Seventeen
Five Years Ago
The thing to do, Ava decided, was to be an adult about it. She had nine more days of OSS, and she had plenty of schoolwork to keep her busy, and plenty of work to do at the nursery, and she would just put on her big girl panties and tackle the situation with the aplomb and disinterest of someone who’d been around the block a few times. It was Saturday; not like she had a lot of opportunity to be home alone, anyway. She could handle this. She totally could.
That plan lasted about an hour.
Because the moment she pulled onto the Dartmoor grounds, her heart squeezed and her eyes burned and she dissolved into this hormonal bundle of girl.
But she greeted Mina with a cheery hello, unrolled the long garden hose and began misting the indoor flats, intent on exhausting herself with work.
It wasn’t Leah who popped by at lunch this time, but Carter, to her massive shock.
“Hi,” she greeted, dumbfounded, as he stood in front of the baby koi tubs and studied her with his hands shoved in his pockets. “You’re here.”
“I ran into your brother over at the clubhouse, and he said you were working over here.”
“Yeah. Wait – you were at the clubhouse?”
“I tried yesterday, but that big guy ran me off. Today, Aidan said I should come look in the nursery.”
“He…did?”
Carter nodded.
“Okay…don’t take this the wrong way…”
He grinned.
“But why would you come to see me? After…” She twirled her hand. “Your friend’s in the hospital.”
His smile pulled to the side until it was more of a grimace. “Can we go outside?” Gesture to the relative privacy of the mulch piles through the open door. “Maybe talk?”
She was too surprised to tell him no. She glanced up and caught Mina’s gaze, earning a nod of permission. So off came the gloves and out she went into the sunlight with a boy she was fast learning she didn’t understand at all.
“I haven’t been to see Mason,” Carter said as they strolled toward the railroad tie walls framing the mulch pits. He studied his shoes as he walked. They were a neon blue and white pair of crisp new Nikes. “His dad called me, the morning after it happened, and wanted me to go to the school and pitch them a story about you forcing Mason to take that shit. He wanted to put the whole thing on you.” He glanced at her sideways, his mouth tucked up in the corners with obvious sympathy. “He said, ‘We’ll blame it on the Dog girl – he didn’t say girl. I’m sorry.”
She shrugged.
“But he figured the school and the cops would be willing to believe it had been your fault, if I’d just join Beau and the girls and say you did it.”
Ava formed her words carefully. “That would be the logical thing to do. Going against Mason Stephens – either of them – never got me anywhere. And I am the biker slut. Everyone would believe you.”
Carter winced. “I didn’t go along with him. And when he started to chew my ass about it, I…kind of hung up on him.”
Personally, Ava thought Carter should have taken a plastic cafeteria fork to his friend’s eye in the fifth grade, but beggars couldn’t be choosers in situations like this. “Impressive.” She spun and sat down on one of the staggered ends of a railroad tie, somewhere in the middle of the wall around the pine bark chips. Plucked one up from the pile and needled its edge with her index fingernail, half-watching Carter as he scuffed his toe through stray chips and gave a facial shrug.
“Yeah, not really.”
The weight of what he wanted to say pressed down at his shoulders, gave their normally wide, straight frame a rounded-edged look.
Ava sat and waited, stripping off the top layer of the bark chip.
“So…” He took a deep breath. “I got a B on our Wuthering Heights quiz yesterday.”
The quiz she would have been taking yesterday at one-thirty if not for Ainsley’s broken nose and Mercy’s hands all over her naked skin. “That’s great.” She tried to shoot some enthusiasm through her voice. “You should be proud of that.”
He grinned: straight white teeth, nice shape to his mouth, blend of humility and mischievous spark. Carter was your classic cutie, in all respects, and if he knew it, and if he used it, he did so with more grace than she would have thought possible – back before she’d gotten to know him better. “That brings my quiz average up to a seventy-seven.”
Ava returned a frail version of his smile. “That’s a C. That’s passing.”
“I bet I can raise it more, though, by the end of the semester. Don’t you think?”
“Probably, if you keep studying as hard as you have been.”
Carter allowed his smile to soften, lips closing, and pulled it inward, a warm inner sunbeam to radiate through from the inside out behind his eyes. “I wouldn’t be passing if it wasn’t for you.”
Ava waved off the praise, a prickle of discomfort itching across her skin. “All you had to do was apply yourself, and there’s at least four other people who could have helped you with that. You just happened to get stuck with me.”
His smile waned a little more, took on a wry twist. “You know what Mason said when I told him that I was going to fail English? He said, ‘Good. Poetry’s for pussies, dude. My father says only women should have to study pointless bullshit like
that.’ ”
“That’s your Mason, for ya.” She flicked the chip away and watched it skip across the top of the pile, dislodging others that shivered down in little rivulets of bark. “Always with the philosophical upper hand.”
“He’s a fucking prick,” Carter said, the words bursting out of him like a sneeze. He even looked surprised afterward. “Shit…yeah. Yeah, let’s go with that: a fucking prick.”
Ava offered a thin, false smile. “Glad it only took you most of your life to figure that out.”
“That’s not fair.”
“Why not?” she shot back.
A shadow passed across his face, something deeper and darker than the blonde quarterback persona hinted at. “Because when you come up from a family like mine, you think the best thing you could do for yourself is make friends with a family like Mason’s. What good happens to a guy like me without friends like that?”
Ava wanted to probe – but she wanted to maintain her righteousness more. It felt good. It felt damn good to be the one looking down her nose for once, the biker whore with the upper hand. “You get OSS for defending yourself, and you make friends like me.”
The silence dropped on them, suddenly. Boom, out of nowhere. The heaviness of what they’d said to each other registered a moment too late, and then they couldn’t pull it back, or try to shrug it off like nothing.
The sun glinted off the bright painted aluminum wheelbarrows, found bits of jet in the concrete birdbaths out in front, laughed and danced through the heaving birch leaves, their shapes crackled and brown and ready to fall.
Finally, Ava said, “So why’d you come by?”
Carter lifted his head and met her stare with a bold one of his own. If he was capable of duplicity, it didn’t show. “Because you’re my friend, and I care about you. And I know you aren’t the kind of person who deserves OSS, and I was worried about you.” His golden brows lifted. “Am I allowed to care?” Bit of a challenge, bit of a grin.
My friend.
Uncomplicated, just support and caring and helping one another – what would it feel like to have someone on her side besides Leah? She didn’t know. That had never happened before.
“Yeah.” She felt herself smiling back, genuine this time. “You are.”
The address Fisher had given them led to a tiny but nicely appointed cottage in Moshina Heights. Set down a dirt drive, shaded by tall oaks, the cottage was sided with cedar shingles and trimmed in red and white, with a small covered porch and a portico with room to park one small car beneath. They paced around it, finding no signs of rot, termites, broken glass. The lawn was mown and the branches close to the house trimmed down. There was an ADT alarm system sticker in one front window, and a satellite dish up on the roof.
It was empty, though. Through the half-covered windows, they spied stretches of pine floor, vacant built-ins, silent gleaming appliances. There was a room around the side that looked like a library: lots of shelves, stone fireplace, window seat.
There was a FOR RENT sign out front.
“Well,” Collier said, with one last peek into the back door window, “at least Fisher didn’t lie about this.”
Walsh stood under the portico, collar of his chambray shirt popped up against the breeze, hands in his cut pockets. His shrewd, light eyes scanned the property. “It’d be easy enough to rent the place for a couple months, do business outta it. We’re off the beaten path out here – no one to say they saw anyone coming or going. No witnesses. Small police presence.” He nodded like he approved of the thought process behind it all. “Smart.”
“And not in the city proper,” Mercy agreed, “so not on our radar.”
“Exactly,” Walsh said. “And my guess is they didn’t do any of the cooking here. This was just a point of contact. This place is too clean.”
Rottie came striding back to them from the edge of the forest, phone in hand. He’d gone to search the tree line, for whatever good that would do him. “Ratchet called,” he said as he rejoined them. “Jesse thinks he has something to show us on the pills.”
“Good.” Collier fished his riding gloves from his back pocket. “We’ll swing by the clubhouse on our way, pick up Ratchet, fill James and Ghost in.”
Walsh entered the number of the real estate agent on the sign into his phone, saying he’d call the guy later and see what he could learn about the last renter, but they weren’t optimistic.
Mercy hated leaving empty-handed. He’d suggested they break in – i.e. kick their way in – which Collier had vetoed, as was his right as an officer. But it was unsatisfying not to have answers. In Mercy’s line of work he experienced more…instant gratification. He wanted to get things done, figure things out, put bullets in people.
But Collier and Walsh and Rottie were of the more patient variety. They could wait.
So into the teeth of autumn they rode back into the city. He relished the bite of the wind, the unfiltered blue of the sky, the growl of their four bikes as they hugged the corners and opened the throttle on the long stretches of empty road.
His mind wandered. To Ava, to the wounded shine in her big brown eyes yesterday afternoon when he’d left her.
He wasn’t sure he knew how to untangle that knot. Had Ava come to him, crying, and curled beneath his arm and told him she’d cashed in her V-card with some jerk who’d hurt her so badly she’d cried when he was inside her, heads would have rolled. He would have been on the warpath. But when he was that jerk – when it had been his cock in her and his shoulder with her little teeth marks in it – what did he do with that? How could he claim to love her and then take her at seventeen, when she was still just a baby? And what did he do with how dangerously wonderful it had all felt?
He didn’t know. He didn’t want to see her again. And he wanted a chance to do it over again, to break her in slow, again and again, until she was biting him in the throes of pleasure, rather than pain.
And he wanted to hate himself for all of it, but he just couldn’t.
He needed to lay eyes on her again, he decided. Feel her out, see where her head was at today, talk to her, try to get a better hold on his own impulses. They’d never been separated very long before; he wasn’t sure they could handle distance now, not after yesterday.
When they reached Industrial Road in Knoxville, he turned in at the Green Hills gate and let his brothers go ahead of him to the clubhouse. When Collier glanced over his shoulder he gave him a wave: I’ll catch up.
Maggie wasn’t around today, that much he knew and was glad for, so he parked beside a big display of white and orange pumpkins and took his helmet off, pushed his hair back over his ears.
A fizz of energy that was almost like nerves deep in the bit of his stomach.
No way. Just anticipation. Just wanting to see her and hoping she’d have a smile for him.
Mina directed him around to the side, without a hint of suspicion. Rottie’s wife – big on the sweet, small on the smart.
Mercy headed that way, and he caught sight of a red Mustang from the corner of his eye the moment he rounded the building and saw Ava sitting on the wall around the mulch piles, chatting with Carter Michaels, smiling at something he’d said.
The little shit! The little douchebag, football-playing shit had come again!
Ava was in her work uniform, the shapeless green polo just skimming against the shapes of her breasts, her khakis riding up and flashing the masculine Justin work boots that were caked in mud up to the ankles. Her hair, pulled back in a sleek ponytail, glinted like copper-streaked mahogany in the sunlight. Her face, pale and pert and a vivid cream in the sunshine, was stamped with laughter.
Nothing like she’d looked yesterday, all tears and bruises.
Mercy’s hands were in fists and his pulse was a hard knock in his temples before he could check himself.
And then the shame hit: here he stood, jealous of some seventeen-year-old boy-child, just a kid, because of Ava. Because of how he’d allowed his feelings for her to warp so far beyond repair.
He turned and stalked back to his bike, unable to shake the urge to hit something.
She’d caught him! Whatever Carter was saying faded into the background as Ava tried to control the bubble of laughter coming up her throat. She wanted to shout, jubilation surging through her in uncontrollable, juvenile tides.
She’d seen, just for a second, his outline unmistakable against the parking lot beyond, Mercy standing there, watching them. She knew with a sureness that felt incredible that Mercy had no business at the nursery. She knew he’d been there to see her. And instead, he’d seen her with Carter, and he’d left.
He wasn’t indifferent, not by a long shot.
She could have kissed Carter.
Instead, she said, “So what’s our next book for class?”
He pulled a library paperback copy of Jane Eyre from his windbreaker pocket.
Electric shivers went up Ava’s arms.
He made a face. “It’s another love story, I think.”
“It’s so much more than that,” she assured, grinning ear-to-ear. “It’s amazing.”
The Bell Bar had been named for one prize artifact: a boxing ring bell that supposedly bore Muhammad Ali’s signature. It was framed and mounted high on the wall above a TV, too far for anyone to catch the signature. It was irrelevant, mostly, just something to tell new customers. The bar survived on its atmosphere, drink prices, and cute waitresses.
Dark wood floors, dark wood walls, festive amounts of neon, lots of old spotted brass and red leather on the booths. Tall tables with tall stools and an elevated bar three steps up and illuminated softly from beneath, with a dazzle of liquor bottles, glasses of all shapes, colorful and intricate tap pulls. Games on all the TVs, framed boxer memorabilia on the walls, silky shorts and halter tops on the waitresses. The place smelled like hops, old leather, and wood polish.
Mercy was splitting a pitcher of Michelob with Walsh, one of the money man’s rare forays into the social scene. There was always beer at the clubhouse, but sometimes it was nice to unplug and go somewhere different. Most of the Dogs haunted the Bell Bar. They were always welcome.
Walsh sat sideways in his chair, facing…God knew what…and sipped his beer, a mostly silent drinking buddy. Which was fine by Mercy, considering he was still disturbingly pissed off about what he’d seen earlier.
“So the pills,” Mercy said, just to have something to say. “What do you make of that?”
Ratchet’s cousin Jesse had said that, best he could tell based on the tests he’d run, they contained a blend of Ecstasy, two prescription drugs – one for epilepsy, one for bipolar disorder – and arsenic. That was all that he knew of. There were traces of other things, he’d said, that he couldn’t identify yet. Basically, a big poison cocktail. And it hadn’t been, as he explained, cheap to put together. The scripts had been expensive – that, or stolen.
Walsh quirked an eyebrow. “I think we’ve got a major problem on our hands,” he said in a flat voice. “What else is new?”
Their waitress – cute, busty blonde thing in white top and blue shorts – sashayed up to their table with an easy smile. “You boys doing okay?”
Her lean-and-squeeze move was practiced and subtle, plumping her breasts just the right amount and drawing Mercy’s eyes.
He let himself entertain the notion a second: smile back, toss her a compliment, wait for the wink, for the hand on his knee. Meet her out back in a few, press her up against the wall, shove his hand inside her halter top, get a gasp out of her. Ask her back to his place. Fuck her until she begged for seconds. She wouldn’t cry, wouldn’t be hurt, wouldn’t love him and cloud his mind and complicate his life.
Instead, he said, “Yeah. In fact, you can bring my check, sweetheart, and I’ll settle up.”
There was a small twitch of disappointment in her smile. “Okay. Be right back.”
Walsh didn’t question his leaving. Outside, a rain storm was settling in, the first misty sweeps brushing down toward the pavement, little cold flecks against his skin as he walked to his bike.
By the time he got home, it was full-on raining, silver flashes in the Dyna’s headlamp. He pulled his hood up and climbed the stairs to his apartment two at a time.
He loved his place. It wasn’t much, but it was his, and it held a certain charm. It was a set of rooms above a bakery on Market Street, with a view of Market Square’s quirky alley lineup of shops. It had original hardwoods, rough and in need of new varnish in spots, with heavy natural wood-tone crown molding and baseboards, and a kitchen from the fifties that had been maintained, and never updated. The main room was his living area: old bachelor sofas, floor lamps, TV more modest than most single dudes owned, low built-in shelves full of paperbacks under the window, rope rug, cozy threadbare chair with an ottoman. The kitchen was cramped and narrow, with a table for two pressed against one wall that usually just held his spare magazines. The bathroom – claw foot tub, medicine cabinet, subway tile – was wedged between the living room and the bedroom. His bedroom – barely wide enough for the double bed – was nothing but a closet, a nightstand, ceiling fan, and a gun safe.
He’d left a lamp on, and when he ducked in from the downpour, he stepped into a warm puddle of lamplight, the homey smell of the fresh-baked bread from the bakery below reminding him he’d skipped dinner. He probably had some bacon in the fridge, some tomatoes, brown mustard, that half loaf of ciabatta he’d bought downstairs two days ago. He could make a sandwich –
There was a knock at the door.
Through the peephole, he saw a slight, female shape, hooded against the rain.
He didn’t wonder who it was. His chest tightened and he fought down the leftover sour feelings from the nursery before, opening the door and ushering her in with one quick gesture. He knew it was Ava, but the scent of her pushed the point home. Linen, gardenias, cherries, clean dirt leftover on her shoes: oh yeah, that was his Ava.
As he closed and locked the door – it was tempting to shove her back out before he did so – he gathered his internal tension in-hand and said, “I think you took a wrong turn on your way home.”
There was amusement threaded through her voice, a sound he hadn’t expected to hear. “Oh, we’re gonna play that game?”
He turned – and stopped short.
She’d pushed her hood back, and under the sweatshirt and leather jacket, she wore a plain white tank top with a visible black bra beneath. Jeans – familiar, worn, hugging her in a comfortable way that wasn’t trying too hard. Her black Durango boots with the spur straps. It wasn’t anything special, wasn’t stockings and garter belt, was the sort of thing she wore all the time. But her hair was down and there was rain all in it, shimmering in the light. Her makeup was delicate, pretty. A thin wedge of shadow slid down into her shirt, between the curves of her breasts. There was something so very green and untried about the way she cocked her hips and stuck her hands in her back pockets.
“Game?”
Her smile was shy, but there was bravery in her eyes, a twinkle that made her look so young. “I saw you today, at Green Hills. I saw you see me and walk away.”
Mercy folded his arms and leaned back against the door. “So?”
Ava took a step forward, slowly, hips rolling a little in a way that told him she hadn’t meant to, those long legs just put the rest of her body to work, was all. “Well,” she considered the floor as she took another step, closing in on him, “I was worried I’d be the one who couldn’t keep her cool, after” – fast, direct moment of piercing eye contact, and his mental image of young vanished – “yesterday. But then” – slow smile – “you walked away.”
Another shrug. “So? That’s what people do. They walk places.”
“I think” – and there was the bravery again, because he could see she wasn’t at all sure about this – “you saw me with Carter and you got…jealous.”
He snorted. “Me? Jealous of that stupid kid? Ah, sweetheart–”
“Yes or no, you didn’t like him talking to me,” she said, her gaze sparkling up at him. Behind her, rain poured down the window, glimmering with golden streetlamp light.
He scowled. “I don’t like teenage boys. They’re only after one thing.”
A victorious smile set her face aglow. “That wouldn’t happen to be the thing you’re after, is it?”
“I’m not after – oh, Jesus Christ.” He caught her around the waist and dragged her the rest of the way to him. He couldn’t help it. Her gasp was breathy and aroused and delighted right before he ducked his head and captured her glossy mouth in a kiss.
Sin, Mercy reflected, came packaged according to severity, to color, to regret. There were those deep, red sins, all bloody and irretrievable, tasting of murder and betrayal, a hint of the satanic on the back of the tongue, tickling the throat with fire. His usual brand of sin, if he was honest.
Then there were the sinuous curves and loops of silvered, uncertain sin; the kind whose consequences were a dim shadow against the bright backdrop of the here-and-now. The kind with slow-eating jaws. A malignant sickness of a sin.
That’s what he was doing here. That was Ava offering her mouth to him and leaning into his touch while the rain sealed them into the warm lamplight and cut off the world of reprimands. He was warping her, as he sat down in the chair and pulled her down into his lap, felt all her warm places settle over him; felt her slender hands on his face as she opened her jaw and welcomed the pressure of his tongue. He was burning scars into her that she wouldn’t even notice until they were vivid and visible to the whole world.
But he didn’t stop. Because he couldn’t.
He watched, fascinated, as she pushed back, a hand on his chest, and stared up at him through the black fans of her lashes. Her hand moved, trailing down across his stomach, pausing as his abs leapt beneath it, then lower, as Ava slid from his knee with the grace of some fairytale creature and settled on the rug between his legs. Her fingernails ticking against his belt buckle was the most stimulating sound in his memory.
Some of her bravery ebbed, replaced with a wide-eyed, parted-lip pleading.
“Ava, what are you doing, baby?”
Her fingers at the button, at the zipper. That look again, half-hypnotized, full of warm longing. Raindrops in her hair.
“You’ll have to tell me what you like,” she said, cheeks pinking. “ ‘Cause I’m new at this.”
He cupped her face in one large, careful hand. “Yeah? Okay.” He smoothed his thumb across her cheek, felt the heat in it. “Just go slow, darlin’, and you’ll be alright.”
I’m here. I’ll check in later, read Ava’s text time-stamped fifteen minutes before. Maggie frowned at her phone and laid it alongside her plate, reaching for her fork. Her mother-Spidey-senses were all a-tinlge, but she had no proof. Nothing but suspicion and a better understanding of her daughter than she sometimes wished for.
She twirled spaghetti onto her fork and told her intuition to shut up. That didn’t make her a bad mother, did it?
“Where’s Ava?” Ghost asked as he came into the kitchen, damp and soap-smelling from the shower, his hair curling above his ears with little water droplets.
Maggie took a moment to appreciate the way her man looked in his old Allman Brothers t-shirt, then glanced back at her plate and said, “Spending the night with Leah. She just texted me that she got there okay.”
“Isn’t she supposed to be sulking around, feeling punished?” He sat in front of his plate and reached for the parm.
“She needs a pick-me-up. And it’s not like her grades will suffer for it.”
He made a sound of agreement. Then: “That kid she’s tutoring, he’s been by twice looking for her.” He snorted. “Little shit’s got it bad for her, I think.”
“Carter,” Maggie supplied the name. “He’s a sweet kid.”
“He’s not the kind of boy she needs to be dating. Thank God she’s not interested in that kinda thing yet.” His little smirk across the table said, Not like you, huh?
Maggie forced a smile. Oh, baby, if only you knew.
“Wait. Just wait, baby, wait.”
Ava gasped, again and again; she couldn’t catch her breath. She dug her nails into Mercy’s biceps and the light from the floor lamp filled her eyes, gilded his naked shape above her, glimmered on his tats, burned obsidian in his eyes. The pain: not as bad as before, but still breathtaking, the pressure, the invasion, still so intimate and overwhelming.
Mercy’s cock, deep inside; her body, struggling to accommodate.
Her legs around his waist, the shifting of his abs and back caressing the soft insides of her thighs. Her nipples, hard and damp from his mouth. The salty taste of him, lingering at the back of her tongue.
“Wait,” he whispered, kissing her throat, holding so still, so sweetly still for her.
She finally pulled in a breath, and she felt it shiver through her, felt her muscles start to relax.
Slowly.
Slowly.
The pain started to become something else, some other sensation, something…
“Merc.” She lifted her spine, experimentally. Something, yeah – oh, it was something…
She felt him grinning into her neck. “Better?”
“Yes. I…yes.”
The movement started in his hips, a slow nudge, and it rolled up his back, all his muscles trembling above her with restraint. Another. Then another. Shallow, easy thrusts. Giving her time, stretching her.
She didn’t know when she started to feel it, when it became something she needed, desperately, but she realized her hands were clutching at his shoulders and her hips were lifting and she wanted more of him.
His body responded; he’d been waiting for that small cue from her. There was nothing shallow or easy about his next thrust, and it pushed her back to the cushions, reached inside her and pressed against secret places she hadn’t known existed.
“Yes,” she said again, so he’d know she was okay, that it was good.
He surged against her again, a full-body coiling and flexing of his spine, his staggering strength focused solely on the act of mating with her.
Mercy caught her arms in his hands and lifted them up over her head, pinned her wrists against the couch cushion, his grip gentle, the weight of his arms like fence posts holding her fast.
The sounds: his breathing and hers, the creak of the couch frame, the slide of skin against skin. The sight of his dark head ducking over her breasts so he could take her nipple into his mouth. And the relentless thrusting, the deep plunging.
She felt so thoroughly invaded, worked, used, taken, ravished…there weren’t words, even in her writer’s mind, for the way the fire ignited and swept over her. The way she thought she might snap in half.
She strained against him as she came, as the fireworks bloomed to life against her eyelids.
**
His bed wasn’t big enough for two, not with him in it. But she loved that, the way they were glued together under the sheets, their legs tangled, their heads on the same pillow so she almost went cross-eyed if she stared too hard at the tip of his nose. They’d left the door open – he had, after he’d swung her up in his arms and carried her in here – and left the lights off, the glow from the living room giving them just enough to see the vague outlines of each other.
Ava took immeasurable delight in the quiet intimacy of being exhausted and naked, being able to pass her hands across his bare skin. Which she kept doing; she traced her name across his chest with a fingertip, over and over, pretending she was marking him, a warning to other women.
His voice was sleepy. “Are the cops about to be at my door? Or worse, your old man?”
“No.” She tried to stifle a yawn and failed. “I told Mom I was spending the night with Leah.”
“Jesus,” he muttered, without any real feeling behind it. “I never fucked a chick who needed a signed permission slip from Mommy before.”
He was laughing before she found his nipple and gave it a hard tweak.
“Stop trying to make it creepy,” she said. “It’s not creepy; you know it’s not.”
He groaned and threw an arm across her, dragged her over so she was half-pinned beneath him and held her there with one heavy leg hooked between her knees. “Just go to sleep, Homecoming Queen, ‘fore I start getting creepy ideas again.”
She giggled, tired, but giddy off the taste of his skin where her face was tucked against his arm. “Tell me a story,” she said, not embarrassed that it was something she’d been saying to him since she was eight.
He took a deep breath – got caught a second on the old words, the memory of her as just a baby – then exhaled, ruffling her hair. “Did I ever tell you the one about Big Son?”
He had. “No,” she said, kissing the hard swell of his bicep. “How does it go?”
He put on his storyteller’s voice, that faraway stamp of memory coloring his tale. “There was this gator – big son of a bitch, half of one front leg missing. Daddy had this Ahab thing for him, wanted to be the one to bring him in; wanted his name on the tag…”
Diving into the swamp with him like this brought up the same old questions; she wanted to pick at the scab, pry up the boards and find out what dark thing had happened that made him hate Louisiana. She always asked, and he always dodged her and sent her off on another topic before she realized what he was doing.
Tell me this time, she asked silently. Tell me about the bad thing now, now that we’re all stripped down and you’ve been inside me.
But she was so tired, and the deep rumble of his voice was so soothing. Later, she assured herself. She’d ask later.
“Now, Daddy never caught him, no,” Mercy said, his voice a lullaby. His accent thickened when he told swamp stories, the Cajun flavor shoveled on in spades. “No one did. But the story went that Big Son was like a pet gator, and he mighta been too smart to take a bait, but he’d eat right out of your hand if you fed him. There was this spot, this shady place in one of the glades, and a deep pool, and you could find Son there, if you’d a mind to feed him. He’d come up if you called him. Three rocks in the water, one after the next. It had to be three. The first one – that coulda been a fish jumping, a frog diving in. The second – after the second, Son would start listening. He’d think about coming up. And after the third, there he was. ‘Come get it, you big son of a bitch,’ and he’d swim right up to you. I heard murderers fed bodies to him, so no one would ever know…”