by A. J. Downey
I huffed a laugh and immediately winced.
He checked me over, and sat up a little straighter and asked, “You do this?”
Raven stood up straighter from where she slouched tiredly against the doorway now that all eyes were off her and on me. She said, “Yeah.”
“I’m impressed,” Jack declared, and he sounded it. “There’s nothing for me to really do here that hasn’t already been done. Her assessment and diagnosis are spot on. You shouldn’t move for a few days. Rest, plenty of fluids, some pain relievers and let things set and your body heal.”
“What kind of pain relief?” I asked. “Because shit, I could really use some.”
“I’ll give Mav a list to get outta your chapter stores. Some oxys for the first few days for sure. Canadian Tylenol after that.”
“The good shit,” Fenris grunted.
“The good shit,” Eulogy agreed.
“Thanks for coming up all this way,” I said quietly.
“Any time, but let’s try and make this the last time if you know what I mean.” He raked his hand back through his brown hair which was getting a little long and was going prematurely silver.
“Yeah, I’m with you there,” I grunted.
“Talk to you?” he asked Mav, hefting his med pack and Mav nodded. They went for the doorway and Raven turned sideways so they could get out. They stood by the front door to her apartment and spoke in low tones. Mav looked her way and over her considering. I could see the wheels turning and was grateful the swelling had gone down enough I could see again.
“How you hanging in there?” Glassjaw asked from the only chair in the corner.
“Could use something for the pain,” I admitted. It’d been grinding on me long enough now that I was tired.
“I’ll get you some water,” Raven murmured, and I heard her shuffle off. She’d made this tea earlier and had Glassjaw help me drink some. While tea wasn’t my thing, it’d somehow helped take the edge off. I wondered if it was some sort of hippy-chick homeopathic shit, but I didn’t want to be rude and ask.
“Here, man.” Fenris came near and put a couple of round pills in my hand.
“You came prepared. Gotta like that.” I let him help me sit up and put the pills in my mouth, wincing. Raven came back and pressed a cold glass into my hand, and I chased the tablets down with several cool drinks.
“You shouldn’t move if you can avoid it for at least a few days. You can stay here; I don’t mind. I just have to go to work. I can sleep on the couch or whatever.”
“You sure about that?” Fenris asked her, and she nodded. He gave a nod and looked at me. “It’s honestly probably the best thing, bro.”
“I don’t want to upend your life, sweetheart,” I told her, and she smiled.
“Might be nice to have some company,” she said glibly. “It gets kind of lonely up here all by myself.”
I smiled and fought not to chuckle, coughing a couple of times and wincing which was almost worse.
“Don’t make me laugh,” I begged, and her expression smoothed.
“Get some rest,” she murmured and pulled the thin blankets up a little higher on me.
“I’m going to talk to Mav and Jack.” Fenris got to his feet.
I closed my eyes and waited for the damn pills to take effect. Let the grownups sort it out.
I slept. I didn’t know how long, but when I woke back up, Raven was gone and Fenris was sitting with his back against the wall beside the bed, his legs stretched out in front of him, booted feet crossed at the ankle while he fucked around on his phone.
“Shit, bro, how long you been sitting there?” I asked, groggily.
“Ah, it’s been a fuckin’ minute,” he said, stretching.
“What time is it?” I asked. It was dark outside the glimpse of kitchen window that I could see through the bedroom door and in through the kitchen door. The only window in the fuckin’ place that I could tell.
“Getting on toward three.”
“In the morning?”
He chuckled. “Yeah.”
“What the fuck you doing here then? Shouldn’t you be home with your lady?”
He put his phone in his jacket pocket and nodded, the long braid of his blond mohawk dragging across the leather of his cut.
“Yeah, I should, but Aspen’s cool. She knows what’s up and Jack said we shouldn’t leave you alone for the first twenty-four or so.”
“Got it,” I muttered and sighed out, closing my eyes.
“Need anything?” he asked.
“Yeah, help up. I gotta take a leak. Some water maybe.”
“I got you,” Fen agreed, and he helped leverage me up off the mattress on the floor and into a standing position. My head swam, dizzy from the painkillers or a concussion, I didn’t fuckin’ know. It throbbed as I staggered into the bathroom and I had to brace myself against the wall over the john like I was drunk as fuck still to get my aim right.
Taking that leak was grim. Pretty sure there was blood, but with the blows to the kidneys I’d taken from those fuckers kicking the shit out of my back, I wasn’t really surprised. It’d happened before and I wasn’t dead yet, so I wasn’t going to fucking worry about it too much.
I went back and laid down again after washing my hands with the bar of herbal smelling raw soap on the edge of the old-school cracked-pedestal sink. I heard Fenris in the kitchen, the tap running. He came in and scoffed.
“This place is a fuckin’ dump,” he said, and I nodded.
“Yeah, I noticed.” What did he expect from an apartment in Rat City?
He sat back down and handed me the glass of water. “Have to run the tap for a while just to get clear water.”
“Pipes are old as fuck,” I muttered and drank the cold water down greedily.
“Why she would wanna live here is beyond me,” he said, looking around at the cracked and water-stained ceiling, the equally cracked and yellowed plaster walls – and I do mean plaster. The building was old, like 1940s old and the walls still original. It was all hard original plaster not more modern drywall.
Before my stint in prison, I had worked for one of those contractor places that would come clean up after fire and water damage. It was shitty work, but it paid pretty decent. I wanted to go back, but the boss I had been under was a dick. The evangelical type. Missed the whole point of what it was to be a good Christian.
An actual follower of Christ would have taken me back in a heartbeat. I’d been one of his best employees. This guy, though? Said not only no but hell no. How would it look having a felon on parole working for his company? Like anyone would fuckin’ know by looking at me. Well, maybe they might, but you look at half the fuckin’ guys working for him, you would think the same thing. I guess it was the “parole” part he didn’t want to deal with.
Fuckin’ jagoff.
“Same thing about you, bro,” Fenris said when I didn’t say anything.
“What?” I asked. “What about me?”
“None of us can figure out why the fuck you were at Shoreman’s of all places. I mean, what a fuckin’ dive, man… what’s the matter? Free booze at the club not good enough?” His voice held humor, but under it was worry.
“I just needed a break,” I mumbled.
“From us?” Fenris asked, and he sounded a little offended.
“No,” I muttered. “It’s stupid.”
“Mace, man, you gotta give me something to work with here, buddy. You almost got beat to fuckin’ death. We’re fuckin’ worried about you.”
I heaved a sigh. “I’m jealous, alright?” I groused.
“Jealous?” he echoed in disbelief.
“Yeah. I get locked up and all y’all out here hooking up in these beautiful meaningful relationships and fuck me, I want that…”
“Dude, I think everybody wants that,” Fen declared, and he sounded a bit shocked. I opened one eye and looked up at him.
“Didn’t take me for the type, or what?”
“It’s not that, I
just… I guess I didn’t think it fuckin’ bothered you that much being single. I mean, you got plenty of pussy throwing itself at you—”
“Not the same thing,” I countered.
“Yeah, I get that,” he said. “You didn’t let me finish.”
He didn’t get to, either. Raven came in her front door. I caught sight of her through the bedroom doorway, a straight shot to her front door as she shut it behind her and leaned heavily against it as she threw the long line of bolts.
“You look like hell,” Fen commented dryly.
“Tired,” she muttered, dragging the strap of her canvas messenger bag over her head, and dropping it with a loud clunk against the worn hardwood floor at her feet.
“The hell was that?” Fen laughed.
“Probably my pistol,” she said with a shrug.
“You got a gun in that thing?”
She stooped and dragged it out and Fen started laughing.
“Is that a fucking starter pistol?” he asked and sure as shit, it was. A long-barreled starter pistol, the kind Connery had in that popular old Bond promo shot.
“Shut up,” she grumbled, putting it back into her bag. “It got those fuckers off of him, didn’t it?”
“Oh, shit. Is that how you did it?” Fen asked and she nodded, tiredly and went over to the couch, falling onto it face-first.
I laughed, it hurt like hell. Fen stopped mid-chuckle to turn a wary eye on me.
“Raven,” I called out, but there was no answer. I felt myself soften up. Was she already out? “Raven,” I tried again.
Fen got up and went over and looked down.
“She is out like a goddamn traffic light,” he said, and I nodded.
“Some fuckin’ bullshit,” I muttered.
“What?” he asked, looking down at her curiously.
“Her sleeping on her own damn couch.”
He lifted a shoulder in a half-assed shrug and said, “She signed up for it.” He was doing that thing he sometimes did without realizing it – staring down at her a little intently, like he was memorizing every line and feature but at the same time wondering what she would look like with her skin off. It was an incredibly creepy and intimate look, and it didn’t sit well with me.
Usually, it was kind of fascinating watching him watch somebody like that. It was something that was uniquely fuckin’ Fenris – or so I’d thought until I met that one dude from the mother chapter out in Kentucky. That guy was a stone-cold fuckin’ freak.
It wasn’t a sexual thing, that look. It wasn’t gendered, or anything you could label. What it was, was nuanced, predatory, a raw curiosity that usually involved blood or ichor if the dude casting that look was given a chance to indulge whatever curiosity he had.
“Fen,” I said, and he shook himself a little, as though waking up from some terrible dream. “I can’t say I much like the way you’re looking at her right now, buddy.”
“Not her,” he said honestly. “Sorry, bro… I just have my suspicions.”
“Yeah?” I asked.
“Yeah.”
His blue eyes met my brown ones, and a silent something passed between us. I nodded and he nodded too.
There was something to it. The way she didn’t want or like to draw attention. I mean, nobody willingly lived in a dump like this that wasn’t hiding from or running from something.
“Help me up, bro.”
“Why?”
“So, I can get her in her own bed tonight to sleep. I’ll take the couch.”
He chuckled and shook his head.
“This bed’s big enough for the both of you,” he said, kneeling down, and swiping the weird wig thing she had going on off her head. He laid it over the back of the couch and spoke softly. Raven groaned and turned over in her sleep and he said, “Atta girl.”
He got his arms under her and leveraged her willowy thin frame up and brought her over. I struggled to sit up and twitched back the blankets on the one side and he set her down. I flicked them over her legs as she turned onto her side toward me and tucked her hands under her cheek.
“Thanks,” I said, and he nodded.
“Another round of painkillers?” he asked.
“Yeah.”
He got me the pills and some more water. I took the tablets, wincing at the taste they left in my mouth. Fuckers dissolved too quickly.
“Go on, get out of here, bro,” I said quietly. “You’ve got Aspen waiting.”
“Doc said to not leave you alone,” he tried to argue, and I raised my eyebrows.
“I’m not alone,” I declared and jerked my head in Raven’s direction.
“Right.” He nodded.
“You don’t need to watch us both sleep,” I said, and he nodded.
“Okay. I’ll send the prospect by tomorrow afternoon with your new phone. Cipher is getting all that shit handled.”
“Thanks, man.”
“No problem.”
He let himself out and I didn’t bother getting up to lock the door. It was a bad hood, sure, but that was another thing Fen left behind in case I should need it. I glanced at the black nine-millimeter on the floor beside the bed within easy reach and turned my back on it to focus on the girl in the bed beside me.
She was so tired, she even looked exhausted in sleep. I didn’t think that had everything to do with me, though… there was another type of world weariness under it all. I closed my eyes and breathed in slow, her rich, earthy, herbal scent filling my nose.
She smelled good. Natural. Like a woman. God, I’d missed that smell…
4
Raven…
I sucked in a sharp, shuddering breath and stretched, smiling to myself when I met resistance at my back. What could I say? I was an unabashed cuddle slut and while I had no idea how I’d managed to get into my bed, as I distinctly remembered crashing on my couch face-first after my shift, I couldn’t argue that it was really nice to wake up to being held.
A guilty pleasure I shook off entirely too quick as I looked back into Mace’s battered face, propped on his hand, and murmured, “Sorry, I don’t remember crawling into bed.”
“You didn’t. I had Fenris put you here.”
I blinked, taken aback, and felt my mouth drop open into a little ‘o’ of surprise.
“Oh,” I finally managed, not sure how I felt about that.
“Nothing by it,” he said carefully, searching my face, his own expression carefully closed off and… and vulnerable in its own way. “Couldn’t stand the thought of you sleeping on your own couch. It didn’t sit well with me.”
I gave him a slightly crooked smile and said, “And they say chivalry is dead.”
“Not with me, it’s not.”
He took his hand from my waist and I bit my lips together silently for a moment and finally ventured with, “It’s okay. I… I kind of liked it there.” Which was another thing I didn’t know how to quite feel about.
He smiled slowly and even with all the bruising and the swelling; he was handsome.
“Yeah?” he asked, putting it back.
I smiled carefully. “Yeah.”
“Well alright then.”
“You need anything?” I asked, forgetting my manners. I mean, shit. He was hurt and here I was making it all about me!
“No,” he said. “You should sleep some more.”
I smiled then and said honestly, “I was about to ask if that would be alright with you.”
“Guess you have your answer,” he murmured with a cheeky grin, and holy hell, my heart almost stopped at that smile. I mean, it damn sure tripped over itself and then started just pounding.
“Okay,” I said and laid back down. I sighed out and he cuddled me. It felt so nice.
“You good with this?” he asked a moment later as I sighed out again.
“Yeah, you?” I asked.
“Yeah, but what was that for?” he asked.
“What?”
“That big sigh.”
“Oh, it was nothing,” I lied, but
I’d always been a bad liar.
He jostled me a tiny bit. “Raven,” he said, tone gently chiding.
“It’s nice is all… I’ve um, I’ve missed this. Just, being held by someone.” Which was true. Which had led me down the road to ruin in the first place. A wave of sorrow crested somewhere in the center of my chest and crashed over me.
I could hear his careful smile in his voice when he spoke next.
“Yeah, me too. I mean, I’ve missed having someone to hold onto.”
“How long have you been single?” I asked, curious, though knowing it was probably none of my business.
He snorted. “Too long.”
I thought about it and answered, “Yeah, me too.”
I closed my eyes and after a few moments of silence figured the conversation was concluded and so I slept some more.
The next time I woke, it was to the sound of soft masculine voices and I was alone in my room. I pushed up into a sitting position sharply worried about Mace, and the voices ceased. I looked into my little living room. Mace was seated on my couch, Glassjaw standing over him, both looking in my direction.
“Did we wake you?” Glassjaw asked, and I ignored the question in favor of one of my own.
“What time is it?”
“A little after noon,” Mace answered.
“Shit, I overslept,” I muttered, and I had. I’d missed the food pantry up at Holy Family. Shit.
“Where you gotta be?” Glassjaw asked. “I can give you a ride.”
I shook my head.
“Closed now, I missed it.”
“Clue us in, Raven,” Mace said gently.
“Food pantry up at the Catholic church,” I finally relented.
“How much you need?” Glassjaw pulled a wad of cash out of his front pocket and I blinked. I don’t think I’d ever seen that much cash in one place at one time and that included counting the till at the bar.
“What?” I asked, as much to buy time as anything.
“Least we can do with you putting me up like this,” Mace said, and I frowned slightly and pushed to my feet, giving a long stretch.