Chapter 13
Dalton
My father’s assistant arrived in front of the building at eight o’clock in the evening since I had arranged for him to check in on me earlier than originally planned so that I could take Brittany out tonight. He had reluctantly agreed, obviously not pleased that I had rescheduled. I made up an excuse about going to a support group for managing anger—a bold-faced lie I hoped my father’s assistant wouldn’t double check the validity of. After answering a gamut of questions the assistant had for me, I left him parked outside to go in and prepare for my date with Brittany.
When it got closer to the time that I told Brittany to meet me, I peeked out the window to make sure that my father’s assistant had left and didn’t catch me leaving with Brittany on my arm. My heart sank as I spotted him still waiting outside of the building, presumably to take note of which direction I left for the meeting I had fibbed about.
Thinking quickly, I jogged outside after making sure Brittany was not in the hall yet and pretended as if I was leaving the building in sight of my father’s assistant, waving as I went to be positive he had seen me. I walked a couple blocks until I felt positive I’d given him enough time to confirm that I had left and he himself had gone on his way. As I snuck back to the apartment, I saw that the car still sat in full view of the entryway doors. That was not good.
I checked my watch, noting to myself that I had five minutes before Brittany expected me at her door, and I sprinted back the way I had come so that I could double back to the other side of the apartment building without being seen by my father’s assistant. I reached the black door which opened up to the apartment courtyard as an access point for tenants needing to deposit their trash in the outside bin. I knew where all the cameras were pointed, and I also knew there was a window to the gym that was in the blind spot of two cameras. A few days ago, I had ordered another camera to fix the hole in security, and I silently thanked my luck that it hadn’t arrived yet.
I was also lucky that one of the tenants who was always in the gym when I was exercising had opted to partake in a solitary workout today, as the gym was empty except for her. I lightly tapped on the glass and, with some awkward fibbing about testing the security, managed to convince her to unlock the window allowing me to crawl through. I bent down on my way through the courtyard to avoid the prying eyes of the cameras and picked a rose and some lavender I had been caring for.
When I got to Brittany’s door, I realized I had to scheme some way to get back out the building without being seen by my father’s assistant, the security cameras, and also without drawing Brittany’s attention to the fact that I was using one of the windows as a door. I lightly knocked and held my makeshift bouquet at my side. When she opened the door, her own lavender scent reached out to caress my face as I drank in the sight of her. She had on a beautiful gown. The thin straps held snug over her collar bone and came down near the top crest of her breasts where the neckline started and clung tightly to the peak of her curves as if it could slip off at any moment. The tightness of the fabric went down to just below her breasts, where the dress boasted a hole in the fabric to show off her belly button. The rest of the dress hung down to her ankles in ruffles, its burnt orange color seemingly ablaze as it loosely danced from the breeze she caused coming to the door.
“You look absolutely breathtaking,” I managed to say, holding out the flowers I had picked for her.
Her face had lit up bright the minute she had opened the door, and now that she was holding the flowers I had given her, it flushed into a deep shade of crimson. “Did you grow these?”
“I may have encouraged them along,” I said, not wanting to relinquish the fact that I had planted them with her in mind a few days after she first moved in.
She brought the flowers inside of her apartment to deposit them into a vase.
Seeing an opportunity, albeit a small one, I leaned into her apartment and called out to her. “I have to take a maintenance call really quick, meet me outside in the back of the building?”
Before she could answer, I sprinted back to the gym and leaped out the unlocked window, shutting it behind me. Making sure I was out of sight from the security cameras, I walked to the other side of the street and brought out my phone to complete the charade.
Brittany soon met me outside. She seemed a bit confused, but she didn’t press me on the matter as I pretended to hang up the phone as she approached me. She had put on a jacket that also only fell to the top of her belly button, and I could hear the tap of her high heels as she stepped with confidence against the sidewalk. Ashamed I had lied to her, I vowed to myself that I would eventually confess to her my lie, and all my other secrets with it.
“Do we need to fix someone’s refrigerator before we leave, Mister Manager?” Brittany moved a strand of her blond hair away from where it had gotten caught against her eyelashes.
“Mister Manager is now officially off-duty,” I said, visibly turning my phone off.
She grinned mischievously, deciding to do the same. Then she reached out her arm for me to link with, and I walked her down to a local mead shop. I offered to buy her drink for her, and she refused at first but eventually let me pay for both our glasses of mead. I couldn’t afford much else after that so instead of getting a second, we ordered some food and found a secluded table in the corner as a local guitarist and singer crooned to us from a stage.
Not once during the entire date did my mind drift to the stress of my work at the apartment building or my father, and not once did my inner shadow bubble up to derail me. Brittany didn’t make me feel like my father did, or any of the other tenants, or really anyone for that matter. She didn’t make me feel broken, as if I was a sick dog in need of rehabilitation. Even the man in the mirror made me feel like a sky bird trapped in a fish world. Not Brittany. As we laughed together and teased each other, shared our stress and opened up about what kept us awake at night, I felt as if she already knew my dark secrets and that we had been partners in crime since day one. I felt comfortable in my own skin around her, as if my ugly scars had been washed away under her knowing, familiar gaze.
“I haven’t felt this free in a long time,” she said to me as we walked down a sidewalk in the international district. We each had an ice cream in one hand and linked our free hands together.
“A very long time,” I agreed.
She gave my fingers a squeeze, the heat and pressure from her hand igniting something in me. We finished our ice cream cones and turned a corner to enter a park on the way back home, and almost ran into a group of graffiti artists decorating the sidewalk. This particular group of artists were rendering a large piece of art with gold colors that reflected the lamps keeping the park company at night.
“That is my favorite painting,” Brittany whispered. It was a painting I knew of, also, one of the few I could actually name by its title. It had been the favorite of a woman I used to love a long time ago. It was called The Kiss.
“Mine, too,” I decided in that moment. I looked over at Brittany to catch her reaction and found her looking up at me. Her eyes were wide, almost as if she was both deathly afraid and extremely happy at the same time. Her expression slammed against my heart with a ferocity I didn’t expect.
My breath came faster. We had still been holding hands, but I let her fingers slowly slip out of mine as I brought up my arms to take her face in my palms. I started to lean in without intending to; my body acted of its own accord.
As I leaned in, her eyes closed and she lifted her chin upwards in anticipation. Her mouth hung slightly open, and she nervously wet her lips with her tongue. I closed my eyes as I got close enough to feel her hot breath against my lips, remaining for a moment in the electricity caused by being so close and yet not quite touching.
I held there for quite some time, the sound of spray cans hissing next to us as our lips brushed against each other. When the tension was too much for me to stand, I covered the final distance her lips and inhaled sharply as blood rushed through my entire body. I couldn’t help but lightly bite her lower lip as she brought her hands to my lower back and let them drift to the top of my ass. We stood there, our lips locked, and I forgot everything else, everything except for her.
When it was over, I opened my eyes and for an instant was transported to my past. Brittany resembled somebody I used to know, another woman who was able to break through the walls I’d surrounded myself with. But this woman who Brittany reminded me of was someone lost to the past, someone from a time when I was a completely different person. I placed those thoughts out of my mind and once again saw Brittany without comparing her to anyone else.
She opened her eyes and smiled up at me before resting her head against my chest and squeezing me gently. I wanted to enjoy this moment without marring it by being reminded of another woman, the only other woman I had ever fallen for, but the fact that this whole thing felt familiar and that Brittany had uncanny similarities to this woman from the dark times in my past was a red flag for me.
I shook off the feeling of alarm bells in my head. The date had been perfect and Brittany had made me feel free and like myself again, so I attempted to ignore my trepidation. Yet, it wouldn’t dissipate completely no matter how hard I tried.
“You’re trouble, you know that?” Brittany said to me.
“You’re telling me.” We walked hand in hand back to the apartment building, an odd mix of giddiness and worry swimming inside of me.
Instead of my father’s assistant, Tommy O’Denill sat in his car outside the building when Brittany and I got back home. I flashed him a look as if to say, “Wait here, I’ll be back.”
Sweat broke on my forehead. I walked Brittany up the steps inside the building and to her door, trying to block her view of Tommy and vice versa with my body as I walked beside her.
At her door, she squeezed my hand one last time before letting go and opening her door. She turned around once she was inside and looked up at me, waiting for me to say goodnight or ask to be invited in as she removed her high heels in front of me.
“I had a really good time tonight, I would love to do this again, soon,” I said.
“You know where to find me.”
We smiled at each other, and with a wink she coyly closed her door. I stood there, hesitating for a moment and debating knocking on her door again, ripping her dress off her body, and pressing her up against the wall for another maddening kiss to keep me drunk on her energy.
I didn’t, and instead I went back out to deal with Tommy.
“I want out,” I told him once inside his car. I had joined this gang a while ago, a gang specifically intent on the protection of those who could not protect themselves. It was a group of vigilantes who took it upon themselves to intimidate violent people into cleaning up their act. Lately, though, the gang had been taken over by a younger member, Tribado, and the gang went from mild intimidation to outright torture. We were quickly turning into a group that took part in the very acts we had sworn to prevent. It was no longer something I wanted to be a part of.
“Good joke, kid.” He handed me an envelope. “This one is gonna replace the last one I gave ya, some last-minute changes to the job before tomorrow.”
“I’m serious, I don’t want to do this anymore. I only joined because you guys seemed to make a difference when the cops couldn’t, but you’ve evolved into something dark.” Now that Tommy had seen Brittany, I had to destroy all ties I had to this particular secret of mine. I was putting Brittany in danger, and I was no better than the man who had murdered Brittany’s sister. I was also no better than that man I knew once, long ago, named James Krall. James had been the kerosene on the fire of my rage, the sole reason I joined the ‘protection’ gang to begin with. He’d murdered his girlfriend, a woman I was in love with, and in trying to eradicate evil like his from this world, I had inherited and perpetuated my own evil. “I’m done with this whole hypocritical endeavor.”
Tommy let out a fake laugh, loud and hard. “Boss respected your decision to take on less jobs, he respected your space by giving your apartment building a wide berth, but this is asking too much, Jones.” He leaned over and opened my passenger side door for me. “I’ll see you tomorrow, whether it’s because you’re coming with us as lookout while we tune up a domestic abuser or if I’m coming by to let Tribado pay you and your lover a visit in your gilded nest.”
“You leave Brittany out of this,” I spat.
“Okay, tough guy, then take the envelope.” He practically pushed me out of the car and sped off, his tires peeling loudly. I crunched the envelope up in my hand, knowing I had to obey or risk Brittany’s safety.
I went inside and locked up for the night, removing my shirt for a shower before bed. The name tattooed on my chest burned as I stared at it in the mirror, forcing myself to remember the face of James Krall and how he took the owner of this name on my chest from the world and prohibited me from ever hearing her respond when I spoke her name out loud.
“I’ll protect Brittany like I couldn’t protect you, Talia,” I whispered to myself while clutching Talia’s name on my chest.