by Alice Ward
“Yes, but it will have to be on the weekend because I’m not missing work.”
“That’s fine. My understudy is eager to take Xander out for a spin anyway.” The relief in his voice was tangible, and I folded my fingers into my palm to quell the desire to caress his cheek comfortingly. Not that I could have, obviously.
I didn’t want to stay on the phone too long and end up with a new web of confused feelings to untangle before we went to California, so I decided to end the call there. “Why don’t you just text me the details, and we’ll work it out? I have to get back to fixing my doorknob.”
“There are so many jokes I could make right now.” The humor had resurfaced, and I fanned my cheeks. My living room suddenly felt much too warm. “Goodnight, Juliet.”
The line clicked off, and my phone screen blackened. I let the device slide from my shoulder to the couch without interference as his parting words replayed over and over in my ears. I was burning alive, so hot that tiny beads of sweat were already starting to form along my hairline. It had been so long.
On an impulse, I scrambled out of my sweatpants and underwear. My clit was already swollen with want, and a quick brush down my slit revealed unexpected moisture. I was as physically desperate as I’d been the first time Tate and I were intimate. Resting the pad of my thumb on top of my engorged clit, I slid two fingers inside myself and tapped the memory of that night.
Tate’s hands on my naked thighs…
His tongue playing twisted games in my crease…
The sensation of his stiff cock entering me…
My hand started moving of its own volition, fingers gesturing and thumb rolling. I let my head rock back limply and closed my eyes, watching the mental movie of my own experience with rapt attention.
He’s playing with me. He wants me to beg him.
Don’t give in! Don’t give in!
“So eager, Miss Capulet.”
Oh my god, he’s so hard…
“Fuck!” The expletive burst from my mouth as I bucked, doubling over until my knees touched my ears. The memory was so powerful it had sent me from a slow build to the very edge of climax, and I started feverishly stroking my G-spot and clit in perfect synchronization. My legs were quaking, and my wrist was going numb from my aggressive movements, but I wasn’t going to stop. I needed this orgasm.
It exploded over me like a dam breaking, all power and no preparation. I rocked back and forth while my thighs clenched my hand to the point of pain, and moans rocketed from my throat at a volume rock stars would have admired.
At no point since I’d moved in had I ever put on such a performance for my neighbors, but there wasn’t a thing in the world I could’ve cared less about at that moment as what the others in my building thought. The only thing that mattered was the way pleasure steamrolled over me and flattened me into an euphorically helpless mess.
I stayed on the couch in an unnatural position for at least five minutes after the sensations calmed, unable to think straight and unwilling to move. If I’d tried to stand, I would have done an excellent impression of a newborn calf, and my muscles felt like jelly. It was hard to believe I hadn’t had that kind of release since my last overnight stay at Tate’s in theory, but my body’s reaction convinced me.
So, I was going to California with Tate. He was going to tell me, and show me, everything I wanted to know, and there was a chance I would regain the only relationship I’d ever had that made me walk around with my head in the clouds. Maybe the “avoidance technique” for getting over breakups was the way to go.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Tate
“After you, m’lady.”
Sadie gave me a sidelong look as I held the car door open for her, but she slid into the passenger seat without protest. I smiled as I closed the door behind her and rounded the vehicle to the driver’s side.
We’d landed in California less than a half hour before. Our plane trip had been relatively quiet with both of us lost in our thoughts. She didn’t try to ask me questions, which I thought was admirable because, had I been her, I would have been interrogating me from the moment we’d met up at the hangar.
I’d spent the flight attempting to soothe my riled nerves. My inclination had been to have a drink or seven, but I’d planned on driving her around town myself and a blood alcohol level of any significance wouldn’t have accommodated that plan.
When I got into the car, Sadie was sitting with her hands in her lap and her eyes darting around the interior. I couldn’t tell whether she was nervous or excited, but I had to guess it was the former.
“You okay?” I asked as I inserted the key and turned it. The engine roared to life. It was a simple sedan, nothing flashy, but I’d insisted on a six cylinder because I’d always had a stigma about men who drove dinky cars.
“I guess.” She motioned to the wheel. “Do you know how to drive this thing?”
I squinted at her. “You’re asking me if I know how to drive a car?”
“Well, I’ve never seen you drive before.” Her voice had jumped up an octave, and she threw her hands in the air like I was being ridiculous for thinking she was being ridiculous. “Phillip drives you everywhere, and a lot of people in New York don’t drive. Oh, jeez, you have your license, don’t you?”
Rolling my eyes and grinning, I dug into my back pocket to pull out my wallet. I flipped it open to my license and brandished it at her. “Still valid and everything.”
“That’s something.”
The banter between us was a salve to my anxiety. It felt like the Earth had been tilted off its axis for a little bit, but it was finally righting itself again. Pocketing the wallet once more, I put my hands on the wheel in an exaggerated ten-and-two position and watched for her reaction out of the corner of my eye. She didn’t disappoint.
“All right, smartass, let’s just get started. I still haven’t decided if I want to go back home tonight or not.”
I chuckled, put the car into gear, and pulled away from the hangar. We weren’t back to normal yet, and I could still sense her reservation, but the spark between us was very much present. As she was wont to say, that was something.
The mood in the vehicle shifted as we drove, however, becoming sober and silent. We began passing houses before long, and I was struck by how many I still vividly remembered. Sadie’s eyes went wide, taking in the rundown exteriors with boarded windows and broken awnings. She sighed at the locked chain-link gates and whimpered at the sight of dogs tied and panting beneath the blazing sun.
I felt as though I was seeing my hometown through her eyes, and hot humiliation spilled down my back. The point of this trip was for her to learn everything about my past, but I suddenly wished I couldn’t remember a thing about it so I wouldn’t have to tell her.
I turned down a street marked with a pair of dead shrubs on either side. The homes were even dingier here, but they weren’t in much greater disrepair than when I’d been a resident. I slowed the car to a crawl, watching with trepidation as we drew nearer and nearer to a particularly scummy abode. Once we reached it, I came to a stop at the curb.
“Are we getting out?” she asked. Her voice was funeral soft. Perhaps she was already regretting this.
“No. It’s not safe.” I leaned across her slightly and pointed as subtly as I could to the place of interest. “See this place? With the yellow siding?”
She nodded.
“That’s where I was born.”
Her eyebrows came together, and she stared at the ranch-style building for a long moment. I saw her gaze slipping from the cracked cement steps to the brown flowerbed lining the front. “You mean, you were born in there?”
“Yeah. My dad wouldn’t let my mom go to the hospital because they would have found out I was full of heroin and I would’ve been taken by the state. That would’ve meant no monthly check.”
She whirled around so fast I accidentally caught a few strands of her hair in my eye, and I jerked back. “What?”
&n
bsp; “My parents were drug addicts.” I rubbed my eye with a knuckle and blinked the pain-induced tears from the other. “Both of them. Every dime they had went to whatever drug they could get their hands on, though my mom preferred heroin. I grew up so poverty-stricken that even the poor looked wealthy to us.”
Sadie’s hand had wrapped around the door handle, and she was clutching it so tightly that the tendons in her forearm were popping out. “I had no idea.”
I gave her a look through watery eyes. “Of course you didn’t. That’s why we’re here.”
“No, I mean…” She flicked her gaze back to the house. “I don’t want this to sound callous, but I guess I’m not understanding why you kept that so secret. Not just from me, but from everyone. There’s plenty of celebrities who had rough upbringings, and the whole rags-to-riches story is a popular one in your industry.”
While I knew she didn’t intend to be rude, the words stung a little. “Just because others are open about their unfortunate childhoods doesn’t mean I am.” I stared at the dilapidated house with extreme prejudice. My family had long since left the place, and I was sure several others had come and gone in the meantime, but I still could clearly picture the back of my father’s head in the front picture window while my mom shot up in the hideous pink kitchen. “It’s embarrassing to say I came from this place. And those people.”
“I’m sorry.” She was soft again. Cool fingertips rested on the back of my hand and regretful eyes met mine. “I’m just trying to understand.”
I nodded and tried to force my walls back down. “I know.”
Throwing the car back into drive, we resumed down the street. It didn’t escape my notice that Sadie was observing the houses we passed with a different expression now. She looked sadder, almost on the verge of quiet tears. I gritted my teeth to stop myself from turning around and heading back to the hangar, if only to save her the upset of seeing the rest I had to show her.
Not a word was exchanged between us before we came to a stop once more. This time, it was in the parking lot of a shoddy apartment building. The exterior was the same faded gray brick I remembered, but some “improvements” had been made since the last time I’d called the place home. Satellite dishes were mounted on most of the balconies and black plastic shutters had been nailed in place on either side of every window. The intention might have been to class up the joint, but to me, it looked even trashier than it had twenty years ago.
“Your first apartment?” she guessed.
“Sort of.” I pointed to the window on the far right. “That’s where we moved when I was four. My parents got evicted from the house because they weren’t paying rent, so we came here. It’s a government subsidy, or it was at the time anyway.”
She studied the building with a critical eye. “It doesn’t look as bad as the house.”
“It wasn’t, if you’re talking about upkeep and cleanliness, but it was still a shithole. Roaches, vermin, mold, that kind of stuff. The problem was my parents didn’t have to pay as much in rent, which meant they had more money for drugs.” I moved my finger one window to the left. “See that window? That’s the room where my dad killed my mom in a crack rage.”
If Sadie’s spin when I’d told her about the house had been dramatic, she nearly broke her neck this time. Her mouth had fallen open, and her eyes were so wide that her upper lashes almost reached her brows. I could see her lips moving, but no words were coming out, and she finally closed her mouth altogether.
“He was high. So was she, but he was worse. Out of his mind, if you ask me.” I was young when it happened, but the memory was so vivid that I could see it playing out all over again. “They got into a fight. They fought all the time, but there were fights, and there were fights. This was more than that. Sometimes I think he meant to do it.”
She still hadn’t spoken, but liquid had risen along the ridge of her lower lids and was very near to spilling over.
“I grabbed my brother — he was three at the time, I was six — and took him into our bedroom with the door shut. We heard screaming and banging, and then there was a thud. Just a thud, like someone had dropped a bowling ball.” I shuddered. “Artie started crying, and I put my hand over his mouth because I was sure my dad was coming for us next. He didn’t, though.” A disgusted snicker crawled from the depths of my throat. “He went to the kitchen, got himself a beer, and sat down on the couch. The cops showed up the next morning when I didn’t go to school. A teacher probably called. They were always concerned about me because I was always dirty and wearing raggedy clothes and never had lunch. Anyway, a policeman got me and my brother from our bedroom while a couple others were forcing my dad into the back of a cruiser.”
“Oh my god.” The tears were rolling down Sadie’s cheeks now, and the tip of her nose was cherry red. “I’m so sorry you had to go through that. What happened to you after your dad was arrested? Where did you go?”
***
“Bring me that Bible and siddown over here!”
Mrs. Henderson’s thick southern accent cut through the notes I was idly plunking on the piano, wrenching me back into reality. I got up from the small bench to retrieve the Bible from the built-in, where it was always kept between an old copy of Tennyson poetry and a leather-bound book about religious symbolism, and took it to the wrinkly faced woman. She snatched it from my outstretched hand and smacked the couch cushion beside her.
I sat as she began reciting Psalms. My mind started wandering again almost instantly, but I was careful to keep my gaze directed at my sneakers so she wouldn’t notice the unfocused look in my eyes.
After a while, she thrust the heavy book in my hands. “Your turn,” she ordered.
As I read, her hand crept to my thigh before moving higher and higher and… there.
I knew better than to complain. I just read. Read her Bible, wondering if she thought the scriptures would somehow offset what she was doing to a young boy.
Hers was the fourth in a line of foster homes I’d found myself in since I’d become an orphan, for all intents and purposes. As far as I knew, my dad was still alive, but I hadn’t seen or heard from him in the five years since he’d been imprisoned, and that was as good as being an orphan to me.
Artie had been placed with a couple on the other side of Lodi who had nine other children in their care. I probably should have been grateful to have a decent roof over my head and warm food in my belly, but all I felt was resentment. Resentment for my mom for caring more about drugs than me. Resentment for my dad murdering my mom. Resentment for the social workers who let Artie and me be separated. Resentment for Mrs. Henderson for her abuse and her hypocrisy.
That’s why I was getting out.
Once my widowed guardian disappeared into her bedroom for the night, which was consistently at ten o’clock, I was going to crawl out my first-floor window and take off. Braving the streets was a hundred times better than being shuffled from one place to another and kept apart from my brother. Plus, foster families came with their own sets of problems that were oftentimes just as bad as what I’d come from.
The first one I’d gone to had been a husband and wife with two kids of their own and three fosters. The wife found out the husband was sleeping with her sister, and I’d nearly had my head taken off when she started throwing knives. Even Mrs. Henderson, the most normal of the bunch, had a habit of drinking her weight in schnapps and passing out on the sofa. No, I was going to take my chances on the streets. The only thing I had to do first was get Artie.
At ten on the dot, the retiree poked her head into my bedroom to tell me she was turning in.
“Did you say your prayers?”
“Yes, Mrs. Henderson.”
She looked over the rim of her glasses. “God knows if you’re lying.”
“I said them, Mrs. Henderson.”
“Good.” She closed the door with a snap.
Beneath my blue plaid sheets and musty quilt, I was fully dressed. I’d even left my sneakers on to avoid
any extra noisemaking. The moon was bright and full outside my window, and I only had to wait until I heard the water shut off from the bathroom to make my escape.
Three, two, one…
I was free. The grass was beneath my shoes, and I was out of the house with the perpetual freesia smell from dollar store candles. I closed the window behind me as far as I could to prevent intruders from targeting Mrs. Henderson’s home, and I started off for Artie.
***
“So, you ended up living on the streets? By choice?”
I nodded. “I wanted to get away from dysfunction, and it seemed like that’s all I got when my fate was left up to others. If I was going to deal with dysfunction, it was going to be my own doing.”
“Did you get your brother?”
“Oh, yeah. Our fosters let us talk on the phone with each other once a week, so we had the whole thing set up.”
Sadie pressed two fingers to her temples and rubbed in a circular motion. “I can’t even imagine that. Any of it. What happened to your mom, then being moved from one stranger’s house to another.” She shook her head. “And then going out on your own at eleven? God.” She continued massaging her head as she looked at me from the corner of her eye. “Does your dad still think you’re missing?”
I tightened my lips and put the car into reverse. “He’s dead. He was beaten to death in prison.”
Her mouth formed a small o. “I’m sorry.”
“I’m not.”
She didn’t respond to that immediately, which I didn’t blame her for. What was someone supposed to say after a burden of information like this? I started backing the car up, looking over my shoulder to ensure I didn’t hit one of the hoopties in the lot. Once I’d steered us back onto the main drag, Sadie broke the silence. “Where are we going now?”
“My brother’s.” I clenched my jaw. “There’s more you should know.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Sadie
I didn’t realize we hadn’t been touring Sacramento until we passed a sign after about forty-five minutes that read, “Welcome to Sacramento.” Why I’d continued to think the city was Tate’s hometown after finding out the Gold Rush association had been a lie, I didn’t know, but it turned out the place where Tate was born and suffered all his childhood traumas was called Lodi.