by Anna Lewis
***
“I was afraid you were going to say that,” Lynx said, his eyes fixed on the ceiling, refusing to look at Cherise. “Can we please talk about this later, after we’ve had a shower, at least”—
“No, we need to talk about this now, Lynx,” Cherise insisted. “We need to talk about this now, so we can have a later.”
Lynx just shook his head, eyes still locked on the ceiling. “Don’t you see, Cherise? We won’t have a later, we can’t.”
“What do you mean—?”
“The thing we need to talk about? Whatever it is you’ve discovered about me, whatever information made you go back to that bar looking for me? It’s all connected. We can never be together, Cherise.”
“You’re a felon,” she said.
“I am,” he admitted without hesitation. “But it isn’t what you think, Cherise.”
Cherise made them two cups of coffee from the flimsy hotel coffeemaker as Lynx explained his side of the story.
He was a felon, all right, and the app’s report on him was correct: he was guilty of aggravated assault and battery.
“Why would you—?” Cherise began, but Lynx held up one hand to silence her.
“I didn’t want to, Cherise, I had to.”
Lynx had a sister, a little sister named Lily. “The sweetest, kindest girl you’d ever meet, Cherise, but she had terrible, and I mean terrible taste in men.”
Lily had started dating a biker, a young guy who ran with the gang from the Olde Glory Inn, and everything seemed okay at first. The guy, Rusty, had treated Lily well in the beginning, and had quickly befriended Lynx.
“I liked the bastard,” Lynx admitted. “I liked him a lot. He seemed like he was treating my sister good and he was fun to hang around with. We used to ride together, fix up our hogs, shoot the shit at the bar with the other guys there. Everything was cool.”
Until Lily got pregnant, that was. Lynx claimed that Lily told the family that Rusty was cool with it, that he was happy even, that they were going to get married. Lynx believed that lie—and ignored small bruises and marks on his baby sister—until Lily, seven months pregnant and as big as a house, phoned him from the emergency room, sobbing that he needed to come get her.
When Lynx arrived at the emergency room, Lily’s sweet face was covered in bruises and Rusty was nowhere to be seen. After much duress, Lily finally admitted that Rusty had beat her up—that he’d been doing it regularly for months now—and thrown her down the stairs. She’d lost the baby.
Lynx looked at Cherise, his eyes shining with tears. “So I went and found him,” he said simply. “I found him in the bar at the Olde Glory, and I beat the living shit out of him with a tire iron.”
Cherise shuddered, whether from the story or the cold tone in Lynx’s voice, she wasn’t sure.
Lynx continued. “I would have killed him, I would have fucking killed him, if the cops hadn’t show up. They arrested me for assault and he got time for domestic abuse and manslaughter.”
Cherise gasped.
“I got out in two years, with good behavior,” Lynx said. “Guess how long that bastard served?”
Cherise shook her head. She had no idea how much jail time was associated with Rusty’s sentence. She hoped that it was a good, long time. “I don’t know? 20 years?”
Lynx laughed, a harsh, rough sound. “Try six months. That asshole only served six months for beating my sister and killing my unborn nephew.”
“That’s awful.”
“I know,” Lynx agreed, nodding. “It’s horrifying, Cherise. The law didn’t punish him for what he did, so it’s up to me.”
“You can’t—”
“I have to! That’s why I was at the Glory. I’m trying to get back in those guys’ good graces and see if I can find out where Rusty’s hiding out. Once I figure out where that little rat is holed up, I’m going in there and I’m going to finish what I started.”
Cherise shook her head. “No, Lynx.”
“Yes, Cherise.”
“There has to be something else you can do—”
“The law already failed me, Cherise. It failed my sister, it failed my baby nephew,” Lynx said. “The only person who can end this is me.”
Cherise’s head was spinning. Only thirty minutes ago, she’d been happily nestled up with a man with whom she was slowly falling in love and now, now, she was trying to dissuade that same man from committing a vigilante revenge murder.
“Come to San Francisco with me!” she blurted out. “We can get you set up with a new life, get you a job—”
“Felons on parole can’t really get jobs, Cherise,” Lynx argued.
“Then don’t work! I make enough money, I can keep us both comfortable—”
Lynx just shook his head again. “Cherise, no. I can’t come to San Francisco with you, girl.”
“Why not?” Cherise demanded. “Give me one good reason why not, Lynx!”
Lynx closed his eyes for a long time, and when he reopened them, they were clear with purpose. “I’m on parole, Cherise. Parolees can’t leave the state. I can’t come to San Francisco with you. Hell, I can’t leave Nebraska.”
***
San Francisco seemed dull. Cherise used to delight in the busy traffic, the steep hills, the streets teeming with people of all creeds and colors. The city used to be her happy place and now. Now it seemed dull and lifeless, a dull mass of humanity that teemed around her every time she stepped outside.
“We just need to find you a boyfriend!” her friend Meredith crowed, pouring more white wine into Cherise’s still-full glass.
Cherise rolled her eyes and tried to take a sip of the wine. It tasted bitter, like it had gone bad. “Does your wine taste okay?” she asked her friend and Meredith enthusiastically nodded.
“All right, it just must be me then.” Cherise hadn’t had a taste for alcohol since getting home from Nebraska over a month ago. Maybe getting into two barroom brawls had something to do with that.
“So? When are you going to let me set you up with my brother’s friend?” Meredith prattled as Cherise did her best to listen and not let her mind wander back to Nebraska, back to Lynx. Her head pounded, partially from her friend’s perky diatribe, but perhaps also from lack of sleep. She hadn’t been able to sleep well back in San Francisco. Her empty bed seemed like too much to bear.
Meredith was still yammering. “And he’s so nice! He works in HR at my brother’s firm and is part of their intramural kickball league! How fun is that?”
Cherise stood up suddenly, slamming her wine class down onto the coffee table with far more force than she intended.
Meredith’s eyes widened. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah, sorry. My head is pounding and I just need to grab some aspirin real fast. Excuse me for a sec, Mer…”
Cherise pushed past her little friend and stumbled down the hall to her bathroom. Her medicine cabinet was a disaster. The aspirin was nowhere in sight, so she moved some other items out of the way as she searched. An old toothbrush, eye ointment for a condition that had long since cleared up, a full box of tampons…
Cerise did a double take at the tampon box. She vaguely remembered buying those at CVS, reminding herself to get them before she went to Nebraska. Nebraska was over a month ago, Cherise thought wildly. I should have used those tampons by now…
Her eyes widened and she had to grip the edge of the sink to keep from toppling over.
“Meredith!” Cherise cried out. “We need to go to the drugstore. Now!”
An hour later, Cherise and Meredith were huddled together on the couch, intently watching the little red cross appear at the end of the little pee-stick.
“Oh my god,” Cherise muttered.
“Oh my god!” Meredith crowed. “You’re going to have a baby!”
Cherise buried her head in her hands and sobbed.
She couldn’t do this, she really couldn’t. How was she supposed to do this on her own? Raise a child without a father?”
Cherise shook her head and told her friend the whole story. By the end, Meredith’s eyes were wide.
“But you have to tell him, Cherise!” Meredith said.
“I can’t, Mer,” Cherise argued. “Even if he could leave Nebraska, which he can’t because he’s on freaking parole, that still wouldn’t change the fact that he’s a convicted felon on a revenge mission. What kind of father would that be for this kid, huh?”
Meredith just shrugged. “I still think you should tell him, Cherise. It’s his kid, he has the right to know.”
Cherise shook her head defiantly. “I can do this on my own, Mer. He doesn’t need to know. He never needs to know.”
Despite objections from her friends and family, Cherise kept her word. She pushed through the first trimester of her pregnancy just fine, taking herself to her doctor’s appointments and planning her own upcoming baby shower.
She didn’t need help, she didn’t need a boyfriend or husband to help her raise this kid. She could do this.
One afternoon, Cherise was returning to her apartment, arms full of new maternity clothing. She’d only recently begun to show—nothing much, just a small swell of her tummy—and was anticipating a need for some new, stretchy clothing sometime in the near future. The day was hot, even for San Francisco, and she was dripping with sweat by the time she made it home and parked her new little SUV inside her tiny urban garage.
As she climbed the steps to her front door, she froze in her tracks. There, seated on her porch swing, was a very familiar, very large figure.
***
“What are you doing here?” Cherise asked, in lieu of a proper greeting.
Lynx just looked at her, his posture defeated and his eyes remorseful. “I came to find you, Cherise.”
“Are you insane, Lynx?” she hissed, pulling him into her home. “If they catch you breaking your parole, they’ll drag you back to Nebraska to serve more time, they’ll lock you up again, they’ll—”
“No, they won’t,” Lynx said. “They let me off parole early, Cherise.”
“What? Why would they do that?” Cherise was dumbfounded. This was everything she wanted, everything she dreamed, so why wasn’t she happy?
“I helped them find a fugitive,” Lynx said simply. “Rusty broke his own parole and I found him, Cherise.”
“You…found him? And did you—?”
“No! That was just it, Cherise,” Lynx told her. “I was going to beat the hell out of him, I swear to god I was going to kill him and then I…I just, didn’t. I didn’t even go up to his door. I just went to the nearest police station, told them what I knew and they went in and arrested him.”
Lynx continued. “Turns out he had a ton of meth and coke in his place, enough to book him on drug trafficking charges. So, he’s going away for a long, long time, Cherise. And I have you to thank for it.”
Cherise blanched. “Me?”
“You, Cherise,” Lynx repeated. “When I got to his place, right before I barged in that door, the only thing I thought about was you. How, if I went in there and beat him up or, or killed him, I would never see you again. And suddenly, it just didn’t seem worth it.”
“You came and found me,” Cherise stuttered, her hand flying involuntarily to her belly. “I can’t believe you found me, Lynx, I just can’t believe it.”
Lynx smiled and his whole face lit up. “You’re happy, then? This is okay?”
“Okay? This is amazing!” Cherise threw herself at him and Lynx picked her up, swinging her around as if she weighed no more than a child.
A child. Oh no.
“Lynx, wait,” Cherise shouted, but he didn’t seem to hear. “Wait, wait!”
Finally, Lynx setting her down, his lovely green eyes full of concern. “What’s wrong, baby? Is everything okay?”
Cherise nodded. “Everything is definitely okay, it’s just—”
“Are you dating someone else?” Lynx asked. “Oh god, I knew it. I was afraid of this, that I’d waited too long and you’d found someone else who—”
“Lynx, no,” Cherise argued. “It isn’t like that—”
“I understand, I can understand how you wouldn’t want to wait for me, an ex-con who—”
“Lynx, stop!” Cherise had to shout and, this time, it worked. Lynx instantly fell silent. “I haven’t met someone else, it’s just that I’m…I’m…”
“Cherise?”
“I’m pregnant!” she sobbed. Speaking that word aloud, to Lynx, uncorked some sort of blockage within her and everything—all the hopes, the dreams, the fears—came pouring out of her in a deluge of words.
Lynx just sat there, shocked, taking in all of Cherise’s ramblings, holding her close when she needed to sob into him, giving her space when she pulled away. After what seemed like hours, Cherise finally ran out of words and tears. She swiped one hand across her face, rubbing away tears and mascara.
“So?” she asked tentatively. “What do you think? I didn’t really let you talk, did I?”
Lynx shook his head, smiling. “No, you really didn’t, Cherise.”
“And?”
“And?” Lynx smiled. “And, I thought hearing I was getting released from parole early was the best news I’d ever heard, but I was wrong, baby, so wrong. This news, that I’m going to be a father, that I’m going to be a father with you is the absolute best news I could ever hope for.”
“Really?” Cherise said, releasing a breath she didn’t even know she’d been holding.
“Really,” Lynx echoed, reassuring her. He tipped his head forward until his forehead was resting softly against hers, his sandy blond hair mixed with her black twists. “And I’m with you until the end, Cherise.”
She smiled up at him, tipping her head slightly in order to fit her full mouth against his. They stayed like that for a moment, parents-to-be chastely kissing, until Cherise flicked her tongue against Lynx’s mouth, teasing and testing.
He instantly pulled back as though electrocuted.
“What’s wrong?” she asked, fearing that she’d crossed some invisible line.
“Cherise, we can’t…” Lynx shrugged. “We can’t, be together, while you’re pregnant! Wait, can we?”
Cherise tried her best to contain her giggle, but failed miserably, peals of laughter pouring out of her as Lynx just stared at her, horribly confused.
“Yes,” she said, still shaking with laughter. “Yes, Lynx we can still fuck.”
Lynx reddened. “Oh my god, Cherise, you’ve got a filthy mouth for a pregnant lady.”
She cocked one dark eyebrow and grinned. “Why don’t you step into my bedroom, Lynx, and let’s see just how dirty my mouth can really be.”
It had been over three months since Cherise had returned from her trip to Nebraska, and every celibate night had built upside of her until she was a dam ready to burst. She barely let Lynx step inside her room before she was on him, tearing at his clothes, nipping at his neck, grinding her full hips against the rapidly hardening bulge inside his pants.
“I need you,” she whispered into the shell of his ear, standing on tiptoes to reach. “I need you inside me, Lynx, now.”
Lynx didn’t hesitate, scooping her up instantly and carrying her to her bed. There was something different about him, something freshly gentle as he set her down delicately on the mattress.
“I’m not going to break,” she whispered as Lynx kissed down the line of her neck, pausing to nip lightly at the soft juncture where her neck met her shoulders. Cherise gasped and Lynx smiled down at her.
“I know,” Lynx said. “I know you’re not going to break, baby.”
“You don’t need to be gentle for my sake—”
Lynx didn’t let her finish. “It’s not for your sake, Cherise, or the baby’s. I know you’re fine, I mean, physically. It’s just—”
“It’s just what?” Cherise asked, her hands buri
ed in his soft, sandy hair. His face was tucked into the curve of her shoulder and, at first, he spoke so softly, it was impossible to hear him. Cherise had to ask him to repeat himself before she was able to understand him.
“It’s not you, Cherise, or the baby,” Lynx repeated. “It’s me. I just…I just feel so lucky. Like it’s a privilege to be allowed to touch you.”
Cherise bit her lip, hoping to hold back the tears that were brimming in her eyes. “I’m yours, Lynx.”
“I know, baby,” he replied. “And that makes me the luckiest man in the world.
With that, Lynx gently lifted Cherise up and turned her around, arranging her on all fours facing away from him.
“Is this okay?” he asked.
Cherise nodded, her attention focused on the points of her body where Lynx had touched her. His touch, absent for so long, burned her, lit a fire deep inside of her. She needed him. She needed him immediately.
“Please be inside me,” she practically sobbed. “Lynx, I need you. I need you inside of me now, love.”
Lynx gripped her full hips with both his strong hands and pulled her toward him, slowly penetrating her and pushing her further onto his long shaft with each gentle tug.
When he was fully seated within her, the base of his thick cock filling her to the brim, Lynx paused and let out a deep, shuddering breath.
“What do you want me to do?” Cherise moaned, still lost in the pleasure of having him inside of her again.
Lynx’s eyelids fluttered. “I need you to fuck yourself on me, Cherise.”
“What?”
“I’m going to hold still—for now, anyway—and I need you to take control. I’m nervous and I don’t want to hurt you—”
“You won’t—”
“I know, Cherise, I know that,” Lynx said, his voice tense with his restrained desire. “But please do this, just for now, just for me, okay?”
Cherise wiggled her hips back, pressing into Lynx, driving his cock into her with each backward thrust. His hands gripped her hips like they were made of iron, steadying himself as she pushed back into him.