by Nicole Fox
“Allison.” He speaks slowly, in the tone of a man who’s constraining himself. “I get it. All right? I understand that you’re stressed and scared and all that shit. But you can’t keep accusing me of doing shit I ain’t doing. Okay, maybe I did groan. But so fuckin’ what? I’m here. I’m protecting you.”
“But you don’t want to be!” I snap.
“It’s fuckin’ scary for me!” he explodes, leaping to his feet. He slams his beer down on the coffee table and goes to the window, leaning his hands against it and pressing his face almost against the glass. From this angle he looks like some kind of animal, back heaving. “I’m not made for this shit, all right? I told you about my little brother. I’ve shared shit with you. And you’ve done the same and I’m thankful for that. But Jesus Christ, did it ever occur to you that it might be hard for me to wake up next to the same woman, to go to sleep with you every night without feeling like I’m—I’m under siege, goddamn.”
“Under siege,” I mutter. And I want to meet him halfway. I know he’s angry, upset, reaching out to me. But something twists in my belly. Anger, outrage: something vicious. “So you’d rather wake up next to a different woman every night.”
“That’s not what I’m saying.” He turns to me, face difficult to read. “I’m just being honest with you about how I feel, is all, and that’s how I feel. You can take it any way you want. You can get upset about it or get mean or whatever, but I never tell women how I feel, and now I’m tellin’ you. I reckon that means something. But you’ve gotta understand that I need some goddamn freedom, just a little bit. Let me call in a couple of the brothers to watch over you so I can go and take care of business.”
“So you can go someplace else, you mean. I bet you’ll just go to a bar and get drunk and forget I exist. You’ll end up fucking some other woman.”
He massages his temples, closing his eyes, breathing slowly. “Can you just fuckin’ stop for a second? Just talk to me like we’re human goddamn beings. You don’t need to do this aggressive shit. I’m just telling you—”
“How you feel. I got it! Did you ever stop to think about how I felt, maybe?”
He laughs, and then the laugh turns into a growl. “What do you think I’ve been doing for three damn days? I’ve been talking you back to sleep after nightmares. I’ve been stroking your hair. I’ve been making sure you’re okay. All that shit. You can’t tell me I haven’t been thinking about your feelings.”
“Wow. I didn’t realize it was such a chore for you.” I fold my arms and make my face calm. Emotions attack me nonstop, trying to throw me off-balance. Or maybe they already have … “I didn’t realize I was being such a burden when I woke up seeing the bloody face that you stabbed. I didn’t realize I was being such a horrible bitch by asking for your help.”
“I didn’t say that.” He sighs. “And you know I didn’t say that. I really wish you’d stop accusing me of shit I didn’t do or say.”
“Well, I wish you’d stop accusing me of trapping you!”
“I didn’t say that.”
“Let me explain something to you, Granite, because we keep running into this problem. Sometimes people imply things when they didn’t actually say them.”
“I didn’t imply shit, either.” He lets his head fall back, staring at the ceiling as though that will give him the solution. “I didn’t mean to imply shit, anyway. I don’t wanna keep going on like this, all right, but this shit really isn’t easy for me. So if it seems like I’m distant or pissed off or whatever, then fine, all right. Fine. But that doesn’t mean we have to have a full-blown argument about it. This is what’s gonna happen. I’m gonna call a couple of my boys—I’ll make sure they’re ones Al’s never met before—to come by and watch the place. And then I’m gonna chase down these leads you told me about. It’s the best thing for it. I know it seems like I’m abandoning you or whatever, but I’m not. I promise you. I’m just trying to do what’s best, practically, not …”
“Say it,” I urge him. “Emotionally. You can say it.”
“Well.” He sighs, shrugs. “There it is.”
“So you’re leaving.”
He approaches me, hands raised. “Only for a little while. Come here. Don’t be like that.”
“I’m not being like anything.” I flinch away from him, dodging away from his grip, and then follow him to the door. “If you want to leave, then leave. I won’t get angry at you about it. I don’t care. Fine!”
He sighs again, and then goes about gathering his things. He doesn’t have much: just one hold-all and his leather jacket. I follow him to the door, pissed at myself for being pissed with him, wishing I could push this emotional shit away and just be with him, just be with him like I want to be, like he wants to be—I think—but which that horrible moment outside the hospital has made far more difficult. The blood—the hand—the terror …
“I’ll see you again soon,” he says. “And I’ll wait outside until my boys come to watch over you.”
“I had somebody here to watch over me.” I slam the door in his face and then sprint into the bathroom. The argument, the stress, I don’t know what it is, but something is causing sickness to rise up in my belly like the waves of a tsunami. I collapse onto my knees beside the bowl and vomit forcefully into the bottom, belly twisting like there’s a blade in there.
Then I go into the living room and call Emma. Her voicemail picks up. “Hey, I just want to let you know that you were right about Granite. He doesn’t care about me. He never did.” I slam down the phone, not sure if Emma ever said that Granite didn’t care about me or if I just made it up.
About twenty minutes later, somebody knocks on the door. I answer it to find a tall, hard-faced man with a dice tattoo on his neck. “The name’s Lucky,” he says. “Granite wanted me to let you know that I’m just outside if you need anything.”
“Thank you, Lucky,” I mutter, reminding myself not to be rude.
I return to the living room and throw myself on the couch, resting my cheek on my arm. I tell myself I won’t call him. I won’t be that girl. But then I end up calling him. He doesn’t answer. I try calling Brandon instead, but he doesn’t answer either. My brother’s lost or maybe dead; my protector’s gone because he can’t stand spending time with me …
And now this sickness, rising with a vengeance. I run back into the bathroom just in time to stop the chunks from decorating my hallway wall.
Chapter Seventeen
Granite
“I felt like I was being suffocated, man, and it ain’t even her fault. She’s just scared. Of course she’s goin’ to be a little bit clingy. That’s how it goes, ain’t it? But the way she was going on at me. I just needed some air.”
I lean back in the corner booth, sipping my whisky. Ranger stares at me with his upper lip curled. “I refuse to believe there was no way the two of you could’ve worked that out without going at each other like that. I just refuse to believe it.” He strokes his finger along the rim of his Stetson as he talks. “There’s a way to fix everything with a lady if you take the time. It sounds to me like you didn’t take the time.”
“I came here for a drink.” I drain my glass of whisky and pour another. “I didn’t come here to be lectured. I just came from being lectured. Goddamn it, man. Do you work for her or somethin’?”
“I just never saw you spending three days with a lady. So if you did spend three days with her, and you’re still alive, then it seems to me there must be somethin’ special between the two of you. You’ve never spent more’n, what? A couple of hours with a lady?”
“If that.” I nod. “I didn’t want to leave. I mean, I did. I had to get out of there for a couple of hours. But I didn’t want to leave the way I did, with all that shouting and bullshit. I get that she’s scared—”
“Do you?” Ranger interrupts. “Because it seems to me that a man like you don’t know what it is to be really scared. You spend your life being tough and facing things that’d turn most folk to jelly. So
when something happens like what you told me about—all that blood, man—it don’t mean half as much to you as it does to somebody like her. She’s getting nightmares and you’re sleeping like an angel on account of how different your lives are.”
“Maybe there’s something to that,” I say, thinking on it for a few minutes. I never thought about it like that. Ranger has a way of pulling something out and holding it at a different angle, one I never would’ve guessed at. “Maybe I should call her,” I mutter. “Or at least call the fella who’s watching over her, to make sure she’s okay.”
Ranger smiles. “That sounds like a good idea to me,” he says. “A real good idea. Why don’t you do it right now?”
“So you can sit there and watch me and get some sort of sick thrill out of it? I like you, pal, you know that, but sometimes I think you get off by making me uncomfortable.”
I go outside, taking my whisky with me, and call Lucky. It rings three times, four, five … on the sixth ring I know something’s up. A man might let his cell ring four or five times if he’s smoking a cigarette or it’s fallen down the side of his chair or whatever, but when you’ve lived the outlaw life as long as I have, six rings means it’s time to get ready. I call Allison next, heart thumping in my neck, which I didn’t even know was possible. The phone rings and rings and then her voicemail takes over. I clench my teeth, hard, until they feel like they might shatter, and then ring again.
No answer.
I jump on my bike and speed toward her house.
“So you left her and now this happens,” Jimmy says, making a tutting noise. “That wasn’t very smart, was it, or nice? That’s very silly if you ask me. Yes, very silly. Very silly and stupid and mean and dumb and silly and stupid and mean.”
“Leave me alone, kid,” I whisper in my head. “I’ve got enough to worry about without you getting involved.”
“I know you have!” And Jimmy giggles. “You left her all on her own because you were annoyed. What sort of man does that to a woman he’s supposed to care about? I don’t want to be judgmental, big brother, but that seems like a real mean thing to do to me. I’m just being honest.”
“Well, be less honest.”
I block him from my mind and bring the bike to a stop outside her house. The world is mostly dark now except for the light from the nearby house and a snatch of starlight every now and then, when the clouds decide to move. I run across the dark-lit yard into the house, where I find Lucky propped up against the wall, a blade stuck through his neck. He opens his mouth and blood comes out, and then his eyes fall closed.
I kneel down next to him and check his pulse, but it doesn’t take a genius to figure out he’s dead. Then I search the house, quickly and thoroughly. She’s nowhere to be found. They have her, the fucking animals. They’ve taken her from right under my nose. They must’ve been waiting for me to leave.
I run outside and jump onto my bike. They think they can take my girl and nothing will happen. They think they can do anything they damn well please and get away with it. I ride quick and hard toward a bar where I know they hang out, where even the boss knows they hang out. Everybody knows they hang out there but they’re too well defended to hit them. Well, I ain’t going to hit them. I’m going to get my girl back.
Part of me knows I should go about this smarter, but before I can give that part a fair hearing, I’m already walking toward the bar. It’s called The Damsel, with a carving of a lady in a dress over the door, and two fellas standing out the front. One is a short, fat fuck with one of those combovers and a gold front tooth which makes him look like a pimp rabbit. The other is young, around the same age as Jax, with that eager look all young outlaws have. He grips a knuckle-duster and stares at me with dead eyes as I approach.
“I need to speak with the man in charge,” I say, ignoring their meant-to-be-intimidating looks. “I don’t know the bastard’s name, but I’m guessin’ it’s the stupid fuck with the handlebar mustache.”
The kid with the knuckle-duster takes a step forward. “You better watch your mouth.”
“Is that right?” I step close to him, staring him in the face. “My name is Granite, kid, and I reckon you’ve heard of me. Your boss took my girl and I ain’t too happy about it, so you might wanna rethink getting in my face like this. I really ain’t in the fuckin’ mood for it.”
“Kid.” Gold-Tooth touches his arm. “Let him past. Todd said he wanted to see him.” He looks at me. “First door on the right.”
I walk into the bar, down a hallway which smells of old alcohol, and into the door on the right which has a manager sign hanging on it. I don’t knock, just push through. It’s the handlebar-mustache bastard, sitting behind a desk with his hands behind his head, some poor hooker on her knees in front of him, sucking him off. “Oh, it’s you,” he says, smiling. He waves the hooker away. She leaves the room, wiping her mouth. When the door closes, he stands up, zipping up his fly.
“Todd. What kind of name is that for an outlaw, or a leader?”
“A name’s a name,” he says. “You don’t need to worry about my name, Granite. You’re not here for that. You’re here for something else. Not that I know anything about it, of course.” He strokes the ends of his mustache as he talks.
“Cut the movie villain shit. You killed one of my boys and you’ve got Allison. Give her back to me and this don’t have to get ugly.”
“Give her back to you?” Todd taps his finger against the desk. “That seems like a very strange thing for you to say, Granite, seeing as you’re the one who walked out of there. I thought you were done with her. Don’t look surprised. You think you can stab one of my boys in the face and we won’t keep an eye on you? We had a bug in that place before you even got home. That was some argument you had, right? I’m sorry. Boohoo … you’re not used to that sort of thing, are you? I shouldn’t bring it up.”
“Screw you,” I snap. “Just give me my fucking woman.”
“But how is she your woman? Can you explain that to me, big guy?” He takes a sawn-off shotgun from under the desk and waves it as he speaks. “If she was your woman, you wouldn’t have left her there for my men to pick up. You wouldn’t have got so damn annoyed at her when all she wanted was a shoulder to cry on.”
“I don’t wanna play these games.”
“Neither do I.” He stands up, rolling his shoulders, clicking his neck from side to side. He looks like a boxer getting ready to fight. “I never want to play games. I’m not that sort of guy. I prefer real shit, like your girl. There’s something real. When she came around to Brandon’s house and I saw her, goddamn. I can see why you like her. She has that look about her, doesn’t she, that real slutty look.”
“Cut. The. Shit.” I make to step forward, but he casually hefts the shotgun in my direction. I stay where I am, but I don’t take a step back. “You’ll take me to her.”
“How old are you, Granite? Twenty-something? I’m forty this year. I remember when I was your age. I never thought I’d grow old. I thought it was a myth, getting old. I know how that sounds. Sounds like I’m a proper fuckin’ moron, doesn’t it? But it’s the truth. I’d look in the mirror and try’n imagine getting wrinkles and all that shit. And it just didn’t seem real. But now those wrinkles are popping up like whores at a funeral. So I find myself looking back on my life, on those young days, and thinking about what makes a man a man.”
He sits on the desk, shotgun laid on his knees but aimed at me at the same time. “I remember when I was a young guy. I was the meanest bastard you’ve ever seen. Nobody crossed me. One time I was in a bar and this fella made some joke about my mustache. I laughed along with him, told him he was a funny guy, and then later that night I got that piece of shit outside the bar, stabbed him in the back of the head, and watched him fall like a bag of bricks. I finished him, finished him good and quick and clean. That’s how I lived my life after that, never let a man embarrass me, never let a man think he’s better than me. And then you come along, you sick fuck,
and stab my boy in front of me. Do you think I can let that stand?”
I put my hand in my back pocket, working from memory. Slide my thumb across to unlock the phone. Bottom left for messages. Bottom left again for audio message.
“I’ve got a friend called Ranger,” I say. “He’s a real smart fella. He’ll find me if you try any funny shit. He knows where The Damsel is. He knows my boys. He won’t have any trouble on that front.” I click send—or what I hope is send.
“Maybe he will.” Todd shrugs. “It don’t matter. This is all gonna be over soon.” He sighs, scratching his face with the handle of the sawn-off. “Why couldn’t you just do what you were told? You could’ve just sat there, let us do what we needed to do, and then gone on with your life. There was no reason to play the hero. That’s what you sort of fellas never understand. You think you’ve gotta be some superhero all the time, when if you just did what you were fuckin’ told, everything would work out for the better.”