“Holy shit, Sydney. I’m sorry.” I feel like a jackass for saying something so trite, but it’s true. I’m sorry as hell for her, losing basically the only person she had at such a young age. It’s true, I walked away from my last shitty foster home at around the same time, but at least I chose it. And besides, the home I left was no kind of home at all. Sydney at least had a parent who loved her, and it’s clear how much she loved him. Looking at her face now, I see all the pain etched on it that she’s hidden from the world.
“Thanks,” she says simply. “Life is shitty sometimes. If it’s one thing my father taught me, it’s that the odds are always against you. You do everything you can to beat them, but…” She shrugs. “Eventually, the table always wins.”
I wish I could tell her that’s not true, but the words freeze in my throat. I’m not exactly a rainbows and unicorns kind of guy, and she’s not stupid. She’d smell the bullshit from a mile away.
A lump forms in my throat where the words would be. If I had any to offer.
22
Brick
“After Dad died, I had to figure out a way to make a living.” Sydney has propped herself up on one elbow. Her eyes don’t quite meet mine as she continues to talk, and it’s almost as though she’s telling someone else’s story, her voice devoid of emotion.
“He had been on a losing streak when he got sick, and the medical bills wiped out all his savings,” she continues. “So, I did what I knew how to do: I started making the rounds of the casinos, playing just enough to make ends meet, and keeping a low enough profile so no one would get wise to me. Counting cards isn’t illegal, but casinos don’t like it, for obvious reasons. I was lucky I was a girl, and young enough that most people just assumed I was some college kid on vacation or something. As long as I was careful, and didn’t call attention to myself, I managed to stay under the radar for the most part.” She hesitates for a moment. “But eventually, one of my dad’s gambling associates recognized me one day and had me watched to see how good I was. The people who were watching me noticed I was counting, saw my potential, and went back to tell him. A few days later, Devon had me brought to the suite where he was staying and asked me to join his team.”
“Team?” I ask, not understanding.
“Yeah.” She takes a deep breath and lets it out. All of a sudden, she sounds tired. “There are teams all over the major casinos, especially in Atlantic City and Vegas. They’re run like a business, with rules and perks, and incentive systems. Behind the teams are investors, too, who try to make money off a team or an individual counter.” Her face grows dark for a moment, like she’s remembering something she doesn’t want to talk about. “I did that for a little over three years. The thing is, on a team, the money can be better, but your fate is also tied to everyone else on the team. We had months of losing from time to time. And even though I was good at it, the lifestyle just wasn’t for me. I had seen what it did to my dad, and I never had the drive or the passion for winning that carried the others through.”
Sydney looks at me now, almost as though she’s registering that I’m still there. “In movies, they romanticize that life,” she says. “But the reality is that it’s grueling and intense. I thought about my dad, and how his whole existence had been focused on beating the odds, and decided I needed to get out before the life claimed me.” She looks away again, her eyes dark and troubled. “So I took the money that was mine, and left town. I came here because it was the only place I could think of that was far enough away from what I’d known.”
“Your great-aunt told you about Tanner Springs,” I murmur. “Right?”
“Right,” she nods, looking impressed. One corner of her mouth curves up slightly. “My great-aunt Edna — she’s the only relative of my dad’s he was in touch with — had a high school friend who lived here. Edna’s dead now, but I remember she always used to talk about visiting Tanner Springs in the summers. She loved it here. Since I had literally nowhere else to go, I figured I’d take a chance. So here I am.”
“Here you are,” I agree. “Atlantic City’s loss is Tanner Springs’ gain.”
She gives me a little smirk. “At least I can be proud I’ve brought decent coffee to this town.”
“Does anyone from your former life know you’re here?” I ask, out of curiosity.
Something in Sydney’s expression flickers, just for a moment. It happens so fast that I almost think I’m imagining it. But then she smiles at me, and it’s different somehow. Like a part of her has closed off.
“Nope. No one,” she says, a little too airily. “Don’t blow my cover, okay?”
Suddenly, everything feels a little off.
I want to push it — to call her bluff and ask her what’s wrong. What she’s not telling me.
But I don’t. Because something tells me I wouldn’t get it out of her. Not right now.
And if I’m honest, it’s also because selfishly, I sense it might wreck the mood.
So instead, I file it away to ask her about later.
“You’re the first person I’ve told all that to,” she murmurs, tracing a little circle on the sheet with her finger. “In Tanner Springs or anywhere.”
The weight of her words hits me then, as I realize what she’s saying. Sydney probably hasn’t had a lot of people to confide in, given the life she’s had. The fact that she felt comfortable enough to let me in — to get a glimpse of the world she worked so hard to leave behind — is a gift, something precious and fragile. It’s more than I expected. I don’t know quite what to do with it.
“Your secret’s safe with me,” I say carefully. “Thanks for telling me.”
“You know, you’re a surprisingly good listener,” she muses, biting her lip, and then smirks at me. “For a big bad biker guy, that is.”
I snort and grab her by the waist, making her squeal. “Enough talking,” I growl. “I can’t have you thinking I have a sensitive side. You’ll ruin my goddamn reputation.”
“Your secret’s safe with m-eeek!” she shrieks as I toss her back on the bed. She starts to giggle as I lower myself on top of her, and pretends to protest, but the giggles turn to moans soon enough. I’m already hard again, and she’s wet and ready for me. I push myself inside of her and we rock together, Sydney wrapping her legs around my hips and whimpering as I drive myself deeper and deeper. We come together, and then I hold her, so tightly I’m afraid I’m hurting her, but I can’t let go.
“So, your turn,” Sydney murmurs, her fingers tracing the scar patterns on my left hand and arm. “Tell me about this.”
We haven’t slept. We haven’t eaten. It’s still dark outside, and quiet. The sky hasn’t yet shifted from inky black to just a tiny hint of gray, announcing the morning, but it will soon.
I shrug. “Not much to tell,” I say, winding my fingers through hers. “It happened in the Marines.” I stop for a moment, and weigh how much to tell her. It’s an ugly story. Not exactly anyone’s idea of pillow talk. “I was stationed in Helmand Province, Afghanistan. Some guys in my unit were hit by an RPG. Pulling one of them out to safety, I got burned pretty bad.”
She looks at me, her eyes dark with sympathy. “Did you get him out?”
“Yeah,” I say softly. “But it wasn’t enough. He didn’t survive.”
I stop talking, thinking of the aftermath. Sydney seems to sense that I don’t want to talk about it.
“We should get some sleep,” she murmurs. “It’ll be morning soon. We’re both gonna be dead tired today.”
“Worth it,” I say, pulling her hand to my lips and kissing it.
She nods, her eyes shining. “Worth it,” she whispers.
Sydney drifts off to sleep, and I listen as her breathing slows and deepens. She’s right, I’m fucking tired as hell and I’m gonna feel like shit later, but I also know I’m not going to sleep. Instead, I lie there and think about the rest of the Helmand story.
About Rob Sims, the Marine I tried and failed to save that day.
; About how he was always talking about his wife. How he was trying so hard to stay alive so he could make it back home to her.
“Fuck,” I mutter under my breath.
Next to me, Sydney stirs and sighs, but doesn’t wake up.
Sims was a hell of a Marine. He was the guy you wanted next to you in a fight: solid and dependable as they come, the guy you knew would always have your back. He was a straight fucking arrow, too.
And Jesus, he fucking loved his wife. He talked about her all the time. Her name was Tina. I can remember the picture of her Sims had as his home screen on his phone, because he’d show it to anyone and everyone who asked about her. She was dark-haired and wide-eyed, and even though the picture only showed her from the chest up, you could tell she had a hell of a body.
Sims and Tina had only been together for a year before they got married, and he shipped off to Afghanistan shortly after that. Sims worried about Tina a lot — about whether she was adjusting to her new life on a military base without him, far from her family and the friends she’d left behind. A few months before he ended up getting killed, Sims confided to me once or twice that they’d been fighting a lot, and that sometimes she wouldn’t reply to his emails after an argument, or wouldn’t pick up the phone when they’d agreed to Skype. He always forgave her for it, though. “She has it rougher than I do, in a lot of ways,” he’d say. “She’s all alone, without a lot to do on the base. It’s tougher to be the one left behind.”
Personally, I thought maybe it was a little tougher to be living in a hundred-degree hellhole, getting shot at and explosives lobbed at you, but I figured I’d keep that shit to myself.
A couple of months after Sims got killed, I came up for a two week leave. I hadn’t originally planned to go back to the States, but at the last minute I decided I felt an obligation to go see Sims’ widow and offer my condolences in person. I figured she might take some comfort in knowing something about his life as a soldier. How respected he was by his fellow Marines, and how fucking sorry we were that he was gone.
I found out Tina Sims had moved off the military base where she’d been living and into an apartment, a few miles away but still in the same town. I got hold of her address, and her phone number too. I thought about calling her to let her know I wanted to pay her a visit, but I’ve never been much good on the phone. And to be honest I had no idea what the fuck you were supposed to say to a grieving widow anyway. In the end, I decided to just bite the bullet, show up, and hope for the best.
The place Sims’ wife had moved to was a run-down two-story apartment complex in serious need of a paint job. The front yard was little more than some patches of dead grass and brown shrubbery. The whole building and the grounds around it reeked of neglect. My first thought when I got there and saw the condition of the place was that Sims would have lost his damn mind from worry if he knew his wife was living in a shithole like this. I started trying to figure out what I could do to help her out as I made my way up the walk. I didn’t know anything about survivor’s benefits in the Corps, but I sure as hell thought there had to be something better for her than this.
At first, when the man answered her door, I thought I’d written the address down wrong. He was about my age, thin and cocky-looking, with a shitty little mustache. His clothes and hair smelled like weed. In confusion, I asked if this was where Tina Sims lived.
“Widow Sims!” he yelled back into the apartment, a laugh in his voice. “Someone’s here to see you!”
When Tina came out, looking like she’d just gotten out of bed even though it was mid-afternoon, I recognized her instantly from Sims’s photos. I told her who I was, and that I was a friend of her husband’s.
“I ain’t got a husband anymore,” she sneered. “What I got now is a monthly check.”
Tina Sims didn’t want to talk to me, and wouldn’t let me in the house. Not that I wanted to go in by that point, anyway. It was pretty clear she wasn’t grieving Rob, and that she’d quickly found someone else to spend her time — and his death pension — with. If she hadn’t been cheating on him the whole time he’d been gone, that is.
It ate at me, in the days and weeks afterwards. It killed me that Sims went to his death thinking his wife was faithful. Thinking that she loved him. That she missed him, and was waiting for him to come back home to her.
I don’t know. Maybe it was better that he never found out the truth about her. But I fucking couldn’t stand that he went to his grave being lied to like that. It still makes me sick to think about it.
I’ve always taken Sims and his wife as a cautionary tale. About what happens when you let your brain talk you into believing in shit that isn’t real. Tina Sims lied to him, and shit all over him, and he never even knew it. And she’ll never pay a price for betraying him. His marriage and his wife were the most important thing in his whole life, and it was all a goddamn lie. After that day, I could never quite look at any couple the same way again. I was always wondering who was fucking around on who. Who was lying to who.
I look down now at the woman sleeping peacefully beside me, and can’t help but think that Sydney is about the furthest thing away from Tina Fucking Sims I can possibly imagine.
Don’t go down that rabbit hole, motherfucker. This is just a mutual good time, nothing more.
But I’m not fooling myself. I haven’t been able to stop thinking about wanting more with Sydney. Every time I leave her, I can hardly think about anything else but seeing her again. She’s a fucking distraction. I should have put an end to this as soon as I realized she’s not a woman I’m going to fuck a couple of times and then get sick of.
I lean back against the pillows and close my eyes, pissed at myself for even thinking about her like this. I am not in the market for an old lady. I should get up out of this bed, tell her goodbye, and go sink my dick into one of the club girls to get her out of my head. But I know I’m not about to do that. There’s not one of them that can hold a candle to her. Hell, there’s not a woman I can think of that can hold a candle to Sydney Banner.
Fuck. I’m in deep.
23
Sydney
The next day, at work, I’m dead on my feet, and yet somehow positively giddy.
I don’t know how much sleep Gavin got, but I’m pretty sure it’s even less than the couple of hours I managed. He was still awake when I drifted off to sleep, and when he gently shook me awake at just before five a.m., he had already started some breakfast for us in my kitchen.
“I didn’t know what time you needed to get up,” he murmured as he slid into bed next to me, “but I figured it was early, so you could get to the shop.”
We ate a quick breakfast of eggs and toast, and then he took off and told me he’d see me later on. I wandered around my house getting ready half in a daze, my mind still full of him and my body pleasantly sore from lovemaking.
Even now, I can feel him in the ache between my legs and the slight rawness of my face from his beard — souvenirs reminding me that we spend the night together. That he was in my bed. That we shared our stories in the dark.
A tiny pang of guilt rises up inside me, threatening to ruin my good mood, but I push it back down. I feel a little bad that the version I told Gavin why I left Atlantic City left out some pretty important details.
I’d told Gavin that Devon was one of my father’s gambling associates, so it’s not like I left him out of the story completely. What I didn’t tell him was that Devon and I were together for almost a year before I skipped town.
Devon took me under his wing after he offered to bring me on as part of his team. At first, he kept our relationship completely platonic, never letting on that he had any sexual interest in me at all. I let my guard down, little by little coming to trust him as much as I’d ever trusted anyone besides my father. When we did get involved, he began confiding in me more regarding the “business” side of the house. I learned about some of his less than ethical dealings with some of the other members of the team. I also even
tually learned, without his knowledge, that he was skimming money off the top of the organization before he paid us.
I was a high earner for Devon. I had a knack for being able to disguise myself and pass unnoticed. Once I had determined I wanted to leave Atlantic City and start somewhere fresh, I calculated that in the three years I’d worked for him he’d skimmed almost fifty-thousand dollars from me. It was money that I took back, the day I left, leaving him a note to that effect and telling him I was finished with Atlantic City and with the team.
I feel bad skipping over that part with Gavin. I know I should have told him about the texts I’ve received from Devon, and that there’s a slight possibility that he might be serious about coming after me. I can’t help but shake the feeling that Gavin would think I’d been lying to him if he knew, when that’s not what I was doing at all — not intentionally, anyway. It’s just that right then in the moment, things felt really good, laying here beside him. I didn’t want to wreck the mood, and get him all riled up and saying things like why the fuck didn’t you tell me this before, and we have to immediately go buy fifteen security cameras for every angle of every room in your house, and I’m rearranging my life so I can spend twenty-four hours a day keeping an eye on you and making sure you’re safe.
Gavin would be angry if he knew I’d withheld all that from him. I know that. I try to tell my conscience not to feel so guilty about it. He is just trying to protect me, and I’d be lying if I said that doesn’t make me feel sort of… well, not loved, exactly, but at least valued. But I also know he’d just worry way more than necessary. In my mind, there’s a thin line between protection and ownership. And Gavin doesn’t own me, I argue in my head, jutting out my chin defiantly. Being part of the team in Atlantic City was sort of like being owned. Our time was rarely our own, and everything we won had to be turned over to Devon first, before he would pay us our cut.
BRICK (Lords of Carnage MC) Page 12