by A. J. Downey
“One of these days I’m going to get you to ‘fess up and tell me, ‘Yeah, Mali, you’re totally being a whiny bitch!’”
She laughed, “Well, not today, I’m afraid.”
“I’m going to go for a swim.”
“Sure, dinner should be up in an hour or so, though.”
I nodded and trudged through the soft sand down to the shore. When I got there, I unknotted the sari wrap at my hip and let it flutter to the sand. Kicking out of my thongs, I walked barefoot the rest of the way into the water.
Swimming helped to both pass the time and keep me fit, and while I would have never swum in the Chesapeake back in Indigo City, that was mostly due to the combination of the water temperatures being too cold and the fear of pollution, being near a major metropolis.
Speaking of Indigo City, in a major twist of fate and fat irony, three weeks back it’d been plastered all over the news. The Boyle Irish crime family had all but fucking collapsed. Arrests were being made left and right and there was a mountain of state’s evidence against them. Everything from drug to human trafficking. I’d had to shake my head. Leave it to my dad to fucking hide us right under their damn noses… Of course, if you really wanted to hide something, you had to do it in plain sight.
Still, having them arrested was only part of the equation. The Italian crime bosses had proved, time and time again, it was just as easy to run a crime syndicate from prison as it was from anywhere else. Kyle assured me they were working on it, and to be patient. Meanwhile, I sat here and grew more and more frustrated with the whole damn situation. I was still hiding, I still wasn’t safe, but hey, at least I knew what I’d done to incur this life sentence. Apparently, the kid I’d shot had been Danny Boyle’s only son.
I dove under the water and swam deep until my lungs burned and I was forced to return to the surface. I’d been able to stay down longer and longer, which I was happy with; my endurance was improving. I kind of felt like I needed to stay on top of that still. Like I was going to have to make a run for it any minute. It was one of the reasons I still kept my messenger bag always packed. One, I didn’t know if I was going to have to run again but more importantly, I never knew when I was going to need it to fucking go home… Wherever that was, anymore.
Where it is, is with Kyle and wherever he is… my traitorous brain whispered.
“Hey, Mali!” the masculine voice was faint, drifting out over the water, and I bobbed, treading the waves and turned back towards shore. Cutter stood on the edge where sand met the sea, waving his arm above his head. I gave him a chin lift, realized he probably couldn’t see it and made strong, sure, strokes towards shore.
I got my feet under me and marched the rest of the way out of the low waves calling out, “I thought dinner was in an hour.”
“Dinner’s in about a half an hour now, Darlin’, but I figured you were gonna wanna see this.” He held out a towel to me with one hand and an iPad in the other. I scowled and took the towel, my fingers itching for the news. I wrapped my body, and tucked the end under one arm and snatched the device as soon as I felt I wouldn’t get it all wet.
Danny Boyle Dead! I blinked and looked up to Cutter.
“As in the head of the Boyle crime family?”
“That would be the one,” he declared grinning.
I scowled and let my eyes tread over every word in the article, which wasn’t much. He was shanked in the middle of a prison cafeteria riot, died of his injuries before anyone could get help. I swallowed hard and let my eyes rove over the image of a shrewd old man in a suit, eyes glowering from beneath substantial white brows as he leaned in at his last court appearance to hear what his lawyer had to say.
I handed the iPad back and looked up to Cutter’s beaming smile and warm, smiling brown eyes.
“I need a beer,” I declared.
“All right! Now that’s what I’m talkin’ about!” he declared and I walked side by side with him up the beach. He bent and scooped up my wrap and sandals and held the things out with an arched brow, silently asking if I wanted them.
“No, I’m good,” I said, but I wasn’t. At least not really. So much was going through my mind at once and I couldn’t put any of it into words if I’d wanted to. In the end, I had to shrug… so he was dead… in the grand scheme of things, it didn’t make a difference. I was still here, Kyle was still there, and I still felt like I was on the run. I mean, I guess it just wasn’t real yet.
“Got a lot going on up in that head of yers, ain’t yah?” he asked.
“Yeah,” I agreed, but I didn’t expand on it. One of the things that was nice about Cutter and his crew is they didn’t try too hard to make me. At least most of them. Cutter was particularly good at letting it go.
“Go on and wash up, supper should be on the table by the time you get done.”
I nodded and took my unhappy ass upstairs. I grabbed a few things out of my bag and shut myself into the bathroom. A hot shower was made to order to rinse all the sand away and the seawater out of my hair. I’d dyed my ends again, a deep, sea-blue fading into a teal-green. I wondered if Kyle would like it the next time we video chatted. Then I wondered if he would even be able to see it. Most of our chats happened at night, typically in the dark, just the blue-white light of whatever screen illuminating us.
I rested my forehead against the cool tile, the steam rising around me, and sucked in a few deep breaths, letting them out slowly. I was not going to lose my shit. I was not going to cry… but of course, the second I thought that was the second I felt my face crumble and the hot rush of tears. Of course, this was the only safe place to let it out so I sat my ass down in the bottom of the tub and choking down on making too much noise, I let fly. If I didn’t, I was going to lose my shit, completely, and I couldn’t. I wouldn’t. My father hadn’t raised a weak little girl, but he’d sure left one behind, buried deep inside.
I hated that about myself. It was one of my deepest, darkest secrets and the one I hadn’t even let Kyle in on. I didn’t know if I would ever let that one out to see the light of day.
A knock fell at the door, a man’s voice, sounded like Marlin, calling out, “Mali?”
“Yeah!” I called back, voice strong, no hint of the tears I turned my face into the spray to rinse off, letting it at all go down the drain. I was fine. I was hard, solid, a force to be reckoned with.
“Yeah, dinner’s on the table. Come and get it.”
“Cool, thanks!” I called back.
I got my ass out of the shower, dried off, pulled on the short-shorts I’d had donated to my woefully inadequate wardrobe and threw on one of the loose tank tops that Kyle had bought me. This one was black with silver writing on it that said ‘Believe’ with a couple of stars around it, the ones made from intersecting lines with one central focal point, not the five-pointed kind.
I whipped a brush through my hair, snarling at my reflection when it caught and pulled but I wasn’t trying to waste everyone’s time, either. I whipped it into a braid over my shoulder, tying it off as I descended the last couple of stairs into the dining room and kitchen. Looked like dinner was outside tonight, on the stone porch through the back sliding door.
I went out, the patio lit by citronella tiki torches and froze. I had to blink several times to make sure I was seeing things right. I mean, his back was to me, the patches of his cut faded and dirty, but the vest and jacket they rode on was well taken care of. His hair had been cut, which was a good idea, I mean, it was hot down here.
Nervous chuckles went around the table and he turned around, and of course, as it had ever been between us, I blurted out the first thing that came to mind.
“You son of a bitch!” Kyle grinned at me, joy filling his warm brown eyes, and I declared, “I missed you.”
Couldn’t stop these tears, they came out of nowhere, blurring my vision as he closed the gap between us and crushed me against him. I shuddered, an irritating broken little sob escaping into his shoulder as I wrapped my arms around him and hel
d him so tight I didn’t care if it hurt.
“Awww,” Hope, Faith, and Charity chorused and there was some feel-good masculine laughter.
“I missed you, too, baby…” he pressed his lips to my damp hair and cradled my body with one arm, his other hand pressing my face into his shoulder to help hide me from the onlookers. Goddammit, he knew me so well.
“Guys, give us a minute?” he asked gently and chairs scraped against the stone, the slider opened and the tread of booted feet moved past us while I shook in his arms. The door slid shut, and I managed to hold my shit together for a few heartbeats more but then I lost it.
It was real. I was free. I was home.
21
Data…
“Shhh, I’ve got you,” I murmured against her ear, but I didn’t try to stop her. This was Mali in a storm. I’d only seen it once before, when she confessed what’d happened to her way back when, and it scared me as much now as it had then. I knew, though, that when she broke this thoroughly, when she lost her shit this completely, it was just temporary. When she came back, it was stronger and better than ever.
“You lied to me,” she warbled into my cut and I smiled but it was a sad thing.
“I know, I’m sorry, and I swear it will never happen again.”
“What happened to no more games? Not between us?” she cried and her pain was almost more than I could bear.
“I am so fucking sorry, baby. I didn’t want to but I knew you would never agree to this long apart.”
“You promised!” she shuddered and broke down some more and I had to hand it to her, as well as I knew her, as much as I loved her, she still surprised me. Things I fully expected her to be upset over she shrugged like it wasn’t anything. Things I expected she would shrug like it wasn’t anything would stick with her and bother her to no end. I hadn’t known where this one would fall on the spectrum, but I knew now and it predictably, crushed me too.
“I know, baby, I know and I am so sorry.”
She thrust herself back from me and hit me – granted, ineffectually – twice, in the chest, pushing me back, and screamed at me, “You can’t do that to me, Kyle!”
I knew this about my Mali Rose, too. She couldn’t fight against the things that were really turning her upside down and inside out, so she was picking the thing that she could rage about; the fight that she could win. She was pouring all of the rage, frustration, and pain into that, and I let her. It was like using a thermonuclear device to kill termites, total overkill, but I got it. I got her, so I did what I was supposed to. I let her have what she needed; I let her win.
She stood there, shaking, trembling like a leaf in a storm and when I was sure that she wasn’t going to try and hit me for real, I went to her and pulled her in again. Cuddling her close, I kissed her temple and breathed her in and swore to her, “Never again.”
She nuzzled into me miserably and I smiled, knowing I’d been forgiven, even as she asked weakly, “Promise?”
“I promise.”
I waited for an accusing ‘you promised last time’ but it didn’t come, and that’s the point I could tell I was forgiven. It wasn’t precisely a game, but it was. One that I played dutifully, and had since we were kids, and one she didn’t even know she had a piece on the board for. She really, genuinely, didn’t know she did it.
“I hate that you know just what to say, sometimes,” she grumbled and I laughed and tipped her face up to mine.
“You love me just for that reason, too,” I chided and she frowned.
“Ass,” she muttered, but she didn’t stop me from kissing her, and all was right in our world again. Truce declared.
I had to guess the guys of The Kraken sort of guessed the coast was clear because the sound of the back slider opening up interrupted our kiss, which to be honest, had gone on a little longer than was polite anyway, so I couldn’t be mad about it.
“Y’ all right, darlin’?” Cutter asked and Mali nodded, the blush barely there under her deep, dark tan.
“I’m fine,” she grated.
“Good,” Marlin declared. “Means we can eat.”
I met their VP’s eyes and gave a silent nod in thanks. I’d asked in my initial email if they could make sure to eat dinner every night at the table, like a family, for Mali. I knew it meant more to her than she let on; it was another thing I’d known since we were kids. The shaggy blond man lifted half his lips in an awkward smile and gave a nod back. A silent, ‘no problem.’ Mali looked from him to me and I smiled at her and knew I was busted. She didn’t call me out, though. She just shook her head and slipped out of my arms, her hand slipping down my jacket sleeve, fingers tangling with mine. She dragged me gently to a vacant seat next to hers and we sat.
“So how long you stayin’?” Cutter asked, and it wasn’t in any way a pointed way of saying ‘get thee gone, motherfucker’ but a genuine open invitation to stay as long as we’d like, just curious as to how long that would be.
“No more than a day, two at the most,” I said. “We have a life to build back home.”
“Fair enough,” he said, adding, “Welcome to stay as long as you’d like, take a load off, by the looks of you, you’ve earned some R and R.”
I exchanged a look with Mali and the look she gave me back, plus the tightening of her fingers through mine told me clearly, she just wanted to go home. I smiled down at her; even as tired and absolutely wrung-out as I was, I couldn’t deny her. This homecoming shit was seventeen, going on eighteen years in the making.
“Thank you kindly, Cutter, but I think we’ll get out of your hair.”
“Not at all, brother,” he said passing a large bowl of salad down the table towards us. “What’re friends for, after all?”
I smiled and said, “You need anything, you damn sure know where to call.”
He grinned and shook his head, looking down the table at Mali, “Pleasure was all mine.”
She blushed again and wouldn’t make eye contact, which told me that she’d probably been a difficult little shit. I grinned and loaded both her plate and mine.
“I thought that would never end,” she said as I shut the door on the outside world and gave into that feeling that I’d grown to love. Like it was just me and her, hermetically sealed into our own space, shutting out the wild and oppressive energies out there. Turning ourselves over to the peaceful, symbiotic energy of just her and me in the same space, finding our inner peace.
Mali was a different person when it was just her and me. Like she could shake off this invisible yoke of responsibility, like she shed a cloak and let her wings unfurl. It was beautiful to watch, too. The tension and pretenses draining from her until she was just as raw and vulnerable as the next person… and that she was that way just for me.
“Come here, beautiful,” I murmured and her shoulders dropped, the tension draining from her body as she stepped barefoot and perfect across the carpet. She pushed my jacket off my shoulders and I let her take it, her eyes never leaving mine as she carefully reached out and hung it, cut and all, on a hook in the back of the door.
She got it, the respect that my colors and my brotherhood deserved; and I loved her more for that. I drew her to me, hands slipping along the light, airy fabric of her tank, appreciating how her nipples pressed against the thin material, the outline of the jewelry adorning them shimmering alluringly through it.
“I really like this,” I murmured, tracing a thumb over one pert bud.
She shivered under the light touch and pressed her thighs together, saying, “Oh yeah?”
“It’s hot, and a good look for you.”
“You know just what to say to turn me on,” she replied, her voice gone a little breathy.
“C’mere,” I whispered, my own desire rising to a slow simmer in my bloodstream. We both gravitated toward one another, making careful, unconscious baby steps into each other’s intimate space. Her lips were soft and warm beneath mine.
I smoothed my hands along her body, my hands finding the sl
ight curve of her ass, and I gripped the back pockets of the tiny scrap of shorts she had on. I pulled her tight against me, kneading through the fabric and wishing like hell they weren’t there, no matter how long and elegant they made her legs look. The mere thought of those stems of hers twining around my hips brought my dick to stand at attention and I remembered the last time we’d made love.
I was determined not to break her this time, which just meant there needed to be a lot more foreplay, a lot more care in making her ready to take me.
She whimpered against my mouth and I marveled at this woman, this beautiful and fantastic creature. So fierce, hard, and sharp when it came to the outside world but so willing to love me and trust me behind closed doors; in the world of our own making. So willing to be soft and yielding in my arms. A real hellion in the streets and an angel in the sheets. The opposite of what most men wanted, but so very perfect for me.
“Kyle,” she whispered her tone halfway between breathy and begging as I played my lips along the side of her neck, sucking the spot behind her ear and relishing the shudder she let loose against me. She responded to my touch so beautifully and it had been a gaping hole left in my damn heart, my soul, these past six weeks that I couldn’t wait to begin to fill with all things Amalia.
“Put your legs around me, baby,” I breathed into her ear, and hands on her ass encouraged her to give that little leap. She did and the feeling of our sexes pressed together even through the layers of our mutual clothes was enough to damn near drive me insane.
I carried her to the bed and sat her on the edge, burying my fingers in that tank top I’d bought her what felt like ages ago, sweeping it up and off her sweet body, over her head, discarding it on the floor. I could tell by the heat index in her eyes that she wanted skin on skin contact as badly as I did, her hands balling in the front of my own butchered black band tee. I reached behind me and hauled the offending material over my head and let it join her shirt for some sexy times on the floor.