by Brook Greene
“Yes?” I look up at the sweet brunette.
“I won’t say anything to anyone, I promise. And feel free to come back to me when you decide, and I’ll make sure you get what you need.” She takes my hands in hers and holds them, not saying a word, but giving me comfort with just her presence. What she’s just promised me is big in her world. If Leo were to find out she kept this from him, I don’t want to think about what would happen to her.
“I shouldn’t have come to you with this. I’m so sorry,” I say as I take my hands from hers and jump down from the table, roughly wiping the tears from my eyes.
She takes me by the arm, stopping me. “No, I’m exactly the person you should’ve come to.”
~~~~~~
Matty
I stand in the shadows of the alley I’ve been in for the past six hours. It had started to rain over an hour ago, but nothing will keep me from doing what I’m here for. The other three men who are with me mingle at the other end of the darkened alley, waiting for him to come out of the bar he’s been in all day.
I pull my hoodie down lower, trying to keep the water running off my head and out of my eyes. There are no flashing lights announcing the bar’s presence, just an old iron light fixture hanging above a metal door, casting dirty yellow light in a three foot half circle from the brick building.
My heated skin is only cooled by the gun I have tucked at my back in the waistband of my jeans. I try not to think about the drastic difference in the person I am now compared to the man I was in Tessa’s bed this morning. I push back how she makes me feel and replace it with the thoughts of the things I’m going to have to do tonight. I’ve got to harden my heart and remember why I’m standing in the rain in a dark alley.
This is the man I’m trying so hard to hide from her, and the life I lead when I’m him. I’m starting to think I want it all with Tessa. The white picket fence, three point five kids…all of it, even the nine to five job. I’m slowly becoming that man I’ve made so much fun of the guys for being. My mother had always told me when you know it, it happens fast. I just wished I could put a name or a description of what it is that’s happening between me and Tessa.
I look up at the sound of the metal door clanking open, then slamming shut. He turns towards the three others, but seeing them, he turns back to me. I let him walk further into the alley and step out behind him.
I kick a can, getting his attention. When he turns, I rush him, covering his mouth with my leather gloved hand and push him up against the wall. I look up into his eyes. Fear grips them, even though they’re dilated from too much alcohol.
My face is obstructed from him by the full faced toboggan I’m wearing. “You like putting your hands on little boys, motherfucker?” I bring a knee up into his solar plexus, bending him double. I take him by his greasy hair and pull him back up to a standing position. “Getting their mothers so strung out they can’t get in your way?” I land another knee to his groin. He crumples at my feet, mumbling incoherently. I kick him in the stomach, then take another handful of hair, hauling him back up to his feet again.
A black van pulls up behind me and the door is slung open. I turn, tossing the man in with the other three and climb in behind him. Me and one of the three make quick work duct taping his hands and feet together, then I stretch a piece over his mouth. Unable to resist the urge, I draw back and deliver three punches to the side of his head. When I draw back for a fourth, my arm is caught mid-swing. “Rein it in, brother. Wait until we get there, then you can do whatever the hell you want to this piece of shit,” the man who’d helped me duct tape him tells me.
~~~~~~
We keep a safe house on the outskirts of the small town we have come to call home. The small farmhouse sits in the middle of a thick forest, where if someone screams, the sounds are swallowed by the high mountains surrounding it.
I sit at the small table with an untouched cup of coffee sitting in front of me. I take another pull from the cigarette that has left a shit taste in my mouth. I hear someone clear their throat, and I turn to see a man step through. “He’s ready if you are,” he tells me. Even though I hate to smoke, I take the last drag then tap it out in the ashtray before standing.
I roll my neck, popping it, and follow the man downstairs to the basement. We walk down a long dirt hall to a small room at the end. A light bulb tips off a single wire hanging from the ceiling. It sways back and forth, illuminating the man lying on his side at our feet.
I squat down, taking his hair in my hands, pulling his face to mine. Making eye contact with him, I hear the faint sounds of him pissing himself, right before the acrid stench of urine hits my nose.
I reach up, peeling off the full-faced toboggan so that he can see the face of the man who’s about to kill him. The other three with me stand off to the sides, watching what I’m getting ready to do.
He begs for his life, trying to back away from me as I stand, the tarp he’s lying on crinkling under my feet. I reach for my weapon to the sounds of his cries and mumbles of confused words I don’t care to hear. He watches me screw the silencer onto the end of my gun, then cries out as I point it at him and pull the trigger. The room falls silent as I stand over the body of a man who didn’t deserve to be breathing and pump three more bullets into him.
I reach for my back pocket, pulling the white envelope out, slapping it into the waiting hand. “Make him disappear.”
Oz nods. “You got that shit right, brother.” He says as he thumbs through the bills filling the envelope to capacity, then points. “Mose, Cruz, wrap him up.” Oz’s deep voice follows me up the steps as I exit the basement.
I slide into the driver’s seat of my waiting car. Leaning forward, laying my forehead on the steering wheel, I take several deep breaths to calm my nerves. Bile is burning the back of my throat, but I’m sure it’s nothing like what he’s been through.
I drive back to my hotel and lay on the bed with my phone in my hand. I want to call Tessa so bad I can fucking taste it. I need to hear the sweet sound of her voice calling me baby, and the raspy way she calls my name when she comes. I close my eyes and go back to this morning when I was lying in the bed next to her warm naked body.
I have two more days until I’m back with her, and it seems like an eternity. A special kind of torture I haven’t suffered in such a very long time, but she’s worth every minute I spend away from her. I drift off to sleep with her filling my head and my heart. I’d left my soul with her to keep safe.
Chapter Seventeen
Tessa
I had poured myself a glass of whiskey and sat staring at it for three hours. Every once in a while, I would dip my finger into the glass and let the droplet sit on my tongue. I would close my eyes, savoring the taste of it. The bitter sweet sting it gave me felt like the news I would have to deliver to Matthew when he returned.
And now it’s once again morning and I’m getting ready after lying awake all night, hugged up with his pillow, crying. My third day of work and I already hate it. And now, today, not that I needed to be kicked anymore, Angela is sitting at her desk when I walk through the office door.
Her smile is sickly sweet when she sees me. “Well, good morning, Tessa,” she greets, laying her hands on her desk.
“Good morning, Angela.” I return her greeting, using her name, hoping she doesn’t miss the piss and vinegar I’m throwing her way.
Claire smiles at me when I slump down into my chair. “Hey, Tessa. Hung over?”
I raise an eyebrow at her. “I wish.”
I hear Angela humph at my statement, and Claire and I both throw her a look. “Don’t mind that bitch,” Claire whispers across the space between us, but it’s loud enough for Angela to hear.
She turns her bitchy glare at me. “Trouble in paradise already?”
I bite my lip to keep from screaming at her as my thumb hovers over Eno’s number, then I get an idea. I give her my sweetest smile and say, “Right before Matthew left, Angela, he gave me Eno Tucker’s p
hone number and told me to call him if you gave me any shit. Wanna tell me what that’s about?” Her face blanches and her shoulders slump, right before she turns around, facing the other way. I look to Claire, smiling triumphantly, and wiggle my eyebrows.
Tessa-one. Bitch-fuck off.
~~~~~~
Matty
I shave, shower, then dress in a suit, something I haven’t worn in a very long time. The tattoos are covered and my hair is gelled. I adjust my tie one more time, feeling like I’m being strangled and laugh. How poetic? How very fucking poetic.
I take the car into town, making my first stop.
I stand at the reception desk. “Matthew Keagan here to see Mrs. Davis,” I inform the young girl with a headset on, making me think of Morah.
She looks up with a pissed off look on her face until she sees me, and her face twists from a scowl to a flirty expression. I fight the urge to roll my eyes.
She licks her lips as her eyes roam up and down my body. “Have a seat, Mr. Keagan, and I will let her know you’re here.”
“Thank you,” I reply before sitting in one of the smallest damn chairs I’ve ever sat in, aside from Caden’s tea time table chairs she makes us stuff ourselves into when we’re caught at the clubhouse around tea time with teddy, as she calls it.
I’m kept waiting for thirty minutes while every fucking woman in the god damned building makes a pass, looking through the tiny window at me. Sometimes they make a third and fourth pass.
A small older lady steps around the corner into the waiting area and I stand. She places her frail hand in mine, and I give it a gentle shake. “Mr. Keagan,” she greets me with a knowing smile.
“Mrs. Davis.”
“If you’ll follow me, please?” She turns to lead me down a long glossy hall. My large six foot three frame dwarfs the small lady in front of me.
She closes the door behind us and takes her seat across from me behind the large desk, making her look even smaller than she is. Her face is grim as her sad gray eyes stare back at me. Her mouth twists into a frown as she pushes a manila folder to me. “This is the report I’ve filed with the state.”
I reluctantly reach out to take it. She’d given me most of the details over the phone, so there’s no need for me to open the folder now. “Thank you for everything, Mrs. Davis. I really do appreciate all you’ve done.” I stand, buttoning my suit coat, then I reach to shake her hand. “I really do thank you.” I don’t think I’ve ever met a woman more fit for the job she does. She’s been the one agent in the Department of Social Services I’ve worked with over the past couple years.
“Take care, son,” she says to me in a very motherly tone. I nod to her once more, then turn and exit her office, making my way out to my car laying the folder in the seat beside me, not having the stomach to read anything reported in it right now.
I back out of the space and head to the hospital.
I carry my briefcase with me as I enter the sliding doors to general admission, not needing to stop. I already know what room number I need. I don’t knock, but enter and shut the door behind me. She lays in the bed with her eyes closed until the click of the door calls her attention to me.
Her mouth falls open as she pushes her body up in the bed. I take her in from head to toe.
“Matty?” She’s a shell of the woman I’d once known, almost unrecognizable. Her body is gaunt, her cheeks hollow, and her skin a dull gray color.
I stop at her bedside. Reaching for her arm, I run my thumb over the massive amounts of needle marks in it. “Is this what my fucking money paid for, Rachel?”
She opens her mouth, but I shake my head, silencing her. “Don’t even fucking answer with your pathetic excuses.” I turn from her and roll the table over to her, flipping open a folder and laying a pen on the papers it contains. “Sign them.”
She looks down, reading the title typed on the paperwork, then begins to shake her head no. I take in a deep breath, blowing it out loudly. “This isn’t negotiable. Fucking sign the god damn papers, Rachel, because you know more than anyone I’m not a man to be fucked with. I’m done with you.”
She steels her shaking hands and levels her gaze at me. “You gonna make me disappear, Matty?”
I nod my head once. “If I have to, yes.”
“People would know. I would be missed,” she bites out, all the old venom resurfacing.
“But nobody would care, Rachel, not about you. You’ve burned so many bridges and severed lifesaving ties.” I lean in, getting in her face. “Quite frankly, I think I would be doing them all a favor.” I push the papers to her. “Sign these and save your parents any more unnecessary grief.” At the mention of her parents, her face falls. I’ve had a front row seat to the spectacle of pain she’s caused her two elderly parents.
“But…” She starts to cry. It used to work on me, but not anymore.
“Dry up those fucking fake ass tears. It doesn’t work, Rachel, not anymore.” I pound my finger on the table, my patience for this gone. “Sign the papers, now.”
Realizing she’s out of options, she takes up the pen, stopping when she sees which one it is. She holds it up with real tears in her eyes this time. “Your pen.”
“Yes, it is.” It had been a gift from her.
I take the signed papers and tuck them back into the folder, stowing them away in my briefcase. I turn to walk out, but she stops me. “What am I gonna do now?”
I turn to her, running my hand down my tie. “Rachel, I really don’t give a shit.” I leave the room and a life I feel completely disconnected from behind for good.
~~~~~~
Tessa
Angela doesn’t say anything to me for the rest of the day, and I get numerous text messages from Avery I don’t reply to. I don’t know what I’m going do. Wait and take a test? Take the pill? Or risk it and talk to Matthew about it.
My head says to take the pill, but my heart is screaming for me to talk to Matthew. Claire asks me out for drinks after work, but I decline and go home with my head full and my heart heavy. In one day of thinking I could be pregnant, I’ve grown to want it, even love it in some warped way.
I enter my house and discard my heels at the door before making my way back to my kitchen for some warm tea. I drop my purse and keys on the counter, but the air is different, making me stop. I look around as I circle the island, putting something between myself and whatever it is that has invaded my space.
“Matthew?” I ask, in hopes he’d returned early and is messing with me, but I get no answer. I hear the lock on the front door click and the creaking of the floorboards as someone walks down the hall. I run to the back door, tugging on the knob, trying my best to get away, but it’s been screwed to the frame. My panic is choking me and I freeze when I hear his voice.
“Tessa.” I feel his hand snake into my hair, pulling me back and throwing me through the air. I land on my back so hard, all the air is knocked from my lungs. I roll, gasping as I reach to cradle my tailbone. “You fucking whore. What made you think you could fucking leave me?” I’m engulfed by the terrors of my past.
~~~~~~
Matty
I filed all the paperwork with the clerk of courts then headed off to my parents’ house. The ride seems longer than the thirty minutes it really is, and I know it’s because of what’s waiting for me there.
Pulling into the circle drive, I put the car in park. Getting out, I look up at the ridiculous house my father insisted my mother needed. He spoiled her, giving her everything she told him she didn’t want or need, but he did it anyway.
My parents are the perfect love story—fell in love young and are still like two teenagers together. My father had taught me and my brother how to be good husbands and good men. I’ve fallen away from that, but I’m finding my way back with Tessa’s help.
Before I can open the door, it’s yanked open to the waiting arms of my mother. “Matthew,” she yells out as she practically throws herself at me.
I engulf her in
my arms. “Hey, Momma.” I can tell she’s been crying. Her eyes are puffy and her makeup is gone. “He okay?”
She steps back, taking my suit in and smoothes her hand down my tie, pinching her lips together. “He’s fine, baby.” She takes my arm in hers and walks with me into the house. The sights, sounds, and smells assault me, reminding me of when I was a kid. She’s cooking, the TV is on the news, and everything is how it always is, in the perfect place.
“Jackson,” she calls out to my father who meets us at the end of the foyer.
I offer him my hand, but he holds out his arms, and even as a grown man, I hug my father. I breathe deep, keeping the tears I want to cry at bay. “Dad.”
“Is it taken care of, son?” he asks quietly in my ear.
“Yes, sir,” I answer.
“Good,” he says as he gives my back a slap before pulling away from me. “He’s in here.” My father steps to the side and I peer into my father’s den, a room I’d loved spending time in as a child. I see his little body perched on the foot stool that sits right in front of my father’s chair. He looks so small to me, even though he’s three.
I feel my mother come up beside me. “I remember when you were his age. You did the same thing. Sit right there and watch news you didn’t understand, but you just wanted to be in the big boy’s room.” She turns to me, big tears in her eyes. “He asked the same thing, but this time he called it Pop’s room.” My dad takes her hands from me and turns her into him to let her cry. I look at Dad and lay the folder I’d been holding on the table to my right.
I step into the room cautiously and kneel. “Hey, little man.” His head jerks around at the sound of my voice and a huge smile bursts across his face.
He jumps from the stool and runs to me, his arms out. “Daddy!”
I scoop him up and hold him close to me. “I’ve missed you too, little man, so much.” I bury my face in his neck and thank God I have him now, with me, forever.
~~~~~~