Combative Trilogy

by McLean, Jay

  I stand up, shove one hand in my pocket, place the other on her shoulder. I look her right in the eyes when I tell her, “Just one, Madison. And I did it for you.”

  Just one.

  For now.

  But soon, there’ll be more.

  I walk away, fighting against my craving to be near her. Because my mind knows it as much as my heart does… that I’d rather die a thousand deaths beside her than live a single day without.

  Chapter 40

  Ky: I’m at Zero.

  DeLuca: Got caught up, I’ll be there in ten.

  It’s a lie. I’m already at the club, watching from the second-story balcony as Parker and Bailey enter the building. I’d asked him to meet me last night, to bring Bailey with him, because… because I like to torture myself.

  Obviously.

  He’d told me that he couldn’t, that “Madison” was sick, not physically, but she’d had a tough day, and he wanted to be around to comfort her, to take care of her, all things I couldn’t do, couldn’t be.

  But maybe I like torture because it’s the one thing that brings me closer to the end. I like the pain in my chest, the piercing ache in my heart caused by having to witness the girl I love falling in love with someone else. It’s strange, how you can feel nothing and everything all at once. Be alive, but dead inside.

  They can’t keep their hands off each other. Their mouths, either. I ignore the turning of my stomach and make my way through the crowd, stopping behind them. “Parker.”

  He’s too busy kissing her, and I can’t fucking take this.

  “Parker!”

  No response.

  So I slap his back, hard, and they finally, finally separate. Without looking at me, he shoves me back just as hard, and then Bailey squeals, her hands going to her ears. “What the hell’s your problem?” Parker shouts, bringing Bailey into him. He, too, covers her ears.

  “I was trying to get your attention,” I yell back. “Looks like you were both preoccupied.” I jerk my head toward Bailey. “What’s her problem?”

  “Can we make this quick?” he shouts. “It’s too loud in here for her. It’s hurting her ears.”

  My heart sinks to my stomach.

  Loud noises.

  I’d read it in her report. It’s a trigger, both physically and emotionally.

  Why the fuck didn’t I remember this?

  I shouldn’t have told him to bring her.

  “Anytime you want to quit staring at my girlfriend would be perfect,” he snaps.

  I blink hard. “Sure.” Then I grab my phone, send Tiny a text asking if he’s done in the back office where we’d made the most of the situation and organized a hand-off. His reply is instant, and I lead them there, my mind reeling.

  For so many years, she was all I thought about. All I dreamt about. But I couldn’t take care of her then, and I can’t even take care of her now, so what the fuck is the point of us being here? I can do all this without her. Technically, according to the feds, I don’t even have to do anything but exist.

  It was my choice to have access to her. To go knocking on her fucking window. To sneak us out at night as if we were teenagers, and what the hell was I even doing? Pretending that it was a date? That I hadn’t forced her into it? Just like I hadn’t forced her into my home, my fucking basement. Maybe I even forced her to fall for me.

  After waiting for them to step inside the office, I close the door and watch them sit on the couch together. “Better?” I ask her, and she nods, but she won’t look at me.

  “Do you need a drink or anything?”

  Her smile, too, is forced. “I’m fine. Thank you.”

  “You sure?”

  “Why did you want to meet?” Parker cuts in, his patience thin.

  Bailey licks her lips, and I wonder if she can taste the remnants of whiskey from earlier. And I wonder if she remembers that I was the one to introduce it to her while she sat up on my kitchen counter that’s now nothing but ash, her bare legs on full display. She’d had too much, and I’d laughed while she coughed, and we were so young, and she was so naive, and I thought I could protect her from everything wrong in the world, and I miss her. I’ve never missed her more than I do now, and she’s sitting right in front of me. I blow out a breath, bask in the breaking of my heart, and look up at Parker. “It’s not important, man. I’ll text you. Just get her out of here.” I grab my phone, call for a car. “A cab’s waiting out back. It saves you from going through the club again.”

  As heavy as my heart is, and as much as I don’t want to speak to Parker again, Tiny reminds me that we’d asked to meet him for a reason, and while it doesn’t matter to me, it matters to the overall investigation. I wait an hour before sending him a text to call me when he’s free. It only takes a minute for him to call. I give him the details of the guy he’s fighting—business as usual—and then he says, “I wanted to talk to you about something else.”

  “Yeah?”

  He sighs into the phone. “I’m not happy with the way you are around Maddy.”

  “Maddy?”

  “Yeah. Madison. My girlfriend. You can’t seem to take your eyes off her, and to be honest, it pisses me off and makes her uncomfortable.”

  I make her uncomfortable.

  Jesus Christ, it’s right there, plain as fucking day, and it took him to say the words out loud for me to realize what I’d been doing. I’ve been on the verge of stalking her, watching her from afar as she goes from her apartment to some flower shop again and again, and this entire time… What the hell has happened to me? “You’re right,” I finally admit. “I apologize.”

  “Okay, good talk,” he deadpans.

  “It’s just that she reminds me of someone I used to know. The resemblance is fucking uncanny.”

  “You think you used to know her?”

  I told her that I loved her and that I never stopped loving her, and she said—

  She said she wanted to hate me, that I was deep in her head and that she couldn’t shake it, shake me.

  And I thought that meant that she loved me back.

  But I was so, so wrong.

  “No.” I choke on the truth. “Not Madison. I don’t know her at all.”

  Chapter 41

  Tiny’s feet thump against the pavement as he rushes past the pedestrians, most of them drunk after a night out at a bar or club.

  I jog slowly but remain only two steps behind him.

  “Stop, you motherfucker!” he shouts, clearly out of breath. Around us, people watch, some with their phones out to record him. “I said stop!” He pulls out his gun, holds it in the air.

  “Put that shit away,” I yell through a chuckle, overtaking him. I get to his target and slam my hand against the metal. The truck stops, and the passenger’s side door opens. A college-aged guy steps out. “Are you insane?”

  “Sorry,” I tell him. “My friend…” I point my thumb behind me.

  “Dude, we’re done for the night. What the fuck?”

  I hear Tiny’s short breaths seconds before his hand lands on my shoulder, his entire weight pulling me down. “Eighteen.” Inhale. “Tacos.” Exhale. “Please.”

  The guy looks between us, his eyes wide in disbelief.

  “Make it twenty?” I ask, grimacing.

  “You’re fucking serious right now?”

  “Trust me.” I pull out my money clip. “You don’t want to see my best friend hungry.”

  “What he said,” Tiny pants, waving his gun between us. I don’t even think he knows he’s doing it.

  The guy’s eyes bug out of his head, and so I grab the gun, unload it. “He doesn’t mean it,” I tell him, rubbing Tiny’s bald head. “Look at him. He’s a giant, soft, cuddly panda bear. He just needs his…” My brow knits. “What the fuck do pandas eat?”

  “Coconuts?” Tiny asks.

  “Bamboo,” answers the guy. “How wasted are you two right now?”

  Tiny giggles.

  I hold up my clip. “Drunk enough to pay
whatever’s in here for twenty tacos.”

  College guy stares at us a moment, then shouts over his shoulder as he takes the cash, “Robbie! We’re cooking!”

  After my last call with Parker, I needed to get out of my head, and luckily for us, we were already at a bar. It’s been a hell of a long time since Tiny and I have had enough to drink to let loose, to not worry about our surroundings or be paranoid about who’s watching us.

  Right now, we’re just two guys trying to replace the alcohol in our systems with—

  “Mmm. Tacos. Sweet, sweet tacos,” Tiny sings, shoving half of one in his mouth.

  We’re sitting on the curb, exactly behind where the truck was parked, and it’s probably not the safest place to be, but neither of us seems to care right now. “Would you rather…” I swallow my bite. “Eat twenty tacos off one naked girl or have twenty naked girls serve you one taco?”

  Tiny ponders this a moment, then chuckles. “Do I get to put my dick in their tacos when I’m done?”

  I say through a chuckle, “Could your dick survive twenty tacos?”

  “Boss, you could line up twenty tacos in a row, and my dick’s so big I could fuck them all simultaneously.”

  “Wait!” I bust out a laugh. “I thought we were talking about pussy. You’re talking about fucking actual tacos.”

  “No.” He eyes the sky. “Oh, wait, I am.”

  My shoulders shake with my laughter.

  “But I do love me some tacos,” he mutters. “Sweet, sweet tacos.”

  I scrunch my trash into a ball and place it beside me before kicking out my legs and getting comfortable. If Tiny keeps acting like he’s making love to the food, we’re going to be here a while. We sit in comfortable silence for a few minutes while he eats and I, unwillingly, let my mind go back to Bailey like it always does. “You ever fall in love, man?”

  Tiny shrugs. “You’ve known me for over ten years. You ever see me with heart eyes?”

  “Doesn’t mean you haven’t. Just means you haven’t let it show.”

  “Nah,” he says, unscrewing the lid on his drink. “Love is more your thing. Besides, look at me. Who’s going to fall in love with me?”

  I face him, my chest aching. “If I had a taco, I’d love you.”

  He laughs at that. Then falls quiet again. “You thinking about Bai?”

  “I don’t know what I’m thinking, man. I’m just… thinking.”

  He clears his throat, focuses on the streetlights opposite. “Can I be honest with you?”

  “Always.”

  “You’re my best friend. My brother. And I hate knowing what you’ve gone through, hate seeing what I’ve seen.”

  My heart sinks. “Sorry.”

  “No, I don’t want you to be sorry. I want you to be better. This whole thing with Bailey, I get it. It’s fuckin’ heartbreaking for you. But there’s someone in your life who’s been dealing with the same thing for years.” He pauses a beat. “I like her, Nate.”

  My eyes snap to his. “Ash?”

  He nods.

  I raise an eyebrow.

  “Not like that.” He shakes his head. “But she’s a good girl, and she doesn’t deserve—”

  “She knows what we’re doing,” I cut in.

  “Doesn’t make the hurt any less.”

  I heave out a breath, take in every single one of his words, and tuck them away to worry about another time. “What do you want, Tiny?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean you—Mark Wade, Sanitation Extraordinaire.”

  He chuckles.

  “We’re not going to be doing this forever, man. So, when you look at your life twenty years from now, what do you want?”

  His smile is slow. “You know what I really want to do?”

  “What?”

  “I want to get one of those world globes. You know the ones I’m talking about?”

  I let the memories of my mother flood my entire body with warmth. “Yeah, I know the ones.”

  “I want to get one of those and spin that motherfucker. Wherever my finger lands, bro, that’s where I want to set up. A nice, modest house somewhere. A house I can turn into a home.”

  I smile along with him. “And then?”

  “And then what?” he asks, taking a sip of his drink.

  “Wife? Kids?”

  He nods, his eyes downcast. “Two.”

  “Two wives?”

  He chuckles. “Kids, you fucking dickwad.”

  “Boys or girls?”

  Shaking his head, he picks up another taco. “Either, as long as they’re healthy. And I’d like to travel. I mean, you pay enough, I could go—”

  “You can go.”

  “Not right now.”

  “Why not?”

  He smacks the back of my head, playfully. “Because who the fuck is going to take care of you?”

  “So let’s both go. You and me.”

  “Yeah?” he mocks. “Who’s going to run this town without us?”

  I shrug, then smirk. “Jay Z and Rihanna.”

  “You’re a smartass,” he laughs out.

  “Nah, I’ll just lay low while you’re gone. I can live for a few weeks without you.” And he should live an entire lifetime without me dragging him down, taking away his dreams. “You should go, man. You got a passport?”

  “No, never needed one before.” Similar to Bailey, Tiny grew up with parents who gave zero shits about him. Not unless they needed a target during their drunken rages. It took him a good while to tell me his story, and it was the only time I’d seen him break down. He left that life when he was fourteen, but unlike the girls on posters hanging in the evidence room, there’s never been a missing person’s report for him, because his family never missed him.

  Occasionally, he’ll tell me that I saved his life, but he has no fucking idea how much he saved mine. Blood isn’t always thicker than water, and Tiny and I—we share the same stream. He’s put up with so much of my shit, and in return, I’ve given him nothing. Nothing but these plans and hopes for a future he’s never even mentioned until now. “You should do it; get a passport.”

  “Maybe,” he says, shrugging.

  “No maybes, Tiny. Get the passport. Get the globe.” I make sure he’s looking at me when I say, “Get the modest house and the wife and two kids.”

  He stares at me, his eyes boring into mine, and he knows what this is—what I’m putting on the table. I’m giving him an out, and going by the silence passing between us, he’s contemplating it. I would be, too. This shit can’t last forever. “Maybe we could be neighbors.”

  I crack a smile. “Maybe.”

  Ashton’s entire body barely takes up space on her king-size bed, and I can’t help but frown at the sight of it. Lit only by the streetlights filtering through the curtains, she’s curled into a ball on one side of the bed as if she were waiting for her husband to get home and fill the other side.

  It’s a shame, really, that her husband is me.

  Quietly, I approach her, not wanting to startle her, and sit on the edge of the bed. And then I just watch her, this… this beautiful girl who has a heart bigger than most and a past that should’ve stripped her of that.

  Recalling Tiny’s words, I reach up, finger a strand of her hair away from her forehead, smiling when her eyelids flutter open. “Hey,” she croaks, her voice scratchy from sleep. “What are you doing here?”

  “I just wanted to talk to you.” And I want to tell you I’m sorry, but I’ve said it so many times it no longer holds meaning.

  She rolls onto her back. “What time is it?”

  “It’s late.”

  Her brow furrows before she sits up, switches on the bedside lamp. “Is everything okay?” she asks, pulling the covers up to her chin.

  “Yeah.” I watch her watching me, concern deep in her eyes. “Everything’s fine.” She has these freckles on her nose, pale, tiny ones that I’ve only ever seen up close a few times.

  “Why are you looking
at me like that?” she whispers, dropping her chin to her chest.

  I give her the truth. “Because you’re beautiful.”

  Shaking her head, her eyes downcast, she whispers, “Don’t do that, Nate. It’s not fair to me.”

  She’s right. It’s not. I’m sorry. Because nothing I’ve been doing lately is fair to anyone. But that’s why I’m here. To make it right. Set is straight. “Listen, I need to go away for a few days. And I need you to tell Tiny when he comes by tomorrow morning.”

  Her gaze lifts. “He’s not going with you?”

  “No.”

  “And he doesn’t know you’re going?”

  “No.”

  “Where the hell are you going?”

  “It’s not important.”

  “Nate,” she breathes out. “What’s going on?”

  “I just…” I swallow hard. “I just need to take care of a few things. But I’ll fill you in on everything when I get back, okay?”

  It takes her a moment, and then she nods, inhales a huge breath. “Okay.” Then she leans forward, takes my large hand in her small one. “You’ll be safe?”

  “Always.”

  “When are you leaving?”

  “My car gets here in fifteen minutes.”

  She lowers her gaze as her shoulders drop. “Do you think you can ask Tiny to stay here while you’re gone?”

  I lift her chin with my finger, my eyes searching hers. “I can, but why?”

  She chews her lip. “I know we sleep in separate beds and you get home at all hours of the night, but I just… I feel safer when I know that you’re here.”

  I push down my heartache at her words and press my forehead to hers. “I didn’t know you felt that way.”

  “Well, I do.”

  “You want me to lie with you until the car gets here?”

  She pulls back and scoots to the middle of the bed, giving me room to slide in beside her. Then she finds comfort under the crook of my arm, her head on my shoulder, her hand on my stomach. “What did you do tonight?”

  I can’t help but laugh. “Stopped Tiny from holding up a taco truck at gunpoint.”