Pawn (The Pawn Duet, Book Two): A King Series Spinoff

by T. M. Frazier

  She finds a pace and a rhythm, wrapping her hands around my head, threading her fingers through my hair while her perfect tits bounce in my face.

  It’s all too much and not fucking enough.

  It will never be enough.

  Not with Mickey.

  Not ever.

  “Pike, I need more,” she begs, and I realize what she’s asking, and she doesn’t know how to get there herself.

  I dig my fingers into her hips and raise her up until only the tip of my cock is inside of her. I thrust up, pistoling my hips as I drop her down. Over and over again, I fuck her and make her fuck me as we don’t dare so much as blink.

  It feels so right because it’s with Mickey, but unlike the other times, it also feels all too wrong.

  A tear rolls down her face as she comes, screaming and crying out through her orgasm as her pussy clenches around my cock so hard I almost come from how good it feels and how fucking painful it is.

  I lick the tear off her cheek before it can reach her lips as I come long and hard inside of her. Spilling everything I have into her. Emotions, vulnerability, love.

  “I fucking love you so much,” I whisper as I regain my senses.

  She stays on my lap with me inside of her. Our gazes finally break as her head collapses onto my shoulder. The blood rushes from my cock pulsing inside her pussy which is still constricting me like a vise I never want to get out of.

  After a long while in the silence with nothing but the sound of our breathing and the occasional creaking of an old rocking chair on the porch behind us, she finally speaks. “I love you, too, Pike,” I hear her strained whisper. “So, fucking much. It hurts. It all hurts so bad.”

  She sits up, pulling me from her body. She adjusts her shorts, and I pull up my pants. I feel the loss of her the second my cock slips from her body. I feel it everywhere. In my heart. In the air around us.

  In my fucking soul.

  Who knew that so much love would result in so much pain.

  Mickey sobs. “Something is really, really wrong with me. I need help.”

  “Shhhh…it’s okay. We will get you help,” I say as her tears soak my shirt.

  “I can’t stay here,” she says, digging her fingernails into the skin at the back of my neck.

  “I know,” I admit, resting my chin on her head. “It’s okay. I know.”

  Mickey’s loss, what she’s been through, with her family dying, The Reich. I cringe.

  What I’ve put her through.

  I can’t even begin to imagine all of it, never mind live it. It’s no wonder that it’s too fucking much for her to handle. No wonder she’s breaking. If you punch a mirror, it’s going to fucking break. Even one of the things she’s been through would be too much for anyone else, but yet, for four years, she’s marched on like a soldier who lost an arm and a leg in battle yet picked up his goddamned weapon and kept fucking fighting.

  She’s broken, and lost, but no matter what happens, she’ll never be forgotten.

  Not by me.

  Not ever.

  I’m shaking as I pull her even tighter to my chest. I close my eyes, and for once in my life, I allow the feelings to flow. The result is soaking her hair with my tears, silently crying for the girl I love. During this single moment, I allow myself to grieve.

  Not just for myself.

  Not just for her.

  For what could have been.

  “I love you, Mic,” I whisper in her hair.

  She turns to me with nothing behind her eyes. “Can I go see my sister now?”

  18

  Pike

  One Year Later

  Mickey’s been gone for a year. In total, I knew her less than a month.

  So then, why the hell am I so surprised when I called the treatment facility she’s been living in to find that she completed her program and checked out over a week ago?

  Where the hell is she?

  I laugh to myself. Why the fuck did I automatically assume that she’d come here when her time there was up?

  “Still can’t find her?” Jo Jo asks, sliding up to me at the bar next to the pawn shop.

  I shake my head and take a swig of my beer. “Nope. And you shouldn’t be in here,” I scold.

  Jo Jo rolls her eyes. “Yeah, and I shouldn’t have changed their sign to read NUDE BAR FREE DRINKS, but I did.” She laughs. “And the look on Sally’s face was totally worth it when those big burly nude guys came strolling up.”

  The kid has a point there.

  Leave it to Jo Jo to pull a smile out of me when I didn’t think it was possible. I don’t think I would have made it through this past year without her to distract me from my own bullshit. Or, as Preppy would call it, wallowing.

  With the help of Nine, I became Jo Jo’s official guardian shortly after Mickey left.

  The night I got arrested I promised Jo Jo she wasn’t going back into foster care, and I fucking meant it. I’m a lot of things, but I’m not a liar.

  I’ve learned that Jo Jo reminds me a lot of myself. Some of that is good, like the fact that she doesn’t take shit from anyone, and some of it’s downright terrifying, like her ability to manipulate me into pretty much getting whatever she wants.

  Like, right now. I should be sending her back to the pawn shop, but she made me laugh, and I forgot all about the fact that Hanson’s Bar is not exactly an appropriate place for a twelve-year-old kid.

  “So, you gonna go find her, or what?” Jo Jo asks. She sits up on her knees on the stool and reaches behind the bar. She grabs a red plastic cup from a stack and the soda hose, filling the glass.

  I narrow my eyes at her.

  “Sorry,” she says, sounding not all that apologetic. She raises her hands in defense. “I’m still getting used to this ‘you’re in charge of me and strongly discourage my terrible behavior’ thing.”

  I take out my wallet and slap a few bills down on the bar. “Sally, for my beer and her soda,” I say.

  Jo Jo follows me out through the back door to the alley. “I’ll bring back the cup!” she shouts back.

  Sally smiles. She’s used to Jo Jo’s daily shenanigans by now and even helps Jo Jo do her homework at the bar before it opens.

  “Pike, you didn’t answer me, do you think she’s coming back?”

  I turn to face her. “I thought you didn’t like Mickey?” I ask.

  “I mean, she was okay. I like the way she didn’t let me win at board games or video games. And she never talked to me like she felt sorry for me. The same way you don’t. I wasn’t a broken foster kid to her. I was just a kid. An asshole, but a kid.” She shrugs. “It was nice for someone to see me for who I am but not make that all I am.”

  I put my arm around Jo Jo. For being so young, the kid has been through so much, and it’s made her wise beyond her years. “Same, kid. And since you know I’d never lie to you, the truth is that Mickey might not be coming back.”

  “But you hope she does? Right?” her eyebrows shoot up.

  “I sure as shit do. But I can hope all I want. It doesn’t mean she’s going to come back.”

  “I hope she comes back, too,” she says.

  I walk Jo Jo to the backdoor of my pawn shop and open it. She goes to duck under my arm, but a loud meowing stops her. She steps back out into the alley.

  “The cats are fine. I already fed them,” I say. “They’re starting to be greedy little fuckers. Feed them three times a day every day for a year and get a vet to come out to spay and neuter and give them shots and keep them healthy and build a cat tower the size of the fucking Logan’s Beach water tower filled with cat toys, and suddenly, you’re the center of their universe and the owner of dozens of the little greedy fuckers.”

  “I wouldn’t call them fuckers. More like, loveable nuisances.”

  The voice. It’s not Jo Jo’s. I know this voice.

  “Holy shit,” Jo Jo whispers, tugging on my shirt.

  Slowly, I turn to where a woman on the other side of the alley is holding a
small kitten in her arms. Long, dark hair draped over her shoulders. She’s wearing a pair of white cut-off shorts and a blue t-shirt tied at her belly button. Holy shit is right.

  Mickey. My Mickey.

  “So, you two were talking about me?” Mickey asks, stepping toward us. She sets down the kitten who scurries off, disappearing into the cat tower.

  “You’re back,” I say, my throat thick.

  She beams up at me with clear determined eyes. “I’m back.”

  “For how long?” Jo Jo asks, as eager to hear the answer as I am.

  Mickey steps toward us and looks at me when she answers. “For as long as you’ll both have me.”

  I lift her in my arms and press my lips to hers. “Forever,” I mumble into her mouth. “Fucking forever.”

  “Ew, I do not want to witness this shit,” Jo Jo mutters, ducking into the shop. “Call me when you’re done being gross.”

  The door shuts. I press Mickey against the wall. “How are you?” I ask, looking her over. She’s here. She’s really fucking here.

  In every way.

  She smiles and drops her forehead to mine, holding my face in her hands. “I’m great. I’m here.”

  “Where the fuck did you go? I called, and they said you left a week ago,” I say.

  “There were a lot of goodbyes I had to say. I held a different memorial every day for each member of my family. And I had to make sure that I was going to be able to handle life outside of treatment. I didn’t want to come back and be a burden on you.”

  I hold her tighter. “You’d never be a burden. Never.” I suck in a deep breath. “You came back to me,” I say, still unable to believe she’s real. That she’s here in my arms. And I don’t just mean here physically. I look deep in her eyes, and she knows what I’m trying to see. There’s nothing dulling the light in her eyes.

  She nods. “I didn’t just come back. I came home.”

  My chest squeezes with everything I’m feeling, her words echoing happily in my brain.

  Home.

  “Why?” I ask. “You could have gone anywhere. Done anything—”

  “I told you.” Her eyes are glassy with happy tears. “You’re my constant.”

  19

  Mickey

  Another Year Later…

  A Reason to Hate

  By Dr. Michaela Lovejoy, Sc.D

  Revenge isn’t quick, and neither is grief.

  Just because I have some understanding of the way the mind works doesn’t mean I could get mine to cooperate any better than someone who doesn’t. It also doesn’t mean I could avoid having to learn how to work through my grief.

  In conclusion, I ask you this: What is truth?

  Facts are truths, but people often don’t see facts as finite. Truths are opinions often related to, but not founded in facts. Personal truths are not based on any sort of evidence but rather on beliefs cultivated into ideals.

  Truth, at large, is based on opinion turned belief.

  Religious followers believe that their ideologies are the truth. There are millions of religions in the world. When posed with the question of who is god––Or is there a god? Or what happens when we die?––a follower of each religion gives a different answer. However, the idea behind truth, is that only one of them can be correct, yet, stated differently, millions of people are wrong.

  Therefore, the key to truth lies solely in the believer.

  The same rings true for hate-based groups.

  Creating a believer takes several elements. Some are biological. Some are the way humans are programmed as children along with a combined element of experiences that can be molded to shape around a belief. Personal attitudes associated with true or false ideals. That’s what belief is. Chemicals and biology mixed with psychological circumstances. That’s the potion for belief.

  Manipulation can play a part in this but only if the subject is primed for psychological manipulation. Such as lacking an element of nurture is more likely to accept social influences changing their behavior or perception, as such, changing the very basis of what they see as truth, sometimes disregarding basic human understanding and widely known facts in order to achieve that belief.

  If the subject is made or proved to feel like this truth creates better quality of life for them or motivates them in some way, either with a goal of something or fear of something, such as in social, religious, or ecumenical situations, the subject is much less likely to adapt to a new and more factual truth when confronted and will often offer explanations of why others became misinformed to the truth, rather than admit that theirs is unequivocally wrong.

  When mental illness is presented in one’s truth, it opens up the subject to a new kind of vulnerability which shapes the way the idea is seen, which, in cases of bipolar disorder or schizophrenia, appears to the subject as absolute and therefore, non-arguable. This makes manipulation of the subject difficult unless you find that social or ecumenical goal mentioned above.

  On the day we are born, we begin our conditioning. Whether it’s through our environment or through the people that surround us, we begin to form ideals and thoughts similar to their own. We figure out what is important in life often through what we see is important to others. If hatred is important to your family that becomes a part of your life. You wouldn’t automatically agree that it’s wrong because you’ve not experienced life outside that hate-filled world. And when you do, you take with you those ideals and make excuses for all that is good. You use broken logic to weave together pieces of a story that’s missing chapters.

  But there is hope. I learned that even if someone is conditioned to hate their entire lives. Who lived and breathed the words and ideals that have been planted in their young brains since birth, can change. The ideals are stuck in the brain with figurative super glue, and all they need to be dislodged is a solvent. Something to dissolve what’s holding it inside.

  And that solvent is love.

  It took love for my subject to begin to reject his previous conditioning and start building his own sets of beliefs. His own life free from the binds of hatred. He’s now free to love.

  And so am I.

  Real love isn’t a fairy-tale. It’s not what the influencers on social media show you. It can’t be summed up by a pretty staged picture or by an all-out public declaration of devotion.

  Real love isn’t simple. And regardless of what you see out there in the world, it also isn’t easy. The relationship that love emerges out of love takes hard work.

  There are times when I want to strangle Pike, and I’m sure there are times he wants to strangle me (even outside of our bed). But the test for a solid relationship is not perfection. It’s living every day thankful for the other person. It’s knowing that in the big picture of life that this person makes you want to be better. And through those heated moments, never ever doubting the love that brought you together.

  I’ve learned that there is no valid reason to hate. And that love isn’t perfect, but it’s real, and it’s powerful enough to drive even the strongest hate from the heart.

  Because love is the only truth that matters.

  To subject P- Wherever you are, I hope you’ve found happiness within yourself. In turn, I hope that forgiveness has found you and that you’ve forgiven yourself. Thank you for teaching me that hate is not a mark that can’t be erased.

  “It’s good, Mic. It’s so fucking good.” Thorne says, beaming up from the pages with pride. “What made you decide to turn your paper into a book?”

  I glance over to Pike. “Well, someone told me that I couldn’t let the information I learned die with the Reich and that what I did needed a greater purpose. And my purpose is to help. I needed to expose the Reich for what they were, and I needed to share my findings with the world. A paper wouldn’t reach the masses, and so, this book was born. With this, I hope to educate and maybe even change a few minds out there.”

  Pike presses a kiss to my head. A silent expression of pride.

  Th
orne rushes from the room when the sound of the bell above the door chimes.

  “Hey, kid,” Preppy says, sauntering into the room, passing Thorne on his way in. “I just want to let you know that I always knew you were one of the good ones. Never lost faith in you. Not for one motherfucking second.”

  “Really?” Pike asks.

  Preppy smiles. “It’s true. You should ask the others. Actually, ask Ray and King how I got those two crazy kids together. It’s a doozy of a story.”

  “Does it involve campaigning for their deaths?” I ask.

  He smiles proudly. “No, but it involved a kidnapping and eventually resulted in my own death.”

  “What is he talking about?” I whisper to Pike.

  He chuckles. “I’ll tell you later.”

  “I tell you what,” Preppy says. “Since you’re a bonafide author now, the story would make for a really good book.”

  “Sure, I’ll think about it,” I say. Our cat, Greyson, meows at my feet, rubbing her fur against my ankle. Mindy’s happy barking echoes throughout the pawn shop.

  Jo Jo comes running down the stairs, wearing a pink dress and blue polka dotted leggings. “Is it here? Why didn’t you guys fucking tell me!” she cries.

  “Language,” I warn.

  Jo Jo smiles sheepishly.

  With the help of Nine, who is a guardian of the court representing children in the system, our adoption of Jo Jo will be official in less than a week.

  “Sorry, Mom,” she sings. “But that’s so super fucking cool.”

  I give her another stern warning, but it’s hard to be actually mad at her when my heart feels like it’s about to burst out of my chest with joy every time I see her. Every time I get to tuck her into bed. Every time she falls asleep while I’m reading her a book.

  Pike winks at her. I give him a stern warning of his own. “What? Who decided which words are the fucking bad ones? Words are forms of expression, and I, for one, am not for the oppression or limitation of one’s personal expression. It’s not emotionally healthy.”