Where I Belong (The Debt Book 2)

by Molly O'Keefe

  But it was coming back with a roar.

  My guts hurt with the need to come. My chest and legs. My teeth ached.

  “Come to me,” she murmured, her voice barely over a gasp. She couldn’t sit up, much less blow me. Jack me off. I stepped back, because something felt not right about fucking a woman who could barely move. Whose body had been momentarily broken by pleasure.

  “Please, Tommy,” she said, because of course she knew what I was thinking. She always knew what I was thinking. “I need you.”

  Fuck it. Fuck. It. I was going to hell for any number of reasons, the least of which could be fucking Beth when I’d given her so much pleasure she was practically comatose.

  It would be my very favorite sin.

  I stepped back to the bed, found a condom in the little table by her side of the bed… her side of the bed.

  That had happened fast; her side, my side.

  But I pushed the thought away as I undid my pants and rolled the condom over me. Sucking in air through my teeth because it hurt so good. Just my own hand, rough and clumsy.

  Her pleasure-swollen flesh would kill me.

  “Hurry,” she said like I needed more convincing.

  I bent and slipped my arm around her waist, lifting her and pushing her back on the bed, I split her legs open wider with my own and then, with my teeth gritted, I pushed the head of my cock into her.

  “Oh fuck, baby,” I groaned, putting my head down on her breast. “Fuck, you’re so tight.”

  She sighed, lifting her hips just barely off the mattress. Her hands were still at her sides, too tired even to hold on to me. I held my breath pushing into her, inch by inch.

  I groaned and swore, sweat running off my body onto hers. Until finally I was inside her. Squeezed so hard I could barely move. I barely needed to. I pulled back, lifting my hips, and I felt the orgasm coming—all those demands of my body that I’d been ignoring as I’d been seeing to the demands of hers, they came roaring at me. I saw sparks behind my closed eyelids, my hands were numb, the bottoms of my feet super hot; it was as if I was being rewired, completely changed, from the inside out.

  “Yes,” she was saying over and over again. Permission or something, I wasn’t sure. But I moved my body in hers, thrusting and retreating, inch by inch, clinging to what I knew and who I was until it was all gone and it was just my body and her body and a pleasure that unspooled in my chest.

  I came in great spurts. Giant waves. I came in storms and earthquakes.

  I was matter and particle and electrons and air. I was the very base of myself, blind and dumb to everything but her.

  I was heaving over her, jerking and gasping for air. She didn’t come, but she was stroking my shoulders, whispering in my ears, words I couldn’t hear past the pounding of my heart.

  “So good,” she was saying. “So good.”

  I blew out a breath, only to suck one in, unable to catch it. Unable to regulate anything. For a second I thought I might cry. Might actually sob.

  But I managed to stop myself, pushing up onto my hands. Away from her. It was important not to look at her. Not to see her underneath me, drenched in our sweat.

  I was blood and bone and not looking at her was a mission of protection.

  I got up off the bed with legs that shook and feet that didn’t work, and I staggered to the bathroom, opening the door so Pest could come out, smelling the air like she was a prude and not guilty of trying to lick her own butt.

  I dealt with the condom and pulled up my pants and splashed water on my face, all while figuring out the next three things I needed to do. That’s how I would work this.

  Three things. One step in front of the other.

  Find my keys.

  Get my stuff.

  Go down to the truck.

  I could do those three things. If I thought past that, things fell apart.

  In the bedroom Beth was finally sitting up, her bun half falling down around one shoulder.

  Her chest was covered in red marks from my beard. Smaller bruises around her neck from my openmouthed kisses.

  Don’t look, I told myself. Three things.

  Find my keys.

  Get my stuff.

  Go down to the truck.

  My keys were in the drawer of the bedside table with the condoms and my wallet. I put them in my pocket with numb hands. Feeling her gaze on me all the while.

  “What are you doing?” she asked, her voice rough and scratchy.

  “Do you…” I cleared my throat. My own voice sounded like it had been dragged across a gravel road. “Do you need a ride?”

  Her eyebrows hit her hairline. “A ride. Where?”

  “Do you have a way home?”

  “You’re still leaving.”

  It wasn’t a question. So I didn’t answer.

  It was obvious what she’d been hoping, that the sex would change my mind. That it would be enough to keep me here.

  I gathered my duffel bag. Threw the last of my stuff into it. Shook the bag with the last of Pest’s kibble and then threw it in the bag. I turned to see Pest in Beth’s arms. She was licking the sweat off Beth’s face.

  I’d fucked the rage out of myself. I’d fucked everything out of myself, and now I was empty. Hollow.

  Find my keys.

  Get my stuff.

  Go down to the truck.

  I added breathe to the list because I kept forgetting to do it.

  “You can’t… get past it?” she asked.

  I nearly laughed. “Get past you not telling me about my grandfather?” She looked so fucking hopeful. “No,” I told her. “I can’t.”

  “But you’d drive me back to Los Angeles if I needed you to?”

  I nodded, unable to watch Pest trying to comfort her. “Do you?” I asked, looking at the door, the dresser. Anything but her.

  “No,” she whispered. “I don’t need a ride.”

  “Okay.” Daring one last look, I watched her hunch over herself, the knobs of her spine pressed against the skin of her back. Her hair slipping over her shoulder to cover part of her face.

  Remember, I thought. Remember all of it. The beauty and the pain and how it hurt to love her.

  This is how wishes end up. This is why they’re dangerous.

  I opened the door, the sunlight having slipped behind a cloud, turning the day dramatically dark.

  Good, I thought. Better.

  “Here,” she said, gathering Pest up in her hands and holding her out to me, tears and snot running down her face. “Pest.”

  I realized at once how I could solve the problem of Pest. Of who would take care of her when I wasn’t around.

  Because not being around seemed pretty fucking likely. If I went back to San Francisco, I’d probably be killed. If I didn’t, I’d be on the run for the rest of my life. Because if Bates and Sammy could find me in nowhere, Arizona, they could find me anywhere.

  I’d take a stand in San Francisco.

  “Keep her,” I said.

  “She’s your pet,” Beth said, standing up, looking aghast.

  “She’s yours now,” I said quietly and reached out to scrub at Pest’s head the way she liked for the last time. “Take care of her.”

  “Tommy.”

  “Take care of yourself. No drugs.”

  Tears dripped off her chin onto Pest’s head. “I don’t believe you mean this,” she cried. “I don’t believe you can worry about me and care about me and still leave me.”

  “You worried and cared and still lied. We’re endlessly capable of hurting each other.”

  She sobbed so hard she shook, and I hit my limit.

  Leave. Just leave.

  And keep fucking breathing.

  I closed the door to the apartment above the garage and took the stairs down to the parking area. Too late I realized Pete was standing in the shadows near my truck.

  He gave me pause for a minute. One heart-stopping minute when my curiosity and my fucking endless need for someone to call my own a
lmost swamped me, but then I opened the driver-side door and threw in my bag.

  “Tommy.”

  “What?” I snapped, not looking at him. Where were my fucking shades when I needed them?

  “I’m sorry.”

  I laughed humorlessly.

  “And if you need anything,” he said. “I’m here. I’m always here. I’ll always be here.”

  That wasn’t true, was it? He’d die. Like my mother. Like his wife. We all did. We all would.

  “You want to do something for me?”

  His throat bobbed and his eyes were all watery, his regret and his sorrow coming at me like fucking tentacles. I had to get the hell out of here.

  “Very much,” he said.

  “Take better care of Beth,” I said, got myself in my truck and drove out of there.

  It wasn’t until I was on the highway heading north that I realized I was crying.

  And had been for quite some time.

  12

  Beth

  I was blank. Empty. My lungs worked. And my heart beat, but my brain would only buzz and my arms would only clutch Pest and my eyes would only leak.

  Did I sit there for minutes? Hours? I couldn’t even tell.

  I turned and put Pest on the bed and then slowly picked my clothes up off the floor. My underwear and shorts. My T-shirt. Each time I bent over, I felt more keenly the way he’d used my body. I would be sore for days. My clit and my ass. My inner thighs.

  I might have pulled something in my back coming so hard, and I wished with all my heart that he was here so I could tell him that. And we could laugh. And make a list of our sex injuries. Like normal lovers.

  Normal people.

  Pest barked at me, sitting on the edge of the bed like she knew I was falling to pieces.

  “Shit,” I breathed. “You’re mine now.”

  I had a dog. A goddamned dog. I had Tommy’s dog.

  “You’re mine now,” I said again, petting her wiggling little body. “You and me, Pest. Rejected by Tommy, party of two.” She had surgical tape on her ear, and I put it together that she must have gotten bitten by one of the other dogs and Tommy must have gone inside with her to treat her and that’s how he saw the picture.

  “We’re a little banged up, aren’t we?” I whispered, wishing I had something I could bandage. Wishing my pain could scab over and heal in a few days’ time, leaving me a scar I could talk about on first dates or radio interviews. A funny story— “Oh, this? Oh, well, once I fell in love and all we did was hurt each other. No big deal.”

  But there would be nothing short-lived about this pain.

  I’d hurt him. Really hurt him. And that hurt me more than his leaving did.

  And I had no idea how I would get over it.

  So how could I possibly expect him to get over it?

  I stood still in the middle of the room that smelled like our bodies.

  I couldn’t expect him to get over it. And how…childish and selfish I’d been to expect that of him. To ask that of him. To just let this go, like I’d borrowed his car and put a dent in it.

  And I realized that I thought he should do it, because I believed I had done it.

  I put my hands over my face, feeling the world I’d constructed since St. Joke’s crumble around me.

  I believed I’d put aside the assault. That I’d let it go. That I’d cried the effects of it away. That because I was okay with sex, that I was okay with what had happened to me.

  But I wasn’t.

  If I thought he could just let this kind of pain go…well, that seemed wrong.

  And it seemed like something I should deal with.

  And somehow, as I thought about it, as the shame of my childishness and cowardice settled over me and through me—I felt, in a weird way, myself change. My heartbeat found a slightly different rhythm. My skin felt different on my body.

  I had a lot of regrets in my life, but this… God… this.

  It was like fire. It burned through me, leaving me completely different. Brittle and burned. Frail.

  My shoes were beneath the bed and I went down on my knees to grab them and as I pulled them out, along came a bunch of dust bunnies and a phone.

  My phone? I thought. An old one? I didn’t remember leaving one here last time I visited. I flipped it over, touching the screen, and Carissa’s messages popped up.

  Bates needs proof.

  Proof of Beth being all right.

  Proof her mother means her harm.

  Proof, Tommy, or he’s letting Sammy off his fucking leash.

  How many times did I tell you not to screw this up, Tommy!

  Shit.

  My brain sizzled and popped, and the world returned in a wild, crazy rush. Tommy’s phone.

  I didn’t give Tommy his fucking phone.

  I shoved my feet into my shoes and opened the door, shutting it before Pest could come back out, and ran down the stairs. Peter was sitting on the back of his truck, his eyes on the driveway.

  “How long ago did he leave?” I asked, sliding to a halt next to him, the dirt and gravel kicking up dust under my feet.

  “Twenty minutes.”

  “Gimme… I need your keys… I need to go get him.”

  He looked at me. “What?”

  “I have to get him. He left his phone. He needs… there are things he needs to know.”

  And the crazy irony of not being able to call him.

  “You’re going to drive after him and what?” Peter asked. “Drive him off the road?”

  “If I have to.”

  “Beth…” He took me by the shoulder, and it was so startling. Peter never touched me. We both stood there as if we were surrounded by bees. “That’s crazy. He’s twenty minutes ahead of you, and we don’t know where he went.”

  I knew where he went. The only place he would go. Right back to the city to face down Bates.

  “He’s in trouble!” I said. “And it’s my fault.” My voice cracked, but I was out of tears.

  “How?” he asked, and again it was strange. He didn’t do these things, comfort or ask questions. He let me come and go as I pleased. “Tell me,” he said. “We can figure it out.”

  He knew about the foster home, about how Tommy had saved me and killed the foster father. But he didn’t know the rest of it. Bates and the debt, how Tommy had been living in suspended animation waiting for his past to come calling. And how when it finally did, it was to pick me up and take me to my mother.

  I told him all of it, the words barely making sense as they tripped out of my mouth.

  “But he didn’t take you to your mother, right?” he asked. “That’s what started all this with her?”

  “I begged him not to, and now he has this Bates guy after him.” I fumbled for the phone and showed it to him.

  Peter blinked. “And you think he’s going back to San Francisco?”

  “Of course he is,” I said. Because that’s what Tommy does; he stands up when other people run. “I have to go. I have to go help him. I have to tell Bates what my mother did.”

  Peter nodded. “Okay. I’ll drive. Do you know where he lives?”

  I shook my head.

  “Wait,” I said and quickly pulled up the texts from Simon and called the number attached to it.

  Simon’s voice answered before it even rang. “This is Simon Malik. I’m out of country for the next six weeks. I’m available on my European phone number. If this is an emergency, contact Denise Pebis at the New York Times.”

  I hung up with shaking fingers and then scrolled through Tommy’s contacts for something that looked like Simon’s European phone number. But there was nothing that looked right.

  There were in fact only four other numbers saved in his phone. One was for a Chinese restaurant.

  Three people. I went back to the list of people he’d recently called and found the one he’d called the most. Paul. And I dialed that number.

  “Tommy,” he answered before the first ring was over. “Jesus, buddy, a
re you in some kind of trouble?”

  “This isn’t Tommy,” I said, trying to make my voice sound calm and reasonable. Friendly even. But in my own ears I sounded like a freaking-out lunatic. “My name is Beth Renshaw—”

  “What the fuck are you doing with Tommy’s phone?”

  “He left it… and I need to get it back to him. But I don’t know where he lives. I am a friend of his—”

  “Oh, I fucking know who you are,” he said. “I won’t be telling you shit, sweetheart. You got him in some kind of trouble that Tommy would never go looking for on his own.”

  He hung up on me. And I’d been expecting it, a little. But it still stung. It still stung that out there in the world I was being painted as the one who was trouble.

  Aren’t you? I thought. Aren’t you the one who always gets him in trouble? Like since day fucking one…

  I took a deep breath, my brain scrambling.

  Peter looked so pained that he had no answers for me.

  “Okay, how about this Bates guy?” he asked. “You know how to get in touch with him?”

  I shook my head.

  “The Carissa you—”

  “Yes!” I cried. Not that I knew where Carissa lived, but I could just go right to Carissa and, through her, Bates, explain my situation to them. Hope like fireworks exploded in my head. I went to Carissa’s texts and pulled up her number and called it.

  But immediately a robotic voice said, “This number is no longer in service.”

  “Shit!” I said and then yelled it, startling birds from trees, bringing the dogs running up out of the bush to investigate.

  “Hey, hey,” Peter said, again grabbing my shoulders, giving me a little shake. “We can find out where Tommy lives, right? You can find him like you found me. Using your computer?”

  “It took me months to find you,” I whispered, dread turning cold and hard in my stomach. “And his name is Tommy MacNeill. Do you have any idea how many Tommy MacNeill’s live in San Francisco?”

  “Well, let’s get in the car. We’ll think of something on the way.”

  Inspiration was not a lightning bolt; it rarely was for me. It was like the slow clearing of a storm at night. The careful, stalling retreat of dark clouds until one star appeared. And then another. I had an idea…a sense… but it wasn’t until most of the clouds were gone and the sky was revealed that I could connect the dots and see what I needed to do.