Felice
Untangling herself from Pierce’s arms, Felice looked down on the beautiful man who had become so important to her. How, in such a short period of time, had he become such an integral part of her life? He was sprawled out on the bed like a cat, his muscled chest rising and falling with a slow and steady rhythm.
“I wish I could sleep that soundly.” But there was little sleep in her future; every time she’d actually managed to close her eyes and drift off, horrifying nightmares of a disaster at the Gala would drag her back out of sleep, dripping wet with sweat and shivering. Although she didn’t have to be up for another hour, Felice decided to give up on sleep and get up.
To keep from waking Pierce, she showered in the guest bathroom, got dressed quickly and headed downstairs. She meditated, did a short, relaxing round of easy yoga, straightened her hair, painted her nails… All the things that usually relaxed her. But nothing seemed like it was working today. She had this horrible feeling that someone was going to ruin her day, and there was not a single thing she could do to salvage it.
Trying to shake the feeling, she started a pot of coffee. The scent and being surrounded by her perfect white kitchen instantly made her feel better, but only a tiny bit.
“Maybe I just need a bit of mind-numbing TV.” She surfed through the half a million channels she had, trying to find something relaxing. She settled after a few minutes on the cooking channel and checked her phone. Her Reddit board, /r/FeliceDom, was silent. There was apparently no crazy news out there focused on her. The house was safe, the security system still in working order. Nothing was missing and no crazy messages were waiting for her on the phone. All those things should have put her at ease, but none of it did.
Frustrated, Felice flipped a few more channels, hoping to clear her head. But instead, a face she saw on the news stopped her cold. A cold-looking stranger stared at her from the TV, wearing Pierce’s face. It looked like a mugshot, only the man on the TV looked evil.
A monotone female voice was listing off the information about the case, her pretty face looking rather bored with the facts she listed. “More than a week into the search for biker gang leader Pierce Normandy has come up with no leads and a lot of questions. The murder-suspect was last seen fleeing from the murder scene of one Pedro ‘Snake Eyes’ Gutierrez, a member of a rival gang that Normandy had been having altercations with in the previous weeks…”
But Felice could no longer hear. “But Pierce’s last name is Smith, isn’t it?”
It didn’t matter; the evidence was right in front of her. That was her Pierce, the one who had slept in her bed. She felt frozen, all of the blood in her veins having turned to ice the longer she stared at the beautiful, evil face on the television screen.
Like being caught up in the tide, Felice felt like she was being dragged out to sea. Drowning in a sudden barrage of emotions, she could do nothing but sit on the couch and stare. Even when the news story was over and had moved on to cover an earthquake somewhere far to the east. Felice had a hard time focusing on anything she was saying, and eventually clicked off the TV to get a second of silence.
The house was so quiet that it was oppressive. She couldn’t seem to feel properly, her mind reeling. Suddenly a wave of nausea descended over her, crashing hard against her center. The shattered bits of her heart seemed to click against each other, lighting up the silence with the sound of her chest collapsing in on itself.
The man who had been living in her home, the man who had slept in her bed, and the man who had brought her such immeasurable pleasure, was a gang member and murderer. Feeling cold, then hot, she felt unsafe in her own home for the first time in her entire life. Unable to think of anything else to do, Felice picked up her phone and called the first person she could think of.
“Felice, darling, it’s very early. Is this important?” her mother’s too-calm voice said, obviously unhappy that Felice had woken her.
“I — ” Tears bubbled to the surface of her eyes, cutting off her air for a second. “He lied to me, I — ” It was impossible; the whole world had fallen away and left her bereft and empty. How had her mother not felt the end of the world happen?
“Felice, I need to you take a deep breath and tell me what is wrong, okay?” Her mother sounded more awake now, as though Felice’s panic was caffeine to her bloodstream. “Breathe, Kitten.”
Taking a deep breath in, Felice noticed the world stopped leaning to one side long enough for her to get the words out. “Pierce. He’s not who I thought he is, Mother.”
# # #
Pierce
After Pierce woke and headed downstairs, he was shocked to find a very silent Felice and Dolores at the kitchen table. Both held identical mugs filled with coffee they didn’t drink and identical expressions of calm that had his head reeling. Something bad had happened.
More than anything, Pierce wanted to protect Felice from whatever it was that had put that expression on her face, but he was pretty sure there was nothing he could do. A sick, cold feeling welled up in him as he stared at their too-calm faces.
Tears welled in Felice’s eyes as she watched him walk down the stairs, her whole body quivering with something like fear or rage. Her whole body seemed to move away from him as he entered the room. Her emerald eyes lost their sparkle and looked flat and lifeless. And those cupid’s bow lips that always had a wicked little smile for him were turned down and unmoved by his presence.
Pierce felt hot, then cold, his head spinning as he froze in place. As much as he wanted to go to her and comfort her, he was pretty sure that he was the source of her pain. So he did nothing at all.
“You were on the news this morning, Pierce Normandy,” Dolores said without any preamble. “We saw your pretty face all over the national news.”
Pierce hung his head, feeling like he’d just been punched in the gut. Swallowing, he tried to get his bearing back in a world that was reeling. “Okay. My name is Pierce Normandy, and I was once in a gang.”
Dolores shook her head, setting her mug down on the table with enough force to spill the coffee over the edge of it. She didn’t seem to notice, but Felice did. She stared at the spill, looking like she might cry over it. “I knew that already, boy. I had someone pull up your record. But it features a few stolen property charges and some reckless driving tickets. It didn’t say a fucking thing about murder.”
Pierce opened his mouth, but paused when Felice picked up her head. “You checked Pierce’s background?”
“Yes,” Dolores said, dismissively, waving a hand at her daughter. “But the murder rap was too new to show up properly, wasn’t it, Pierce? Who were you running from?”
He cleared his throat painfully, staring down the Domiano matron with fiery eyes. “Gunner,” he said, the name bringing up all sorts of angry thoughts he fought to keep under control. “He — I watched him kill Snake Eyes. But he wasn’t planning on taking the fall for it. He set me up. So I ran. It was all he wanted; he hasn’t sent any pursuit here, which just means he wanted my turf. So, he has it, and I was supposed to disappear; I have a buddy in California that promised to get me out of the country if I ever needed it.”
There was silence in the room, and Pierce crossed his arms over his chest, standing in a defensive position unconsciously. “I left with the intention of sailing straight through as quickly as possible, but I got held up by a lady who offered me more money that I’d ever had at one time.” Sighing through his nose, he met Dolores’ eyes with his own, both of them unflinching. “But then I spent some time with you daughter and ended up caring for her deeply. I should have left before I hurt you, Felice. I — I’m sorry.”
Dolores was watching him with eyes burning with anger, but as he spoke, her demeanor shifted, changing from anger to something more thoughtful. Staring at him for a long time, Dolores seemed to be searching every inch of his soul for something that Pierce was pretty sure she wouldn’t find. After his life of crime, he was pretty sure he didn’t have a soul anymore. Never in his life had he ever regretted those decisions that lead him to become a criminal until right this very second.
Seeing Felice’s distraught face, he wanted to take every second of it back.
Finally, after an eternity of silence, Dolores finally turned to her daughter, her expression much softer than Pierce had ever seen it. “Felice, darling, I need you to call up that slimy Kenneth Vanderbilt man to give our Pierce ‘Smith’ a believable background story. We need to make him as reputable looking as possible for tonight, and take great pains that all of his tattoos are covered.”
Felice looked up at her mother, her mouth agape. Pierce didn’t notice as he was giving Dolores a very similar expression. Suddenly, Pierce realized what had happened; Dolores saw past all of his bad-guy posturing and down to the core of him.
She knew he was falling hard for Felice, and not a thing in the world could stop it.
Wincing, Pierce realized that she was going to milk that for all it was worth. And in the next second, he realized he didn’t care at all, just so long as it meant he could steal a little more time with Felice.
That was all that mattered.