by Max Henry
“What’s the ‘C’ for?” She pointed to a scripted capital C surrounded by daisies.
He glanced down at the detail, and traced the lines with a finger. “Me brother’s name was Colin.”
Way to put your foot in it, Steph. “Did he like daisies?”
Pete shook his head, still fixed on the picture. “Daisies symbolise innocence.”
The weight of a fully-laden truck smashed into her chest. Innocence. “How old was your brother when he died?” she whispered.
He swallowed thickly before he answered. “Two months from his third birthday.”
The rims of her nostrils flared in time with her heartbeat. She compressed her tongue to the roof of her mouth, but it was no use. The sob escaped past her pathetic attempt to cage her sorrow for him, and came out as a choked whimper. Pete looked up. A flash of annoyance was replaced with a look that said he understood.
“I’m sorry,” she managed. “I know you don’t want pity, but shit, Pete. That’s so sad.” Tears welled in her eyes, but she didn’t want to push the envelope. Instead, Steph drew her knees to her chest, and subtly wiped the moisture onto her pyjamas.
“Agh,” he sighed. “I should know by now that you’re not the type to pity anyone.” He pushed forward, and sat on the edge of the couch with his hands hung limp between his knees. “It is sad. But mostly, it’s fuckin’ disgustin’.”
Steph sniffed away the last tear, and hugged her knees tighter. The look in his eye was pure violence. Whatever place the memory of that day took him, it sure-as-shit wasn’t a good one.
“I mean, Jesus, that woman—me own mother—took his life without so much as a second thought. He didn’t die slowly, ya know.” Pete rose to his feet. His voice also rose with each word. “She had plenty of fuckin’ opportunity to stop what she did, but no, the bitch kept on goin’. She ignored the cryin’, the despair on Colin’s wee face. Fuck, she ignored me screamin’. She just. Kept. At it.” He pounded his fist into the palm of his other hand with each accentuated word.
Steph pushed her feet to edge further into the back of the armchair. For the first time, Pete truly scared her. She still had no reservations on her safety; he never looked at her with the same hate he showed now. She was purely worried for anybody that might come across him in such a mood.
Ivan. She’d agreed to text him. Later. Now certainly wasn’t the time.
“What happened after the police came?”
He threw his hands to the back of his head, and laced his fingers as he walked to the wall of her living room. Silence echoed between them as he perused her pictures; family holidays, school leaver’s party, a cousins wedding. Each of the images portrayed a happy moment in a happy family, and until now she had never been ashamed to have them on display. Now, it simply seemed as though she wanted to ram it down his throat that he never had a ‘normal’ childhood.
Pete dropped onto the couch once more, and rested his head on the back. “They arrested her. The court case was quick, because they had all the evidence right there, ya know. She was sentenced to fifteen years—no chance of parole.”
“Is that all? Fifteen years for the life of her child?”
“That’s all,” he repeated. “She got out five years ago. I’d managed to avoid her, but last month I got a letter sayin’ she was now cleared for travel—” He pulled his lighter from the pocket of the waistcoat, and ran it between his fingers. “—and that I was listed as the contact for her intended destination.”
“Will you let her visit?” Steph braced for accusations, questions of her morals. She braced for Pete to say she was insane for her belief he could.
“She’ll come either way. She does what she wants.” His face remained stoic. He didn’t give a single thing away of how he felt to have his murderous mother get in touch. “That’s why I went to see Derek. He works as our intermediary.”
“Wow.” Steph dropped her legs from the seat, and fidgeted her hands on the arms of the chair. “What did he say?”
“She wanted to meet up with me to explain, re-connect.”
“And you got him to say no.” The connection with her family’s friends made sense now.
“Aye.”
There was a tonne of things Steph still wanted to quiz him on, so much yet to learn. But the poor guy had shared enough for a night, and by the strained expression he wore as he twisted the toe of his boot in the carpet, he’d had enough. The lighter flew through his fingers at break-neck speed. “If you need to have a smoke, don’t let me stop you.”
He twitched a smile, and then pocketed the lighter. “I don’t want to leave until I know we’re okay.”
“I think we’re okay, don’t you?
He shrugged. “I can’t trust me instincts anymore. Everybody I’ve trusted, I’ve believed in, has turned on me. I think it stands to reason I’m a lousy judge of character.”
She shook her head, and slipped off the seat to join him on the couch. He shifted slightly to give her more space as she sat with her body turned to him. “Did it ever occur to you that for once, you may have got it right?”
The eyes which met her gaze held such hope that Steph knew the tears welled yet again. This tough bastard she had been presented with was truly nothing of the sort. The Pete who sat before her was still the same man who would take her wherever, whenever. But now ... now she had managed to get in close enough to peel back the protective coat. Underneath laid a giant softy; a man whose heart belonged in the right place, but equally a man who had never been allowed to show it. All he could do was replicate the environment he grew up in, and at no fault of his own, that environment was a shit one.
“Why do I deserve ya, Cutie?”
“Why not?”
“I’m a failure, Love. I’m scum. If I stayed in Ireland, I can guarantee ya I would have been the same dirt bag me father was. That’s why I left, why I came here, for a chance at being more. But what am I? Huh? I’m nothin’.”
Steph brought her hands to his face, and cupped his jaw. She forced him to look into her eyes. “You are not nothing, Pete O’Malley. Nobody is nothing.”
“Except me mother.”
“Yeah, except maybe your mother.”
They sat in silence for a moment, and Steph brought her hands to her lap. Pete reached out, and then gently wrapped his hand about hers. “So what still bothers you?”
Her heart hammered in her chest. He put her on the spot, and her nerves didn’t like it. “Because I don’t know enough about you. Regardless of everything we talked through, you still mentioned murder—I mean that’s all it is, murder, Pete. Knowing you’d do such a thing has only shown me how little I know about you. What else am I going to risk if I commit to you? What danger is your old life going to put me in?”
“None.”
“How can you be so sure?”
He leant a shoulder into the sofa, and then pulled her to his chest. “Because, me Cutie, I’m not goin’ to let anybody touch a single inch of ya without me permission.”
“That sounds all well, and mighty valiant in theory, but how can you be sure you’ll always be there? What if your past catches up with me while I’m at work?”
“It won’t.”
“Why? How do you know that?” What could he know, that she didn’t?
His arms gave a little squeeze, and her instinct told him it was more about reassuring himself, than her. “Because one thing I’ve been sure to do is clean up any loose ends over the years. I never walk away from anythin’ in me life without either fixin’ the source of the problem, or removin’ it.”
Her skin prickled with a fresh chill. He meant people—remove people—she knew it. “Pete?”
“Yeah?” he loosened his grip on her so she could sit up, and meet his curious gaze.
“How many people have you killed?”
“Only those that mattered.” He held her wide eyes with his dispassionate stare. The subject was something he appeared to have made peace with a long time ago.
; Question was—could she?
****
Pistol fought the resistance as he gave her a tug, and urged her to nestle back into his chest. He liked her there; the way she curled into him, and kept him warm. He couldn’t ask too much of her, and the simple fact she hadn’t leapt to her phone to call the cops was enough for now. Tonight was never meant to be about him. He knew that questions about him were inevitable, but when he wanted her to explain what he needed to do to make her come back to him, he never once imagined it would shift the spotlight firmly on him.
By telling her what he had, even though he purposefully omitted specifics, he had made her an accomplice to his crimes. By not reporting him, she aided and abetted. And by telling her, he had handed Steph the biggest trump card there was. Any time she thought things headed too far south, she had a ‘Go straight to jail’ card to use against him.
That alone would be the greatest test of their trust.
Steph wriggled further into his side, and placed a gentle hand on his stomach. He placed his hand over top of hers, and trapped her to him as she burrowed further under his arm. Her hair smelt of vanilla, and frangipani. The scent was perfection to his senses as he pressed a kiss to the top of her head. She mumbled incoherently, and her breaths relaxed. Fuck it all, the woman was asleep on him.
Pistol edged his legs out slowly, and kicked off his boots. He stretched out—careful not to disturb her—and toed the coffee table closer so he could rest his feet atop. Steph’s arm slipped around his waist as she settled in. He gave in to the urge, and ran his fingers through the ends of her loose hair. The silkiness of her locks would never cease to amaze him—he could run his hands through them for hours.
The light of the room faded as he drew his eyes closed, and rested his cheek on Steph’s head. Although they hadn’t settled everything that would prove to be a roadblock, they had made progress. His girl had listened to what he had to say, and she hadn’t run.
He couldn’t have asked for more.
****
Steph woke first; hot and sweaty against his side. Her spine protested the awkward angle her neck had been in, and numbness skipped along her right side as she edged out from his hold. He stirred, and blinked his eyes open. His luscious mouth curled at one corner, and he reached out to smooth her sleep distressed hair.
“Morning, Love.”
“Morning to you, too.”
He pulled himself up in the seat, and ran a hand over his head. “You’re still here?”
She screwed her mouth to the side. “Uh, yeah. I live here.”
He chuckled, and the resonance through her body eased the ache in her side. “I mean, ya didn’t run screamin’ for the hills in the night while I slept.”
“Why would I?”
He gave her one of those looks reserved for total idiots. “Ya do remember who I am, don’t ya?”
Steph drew straight in the seat, and tucked her knees onto the seat. “Mm-hmm. Mr Pete O’Malley.”
“Executioner Extraordinaire.” He grinned.
“So you say,” she deadpanned. “I’ve chosen to apply selective amnesia to that subject.”
He shook his head with a smile. “Fuck it, Love. I can’t resist changin’ for ya.”
She drew back to straighten in the seat, and regarded him with curiosity. “Change?”
He nodded. “You’re makin’ me change, Love. Just not how I hoped.”
What on earth did he mean by that? “How did you hope you’d change?” She drew her eyebrows together.
He sighed, and ran his fingers over the exposed flesh on her collarbone. “Ya sure ya want to talk about this now?”
No, I want to leave it until Christmas. “Best time as any.” Steph frowned.
“Love, the minute I laid eyes on ya I thought you’d be trouble. I thought to meself ‘here’s a challenge—let’s see if I can get this one in me bed’.” Steph gasped, and he held out a hand to urge her to stay quiet. “But the second I touched ya, ya infected me.” He chuckled. “Here I was, worried that me fucked-up past, me issues, and me problems would be the disease that crippled a beautiful flower like ya. But it was you Steph, always you that crippled me.” Pete eased forward to rest his forearm on her knee, and the most luscious smirk tugged his lips. “Baby, you’ve brought this sinner to his knees.”
“No I haven’t,” she laughed. “I haven’t changed you a single bit.”
“Haven’t ya?”
She shook her head. She couldn’t have. He always did what he wanted, and he always got what he wanted. How could she have changed a thing about him? It’s not as though the man was a freaking lawyer when she met him—he’d always been on the wrong side of the law. “You tell me then, if you’re so sure. What have I changed about you?”
He grinned, and then sighed as he dropped his head back. The subject highly amused him—her not so much. “I came to Australia to start afresh—”
“So you’ve said.”
“Let me finish woman. I came here to get a legit job, to be ‘normal’. I wanted to shrug me father’s dirty past from me shoulders, and be a real man—work honestly for me earnin’s.”
“Don’t you?” He did have a job at Atonia after all.
His lips twisted as he suppressed a laugh. “Now I do. It wasn’t always like that.”
Steph gulped back a further panic-attack, and urged her body not to break out in the cold sweat which itched at her skin. “What did you do? Before Atonia?”
Pete threw his arms over his chest, and chuckled. The deep timbre of his laugh raised images of Dick Dastardly, and Muttley from her memory. He thought of something bad for certain.
“I was a contractor.”
Steph sighed, and slumped into the seat. “Thank fuck for that. I thought for a moment there you were about to say—”
“That I was a criminal? What did ya think I meant by ‘contractor’?”
“Labourer, drain-layer, plumber, you know the thing.” She wound her hand as she went through the list.
He snickered, and shook his head. “Try debt-collector,” he said. His steely cold eyes connected with hers. “Of the physical, break-yer-fingers-if-you-don’t-pay kind.”
“Oh.” Her face numbed as the colour drained from her cheeks. “So what’s changed?” Her fingers dug into the armrest to assist her efforts to stay seated, and not flop to the floor, or vomit.
“I gave it up. I started a real job, and gave it up.”
“Because of me?” She prayed to whoever listened that this was the change he spoke of.
“No,” he sighed. “Before ya.”
“And now?” The words fell on a squeak.
“Now ya make me want to do it again.”
“Why?” she whistled through her reed-like throat.
“Because the way I feel for ya, makes me want to kill every dirty fucker on this earth to keep ya safe. I’ll do anythin’ and everythin’ for ya, no matter the consequence.”
****
He watched as her face rolled through the emotions. Anger, turned to confusion, to shyness, to shock. The thought had never occurred to her that she was the one who held the power between them. It had always been Steph who called the shots. Any time she wanted to draw quits, he would have been a slave to her request.
She never realised.
“I ... I never knew. I never thought of it like that. I always thought it was me who needed to please you.”
“And ya do, Love. You’ve been under me skin for weeks, and I can tell ya that the mark you’ve left on me is more permanent than any ink I’ll ever choose. You, Cutie, make me want to change. Because of ya, I’ll never be the man who set foot in this country again.”
A cute furrow drew her expression stern. “You’ll never want to be ‘normal’, and stay on the right side of the law? Because of me?”
“I’ll never kid meself that I ever could.”
Her expression remained impassive, yet focused.
“Love, some days I wish like hell ya were the one that got
away. But other days I think about cuttin’ meself to make sure I’m not lost in a fantasy, a mere dream, because you’re so right. Ya fit like the last piece to me puzzle.”
He could see the cogs work in her head, the thoughts churn. “How do I fit? I mean, you say I make you worse?” Her head dropped, her face hidden from his view.
Pistol slid his free hand under her jaw, and coaxed her to look up. He caressed her lips with his, eager to show her everything he could in one sweet, soft kiss. More than anything he wanted her to know he could do sweet and soft—when the time called for it. “And yet ya stay.”
“Because I have to,” she whispered.
His heart cramped. Controlling—like yer father. “Why? Why do ya have to?”
Steph’s legs slowly slipped from the seat, and she moved her body toward him. Her arms wrapped around his neck as she rested her forehead to his. He inhaled the sweet smell of her; the flowers he would never be able to look at again without the thought of her pure, milky skin. “Because, wrong as everything you do may be, those reactions are you. I have to stay, because being with me, makes you embrace you.”
Pistol gripped the sides of her head, and growled into her hair. “How can ya be for fuckin’ real?”
“Likewise.”
He drew her face upward, and damn near mauled her with the intensity of his kiss. Deep inside, he knew he’d forever be scared she’d leave. “Ya know I’d come after ya if ya left, eh?”
“Without a doubt.” She chuckled.
“I’d fuckin’ kill every man who touched ya, and lock ya up so ya never left me again.”
“See—” she giggled softly, “—you can do romantic.”
He chuckled as he stroked her hair from her shoulder. Her flesh pricked beneath his lips as he trailed kisses along her collarbone. “Only me own fucked-up kind, though.”
“You know I love you, right?” she whispered.
He drew back, and studied her features. “How?”
“What do you mean how?”