by CD Reiss
“I don’t know if you can tell me this.”
“I will if I can.”
“Where’s the heart coming from? Geographically?”
He thought for a second, then must have decided he wasn’t breaking any rules by revealing the location.
“Ojai.”
25
I didn’t know whether to grieve or rejoice. Committing to either was a betrayal.
Jonathan was going to live.
His father’s heart was going to save his life.
That’s why it was a match.
Margie.
All bad. I knew what happened without being told.
Indy had died in an accident on the 101 because someone in a Camaro was fucking with him.
Snapped neck.
Or his ill-fitting helmet flew off and his skull was crushed.
Margie.
But his heart was undamaged.
It was getting cut out of him and brought to Los Angeles.
To save his son.
“Margie.”
The word cut through the choice between grief and glory.
Will looked at me with concern. “Are you all right?”
Was I?
“Indy. Send someone for Indy’s body.” I held back tears. I had to finish. “He had a motorcycle accident in Ojai.”
“Margie,” he said, “I’m sorry.”
His sympathies could wait. I scanned the parking lot for the Drazen clan and found them a few yards away, watching me with the same concern as Will.
I pointed at my father. “I’m not done with you. I’m going to finish you off like a bottle of scotch I’ve left in the cabinet too long. And when you’re empty, I’m going to break you.”
“Margaret!” my mother scolded.
To hell with her. I was a grown woman. I walked right up to Declan Drazen’s smug, implacable face. I felt more than saw my family follow me. A hand lay on my back. Another took my hand. My sisters came to me, silently passing their power to me.
They were on my side. All of them. They’d all been hurt and they were all tough in their own way.
“Those are very strong words,” my father crooned as if relishing the challenge.
“Indy was the last straw. If he’s dead, kiss your life goodbye. If he’s alive, I’ll destroy you for everything else. For stealing my baby. For Strat. For every shitty thing you’ve done. I’m going to make your life into a misery. You’re going to wish I was never born.”
They were all shaken into silence. Even my father, who I thought couldn’t be shocked by anything.
His brows knotted and he spoke with the conviction of a man who knew only a few truths. “No, Margie.” He came toward me. “You’re the only worthwhile thing I’ve ever made. You are the pride of my life. No matter what you do, you are and always will be my chosen one.”
So surprised by his words, and so convinced of their truth, it was my turn to be stunned into silence. For a moment, I felt the normal satisfactions of a father’s approval. It was replaced by regret. Things would have gone much differently if I’d known.
My hand was squeezed tightly. It was Sheila. The unchosen. The dismissed. She was with me.
Dad took a slight bow of farewell, regarding each of my sisters then my mother, and walked away. A hand slid from my shoulder, and Mom rushed to his side. A grudge long held was a grudge completely shed.
Good.
He’d need her.
26
Pretending to heed Dr. Thorensen’s advice to rest while Jonathan was in surgery, I went home. As much as I needed my sisters, I also needed to be alone. My bulwark against emotional discomfort was action. Plans. Strategies. I didn’t have the middleman’s name. But I could get it even after the FBI came with an arrest warrant. The satisfaction of ruining Declan Drazen would taste just as sweet from prison.
But first, that bottle of fine Japanese scotch wasn’t going to finish itself.
“To Jonathan.” I raised my glass to an empty kitchen. “If anyone deserves Indy’s heart, it’s you.”
I drained the glass and refilled it. Joy over Jonathan’s life was drowned out by grief for the life lost. I didn’t know how to shift from one to the other or give my attention to the positive.
I raised the glass again. “To Indiana Andrew McCaffrey.” I choked on the name, but powered through. “You gave your son everything you had.”
I put it to my lips, and as I did, his song—the one he’d sold when we were separated—came to my mind.
When I lost you
I lost myself
I poured it in the sink for him.
“You don’t feel gone,” I said to the drain. “And feelings are for children. Sons and daughters. All their lives.”
The buzzer rang. It didn’t surprise me. I’d known it was going to go off a split second before it did.
“Jesus. I’m caught talking to the plumbing.”
I put down the empty glass and buzzed in Will’s Suburban. He was here to tell me what he’d found in Ojai. I went to the front yard to hear it.
The car wasn’t even at a complete stop when the passenger door opened and Indiana Andrew McCaffrey jumped out.
His arm was in a cast, but he was alive. Gloriously, viscerally, fully alive—and so was I.
My elation was so complete, I screamed.
In his arms, surrounded by his scent and the solidness of his body, I kissed him. He tried to talk, but I didn’t want to hear it. I wanted to feel it. Feel him. Taste him. Let his tongue search out mine because he was more than a heart. He was whole.
“I’m… uhh…” Will said.
I waved goodbye without opening my eyes or ending the kiss. I heard Will chuckle and drive away. He’d be home before I let Indy’s lips go. He’d be at Hannah’s college graduation. I’d die connected to this man.
Eventually, he pulled away with a smile. “I need to breathe.”
“Yes! Please do. And this.” I pressed my ear to his chest to hear the healthy, strong beat of his heart. “God, that’s the best sound in the world.”
“You thought Jonathan was getting my heart.”
“I didn’t know whether to cheer for him or wail for you.”
“You can wail for Franco Carloni the second.”
“It’s his heart?”
“A word of advice.” He touched my nose. “Wear a seat belt.”
“And a helmet.” I dug my fingers in his hair, grateful for the wholeness of his head. I couldn’t stop looking at his lips moving because of the signals from his mind. Nothing was more alive than that mouth.
“The paperwork from San Luis Obispo’s a little shredded, but I have it.”
“I don’t care.”
“When’s Jonathan out of surgery?”
“A few hours.”
“Will you take me back, Cinnamon?”
“I’ll never let you go again. Ever again.”
We kissed as if we’d spent a decade and a half waiting for it.
* * *
We kissed our way up the steps. Groped past the threshold of the house. I kicked the door closed. His good hand went up my shirt, unhooking the front latch of my bra, touching me with the confidence of a man who knew my body and the excitement of a boy feeling a woman for the first time.
He pulled my shirt over my head with one hand and dropped it. “A few hours.”
“A lifetime.”
He gave me his tongue with heat and urgency. Pushing me against the wall so hard the hall table rattled. I unbuttoned his shirt as if the fastening was offensive. He worked on his pants. When I reached between his legs, he took my wrist and pinned it to the wall. A picture fell and broke. He kissed my nipples, sucking them as if they gave life to more than the pulse of my own pleasure.
I opened my pants, and he kissed to the edge of the zipper, pulling them down as he kneeled before me. He slid the fabric down my legs, along with my underwear, and helped me step out of them.
“The moment I saw you in Palihood a few days ago,
” he said, putting my knee over the shoulder with the broken arm, “I’ve wanted this.”
His mouth explored inside my thigh, then the crook where my leg met my hip, then waited a beat for me to want it before kissing right between my legs. I cried out when his tongue touched my clit. He held me against the wall and sucked me, studied me, remembered me.
Time folded into itself. The years became a moment. My skin was electric with the current between us, as if I were a charged battery that had sat unused all this time. He was here and I’d never chosen otherwise.
Breathless, I pushed into him. “Indy. Drew.” I moaned both of his names. “I’m close.”
He groaned and flicked my clit with his tongue just the way I liked.
I came so hard I thought I was going to unfold.
Gasping, I took my leg off his shoulder and put it on the floor. He stood and kissed me. I tasted the tang of sex on him. Felt the warmth from the friction of my body.
I pulled off his shirt.
He was as magnificent as ever. The tattoos were beautifully faded with time and experience. I ran my hand over them and to his waistband. I tugged it down, freeing his erection from his briefs.
When he saw me looking at it, he took my hand and laid it on him. “It’s been hard for you for years.”
“Let’s make up for lost time.”
I started to lead him upstairs, but our hands and lips wouldn’t let us make it to the bedroom. We fell onto the stair landing, naked except for a cast on his arm that wasn’t much of an impediment, rolling against the walls in the small space. I was on my back when he lifted my legs and pushed my knees apart, exposing my entire body to his eyes and lips.
“Ms. Drazen,” he whispered, worshiping me with his hands. “You’re beautiful.”
He drew his tongue from nipple to hard nipple, sucking each enough to make the invisible line between my breasts and my clitoris hum. I didn’t feel the hard floor under me. I was floating over it.
“Don’t make me wait anymore.” I wrapped a hand around his shaft and put it to my entrance, but he wouldn’t thrust forward.
“You have somewhere to go?” he asked, hovering there.
“No. Nowhere.”
“I want to savor this moment.” He put a little pressure forward, kissing my face and neck.
My body tried to pull him in. I felt the heat of it against me as I looked at him, hands on his scratched shoulders. “You’re killing me.”
“You’re not dead yet.”
“I’m practically a doornail.”
He had a look on his face that I’d seen on men before. It was a proud vulnerability. It was a dare. It was an ambitious intimacy that usually made me run away as if my clit was on fire.
I’d had sex with a lot of men, and I’d inadvertently made a few of them get that look.
This wasn’t inadvertent, nor was it frightening. It was an emotion and it was right.
“I love you,” I said, touching his face. “I’ve always loved you.”
“Good.” He slid into me as if I’d been built for him, all the way to the root in a single stroke. “Fuck.” He whispered the profanity like a prayer, closing his eyes.
“Good idea.”
He smiled, opening his eyes to lay his lips on my cheek. He thrust inside me, slow and steady, before picking up the pace, listening to my body as I listened to his. My breaths turned into gasps.
My fingernails dug into him. I went rigid with pleasure, clenching his cock inside me, coming harder with each stroke. I couldn’t take it. I was going to break under it, but he kept driving into me. I called his name. Both of them, because he was the sensible and warm Drew and the wild and talented Indy. Both. All. Neither. One man I’d let go and one who had come back to me. I came for him, making an offering of my body.
Opening my eyes, I saw him watching me with his jaw clenched. A second later, he released with a grunt, emptying himself inside me.
“Yes,” I said, studying his pleasure. “All of it.”
He jerked with a last spasm while I kissed the scratches on his shoulder. We panted and sweated together until my back ached and I had to shift. He got up on his knees between my legs.
“I say this without sarcasm,” I said. His cock was at half mast, wet with sex, the most desirable thing in the world. “You’re as good as ever.”
“I’m not finished yet.”
“I need a minute.”
He picked up my hand, looked at my wristwatch, and tapped it. “I want you again and we have things to do before we get back to the hospital.” He let go of my wrist and stood over me with his hand out. Magnificent. I’d forgotten how glorious he was. “Unless you want to do a perp walk, you don’t have a minute.”
I could have used a glass of water and a nap, but sometimes no choice was the best choice. I took his hand, and he helped me up. We went to the bedroom and fucked as if we hadn’t seen each other in sixteen years.
27
Jonathan’s skin had lost its gray cast. After three days in a medically-induced coma and a week in recovery, he was flush and full. Not ready to get back on the pitcher’s mound, but I could see his path forward.
So could Monica. She was unable to contain herself. She chattered about nothing and laughed at his every joke.
“They won’t say when I can go,” Jonathan said, holding her hand over the bedrail.
“Soon,” she said. “I can’t wait.”
The way he looked at her spoke volumes about what he couldn’t wait for.
“We have tickets to opening day at Dodger Stadium,” I said. “Monica, do you like baseball?”
“Does she?” He laughed. “Don’t get her started on Harrington’s on-base percentage.”
“Please,” I said, “don’t get started. Also, Indy insisted on the bleachers. I hope you don’t mind.”
“They’re twelve dollars now,” she said, still looking at Jonathan as if he were a hero home from a long war.
“You two really make me ill.” I smiled when I said it. “But can you excuse us? I need a word with my brother.”
“I have to go anyway.” She leapt up. “I’ll see you after my shift.”
After a kiss that went on too long, she left.
“You’re letting her work?”
“Did anyone ever stop you from working?”
“I guess not.” I sat in Monica’s seat. “You’re antsy.”
“I’m done with this bed. I’m done with people coming in and out like I’m a shrine at the end of a pilgrimage.”
“We’re all pretty done. I’m not trying to make you feel guilty, but it’s been a nightmare.”
“Don’t worry. I don’t feel guilty.” He circled his finger in the general area of my face. “You’re looking pretty good for a woman coming out of a nightmare. Is it because of Drew… sorry, Indy now?”
“He answers to both. I like Indy. It’s sexier.”
“That’ll be enough of that.”
“When did you become such a prude?”
“It’s like hearing about my mother’s sex life.”
It was exactly like hearing about his mother’s sex life, but I wasn’t going to tell him that. Ever, if it could be avoided.
“Sheila told me something you said in the parking lot during that drill.”
“It wasn’t a drill.”
“Wasn’t a fire either. But you accused Dad of stealing your baby?”
Of course that came back to bite me in the ass. I had no quick answer, because I didn’t know which lie I needed to tell. Some secrets were better left kept.
“I did say that,” I said.
“What did it mean?”
“It meant I was pretty fucking pissed off.”
“You’re avoiding.” His arm started going up.
He was going to call pledge, and that wasn’t going to work. I put my hand over his and pressed it down.
“Do you remember when we signed you into Westonwood?” I asked. “You and I were alone for a minute while Mom and D
ad signed papers?”
“Barely. I think you were wearing a lavender pantsuit.”
“I have no idea what I was wearing.” I leaned toward him. “But I know what I said. I know what I promised you.”
His eyes narrowed as if squinting would bring the memory into focus.
“I promised you I’d stay by you. I promised you I’d make our father pay for the things he did.”
The squint relaxed. The upward pressure of his arm stopped. “I remember.”
“He removed someone very important to me from the world. You’ll be hearing all about it. You’re stuck in bed, so you won’t be there when they arrest him. I’m sorry for that, but not sorry enough to delay what’s coming.”
“You got him? I thought you’d never turn.” His chin thrust forward as if he wanted the answer half a millisecond earlier.
“I did. Finally. We’re going to be free, Jonathan. Free.”
* * *
I could have stayed away. I could have watched it all on television or read about it in the news, but I had to be sure he didn’t know and I had to make him available to arrest. The only way to do that was to use his trust to have him in a public place at an exact time.
Jungco’s was Indy’s idea. Declan looked relaxed and happy. Mom’s influence, I was sure. Love did the best things for the worst of us. I told her Indy was asking Dad for my hand in marriage so she’d stay home.
“She’s my everything,” Indy said. “And I know how important her family is to her. So I’d like your blessing.”
“You hardly have to ask me,” Dad said to Indy as the salads came. “She’s a grown woman. Her hand in marriage is hers to give.”
Declan had been surprised to see Indy, but over the past week, he had offered him a grudging respect for his ability to survive a run-in with Franco Junior’s Camaro.
“Thank you,” Indy said, holding up his water glass. “I promise I’ll make her happy.”
Dad and I toasted Indy’s water with our wine. The doorway was behind Dad. I had to force myself not to check it every time it opened.
“Now,” my father said to Indy, “if you could promise to make her see sense.”