CHAPTER 22
Kyle
I pull a small cooler from the back of my truck, keeping half an eye on Jane as she spreads out a navy-blue blanket on the grass. She’d suggested a drive over to Acadia again. When I picked her up, she surprised me by coming out of her house with a picnic basket. She announced as she jumped in the truck that we’d have to stop for some drinks, and so we graced a rundown-looking mini mart before we hit the ferry and purchased a cheap Styrofoam cooler, a small bag of ice, and a six-pack of Coke.
Here I am, a man in hiding, having spent the past several years selling my soul to the devil, getting ready to sit down with the sweetest, sexiest woman I’ve ever known to have a motherfucking picnic.
I feel like I’m in the Twilight Zone.
It’s felt like that for the past two weeks since Jane and I have been regularly seeing each other. And by seeing each other, I mean there’s been a whole lot of orgasms dished out, intermixed with what you could call “dates,” I guess. That included going on a double date to dinner with Miranda and some dude she’s banging, but it’s totally not serious. It also included a trip to the county fair where Jane screamed and dug her nails in my leg during every ride, except for the Ferris wheel, where we made out like teenagers at the top. We then gorged ourselves on corn dogs, cotton candy, and elephant ears until my stomach hurt so bad I didn’t think I’d be able to fuck her that night.
I did, however, persevere.
Jane also convinced me to go to dinner at her parents’ house one night. This was something I internally balked at, as I genuinely liked Jane’s mom, Meredith, and didn’t want to string her along by letting her think this was something lasting with her daughter. I had a hard time sitting at a woman’s table, eating her food and knowing I was probably going to hurt her daughter in the long run.
Didn’t matter that her daughter knew that going into this and had agreed to it; it still made me feel bad. I only agreed because Jane sensed my reluctance before I could even accept the invitation, and she quickly backpedaled. I saw the clear disappointment and sadness in her eyes that I couldn’t give her this little bit of normalcy in this crazy relationship we had, and even as she was saying, “Never mind I asked. I’ll come up with a good excuse for my parents,” I was saying, “Of course, I’d be glad to go.”
Turns out, it was nice and her parents are great, but it only served to remind me how different my world is from Jane’s. She adores her parents and has a natural and easy relationship with them. I can’t imagine how that might be affected if they knew what was really going on between their daughter and me.
I carry the cooler over to the blanket. After setting it down on a corner so it’s not lifted by the breeze, I take a seat on one side as Jane removes items from her basket.
“I made some fried chicken and potato salad,” she says as she pulls out some paper plates. “And I was going to make some cookies but decided to buy them instead at the bakery. No sense in ruining this outing for us.”
Chuckling, I take a plate from Jane and put a piece of chicken onto it. It smells phenomenal. There’s something about the fact that Jane made it that makes me believe it will be the best chicken I’ve ever had. Today will no doubt go down as one of the best days ever, which I seem to think a lot when I’m around this woman.
As Jane dishes me some potato salad, I take a bite of the chicken and groan. Her eyes snap to me.
“That’s fucking amazing,” I mumble around my food before chewing.
She ducks her head almost shyly, which is not like Jane, but I’ve come to find out that she actually doesn’t take a compliment very well. She’s almost embarrassed when I do. I find that charming and sad at the same time. I suspect that’s because she’s not had a lot of genuine accolades from men before, which is totally odd given how amazing she is. Also odd is the fact that I hand out compliments to her. Never been that kind of dude, but she brings it out of me and I can’t fucking help myself.
“Miranda’s thinking about dumping Jim,” Jane says off-handedly before licking a bit of potato salad off her thumb.
“The guy who went to dinner with us a few nights ago?” I ask, then take another bite of chicken.
Jane nods as she selects a drumstick from the container of fried, spicy goodness.
“Thought his name was Tom,” I say after I swallow and put my chicken down on the plate. I reach over into the cooler to pull out two Cokes, popping the top on one before handing it to Jane.
“Was it?” she asks as she accepts the Coke and takes sip.
“Yeah,” I tell her, and then try a bite of potato salad. “And damn… that’s amazing too.”
“The secret is to add a little poultry seasoning in it,” she says with a nod down to the container before looking back to me. “Tom, Jim… whatever. The point is she wants to dump him.”
“Didn’t care for the guy anyway,” I say as I continue to eat. “And I could totally tell he wasn’t Miranda’s type.”
Which also seems to say something about how I’ve integrated into Jane’s life since I’ve even gotten to know her best friend quite well. I’ve been around her enough to know that she needs a good guy with a strong hand who won’t take her bullshit. Apparently, though, she either gravitates to assholes with low self-esteem or wimps who like to kiss her ass.
Jane snickers. “He so was not Miranda’s type. And that thing he did with his nose…”
“That snuffling noise whenever he finished a sentence?”
“What was that?” She laughs.
“No fucking clue, but it was driving me batty,” I commiserate.
“Oh, my God,” Jane says as she continues to laugh. “Can you imagine them in bed together? ‘Oh baby, that feels so good.’ Then that god-awful snuffling sound.”
I watch, chicken poised halfway to my mouth, as Jane laughs with abandon. With such radiance. Green eyes shimmering whimsically. Completely in the moment… with me… sharing something that we both found funny as hell.
Sharing something with me that I don’t remember having in forever and a day.
I drop the chicken to the paper plate and reach across the expanse of the blanket. I lean toward Jane at the same time I cup the back of her head to pull her toward me, and I lay a swift but soft kiss on her mouth before I release her.
Her eyes are wide with surprise when I pull back, because I’m not the most spontaneously affectionate person.
“That was different,” she says.
“It was?” I ask, feigning ignorance.
She nods. “You usually only kiss me when you… well, you know… you want sex.”
That would be true. I love kissing Jane, which leads to fucking ten times out of ten.
But that wasn’t my intent just now. Hell, I’m not even sure what my intent was, but I was filled up with a gloriously warm, euphoric feeling that was due solely to the woman sitting across from me and, before I knew it, I was giving her a kiss.
I try to play it off though. Looking around at the picnic area, I casually say, “Who says I don’t want to have sex here?”
Jane rolls her eyes at me, and I grin. Crazy how easy my smiles have been coming the last few weeks.
Like this picnic.
I couldn’t imagine doing something like this… all normal and romantic. It’s a completely foreign concept, and yet I’m drawn even stronger to these things with Jane. My curiosity about this laid-back, normal way of life is stirring, and perhaps I’m even remembering a bit how to live this way.
It’s hard to describe to anyone what it meant for me to go undercover with Mayhem’s Mission. Hell, it’s even hard for me to understand it at times. But in order to do it, I had to let go of every bit of my humanity, and I had to embrace a life bankrupt of any morals, decency, or kindness. My Mission brothers were a ruthless gang involved in serious criminal enterprise from drugs and illegal guns to sex slavery. And that was only the tip of the iceberg. It was the “business” part of what they did.
But there was another part.
A darker part.
It was where I had to convince them that I was cut from the same cloth. I had to do terrible things to people that, without the immunity the government has provided me, would land me in jail for the rest of my life. I have so much blood on my hands that it won’t ever come off.
So yeah… I get why she was surprised by this little act of affection on my part. Given my past, I’m just as surprised.
But goddamn… she is crawling under my skin, invading my senses, and turning me inside out. She makes me laugh, which is a practically unheard of accomplishment. She’s witty and funny and full of personality. Jane is a force of nature that has the strength of a hurricane, and fuck if she didn’t roll right over me.
Hell… even sex with Jane is fun. I’d thought she might be a little shy or reserved, but she’s not. She’s an incredibly sensual woman who perhaps needed just a little encouragement to explore more of that side of herself. Once she understood that I found it incredibly erotic for her to be vocal about what she wanted, the sex became even better.
Not to say she couldn’t throw me off my game every now and then.
Just last night, I thought I’d nearly have a heart attack when Jane demanded I fuck her from behind. I think I actually missed a stroke, but I quickly had her flipped over before I plunged back in. It was then that I realized we were facing the large mirror on her dresser and Jane was watching us with dark, lust-filled eyes as I rode her hard. It made my balls tighten and the need to come was almost painful. My hand pushed into her long hair and I gripped it hard, and that got her attention. Her glazed eyes slid to look at me in the mirror, and we held each other’s gaze for just a brief moment. Then her lips curled upward and a mischievous glint sparkled back at me. She then turned to look back at herself, and, in an imperious voice—while I was still fucking her hard—she said, “Magic mirror on the wall, who is the fairest one of all?”
I came to a dead stop rooted deep within her, and her eyes slowly raised to focus back on me.
She grinned at me and panted, “Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, 1937. Now get back to business, baby.”
And I couldn’t help it. I fucking threw my head back and busted out laughing. I laughed so hard that I collapsed on top of Jane, and then rolled us to our sides. Jane laughed with me as I wrapped my arms around her tight, that orgasm I was so close to completely forgotten—although, admittedly, I was still hard as a rock.
We started talking about movies.
Just like that, I went from fucking Jane to leaving orgasm city behind and talking about movies.
I was fine with that because it was real, and it was Jane, and just having that with her appealed to me on a level I didn’t realize I needed.
♦
The ringing phone startles me awake. For a brief moment, I’m disoriented. Then my eyes land on the mantle with Jane’s painting above it, and my heart immediately settles. I sit up quickly from the rust-colored couch where I’d been laying down and immediately grab the burner phone from the oval-shaped coffee table.
“What’s up?” I answer when I connect to Joe on the line. I stand up from the couch and walk to the front windows, peering through the blinds toward Jane’s house. It’s completely dark, but I’m not surprised. She was having a “girls” night out with Miranda, which, according to Jane, meant that she had to make sure Miranda didn’t get into too much trouble.
I’m hoping Jane will come over here after she gets home.
“I’ve got some bad news,” Joe says, and my body tightens over the ominous tone of his voice.
Pulling back from the window, I open the front door and walk out onto the porch. I sit down on the top step and stare at Jane’s house. “What is it?”
“One of our servers has been infiltrated. The tech team just found the breach, and they were able to shut it down fairly quickly.” Joe’s voice trails off slightly.
“But…” I prompt Joe, because I can tell he’s walked me up to the cliff.
“Your information was in there. New name and current address. It doesn’t look like that information was compromised, but we can’t rule it out just yet.”
“Fuck,” I bark into the phone and run my hand over the stubble on my head. “Why the fuck was that in there?”
“Come on, Kyle,” Joe chastises. “You know we have to have accountability somewhere. It takes funds to set up this type of thing, and we have to answer for that. But Camden has his top techs working on it right now.”
Bart Camden is Joe’s boss—and technically mine, for that matter, since Joe and I were effectively partnered up the last several years.
“There is some good news though,” Joe adds on. I let my eyes drift from Jane’s darkened house over to Front Street where her parents live a few blocks down. Such normal people who have no clue about me.
“What’s that?” I ask.
“A few of the Mission higher-ups have reached out to the prosecutor about cutting some deals,” Joe says, and this causes me to sit up a bit straighter. This is surprising because there’s a code among the members of Mayhem’s Mission. You never rat out your brothers, but if you do, be prepared to die for that action.
This is good news indeed. It means convictions will be easier to secure. It could mean a domino effect with the rest of the defendants who were indicted, and perhaps this will go away faster.
“Do I have anything to worry about at this point?” I ask as my eyes cut back to Jane’s house. I don’t care about myself, but if someone’s coming for me, I am not going to put her in danger. I’ll pack my shit up tonight and hightail it out of town.
“We believe you’re good for now,” Joe says. “Like I said… it doesn’t look like your information was compromised, but I wanted to let you know because nothing’s ever one hundred percent. If you want to relocate, we’ll make it happen.”
My gut twists, not knowing if I’m making the right decision. I’m hoping to fuck the feds have my back because part of this decision is for my own needs. “I’ll stay for now. But if you find out that the breach went as far as my information, you let me know immediately.”
“Will do, buddy,” he assures me. “Talk later.”
“Later,” I say before disconnecting the call.