by J. C. Allen
But she was so far away—too far away—and my hand, far as it might reach, would never get to her. I’d never get an answer. Not from her. I didn’t know why I ever expected to get an answer from her—in some ways, though not as twisted and as dark, I wondered if this paralleled asking my father if I could join the Black Falcons.
I watched in horror as the image faded, disappearing into that oblivion where she waited between visits.
And then, just like that, I was back in my apartment, my stereo crushed, my past as confusing as ever, and my future clear in at least action but certainly not in feelings.
“Fuck…”
I closed my eyes, squeezed them shut until they hurt, and tried to fight the wave of tears that threatened to spill. I didn’t want to cry right now. I didn’t want to have all these negative emotions right before meeting with Eve.
Eve…
Just thinking her name…
It was a surreal feeling to realize that thinking about her made me feel better about myself. Even in the face of Maggie’s memory, even in the face of that, I still felt good thinking about Eve.
She just brought me a certain peace of mind, a certain sense of stability, that no one else could. With all respect to my family and Roost, there was something to be said for a woman who just got you—and Eve certainly got me.
It just seemed so right…
Until, of course, it went wrong. Maybe I’d swing back, have myself a moment of crazy, and Eve would get an eyeful of just how broken I really was. Maybe she would realize that a John she only had to deal with for an hour or so at a time was a much better bargain than a broken man on a permanent basis.
Running on empty…
“Then fill the damn tank,” I told myself. “Get it together, Derek.”
I couldn’t get it together with her right now, given the obvious fact that I had now let the clock slip to 4:40 p.m. Even if I left at this exact moment, hopped on my bike, and roared toward the street corner, picking up Eve as I ran by her, sort of twirling her onto the bike—never mind the dangers and how that would almost certainly break my arm or kill her—I wouldn’t get there until right at 5… at which point it would look more like a kidnapping to the Black Falcons than it was me hiring her.
I preferred the term rescue, but I wasn’t her employer.
But I had to leave the house now. I had to go see Roost. If nothing else, too much had happened the previous night with the Black Falcons that I couldn’t just ignore as the leader of the Savage Saviors—I had to hold a conference call of sorts with my Chief Operating Officer.
Still, as I prepared to head over, my mind kept going to Eve.
I tried to fight through all the nerves telling me this was a bad idea. The truth, I realized, was that I needed this. I needed to see if there was any chance of hope for me.
And if there was, I’d most certainly know it very, very soon—maybe not tomorrow, but I couldn’t see things going more than a couple of weeks without a head-on confrontation coming with the Black Falcons.
Moving towards the elevator, I waited, trying to keep my thoughts on the night before—ideally, what had happened at the fundraiser.
In reality, though, it just all went back to Eve and what had happened in this apartment bedroom barely a little over twelve hours ago.
It was an interesting realization to come to the conclusion that for so long, I had fought these feelings like hell.
For how long had I been afraid of my own thoughts?
Afraid of what the quiet meant for me?
The truth was that I’d been afraid of my own thoughts for so long that the change Eve had made in me was actually creating a storm in my head. A high concentration of warmth had collided with a block of coldness that was prepared to settle in until the end of time and then…
Well, I guess time would tell what the outcome would be for that, huh?
Hopefully better than Maggie.
If you listen to your old man’s words this time, it might just.
Oh, Matty’s gonna have a field day hearing all of this.
“Fuck you, Matty,” I whispered, shaking my head.
Because hadn’t that know-everything fruit-loop life-Jedi all but said this would happen?
“Right down to the ‘prostitute’-part…” I mused, shaking my head and scoffing. “Fuck you, Matty.”
I called for the elevator, which opened, interrupting my thoughts. I stepped in, mentally tracing the route I’d take at the bottom to get to my chopper.
Moving to my chopper when I got to the bottom of the complex, I took a deep breath.
You think she’ll want to be with you? You don’t even want to be with you.
“I do now,” I countered the thought in a low mutter. “Especially since she was looking at me like that.”
Maybe I was just trying to pump myself up. Maybe I was just trying to give myself more credit than I deserved. Maybe I didn’t actually believe…
No, I did. She had been looking at me in that way. Like…
I was worth it.
Like maybe I could be alright after all.
Smiling, I slipped onto the chopper and started the engine, closing my eyes for a moment to savor the sensation of the rumbling engine in conjunction with what I was to do next time I saw Eve.
Me. On a second date.
Yeah.
That seemed right. It really did.
But first, business.
I gunned the chopper down the roads, feeling free as my hair brushed back with the wind blowing against my face. I weaved through traffic, doing my best not to stop at red lights and stop signs if I could help it—but unlike in the past, this wasn’t half out of a suicidal wish to have something hit me to put me out of my misery.
Rather, this was mere protection against those moments when I fully stopped, when that PTSD flashback to Maggie’s death would flash in my mind. I wasn’t naive enough to believe those would suddenly end just because I was seriously feeling the potential with Eve, but the more I could prevent them, the better.
Fortunately, fate—and traffic—shined well upon me on this day, as I encountered only one stop in which it was not safe to barrel through. And this one was so quick, that the vision didn’t even get the chance to consume my mind.
I pulled up to the rear of our mechanic shop, hopping off my bike in record fashion and making my way the private office, our “battle station,” where Roost sat. He looked up at me, smirked, and shook his head.
“How goes it, Roo—”
“Rumor has it yer a fuckin’ idiot,” he said with a guffaw. “Top o’ the morning to ya, Derek. Reckon’ I ought to greet ya lucky ass with pleasantries like this if yer gonna keep runnin’ these suicide runs.”
I couldn’t help but laugh at what he said, and Roost matched my laugh—until, as if someone had flipped a switch, he became deadly serious.
“The fuck did ya think ya were doin’?!?” he demanded. “Yer lucky as an untouched asshole in the cell! Ya should be dead!”
I could see that I was not going to say anything that would assuage Roost, and he seemed to be making a point to raise his voice for all of the Saviors to hear. Little bastard.
Not that I could really blame him. Not that he was really little, either.
“Ya just raised a giant shitstorm, Derek,” he growled, his voice coming slightly down. “It’s only gonna get worse from here.”
I sighed.
“I know,” I said. “I know how lucky I am. I’m not going to pretend I’m not. I just… I went into a rage to kill Rock. He killed Maggie, Roost. He killed my daughter. You know this.”
I was surprisingly calm for the topic at hand. Perhaps meeting Eve…
Well, it was too ridiculous to say meeting Eve had made me chill and cool over what had happened to Maggie and my unborn child. I still fantasized about Rock dying with a bullet lodged in his throat—in his head was too kind and merciful an act.
But I couldn’t pretend that I didn’t have better self-cont
rol at that moment relative to before.
“I’m not going to stand on the sidelines waiting for the right moment, Roost. If a chance presents itself again, I’m not going to wait. I’m going to seize it and kill him.”
Roost, as if to make a point, turned his head, prepped a huge loogie, and spat on the ground.
“It’s yer lucky day then, Derek,” he said with a sarcastic laugh. “Ya know what the Black Falcons gonna be doin’, now yer pulled ya little stunt?”
I knew the answer before he so much as took another breath.
“They’re gonna be patrollin’ the streets like the falcons they are, lookin’ for any chance they can get to kill yer lucky guts,” he said. “Rumor is Rock is losin’ control of himself, tryin’ to find you.”
“Rumor?”
That brought a slight grin to Rooster’s face, who knew how legendary the temper of Rock was—which, in turn, meant how legendarily easy it could be to control him.
The problem, of course, was controlling him enough to get him out into the open.
“Well, they say fiction is stranger than truth, and right now, yer lil’ stunt might just’ve gotten that punkass out onto the streets. But yer best be careful ridin’, and I don’t mean yer helmet.”
“Sure you do,” I teased.
“Derek.”
I got serious.
“I dunno where this good spirit’s comin’ from—I kinder like it, not gonna lie—but don’t let it blind ya. The streets gonna be a hell lot more dangerous now with what ya did, so ya best be careful, ya hear?”
I nodded. Nothing really more needed to be said.
“Good,” Roost said. “Now then, let’s discuss a plan to actually kill that sorry motherfucka.”
18
Eve
He’s not coming.
I should’ve known better.
I sat on the edge of my bed, continuously glancing at my phone like a lovesick teenager, waiting for the number of one Derek Knight to call me. If he knew how much I looked at that phone—hell, if he knew how many times I just glanced at my phone but had to exert an unfair amount of self-control not to stare at it—I don’t think he would have ever seen me again. Clingy. Desperate. Begging.
Hell, who the fuck wouldn’t be desperate in a situation like mine?
But it’s the very thing that’s going to drive him away. My very need for salvation will prevent that from ever happening.
Cruel, but real.
Fuck you, Rock.
Fuck you, Chuck.
Fuck you both for putting me in this spot.
I couldn’t say “as usual” because I’d never put myself in a spot to fall in love like this in what felt like an entire lifetime. But in terms of “as usual” where, “as usual, the girl who needed to be loved the most scared it off, and as usual, the girl who didn’t need it and had her life together got it the most?”
Yeah, that was as usual. It was too as usual.
The only benefit to this was that as soon as I had gotten home, stuffed the cash in my purse, passed out, and woken up, I’d gotten ready. I swear Crystal must have thought she was dreaming when she woke up, seeing me ready to go. She cracked a few jokes about my sense of timing after landing a man, perhaps being the only woman in history who sped up as a result, but she left me alone for the most part. She knew the world that I inhabited now.
Namely, heartbreak and disappointment.
I wasn’t even mad at Derek. Perhaps I’d slept with him too quickly. Hell of a thing for a hooker to say. You should be more mad he got the goods for free than anything else.
Except he hadn’t. He’d given me enough cash to provide me an alibi to Rock—or, in other words, an alibi to survive my next encounter with him. He might wonder what I had done that night, but as long as he had the cash in his hand, it acted like an aphrodisiac to him, calming his spirits and lessening—though never really eliminating—the possibility he’d just grab a pistol and place a bullet straight into my fucking brain.
“… swear, this powder is running so dry, and ain’t none of us got time to go to CVS.”
My mind briefly broke out of its self-inflicted bad talk as I heard Crystal’s voice carrying from the bathroom. She was back to her routine of boisterous, colorful humor as a means of preventing herself from dwelling too long in the darkness. I only wished I had half of her humor—it would make grotesque topics like sex with gross Johns and powdering my pussy a little bit more funny.
“Sorry,” I shouted.
“Aww hell, girl, it ain’t your fault,” she shouted, not realizing how little of what she’d said I’d heard. “We just a poor set of girls, nobody loves us. Easy come, easy go.”
It dawned on me she was referencing Queen—or she was oblivious to that fact. I decided not to ask, not wanting to get into a prolonged discussion about 70’s English music. I was just a little too upset and a little too distracted by the lack of the distraction I most hoped to see.
“Easy go,” I said, my voice dying a little bit at the end. “Well, whenever you’re ready, I’m ready.”
“I know, girl! First time I seen that from you in what feels like my entire time with you!” Crystal shouted, emerging from the bathroom with only her underwear on. I couldn’t even feign surprise or shock—it was just all part of the Crystal experience. “Usually I’m the one holding a fake gun to your head before one of Rock’s boys gets the idea to hold one to you, but damn, role reversal, huh?”
“Something like that,” I said, letting my voice drift.
Crystal went into the bathroom for a second, hesitated, but then didn’t say anything. I knew exactly what she was debating—whether she should help me with my emotional state, or prepare herself.
The choice wasn’t hard. One of them got us killed when we showed up late. The other gave us a chance to talk later, probably tomorrow.
We’re only as loyal to each other as our chances of survival, I thought. I love you, Crystal, but we have to make sure we get through this first. Then we’ll deal with emotions.
I had a moment then when I realized I sounded like a soldier trapped within enemy lines, but I was nothing of the sort. There was no war. There were no terrorists.
There was just my brother, the asshole who put me here… whom I kept trying to forgive despite my more rational side telling me I had no business doing so.
Crystal emerged a short while later, giving me the nod with her purse slung over her shoulder. As we left, she put her arm around my neck, and I leaned into it slightly. The normally loquacious Crystal didn’t say much, and I didn’t either. We both knew words wouldn’t do anything to the realization that, as usual, hope had been crushed.
The life of a whore. You don’t believe in hope, because hope implies there’s the possibility for a brighter future. If there is, the odds are so remote that to believe they’ll come true is to believe in insanity.
We made our way to the bus and waited—that was a first too—when Crystal asked to see my earnings from the night before. I opened my purse, and actually got a good laugh when the expression on her face matched that of a porn star faking surprise at a huge dick.
“Holy shit, girl!” she said. “You might even get Rock to smile when he sees that!”
“Let’s not get too carried away,” I said. “We all know there’s nothing funny to Rock!”
Both of us laughed at that.
But both of our laughing faded when we realized just how true what I said was. Rock could get mad for no good reason. Very little was funny to him.
There was no humor in the world. There was only money, opportunities to make money, and punishment to be enacted for losing money. I shuddered to think of a world in which money disappeared—Rock would either destroy it or he’d go mad and destroy the world in the process of killing himself.
I checked my phone. The bus still had another couple of minutes before it got there, leaving me to open my Kindle app on my phone and resume reading Richard Dawkins. I leaned against the bus station, b
arely noting a limo pulling up.
“Whatcha reading, girl?” Crystal asked.
I sighed. This topic again? Crystal must truly have been desperate for some conversation. Maybe… maybe she’s trying to distract herself from the fact that I might have found an escape.
What that must do to her…
“That vampire novel I told you about,” I lied, hoping this conversation would not last more than a few minutes. “You know the one.”
“Yeah… I think so,” she said, smirking. “The one where the two horny ones…”
I ignored her as I noticed something strange.
That limo that I had seen from just seconds ago was now slowing down as it approached.
We never, ever, ever got picked up at this corner. At best, some guys might start flirting with us, but once they realized what we were, they didn’t dare continue. This was too public and too open of a spot—not to mention not trashy enough—for people to pick up hookers.
Which meant…
The window rolled down, revealing a bald man in sunglasses. Even with the black lids over his eyes, I recognized him immediately.
He was one of Rock’s cronies who would wait for us on the street corner.
“Get in. Now.”
He opened the door, and the gun was visible in his lap without me even looking. I stuffed my phone into my purse, praying suddenly they didn’t demand to see it—not that I had ever texted or called Derek, but still…
It never takes much for Rock to lose his mind and thus for me to lose my life.
Crystal and I slid into two seats in the limo, and though my peripheral vision only showed me his pants at first, I didn’t need to see more to know that I’d gotten into the limo of Rock. My glance up confirmed as much.
He sat there in a white suit, arms crossed, with two of his minions by his side. He had absolutely no qualms having his gun visible, and the two bodyguards had even less shame about it, their guns all but ready to launch bullets into our skulls with one wrong word.