by Tara Lynn
Soon enough, this would all be my past. Oh yeah, my name would carry in west Texas for a generation, but everything faded. If my story didn’t go past high school ball, then I sure as hell was going out as a legend.
Marlo broke free. It wasn't more than a half-second gap, but I saw the spiral line up. I drew back and hurled the ball.
An ogre from the other team slammed into me. He grabbed and twisted, but I rolled and spun him right off with his own force.
Too late, prick.
The opposing wall of muscle stopped and watched with me as Marlo scooped the ball out of the air. The crowd seared the sky with their voices. He jogged into the endzone, punted the ball into the stands and raised his arms, conducting our orchestra of victory.
I threw him a nod. Kid had done me right. Then again, he wasn’t just a teammate, he was a brother. He’d be with me in my next life, once I hung up my red and white padding for good.
The ball came back out and the Coyotes did their best, but they weren't magicians. Ten seconds on the clock – even I couldn't have spun that into a victory. Certainly didn’t help when I intercepted their last pass though.
The buzzer rang with me holding the ball by its tip. Everyone was chanting my name now, team colors all but forgotten. I slammed the ball into the ground and got a yard off field before my teammates mobbed me. They hoisted me above and carried me off.
“Tull. Tull. Tull.” Like they were hammering a nail into a steel box.
Crowds cluttered the railing above the path to the locker room. A Texas sized crowd in a Texas sized arena wearing smiles only victors saw. Their voices rained down on me.
A current ran through my spine. What would it be for this to keep going?
I couldn't help myself. I started scanning for anyone who resembled a scout – a middle aged black or white man, holding a pad, maybe sporting a hat from his school. Dozens of guys fit the profile, but then again whole towns came out for games around these parts. Football might be the one thing that could unite us, more than church even.
But as much as these people beamed down on me, none seemed capable of delivering me into the next level. Even amidst the celebration, gloom eked in.
Objects tend to stay in the direction they’re headed – Newton’s first law. I didn’t attend class often, but I made room for physics. I lived it out here on the field. It applied to life too though.
I knew where I’d end up, and nothing could change that.
I spotted a couple familiar faces. These men were not middle aged, but they looked like they’d lived a dozen lives. Even in the warm Texas night, they wore thick leather jackets with sawed off sleeves. The red and white skull up front grinned wickedly down on me. Their own smiles were far more genuine.
Clash and Jethro. The wiry, ponytailed vice president and the giant keg of a sergeant-in-arms for the Blood Brothers MC. Marlo might be my brother now, but when I’d been facing an abyss, those two had been the ones who pulled me back out. They’d changed my path instead of letting it lead me off a cliff.
They pounded their chests. I pounded back, my heart warming more than from any mere victory. It wouldn’t be the worst thing, riding down a road with them at my side.
But once I left the roar of the stadium, once the doors to the locker room shut, my mind refused to sit at ease. The steam billowed around me in the shower. I shut my eyes and let the patter of the water fill my head like a hundred-thousand-person stadium – the type they had in Austin or Union Station. I pictured the world watching me walk into the center.
The thought dried up as I toweled down. This was Nowhere, TX. No one from a college that big ever recruited here. And even if they did, it’d just be a waste of their time and mine. I wouldn’t accept it. I wasn’t some sweet yokel with a wicked hurl. I knew the dark truths of this world. I belonged to this town. If any scout knew who I was, they’d turn and run the other way.
I sat on the bench, rubbing my hair beyond dry.
I survived through the MC’s code. It wasn’t a code fit for university halls, but it was one that suited the world I’d known. It was a code that had saved me when I was at my lowest. I had done dark deeds in service of the MC, drawn blood and seeded chems, but it was all for a cause:
Protect your own.
The MC might not be perfect, but they kept Loving safe from outside threat. I’d seen enough of the shit that happened in other little towns in west Texas to know how true it was. The hard drug use and violence that followed stayed well out of Loving town borders.
And besides, the MC counted me as family. It might be truest one I had left.
“Not a bad throw out there.” Marlo's voice cracked my haze. He stood over me, still padded out in his red and white and grass-stained uniform, smiling a criminal smile.
I clasped his hand. “Not a bad catch either. You really earned that one.”
“It's like I tell you in practice. I save it for when it counts.”
“Right. Is that what you tell girls when you can't get it up too?”
He socked me hard. “We'll see who's tearing up more shit tonight. Let's go trap a couple of those Coyote cheerleaders. Saw this Mexican chick with tits you would not believe.”
“That sounds like a helluva plan,” I said.
And for the dozenth time in the past couple weeks, I remembered that I didn't have a proper place to take her to. Just a paper-bare room in a house with sieves for walls.
Next to a girl who locked herself away to keep from even seeing me most days.
Two weeks I'd lived there, and I had only seen her once at dinner. Not that I was trying, but she was going out of her way to avoid me. I heard the low brass of her music sometimes, played on headphones loud enough to drown out any noise from me. She wanted me etched out of existence.
I had the urge to make her see I wasn’t going anywhere. But wasn’t that the point? I wasn’t leaving Loving, and she was. What use was it to try to reconcile with time snapping us apart again soon enough. Haunting each other unseen might be the right move.
“You got a guest room I can take mine back to?” I said. “New house is shit.”
“Na, my father's home,” Marlo said. “He might just try to cut in.”
His father was a senior member of the Blood Brothers himself. Marlo didn’t have to follow his footsteps, but at least he had a father who knew how to act. Whatever my father had once been, he was just a slump of a man now.
“A motel then. Two beds.”
“I ain't sharing my girl man.”
“I don't want your damn girl. I just don't want to be paying for two rooms.”
“We don't have to pay for shit. Let's bring 'em back to the MC club house. Booze is free and the girls will be wet even without it.”
That didn’t strike me right. The MC might be family, but that didn’t mean I was a fan of the shitshow the place became on a Friday night.
“Forget it. Rooms are on me. The sort of girl I want tonight won't get wet at a clubhouse.”
“Fine with me, I'm not passing up a free room. But you should really consider your tastes, brother, cause clubhouse girls are all you're going to get soon. Which is good, cause they’re into all the freaky shit.”
Well, I wasn’t, but I’d cross that bridge when it stood before me. I put on my civvies. Clapped a few more hands of my teammates as we left.
The rest of them could never be as close as me and Marlo. Some would leave this town for school. The others – well, if they stayed, it wouldn’t be the same. Civilians kept their distance from the MC. I might get some special bearing being the town football hero and all, but my cut would still make them wary. People might know we watched over this town, but they also had some idea of what it cost us outside the borders.
Maybe in a better place, the world worked like it did in the movies. Maybe the police were enough to keep their town safe. But this was Loving and right and wrong worked different.
After all, the police ended up like the worst of them. Sometimes they wo
uld turn their power on the ones who they were sworn to protect.
Liza had caught a deep dark end of that.
“Tell me what happened.
She sat in her PJs, hugging her knees wedged into the corner of her bed, her head turned from me. I held her tight, but she didn’t relax, didn’t melt into me.
“Baby,” I said. “It’s ok. I’m here.”
I tucked her face up by the chin. My heart seized. A raccoon’s hood puffed up the skin around both eyes. Dried blood flaked from her nose, still sat dewy on cracked lips.
“It’s ok,” she said. “It’s him, it’s not you. I know you tried.”
Liza huddled into my chest. My heart pounded slower – and for a moment I believed it. I believed that I hadn’t failed her.
I’d tried doing the right thing. Tried and failed. And now we were who we were. So some people in the town looked at me with fearful eyes now? Fine, I’d happily be coated in sin.
My chest tightened like it was my first day in the MC. God, I’d made my peace with this shit years ago. How the hell could that girl wind me up for weeks? I was a winning quarterback at the top of my game. That was all that today had held. Time to go revel.
Marlo texted me the restaurant the Coyotes were headed to. He wanted to head straight there, but I still felt dirty. I need a pit stop and home clothes. I had time. Their cheerleaders weren't going to put out for their losing team anytime soon.
I shoved out through the crowds in a hoodie to avoid handshakes. People here thought I was going to go pro in a few years time. Poor bastards were in for a surprise.
I rumbled back to my new house. The living room lights were on mute. Someone was watching TV.
My heart beat louder than when I had the stadium on its feet. The car was gone. This had to be Eliza.
I unlocked the door quietly and slipped in. A cloud of light brown hair sat alone over the back of the sofa. Well, so much for that. Air escaped me in something like a sigh.
Lynn turned around. “Oh hey, Everett. I'm surprised to see you back so early. Did your game go well?”
“It was fine. My dad not here?”
“He went to grab a beer with some of his friends.”
“Right.” What he ever did to earn those beers I never knew. Fuck, they had cost him his pilot’s license, but he still went out for his benders. Only now and then, too; he didn’t even have the commitment to become an alcoholic.
“You want something to eat?” Lynn started to get up.
“No.” I started for the stairs. “I'm heading right back out.”
“Alright, have a nice night. Be careful.”
She was a pleasant woman. Too pleasant if she ended up with men like she did.
I started up, then came to an utter halt. Eliza stood at the top of the stairs, peering down. Her room was lit, but only a crack of light leaked out upon her. She had on frilly pink shorts and a white shirt. Her blonde hair hung like a pale veil behind her. She look otherworldly and cozy at once, like some fairy.
Her crystal eyes were wide as the sky – as if I looked more the ghost.
“Enjoying the evening?” I said, coming up on her.
“I was,” she said.
“The sooner you let me through, the sooner I’m out of here.”
“Need to go push some drugs? Or go hurt other pushers?”
She stood frozen. Her strawberry scent washed down on me.
I’d had more words to spit, but they left my mouth as air. I bound my legs together to keep my thoughts from manifesting into the only action they truly understood. It wasn’t just how damn good she looked though.
More than anything else in the world, she reminded me of home.
“Or maybe you’re just messing up another girl,” she said. Clearly my scent wasn’t having the same effect back.
“Oh I might mess up a few girls tonight,” I said. “Victory has a way of putting an appetite in me.”
Her eyes flared.
“Should I bring them home?” I said. “You seem awful curious ‘bout my sex life.”
“I’m not,” she said. “As long as you’re not hurting them.”
My temperature ratcheted up. “Why the fuck would I lay a hand on anyone?”
She jerked. My heart flinched, but hell, there was only so much I would allow.
“I guess you don’t,” she said. “But there’s worse ways to hurt someone.”
Enough. This moment wasn't going to end if neither of us moved. I inched past her. Her shoulder pressed against mine. It had been a week since we even breathed the same air, and we’d been molten a moment ago.
Now, I could feel the sensuousness of her skin through the flimsy cloth – the promise of warmth, the potential for flames. My whole body lit up electric. I took care not to look at her face, not to infuriate myself further.
This night belonged to the victory in the stadium. It belonged to Marlo and the MC. And even if it didn’t, the MC code still applied:
Protect your own.
She’d be my sister soon. The best way to protect her would be to keep her from what I longed to do to her.
I snuck into my room and switched quickly to a tight V-neck that showed my sculpted body and khaki's that draped neatly from my waist.
I was a goddamn quarterback. I was a prospect. I was the closest thing to Christ in this town. But all I could manage looking in the mirror was a grimace. God, that girl wound me up. She made me forget who I was.
Or maybe she made me remember.
I shut my light and went back out. Eliza's door still lay open a crack. I moved past and peered inside. She lay perched on her bed. Her head lay hidden behind the huge sketchpad. All I saw was her lean, lush body. Those long legs that had once twined around me and bound me inside her.
She usually kept the door firmly shut, especially if I was home. Maybe that crack meant something. What would happen if I just walked in, pushed aside that pad and shushed any protest with my lips on hers. Would she fight me off? Or would she remember just how good my hands used to make us feel?
Jesus. Just what I needed – to be dreaming about doing the last thing to my future stepsister that would turn me into everything I hated.
I descended the stairs, clutching the railing to keep steady. It had been so easy to avoid her when we were just classmates. She ran in the honors circles, and I had fallen out of those years ago.
But here, maybe her perfect silence was the only policy that I could abide. I couldn’t seem to handle the sight of her on that bed without being reminded of where that had led us. Of where that could have led us, if things hadn’t gone so wrong.
I stamped my eyes with my palms. No, life hadn't robbed me of shit. I had made my choices. It was why I was still here.
I shot out of the driveway, but even with engine thrumming beneath me. Even after Marlo and I got just the girls we wanted and took em back to a shitty motel by the highway and unleashed our victory on them.
Even as I lay nominally spent.
None of it could make me stop wondering about the girl who’d soon be family. Who’d soon be too close, and too far from what could have once been.
CHAPTER FIVE
Eliza
“You didn't send these out?” Maria asked.
She was standing near the desk in my room, drinking a Fanta and looking betrayed. I knew what she must have found under my sketch pad. I should have come up alone and hid them first. But I needed to get away from that annoying little New Year's get together my mom was throwing downstairs, and I hadn’t thought before escaping.
“I didn't feel like it.”
She dangled the applications in my face. “You didn't feel like applying to Rice and Harvard?”
No, I felt very bad about it. I’d tried. I’d stopped and started, but then I had gotten to the essays: ‘Tell us why you feel you would uniquely excel here?’
I couldn’t, because I wouldn’t. UT Austin felt like an escape, but it was still close enough to what I knew for me to do it well.
These private schools felt like a test to see if I belonged, even after I got in. I wouldn’t be anywhere near the top of the class, and that meant I’d just be me. Everyone would see right through to how broken I really was.
Maria shuffled through the sheets, mouth agape.
“It was too much of a long shot,” I said. “We don't have the money for applications.”
“Bull crap, honey.” She plopped down on the edge of the bed with me. “You know they waive fees. You're the one who told me. You were the one who pushed me to apply. Oh my god, I had you look over my applications and you didn't even apply.”