(Present)

Logan has Banshee drive me back to the hotel. I wanted to take a cab but Logan wouldn’t hear of it. I hate feeling like I need to be looked after like a child. Everything in me wants to protest this around-the-clock surveillance thing but I know that I don’t really have a choice. Banshee takes me up to the room and Logan lets us in.

“Wow, this is swanky! Yeah, I could get used to this,” Banshee says as he walks in and takes a look around. I can tell by the intense look on Logan’s face, something is wrong.

“Hey, they have cable on this thing? I’m two episodes behind on Doctor Who,” Banshee adds. I can tell Logan is only a second away from tossing Banshee out the damn window in order to get me alone and update me. I try to get ahead of the situation.

“Banshee, thanks so much for the ride. I really appreciate it,” I reply, unable to take my eyes off of Logan. Shit. Whatever he has to tell me can’t be good.

“It’s fine, you know I’m here for you. What’s the room service situation?” he says as he plops down on the sofa and puts his foot on the coffee table.

“Banshee, out,” Logan says. Banshee starts to laugh and says, “You see how he treats me? Me? A national treasure,” he jokes. He then looks up and sees the expression on Logan’s face. He stops smiling right away and gets this official look on his face that seems out of place for the fun-loving Banshee I know.

“What’s up?” he asks Logan.

“Malone works for some very connected people who don’t want him to go to prison,” Logan replies.

“Who?” Banshee asks.

“Two families: Moretti and Ricci,” he says. I watch as alarm appears behind Banshee’s eyes. He nods to Logan and starts packing my clothes.

“What are you doing?” I ask him.

“You are going into witness protection. You have to or they will kill you,” Banshee says as if it was obvious.

“No, I can’t go anywhere. I am not walking away. If you want to guard me here that’s fine but I’m not going anywhere,” I reply as I take the stuff back into the room. Banshee looks at me in disbelief.

“Shay, the cops once found a body the Morettis’ left behind of a woman who had betrayed them. Do you know what they did to her? They cut off her—”

“Banshee,” Logan threatens.

“Oh, sorry. I just want you to be safe.”

“I know, Banshee. Thank you,” I reply.

“Banshee, I need footage on both families, what they’ve been doing and who they’ve been talking to. Can you make that happen for me?” Logan asks.

“I’m on it. Logan, get her to see reason,” Banshee says as he leaves us in the room alone.

“You went to see Wyatt?” I ask.

“Yeah, he’s the one who told me about the families. That changes this entire situation. You have to leave town.”

“No.”

“Goddamn it, Shay, this is not a joke! These guys are gonna come after you, they can’t afford to let you mess up their cash flow in any way.”

“I’m not saying don’t protect me, I’m saying do it here in town.”

“You really don’t get how bad this is,” he snaps.

“I do but I am not going to go off running like a coward. Malone killed his wife and he will pay. I don’t care what it takes.”

“Even if it takes your life?” He demands.

“Yes. I can live with that.”

“Well, I can’t. Get your shit. We’re leaving,” he says.

“Okay, fine. You can go if you want. I will check out of this place and get a hotel,” I reply.

“What the fuck is the problem? Don’t you see that I’m trying to protect you?”

“Protect me? Logan, you can’t even look me in the eye. It’s clear that you hate me or whatever is next door to ‘hate.’ You just want to be done with me so you can take off again. Well, fine, go. Take off. I’ll be fine on my own,” I reply as I sit on the sofa and stubbornly fold my arms against my chest.

“Argh! Why don’t you listen to me for once?” he barks.

“You think this is fun for me? You think I get off on knowing that any day now someone could just pop out of the shadows and end my life? I wish there was someone else to stand up for Joanne. I wish it had been someone else in that closet. I would give anything not to have been there that night and watched as that monster bashed her head in.

“He enjoyed it. That sick bastard stole her life, and he enjoyed it. She moaned as she was dying, she died looking over at me. And I didn’t help her. I was so scared, I sat in the closet and I was frozen in fear. I didn’t help her…what kind of person just stands there?” I ask as I sob into my hands.

I feel him take a seat beside me. He places his hand on top of mine. I didn’t plan to cry but I’ve kept it in for so long. I didn’t even cry at Joanne’s funeral.

“C’mon, don’t do that. Don’t cry, okay? I know it’s hard watching people die. Trust me. I know,” he says.

“Logan, I didn’t help her.”

“There was nothing you could have done. The only thing that would have been different is that you would have been dead too,” he says.

“You would have helped her if you were in my position,” I reply.

“Shay, you weigh like a hundred pounds.”

“So what? I could have grabbed something off the desk and hit him with it or jabbed him in the eye.”

“Shay, it’s not a movie. This guy would have killed you. You did the right thing.”

“Fine, maybe I did. But staying and facing this guy is also the right thing. Please, Logan, help me stand up for my friend.” He reads the desperation in my eyes. He swears under his breath and then reluctantly agrees to let us stay.

“Yes!”

“But under one condition. The moment I say it’s no longer safe, you don’t fight me on it. You don’t do the tears thing and you don’t have a fit. I say it’s time to go and you get your ass in the car and we go, got it?”

“Got it. Thank you!” I reply as I hug him. It’s so sudden. I didn’t think about it, I just reached out and he held me.

The sudden closeness is startling for us both. I’m suddenly very aware of the fact that my breasts are pressed up against his chest and that our lips are only a few inches apart. My body is suddenly very aware of him. It tingles with anticipation and my stomach does flip-flops. His eyes glaze over with longing. They are doing all kinds of things to me; I miss the sheer ecstasy of his touch. His love is a total drug, and I remember when I got my first hit…

***

Shay (Three years ago)

After the support group meeting, I felt a lot better. Logan was right. It helped to talk to other people who had been in similar situations. He waited for the meeting to be over and then we went out to dinner. I told him I was good with low-key and good food—I didn’t need fancy. He asked me to marry him. We both laughed and headed to one of my favorite burger places—Rudy’s café on Mulberry Street. After we are done eating, we have a few shots of whiskey and decide to stay and talk. I never thought Logan would be so easy to talk to or such a good listener.

“So your dad, Victor, was a dick who hit your mom all the time?” he asks.

“No, he had his good moments. That’s what kept my mom and me clinging to hope. He’d go two weeks and he’d be fine. He’d even be fun and nice. But if he had a bad day at work, if he got a parking ticket, or if the Giants lost…he’d turn into this stark raving monster,” I reply, sadly overwhelmed by the awful memories.

He picks up on it and says, “We don’t need to talk about it if you don’t want to.”

“It’s fine. I like talking to you,” I admit, unable to look him in the eye as I blush like a schoolgirl.

“Did you ever try to talk to your mom about maybe leaving him?” he asks.

“Yeah and she always said that he would change. She kept thinking that the sky would part and Victor would be a new man. But she was wrong. He didn’t change. He wasn’t going to. But she loved him and so she stayed. He once beat her until she passed out and she…she wouldn’t leave him.”

“I don’t understand that shit,” he says angrily.

“Yeah, same here. I used to get these awful panic attacks when he’d come home. I felt like I was trapped in a box and I couldn’t break free. I’d take off whatever I had on, I’d strip down to nothing just to feel like I could breathe. I was so scared all the time in that house.”

“Do you still get panic attacks?” he asks.

“No, that was a million lifetimes ago. Thank God. Remember when you asked me if I saved everyone? Well my mom is one woman I didn’t save.”

“You said your father was in prison and that you put him there. What happened? Did you call the cops when he was hitting her?”

“Yeah, I did.”

“You hadn’t done that before, what was it about that time that made you call for help?” he says.

I push back tears, take a deep breath, and take a sip of the whiskey on the table.

“He came home, drunk due to whatever his latest excuse was. He wanted to have sex with my mom but she turned him away because he broke yet another promise to stop drinking. He hit her around a few times, dragged her to the floor and…”

“Oh Shay, I’m sorry.”

“He raped her right in front of me. Every time he inserted himself into her, she cried out. She cried until she went silent. I thought she had died. I thought…I watched her shrink into nothing as he had his way with her. I called the cops and I testified against him. He got a judge that really hated rapists. I mean more than they normally do because she threw the book at him. He has another ten years.”

“She blames you?”

“Yup. I’m the one who sent her love away to prison. She also decided to take up drinking and the rest is history.”

“What did she mean about the money you took from her?”

“She was in a car accident a while back and won a settlement. I manage the money for her. I pay her bills and I buy her groceries. I used to give her spending money but she just drinks it away. So, now I’m buying all her food but I’m not giving her any cash. It’s the only way I can make sure she stays sober. But it hasn’t worked, as you can see. She figures out a way to get drunk anyway.”

“Have you seen Victor?”

“No. I never want to see his face again. He’s not my father. I have no idea who my real father is, neither does she. But Victor went out of his way to be a horrible step-dad. So I’m good if he rots in hell.”

“Yeah, I’m good with that too,” he says, smiling sadly.

“Hey, can I ask about your sister, Rose?”

“What do you want to know?”

“Were you close?”

“Yeah. You’d never know it by the amount of arguing we did but yeah, we were. All my brothers were overprotective when it came to Rose but I set out to make sure she never got hurt at all. That meant that I had to kill off any chance she had of getting a boyfriend,” he says.

“Logan, you didn’t!”

“Hell yeah, I didn’t want some guy eye fucking my sister. Once any of my friends looked at Rose funny, we were on the ground fighting.”

“She must have hated that.”

“Yeah, she called me all kinds of names and got me grounded for most of high school but I didn’t care.”

“You killed her love life, you jerk,” I tease.

“Yeah but only for a little while. She ended up going out with this young kid, scrawny, big ears, loved metal music. He was such a prick. His name was Mason Black. They went on a few dates, and she thought she was in love. Then she found him kissing some girl in the school parking lot. She was so heartbroken. My sister didn’t cry. No matter how much we boys tormented her, she was a tough chick but that night, she bawled her eyes out.”

“Aw, first crushes can hurt so much.”

“Not as much as it hurt Mason. I tracked him down...”

“Logan!”

“What? He was fine…eventually.”

“Did you get in trouble?” I ask.

“Yeah, my mom was pissed. She dragged me in front of my dad so he could ground me, lecture me, and straighten me out. My dad heard what I did; man he was so angry, he said, ‘We’re going to the back. I need to talk to this kid, man to man.’”

“Oh no…” I mumble.

“I was scared shitless of my dad, almost as much as I feared my mom. I think my little brother Wyatt was afraid for my life because he held this ugly toad lamp my sister loved hostage until she begged dad not to punish me.

“But it was too late. My dad instructed everyone to leave the house and go out to dinner. He said he wanted to deal with me in private. So, everyone left the house and dad took me out back. I’ll never forget the metal taste in the back of my mouth. I really thought my dad was going to kill me or, worse, send me to military school.”

“What happened when you two went out back?” I ask as I lean across the table.

“You have to picture it. My dad is over six feet tall. He’s an army guy. No nonsense. No bullshit. He told me to stand in front of him and tell him exactly what I did. And I explained that I went over to Mason’s house and beat him up.

“He said, ‘You beat this kid up just because he hurt your little sister?’

“I said, ‘Yes, sir.’ My dad took a long pause. Then he said, ‘Wait right here.’ He disappeared into the house. When he came back out, I swear I was about to piss myself; I was so damn scared. Then he hands me my first beer and says, ‘Good job, kid. Protect your family. No matter what,’” Logan says, grinning.

“What did your mom say?”

“Are you kidding, both me and my dad are scared of that woman. So we pretend like I was scolded and punished. No one knows what happened in the backyard. Rose felt so bad, we called a truce, for a day or so anyway. I loved my sister because she was a fighter. You know? She didn’t let anything stop her.”

“She sounds like my kind of girl.”

“Losing Rose was a blow I didn’t know how to deal with. Given the job I’m in and the things I’ve seen, I had to get good with my mortality very quickly. But I never thought I would have to get good with my little sister dying.”

“It’s not something anyone really knows how to handle. I think people just do the best they can,” I assure him.

“Well, if that’s the best I could have done, then I’m a piss poor brother. In the last few weeks of her life, I avoided seeing her. I made excuses because I couldn’t watch her perish. I wasn’t the man I should have been,” he says bitterly.

“She knows you were doing your best. I don’t think she hated you for not showing up, I think she understood,” I reply.

“All I know is that when Rose was sick I wanted to take her place. I went somewhere so fucking dark and…isolated, it was like I wasn’t really among the living. Finding my way back was something I didn’t think I could do. And honestly, if I had to do it again, I’m not sure that I could. That’s why I’m so glad my parents are in good health. I don’t know what I would do if something happened to my family. They get on my nerves, I get on theirs, we argue, we shout, we threaten, but in the end, my brothers and my parents, they are everything to me.”

“You’re so lucky. I’ve always dreamed of having a big family, big house with lots of activity,” I whisper.

“Well, my mom is always looking to add more people at the dinner table, my dad loves a woman who can handle a nice stiff drink, and my brothers love anyone who can force me to remain on my best behavior. So, anytime you want, you can borrow my family,” he says with a sincere smile.

“Well, thank you,” I reply as I raise a shot glass. He does the same and asks me what we’re toasting.

“Great food and even better company,” I reply.

“Careful, Anika, I might start to think you like me.” My mouth drops open in shock.

“I told you, I did a little research on you. I like your first name. ‘Anika’ is a rare and really beautiful name,” he says.

“I never liked it.”

“Really? Do you want me to stop calling you that?”

“Actually, I think it works when it comes out of your mouth. But I’m not sure. Use my name again in a different sentence and let me see how I feel about it,” I reply playfully.

“Okay: Anika, I would give my fucking soul to know what your lips taste like right now. And the only thing I want to do more than kiss you is take your bad memories away.”

“Um yeah, that works.” I blush as I turn away, suddenly very shy. “Look at me,” he orders. I do as he says.

He leans in. I inhale his heady, delicious scent. He covers my mouth with his. The sweet and spicy sting of whiskey lingers on his tongue. It tastes heavily. He commands my mouth with long seeking strokes. I brazenly flick my tongue along the smooth soft surface of his lips, and an erotic wave makes its way through my body. His kiss ignites me. The hairs on the back of my neck stand up, and goose bumps form down my arms. I’m falling into something deep, dark, and wondrous…