“Well, for most of us living in the twenty-first century, we like to use circuit breakers instead.”
“Okay,” she shrugs, indifferent. “Then this morning when I was at work, my roommate called me and told me the fridge was making funny noises. Then another fuse blew.”
Roommate. Not boyfriend or husband.
In spite of myself, my dick takes note.
“Is your basement through there?” I ask, pointing to a door. “I’m assuming the fuse box is down there?” When she nods, I say, “I’m gonna go down to take a look.”
She gestures. “Go ahead.”
I head down a rickety wooden set of stairs into the basement, which is mostly empty except for an ancient washer-dryer set and some shelves with some old canning supplies collecting dust. I swear to God, if you walked into this house alone, you’d never guess in a hundred damn years that a hot blond chick lives here. I can’t help but chuckle to myself.
The fuse box is on the wall above and to the left of the washing machine. There’s an old metal flashlight sitting on a narrow shelf next to it, and I grab it and switch it on, surprised to see it’s got batteries in it. I focus the shaft of light on the box, noting the two blown fuses, and then spend a few minutes shining it up in the beams and checking out what I can see of the wiring situation.
“Well,” I say when I’m back upstairs. “I’m surprised you haven’t had this problem before. Your appliances are pulling too much current. It’s gonna keep happening unless you get it fixed.”
The shadow of a frown passes across her face. I’ve seen that look on other clients’ faces. It’s the one that says, You’re about to gouge me, aren’t you? Suspicion is something I deal with a lot. Probably because I look the way I do. At least, that’s gotta be part of it. Large, tattooed guys in leather cuts aren’t generally trusted by the public at large.
Enough people in town know me that I get jobs by word of mouth, which helps with that. But this chick doesn’t know me at all.
“What’s the fix?” she asks me, narrowing her eyes.
“Well, first thing you need to do is replace that fuse box with circuit breakers,” I explain. “They’re safer, and easier on you, because when the circuit overloads the switch just flips. No need to replace the fuse every time. But like I said, the circuits are gonna keep blowing unless you fix the problem. So you need to rewire the problem areas. The places where you’ve got appliances that draw more power.” I pause. “You got anything but bedrooms upstairs?”
“And one bathroom,” she offers.
I nod. “Okay. So, you probably don’t need any rewiring to the second floor. Here’s what I’ll do. I put in a circuit box. Then I run some new circuits up to the existing outlets where you need them.” I gesture around the room. “There, where the toaster’s plugged in. The fridge. The dishwasher, over there. The microwave. I’ll run some Romex. Fifteen amps for the regular outlets, twenty for the appliances.”
She sucks her lower lip between her teeth. “How much would that cost?”
I give her a figure. “I only do this part time, so I’d come in, say, a few hours a day. Two-three days a week or so for a couple weeks. I’ll get your fridge up and running as a first priority, and then go from there.”
She looks at me for a few seconds, considering. “I guess that sounds okay…” she murmurs. “Only, I feel like I should get a second opinion. Another quote, or something.”
I snort. “You can. But I’ll tell you right now, you ain’t gonna get anyone out here for less. And if you do decide to go with someone else, make sure to run the name by me. Or hell, run it by Cyndi. This town’s small enough, people get reputations that precede them. There’s not a lot of guys in Ironwood that do electrical work. A couple of them are good, but there’s a few who’ll take you for a ride if they smell an opportunity.”
I mean that. I’m not tryin’ to snow her.
I may be a thief and a criminal in my MC life. I’m no saint, that’s for sure.
But that’s not what I’m about here.
I actually learned to do electrical work during a stint in county. Yep, prison gave me my legit job. At least it was good for something — my version of college, I guess. Once I got out, an old neighbor of ours who used to have a crush on my ma took me on as an apprentice, and then helped me out with starting up my own business when he decided to retire.
Even after I joined the MC, and started making money that way, I kept doing electrical work. I make good money, but that’s not why I do it. I do this work because it’s something I can do by myself. I don’t have to talk to anyone. My terms, my decisions. Just me keeping a dangerous thing under control.
When electricity was first invented, a lot of people thought it was some sort of magic. A miracle. Hell, that might be what people still think, a lot of the time. It’s dangerous, and awe-inspiring, simple but complex. Like taming a dragon or something. I like understanding it.
I like that there’s one area in my life where I fix things, instead of breaking them.
The chick is still looking at me. We’ve been standing there in silence for almost ten seconds. Finally, she gives a little nod.
“When can you start?”
“Tomorrow. Like I said.”
“Okay.”
And that’s that.
“I’ll write you up a quote,” I say, when we’ve decided on a time for me to show up. “I’ll bring it with me tomorrow.” Then something occurs to me. “You got a name?”
The ghost of a grin plays across her lips. “Tori,” she says. “Tori Lowe.”
“Tori,” I repeat. “That short for something?”
“Victoria.”
“Huh. Nice name.” I look around. “It kinda goes with the house.”
Her hint of a grin grows wider. “Are you saying I have an old lady name?”
“Maybe a little bit,” I concede. “I’m Dante.”
“Like the inferno?”
I snort. “No, like Dante Lavelli. Wide receiver for the Cleveland Browns. My dad named me.”
Tori’s eyes go wide, and she starts to laugh, a full, throaty sound that takes me by surprise… and sends my dick straight to full-mast.
“Well, then. Nice to meet you, Dante,” she says, sticking out her hand. “I guess you’re hired.”
9
Tori
I stand on the front porch and watch as Dante descends the steps. I try not to notice how fine his ass looks when he moves. Or how wide his shoulders are. Or how his tattoos somehow make him look even more sculpted and muscular.
Lords of Carnage MC, Ironwood. The patches on the back of his black leather vest are impossible to ignore. He wasn’t wearing the vest the first time I saw him, at Mildred and Eddie’s place. But seeing it now tells me that he’s no casual weekend biker. Whatever the Lords of Carnage are, Dante is clearly a full-fledged member. The smaller patches on the front, which I saw earlier, were like a special code. Words and abbreviations covered his pecs on both sides.
One, in particular, stood out: Enforcer. I’m not sure what that means, exactly. But it sounds kind of… ominous. Like it’s a warning to other bikers.
It probably should be to me, as well.
Dante ambles down to the street, climbs onto his low, black motorcycle, and fires it up. The low rumble thrums all around me. He lifts one finger at me in goodbye.
As he pulls away, I’m almost physically aware of his absence. Like the heat of his body — the hard mass of him — has been taken away from me. I feel more alone here than I usually do. Like the house is emptier than usual. Like something is missing.
It’s unsettling.
I walk back into the kitchen. In the silence where the noise of his engine had been, I can hear the shaky breath I draw into my lungs, then let out in a rush.
Standing in the center of the room, I pull out the pill bottle I shoved into my back pocket. I meant for him not to see me, but I wasn’t quick enough. I probably should have just left them there. He might not have n
oticed them if I had.
Not that I care what he thinks, I tell myself.
Not that I care what anyone thinks.
Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy.
That’s what it’s called. The condition I have.
Basically, it’s fancy doctor language for “shitty heart that doesn’t work like it’s supposed to.”
The words are a confusing mouthful to most people. But they’ve become almost as familiar to me over the years as my own name. They’re part of my identity. One item on the list of things you think about in your head when someone you’ve just met says, “Tell me about yourself.”
I’m Tori Lowe. The Tori is short for Victoria. I’m a features writer for the local paper in Ironwood, Ohio. I have blond hair and blue eyes, and hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. And I like dogs.
Except I don’t like telling anyone. I try to avoid it as much as possible. Almost no one in this town, apart from Savannah and the local pharmacist, knows anything about it. I even go out of town for my yearly checkups with my cardiologist. I’ve insulated myself as much as possible from being the poor girl with the heart condition.
I got diagnosed at age nineteen. That’s pretty typical for hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. Usually, people are diagnosed after puberty, as they grow into adulthood. I had asthma as a kid, and so any shortness of breath I ever experienced, my parents just assumed it was that. But my freshman year at college, I was running late to a class one day, and dashing across campus. I got a stabbing pain in my chest, but there was supposed to be a quiz at the beginning of the hour, so I decided to ignore it and kept running. I woke up a few minutes later with a crowd of people standing around me, and someone from campus security on his phone, ready to call an ambulance.
I’m not sure why no doctors had ever heard anything irregular in my heartbeat before that, but apparently that’s common. When they detected the heart murmur, I was sent for a barrage of tests, which took me out of school for the better part of a week.
My condition is apparently genetic, though my dad didn’t know he had it either until I was diagnosed. He’s the kind of guy who avoids the doctor in general. Apparently, his version isn’t as bad as mine, so he never struggled with it as much.
But he blames himself for my having it. I know he does.
Worse yet, my mom blames him for it. And she blames him for what happened to Vaughn.
Oh, I haven’t mentioned Vaughn, yet, have I?
He’s my twin. Or was.
Vaughn Aaron Lowe was born exactly two and a half minutes before I was. So, technically, he was my parents’ first child, and my older brother by those one-hundred fifty-odd seconds.
I only had a brother for four months, though. He would never grow up to be my playmate, or to pull my hair and tell me to stop being a pest. We would never argue over toys, or snacks, or which TV show to watch.
Vaughn Aaron Lowe died at four months old, of “crib death,” also known as SIDS. Any memories of him I have are buried deep in my unconscious mind. All I have are a few photos of his chubby face as he sits next to me in coordinated outfits, to remind me that I was once one part of a matched pair.
My parents tried to have more children, but it just wasn’t in the cards. So, I grew up an only child. An only child who always knew I was supposed to be one half of a whole.
My parents loved me for both of us, my mom was fond of telling me. I was their miracle baby. The one who lived. I knew I was cherished, and treasured. And if sometimes it got to be a little bit stifling to hold the responsibility of making up for the absence of my twin brother, I told myself I was lucky my parents loved me so much. Even when their marriage started going downhill around the time I hit puberty. Even when they both started avoiding each other in the house, and focusing most of their energy on me instead.
In high school, when I started thinking about applying to colleges, I felt a fair amount of guilt that I’d soon be leaving them alone together, without me to be the glue. But at the same time, I couldn’t wait to finally spreading my wings away from the loving, but constantly watchful eyes of my parents. To finally start my life — not as Tori, the twin who survived, center of her parents’ lives. Just as Tori. Me, myself, and I.
When I was diagnosed during my freshman year of college, one of the unpleasant revelations that came from the discussions with doctors was that Vaughn might have had the same condition. Might have, in fact, died from it.
And with that possibility, the world I knew seemed to shift on its axis.
My parents’ relationship, already strained, broke under the pressure. Within a year, they had separated, and soon after that, they divorced. My mother blamed my father for everything, since it turned out the condition had been passed on by him. She blamed him for Vaughn’s death. For my illness.
I had been the glue that held their marriage together. And yet, my condition was what finally broke them apart.
By the end of my freshman year, my mom had convinced me to move back home and continue my degree at the local college, instead of on the other side of the state. She got my doctors to agree that this was potentially the best course of action, until we knew whether we could get my disease under control through medication.
For the first time in my life, I felt fragile. Breakable. I felt like I was living on borrowed time.
It terrified me. But also, it infuriated me. I felt as though I’d been robbed of my future. I wanted more than ever to keep pursuing my dreams of an exciting career, where every new assignment would take me to a new place. But more and more, I realized that might no longer be possible.
I felt stifled. Like my only option was to settle on a life that in some ways felt more like dying.
My aunt Jeanne knew all of this. She was the one person I confided in about all of my frustrations. When I came to stay with her the summer after my diagnosis, I know it was a mighty struggle she went through to get my mother to agree to it. But Jeanne somehow figured out the right words to convince her little sister that her only niece would be safe and well-supervised in her aunt’s care. Because of Jeanne’s efforts, I was able to have an almost-normal summer — the first time I hadn’t lived fully under the shadow of my illness since I was diagnosed.
Back then, Ironwood was actually a refuge to me. It was the place where no one but Aunt Jeanne (and Savannah, of course) knew anything more about me than I wanted to tell them. As I continued my studies through my sophomore, junior, and senior years, I clung to the prospect of those summer holidays like a life raft. After my diagnosis, they were even more important to me then than they had been when I was a teenager.
The spring of my senior year, I phoned Jeanne up, telling her of my intention to come down to Ironwood to spend one final summer with her post-graduation. But to my immense surprise, she had brushed me off, saying it wasn’t a good time.
I felt utterly blindsided, confused and rejected by her refusal. Even more so because I hadn’t lined up any other plans for the summer. I was still trying to work out what I would do and where I wanted to live after college, knowing that I hoped more than anything to leave Columbus and my stifling home life behind. I had figured I’d work it all out that summer, counting on long talks with Jeanne and Savannah to help me try to make some decisions. Instead, suddenly, I landed right back at my mother’s house after graduation. With no job, no prospects, and parents who for once were united in trying to talk me into staying in town, so they could “take care” of me.
It was in the midst of that sad, aimless summer that my mother got the terrible call about Jeanne’s death.
I realized later that Jeanne had brushed off my request to come visit her because she hadn’t wanted me — or anyone else in the family — to know she was dying. She had wanted to go out on her own terms. And she’d wanted my memories of her to be good. She wanted me to think of her as the robust, no-nonsense aunt I’d always known — not the sick, frail woman she was destined to become at the end. She had taken care of all her funeral arrangements herself, befor
e she got too sick to do so. By the time we got the call, she had already been cremated, the obituary sent to the paper, and the ceremony and burial details put in place. At her request, her lawyer called us at the appropriate time — and let us know that there was a will, and that I was the sole inheritor of Jeanne’s estate.
I’m pretty sure I know why Jeanne decided to leave the house to me, too. She knew how much affection I had had for the town as a child and young adult. She figured Ironwood might be a place where I could have a reasonably good adult life. I’d be able to control who did and didn’t know about my shitty heart. A place where I could once again come to feel normal.
And despite the fact that it’s not the life I wanted, I guess I have to admit that’s what Ironwood mostly has been for me.
It was horrible losing Jeanne. Even more horrible that I never got to say goodbye.
But knowing she found the energy at the end of her own life to take care of me has always consoled me. I’m so thankful to Aunt Jeanne that she gave me a way to escape. Even if my escape wasn’t to parts unknown, like I always thought it would be.
So, yeah. That thing I said earlier? About me not caring that Dante saw my pills?
That was a lie. I do care.
A lot more than I want to.
I don’t know why I cared so much about him specifically seeing them. Maybe it was just a reflex, nothing more. After all, he’s not anything to me. He’s not a friend. He’s barely an acquaintance. Someone who will be in my life for a couple of weeks, max.
But something about Dante makes me very strongly want him not to see me as an invalid.
It’s not him, exactly. It’s more what he represents. He’s just so masculine. So… alive. He’s got this way of moving his body that’s distractingly hard to ignore. Like everything about him just kind of reminds me of sex. Of the sex that I’m not having. Of the sex I haven’t had for a very, very long time.
The last time I even tried to have sex was a few months after my diagnosis. A drunken hook-up at a college party, except I wasn’t drunk. It was not a memory I cherish, to say the least. But something about Dante — the heat and energy and realness of him — is an uncomfortable reminder of just how much I’ve shut myself off from men in general. He makes me wonder what I’m missing. He makes me feel like a woman. Or rather, he makes me realize how much I’d like to feel like a woman once in a while. Instead of just a small-town reporter with a defective heart.
Iron Heart (Lords of Carnage Ironwood MC) Page 6