Reece
Kate is amazing. She doesn’t leave my side, even going with me when I get sent for a variety of scans, including an MRI and a CT scan. She’s the balm my soul needs and I am done with running away.
Having her here by my side makes everything better, I can’t deny the fact.
Liam is at the hospital still, and so is Isla. She rushed to be here, to be by her man’s side, even though he wasn’t hurt. I saw Ethan give her the softest look when she burst into my room. That look, the thing they have between them that I’d always coveted if being honest with myself, I have a chance at that. I simply need to stop letting fear get in the way.
One thing is clear to me however.
I can’t do normal. Can’t do the house, two point five kids, and the nine to five, and the two holidays a year shit. I need to talk to Kate, to tell her I want her, but I want to be free, too. Not free to fuck around, but free to come and go, with her, preferably.
I don’t know how to put that into words, though, without fucking her off completely. Most women would tell me to go get lost. They’d tell me they don’t want to make a go of it with someone with his foot already half out the door. The thing is though, my heart won’t be half out the door. My heart, and my soul will be hers. I won’t cheat on her, I know myself well enough to understand that. I simply need to be able to go climbing or diving, if the urge grabs me. Hell, she could come with me. Maybe she would?
A fancy lawyer has arrived, and he and Liam are talking now at the foot of my bed. I’m taking it in but it’s also going over my head. I’m tired, and it’s hard to focus.
“…not in the public interest, so I think it will be easy to argue that the crown should drop any charges against Reece,” the fancy lawyer is saying in his posh, plummy accent.
Liam is a fucking rock, but I didn’t expect any less. One day, me and him need to talk, to lay some ghosts to rest, but not now. Not when my lower back aches, my piss is dark brown, and my head is splitting. I’m on fluids for my kidneys. Pain killers, and some antibiotics. I’ve been told I will be in hospital for a few more days and then will need a few weeks of rest.
Weeks of rest! The words make me feel itchy already.
The police have said I won’t be taken in, which thank fuck because I know if I get shoved in a cell, I’ll lose it.
I still might be charged, the police and the crown prosecution service will of course discuss my case, Duncan Jacob’s case and come to a decision on both, but fancy pants McLawyerly clearly believes there’s a good chance they won’t pursue charges for me.
“I’ll let Abi know you’ll be staying with us for a while,” Liam says.
“What? No, it’s fine. I want to go home.”
“You can’t go home as sick as you are, you need to be with people. We have more than enough room, you know that. Or you could go to Ethan’s, but you risk further trauma by canine.”
Ethan shoots Liam a disgusted look, and Isla starts to say something in defense of their boisterous crew.
I smile. Ethan and Isla have a fair few dogs and some are big, and over-friendly. I don’t need one of them jumping on me when I’m recovering.
“I’ll be staying with Reece, Liam.” Kate’s clear voice silences the room.
Liam raises his eyebrows at her. He doesn’t seem to like her much, which pisses me off.
“No need,” he replies, brusque and unfriendly as fuck. “You are safe now, Duncan is in custody. You can go back to your life.”
“I will stay with Reece,” she repeats, fixing Liam with a determined stare.
I admire her, Liam scares the fuck out of me half the time, and I know him well. She’s got balls of steel. “Unless, that is,” she says turning to me, “you don’t want me to, Reece. I’ll go back to my life, if you don’t want me to stay, but I’d like to help you out.”
“I’d like you to stay,” I say.
It’s true, and thinking I was going to die for a while at the hands of that nutter has made me realize how true. I do want her to stay, and I want to try and make a go of it. We need to talk but what better time than now?
“Give us the room,” I bark the order to Liam and the lawyer, who exchange glances, but do as I say.
There’s a copper outside the door, but I’ve been told I will be allowed home and that’s all I care about.
“I’m sorry,” I say when the door closes. “I hurt you, back at the house. Closed down, when you put yourself out there. I freaked out.”
Kate holds her hand up. “No need to say sorry. This has all been so…sudden. Kind of surreal, too. I’m still grappling with getting my head around it myself. I like you, a lot.” She looks down at the floor for a moment. “I’m not saying I want wedding bells, Reece. I’m saying I like you and it would be a shame to throw this away without giving it a chance.”
“I don’t do being closed in, trapped, very well,” I blurt out. “I can’t be tied down.”
Her face falls so I take her hand in mine. “I don’t mean tied to you, but tied to a place, a routine, a certain sort of life. It’s not for me. I need to know that if Saturday comes around and I want to go surf all day, I can. If I am with someone who’d want to join me, even better.”
She laughs and then she’s crying a little again. “Reece, I won’t ever make you feel trapped. We’re like two peas in a pod, you and I, in some ways. I love all the things you do, and I’ve spent so long being cooped up, afraid of my own shadow because of that bastard that all I want to do now is live.”
Her face lights up as she talks. “I want to climb mountains, and surf the oceans, and eat weird food in far off places. I want to do those things. I’d like to try doing them with you, but whether you’re on board or not, I won’t be settling down into a monotonous routine anytime soon.”
I get where she’s coming from, and I am so on board it’s crazy. I get this weird little bubble of something in my gut, and I think it might be joy. The idea of me and Kate out there, having adventures together.
I should probably deal with my issues, at some point, but that can wait for another day. Still, I want her to understand. “I think it’s something that happened to me and Liam, I think it means I can’t be trapped. I need to be free, and I get that it’s essentially selfish to ask someone to share your life, but then say you need freedom to bug out at the drop of a hat.”
She smiles at me, her beautiful eyes lighting up. “It’s not selfish, Reece, I think it’s kind of beautiful that you can ask for what you want. I need to be free, too, so maybe we can be free together? What do you say?”
I nod and have to swallow down the thick lump forming in my throat. Free together. It is kind of beautiful. “I’ll need some time off work to recover, but when I get back to it, I’m going to tell Liam I want to do more of the hacking, computer side of things, and less of the protection work, which means I’ll be able to travel more.”
“And I can write from anywhere,” she says.
“Do you want to be my travel buddy?” I ask her, feeling vulnerable in doing so, but elated at the same time.
“You bet,” she replies.
“Just so you know, that’s a whole different level to fuck buddy. Or, at least to me, it is. It’s early days, Kate, but you need to know. I’m not able to offer you normality and stability, but I am falling for you. In fact, I think I was in too deep from the moment I first saw you, and I didn’t realize. I noticed something in you, I thought you were regal.”
“Regal?” She smiles but it’s nonplussed.
“Yeah, regal. Different. Don’t think because I don’t want to settle into some routine existence that what I feel isn’t deep because it is.”
“Same here, Reece.” She reaches over to me and brushes a kiss on my forehead. “Deep but free, it sounds perfect to me.” Her lips brush mine, soft and wonderful.
I close my eyes for a beat, and exhaustion steals over me. I’m wiped out. The blow to my head, the fight to get free, and then this momentous conversation, they’ve all sapped me of any remaining strength. Kate tells me to get some sleep and she curls up in the chair by my bed, a blue hospital blanket covering her.
The next day, I’m dozing, Kate reading her kindle, still on the chair, refusing to leave except to eat and use the toilet, when the door to my room opens and Andrius walks in.
My heart picks up speed.
I start and dart a glance to Kate.
I know the guy, he owes me, and we’ve been through some major shit together, but he still worries the crap out of me. I never quite know whose side he’s on, or what angle he’s playing.
Trailing him, walking with her head down, her feet shuffling along, is a stunning young woman. Her hair is almost white blonde, she’s petite, maybe five feet three or four, and slim, but with full breasts and slender but curvy hips.
When she glances up, I see her eyes are a striking deep blue, almost violet, and they have an angelic expression to them, but her full pouty lips contrast with her eyes and make her look half angel, half porn star.
She’s like some innocent goddess fallen to earth for eating forbidden fruit. If I weren’t head over heels in love with Kate, I think I’d have a major hard on for her. Or, rather, I would if she didn’t look like a terrified doe, caught in the cross hairs of a predator’s sights. The girl is shaking for fucks sake. Suddenly my senses go on red alert.
“Violet,” Andrius addresses the girl, “go get something to drink, for yourself and for me.”
He hands her some money.
Weird, Violet by name, violet by eye color.
“I don’t know where the cafeteria is?” The girl’s reply is sullen but scared. Like a child who is angry at her parents but daren’t act out or she’ll get the lash.
“Kate, why don’t you take Violet to the canteen?” I suggest.
I think Andrius and I are going to have to talk and I don’t want Kate hearing this.
Kate figures it out, and doesn’t like it because she purses her lips. But she nods and does as I ask.
“What brings you here?” I ask as soon as they are gone.
He glances at the door. “I hope my little Thumbelina doesn’t say too much to that woman.”
I shrug. “Anything she says will stay between us four if I ask it of Kate.”
“Oh, it’s like that is it?” he asks in his heavy accented voice.
“It’s like that,” I tell him.
“I need you to do your thing,” he says. “I need you to look into Violet. I am sorry to ask you this when you are sick, but if you can spare the time while you are recuperating to check out whatever you can find out about her, I’d appreciate it.”
I owe him, I know this much. He owes me, too. We’re all entangled in a forest of debts and counter-debts and somewhere along the way I lost the path, and don’t know how to get out. And I’m about to ask another favor of him, a big one. Still, I don’t like what I saw just now. I thought Andrius had a certain code, but that girl is terrified.
“Is she your girlfriend?” I ask him.
He gives a derisive snort. “She’s a gift.”
His words stun me. “Excuse me?”
“She is a gift. From Allyov.”
“A gift? He gave you a girl?”
“Yes. So now this girl, she lives in my house, and she eats my food, and I want to know who the fuck she is and if she’s reporting back to him.”
“She seems scared, Andrius.” I tell him this because she did and because I don’t like the fact.
“Yes, yes she does. Terrified. I still need to know.”
“Does she want to be your…gift?”
Andrius gives a short, cruel laugh. “I doubt it. She’s young, scared, does not seem to know the ways of the world, but it could all be an act. I need to know, Reece.” He leans in then, and his eyes blaze. “I need to know urgently.”
“Why the urgency?” I ask.
“You know my rules.”
I do, they are simple. Andrius is a fixer…and more, for the Russian and sometimes Ukrainian mobsters vying for territory in Europe. He will do almost anything, except for one thing. He won’t harm any women or children, no matter who they are or what they have done.
Instead of making him weak amongst monsters, his weird moral code and the absolute certainty he wields it with, seems to have made him stronger.
So, yes, I know his rules.
“You’re going to kill her?” The shock is evident in my voice.
“What?” Andrius tsks at me. “Your head injury must be making you stupid. Of course not, but Allyov gave her to me to fuck. She’s a virgin, he says. If she’s for real.”
He sighs and hangs his head for a moment. “If she’s for real, he’s taken her off the streets and given her to me to fuck, which is messed up, sick…I don’t understand it. They don’t run women. This is a nightmare. I don’t wish to fuck her, but if I don’t and she’s working for him, one of his whores playing a game, then I am in dangerous territory if I don’t take her. In that case, she’ll tell him, and they will think I am weak, or homosexual, which I have nothing against, but you know what the Russian mob will do.”
“I’m supposed to be getting out of here in the next couple of days and I’ll look into it as soon as I get home,” I tell him.
“You can walk away from it all,” I suggest. I doubt anyone would go after him. He has an almost preternatural reputation amongst the men he works for. They hire him and use him, but they fear him. Even Allyov, which is why I doubt this girl is a plant. I doubt the mob boss would dare do such a thing to Andrius.
“No, my friend, I cannot,” he replies heavily. “Not until it is done.”
I know he’s not what he seems, and I know he needs to get deep into Allyov’s organization, but I still don’t know the why of it all. About to ask, voices outside the door silence me. It also means I haven’t had chance to ask Andrius for that huge favor I need.
The door opens and the girl comes back in with Kate. She holds a bottle of water in one hand and pop in the other. “I didn’t know which you wanted.”
He takes the water. “This is fine.”
She nods, and then sits on the low window ledge and stares out at the rain sodden town below. Kate is watching her, concern on her face.
She can’t be more than nineteen or twenty, surely? Fuck, what the hell? A gift?
“So, your head? It is now going to be even thicker.” Andrius laughs at his joke, I try to join in, but my mind is whirring.
Kate takes something out of her bag, and I see it is a packet of chocolates. She goes over to where Violet is sat and offers her one. Violet shoots a nervous glance toward Andrius then hesitantly takes one. Either this girl is an award worthy actress or she’s young, naive, and scared to death.
Andrius sits in the spare chair and crosses his leg over his opposite knee. He’s wearing a three-piece suit, as usual. A big, steel watch sits on his wrist, and where his shirt is open slightly at the base of his neck, I see the silver cross he always wears nestled there. His shirt sleeves are rolled up, showing the impressive array of fine scars criss-crossing his forearms.
“If the police try to charge you, I can make it go away,” he intones.
Oh, no. Not the way he’d do it. “Thanks, but I think it is sorted anyway.”
“And this crazy man, is he sorted?” He leans in, menacing and dangerous. I see Kate straighten from where she’s leaning against the window. “He is so crazy he could still be dangerous even in prison. Men like him, they get followers, fanatics, who want to help them out, carry on their work. Or they hire people, to carry out attacks for them out in the world.”
I swallow because he’s right and I fucking hate that he is, and that Kate is hearing what he has to say.
“I can make him go away,” he whispers it low, slow, and deadly. Too quiet for Kate to hear over by the window I am sure, what with the hum of the air conditioning filling the room.
“Let me think about it,” I tell him, because Kate is here, but I already want to discuss that with him. The chance to be sure Kate will be safe always is too tempting. Because Duncan might see her as used goods and not want to play with her anymore, but she led him to where he is now. Beaten, broken, captured. He can decide he wants her dead anytime, and I fear Andrius is right, not even prison walls will stop him if that’s the case.
“There’s nothing to think about,” Kate interjects. She probably doesn’t even know what we are talking about, but she heard my last words, and she obviously doesn’t like Andrius with the way she’s watching him, suspicion written all over her face.
“As you wish.” Andrius inclines his head but then turns his ghostly gaze to me, and it says he’ll check with me again about this.
Then he’s standing and holding out his hand. The girl, Violet, gets up from the window, smooths her skirt down, and walks to him. He takes her by the wrist, his big hand wrapped around her fragile joint, and he leads her out of the door, like she’s his pet.
“Who the fuck was that?” Kate’s voice is vibrating with restrained emotion. She’s angry and scared too.
“He’s someone you leave me to deal with. He’s a dangerous, dangerous man and I want you to forget you ever met him.”
“But,” she starts.
I hold my hand up, cutting her off. “Kate, I have never told you to leave something alone, but I am telling you now, leave it alone.”
I brace myself for an argument but she merely nods. “He’s scary, Reece. I won’t say anything else on the matter but he’s not a good man, and I don’t like the idea of you mixing with him.”
“No, he’s not a good man, he’s not a bad man, either. And he is scary, so forget you ever met him and you’ll never see him again. I promise.”
She sighs but I won’t discuss this further. For her sake as well as my own.
Four days later, and I’m discharged. I need to rest for another two weeks, I’ve been told. I’ve also been given a list of warning signs to look for with regards to my kidney function, and my head trauma.
I want to be near the guys, here in Yorkshire, where I feel I can keep Kate safe. She doesn’t mind, and she comes to stay at mine. She’s got a deadline looming, and so we settle into a routine. She looks after me, and makes sure I’m comfortable, and then she goes and writes. I hear her tapping away, and like the sound of it. The noise of another person in the house, doing her own thing, but sharing my space, is soothing. It gives me a glimpse of how this might be between us.
“I’ve put some soup on.” Kate appears at the door and smiles at me. “Do you think you’ll be up for a short walk later?” she asks.
I nod. I keep getting out for twenty minutes at a time, stretching my legs. I can’t wait until I can go for a run again.
“How’s your lower back?” She’s concerned.
“Getting better every day.” My pee is getting back to a normal color now, and the pain is mostly gone. We haven’t done anything sexual, because between the kidney ache, the head pain, and the burnt leg, I haven’t felt up to it, but I can’t wait until we can reconnect in that way.
I’m not used to this, to being laid up and having to take it easy. I want to scream sometimes, but having Kate here helps. If I’d thought her presence might make me feel trapped, it does the opposite. Her being here soothes me and helps me deal with being stuck inside as I recover.
She’s loaded a ton of climbing related documentaries onto her Amazon video account and we’ve been watching those of an evening as we eat whatever she’s prepared that day.
We found we’ve both got an insane urge to try an expedition to K2 one day, which is probably a pipe dream, and will take a fuck ton of training if we ever go for it seriously. We’ve also discussed a possible week-long break, diving in the Maldives. And we’ve talked.
A lot.
I’ve learned about her unconventional, free spirited family, and I get why she’s not so bothered about having the whole white picket fence, kids, and a dog routine. Although, we both have said we’d be open to kids, we like the idea, but we both found out we’d be on the same page when it came to rearing them. Kate wouldn’t want her kids shoved into school aged four. We’d both said how we’d like to home school them when young, and travel with them.
Shit, maybe I’m a fucking hippy at heart. Kate surely is when you scratch the surface, although without the love for stinky Patchouli thank God.
“I’ll see to the soup,” Kate says, leaving the room.
As if he knows she’s left the vicinity, Andrius pops up on my burner phone screen as it starts to ring. I use it only to talk to him, and change it every few weeks.
I grab it. “Yeah.”
“Hello there. Did you find anything?” He’s referring to his gift.
“Nothing conclusive yet, but your instincts may be correct. Her identity is probably fake.”
There’s an intake of breath. I hesitated to tell him this information, knowing what it possibly means for the young woman under his…care. If I don’t though, if she is out to frame him or get information on him for Allyov, then something Andrius has been working for his whole life will be gone to waste.
I hate doing this. I also hate that even though I am on a burner phone, I’ll need to talk in semi-code. No phone is safe.
“Doesn’t mean she’s working for your friend, or is one of his professionals, but it means she’s not what she seems. I think you need to be careful around her. I know they don’t erm, deal in candy, but they do have the dance clubs and you and I both know what goes on in those.” I hope he gets my drift that candy means trafficking women, which is a horrible way to put it when I think about it, and professionals means prostitutes.
“Your friend and his men might not deal in…you know, but they certainly have professionals who choose to work for them, and she might be a professional. So far, her background isn’t pointing at that. She was doing some odd bits of work for him, waitressing in some of the legitimate restaurants he runs. She did the Grey Party a few weeks ago.”
He gives me a grunt in response. There is no Grey Party but there’s a Gilded Club Roundtable meet once a year, where the room is done out in various shades of grey, the tableware even is grey. It’s supposed to be a classy, but ultra-masculine theme for the night. No women are allowed, except as waitresses. I know he’ll get the reference.
The Gilded Club, no shit that’s the fucking name, is a big-wig meet up for some influential local business men, and it’s one of those things where legitimate business meets the crime underworld. The yearly party is full of minor celebrities, tin-pot millionaires and the like, along with Allyov and some of his elder partners in crime, all above board, but deep down, as dodgy as fuck. A couple of years ago a young female journalist had a waitressing job at one of the parties, and did an expose on how many times she was touched or propositioned by local dignitaries. The head of a large city council lost his job after some of his less than salubrious exploits made the front pages.
“That fucking piece of shit party.” Andrius puts my own thoughts into words.
“Listen. Don’t do anything yet, okay? Let me do some more digging. The thing is, Andrius, her identity only starts aged ten, so my feeling is she’s possibly on the run from some threat or danger. Maybe her family were in witness protection or something? I don’t get the feeling from what I’ve found so far that she’s into anything dodgy. But, she might be on someone’s radar, which means she might pose a danger to you. Be super careful around her, until I get more info.”
He laughs. “I’m getting cameras fitted in each room in the house as we speak, while my little friend is getting a massage with Justina.” He mentions his housekeeper and I smile.
The woman is hot as the sun, but she’s into women, and she’s as hard as any man I’ve ever met underneath her glamorous exterior.
“Andrius,” I pause and listen, and hear the reassuring sounds of Kate banging about in the kitchen. She’s a good cook but she makes a ton of noise and mess when she does it. Never uses one spoon when she could use ten. I bet she’s used at least three pans to make this soup. I don’t get it, but it’s endearing so I shrug it off.
“Yes, my friend.”
“What you said about Duncan Roberts.”
“Yes.”
“He’s in jail right now, awaiting psych evaluation and some other stuff. I’ve been told it’s likely he’ll be remanded to a high security psychiatric prison while he awaits trial. Do you think he’ll be safe there?”
He laughs. “Most likely not. He’s a sadistic rapist and they can be reached anywhere. There are people who can reach anyone, anywhere.”
His answer gives me a chill, and reminds me to never get on the wrong side of him. Being friends with him is like having a tiger for a pet, you can’t turn your back, or let your guard down.
“It’s just, I’d hate for anything to happen to him before his trial, he deserves to be punished for what he did.” I mean the exact opposite of course, and the beauty of Andrius is he understands that without me having to lay it on thick in any way. If anyone overheard this conversation, they’d not be able to pick up any inflection in my tone giving any meaning to anything other than what I say outright.
“Me too, he deserves to go away for a long time, where he will be regularly tortured by his prison mates, in the way he did to those women. Still, the odds are against this. It is sad, but this is the way it is for these sick sex offenders.”
He doesn’t lie. Many of them get beaten in jail, raped, or killed. This time, though, we’re plotting the death of one as we speak.
“I better go, Kate is making me soup. Maybe you ought to get your new…friend to cook for you?”
Justina is a great housekeeper and she also sorts Andrius busy schedule, but she’s a lousy cook, beyond making a mean borscht. So whenever he throws a dinner party, which is a rare event, he gets caterers in.
He gives a low laugh. “I think the little witch might poison me.”
“Well, there’s that.”
“Speak soon, my friend.”
“Yep, take care.”
I hang up, knowing that at some point soon Duncan will meet the painful and sticky end he deserves. I don’t even feel badly about it. It means Kate won’t have to stand the indignity of a trial, and neither will his other victims, raped once by him and a second time by the court system and some asshole defense lawyer. Of course, it binds me tighter to Andrius and his murky world, which I could do without.
“Here you are.” Kate comes back into the room, with the soup.
I eat some, but with the painkillers, the antibiotics, and the ongoing swimming feeling in my head, my appetite still isn’t what it was.
She smiles at me as she takes away my still half full bowl. She doesn’t nag at me to eat more, simply keeps making delicious food, and offering me calorific things like a slice of brownie.
I hear her clattering about in the kitchen, no doubt clearing up the gazillion things she’s used to make our meal.
Then she comes back into the room, and she gets onto the sofa with me. It’s a big sectional number, wide and low, and there’s enough room for the two of us. I pull her into me and dip my head, letting myself inhale the scent of her hair, as my nose rubs against the silky strands.
“Thanks for taking care of me,” I tell her.
“Ditto,” She says.
I smile because I’m putting things in motion to do just that.
As she snuggles into my side and sighs happily, I get a warm feeling in my chest. She’s so strong, but also vulnerable. She’s in control, but submissive when it comes to sex. She’s adventurous, but laid-back. And she’s got a crazy-interesting mind. If someone had invented her, they couldn’t have done a better job.
“You know, if a person asked me to put pen to paper and write my ideal woman, I couldn’t have come up with a better you.”
She lifts her head, and her eyes shine. “Oh, Reece, that’s…” she trails off, but I see the emotion in her eyes.
I’m not good with words. I don’t use them often enough, but I use them now. I kiss her forehead.
“I love you, cupcake. And I can’t wait until we can get out of here and go climb some mountains together.”
She smiles at me. “I love you, too.”
The words don’t trap me or scare me, they curl around me and warm me. Anchoring me in the best way, allowing me to be truly free by giving me the base I need to spread my wings.
We are two wandering souls who have found a soul mate to explore this crazy world with.