Mason

 

Back at my apartment, Clara threw on one of my dress shirts and sat outside on the balcony with a glass of whiskey while I climbed into the shower. She insisted I needed to take this one alone. She told me how helpful it had been for her to wash away everything that had just happened alone and said I wouldn’t regret it.

 

She was right. The heat eased my sore muscles and unlocked all the tension in my shoulders and back from fighting with Skull and his goons the night before. It eased some of the tension from having to tell so many people that their friends and loved ones hadn’t made it back.

 

People didn’t seem to mind that their loved ones were involved in criminal organizations when the money was coming in, but as soon as something happened, we became the worst people on the face of the planet. Yes, what we did was dangerous. It was dangerous every day. And it was illegal, so there wasn’t a whole lot we could about it when things went south. We could take revenge, but there was only so much revenge to be had. For twenty of my men, ten of Skull’s men died, including Skull himself.

 

It didn’t seem just, but that was the best ending we could have hoped for. Skull had to die.

 

Shit like that made people step down from their posts. The thought kept occurring to me, which bothered me a lot. I wasn’t about to step down from being the president of Storm’s Angels. The president before me hadn’t been worth mentioning. He had been happy to sell a little dope here and there, trade and sell some guns that had been scrubbed clean, and start as many bar fights as he possibly could. I had turned Storm’s Angels into a legitimate organization, and with Skull’s death, we were about to expand. It was going to be a major expansion in our business to take on what he left behind.

 

I couldn’t walk away from that. The expansion was my responsibility. I had brought us to that point, and I was going to oversee taking us all the way through it.

 

The most stressful aspect of dealing with losses like we had just sustained was having to slow down in the process. I had to take it easy because we’d just faced a major setback while also experiencing a huge gain. If I didn’t proceed carefully, I would lose it all.

 

I calmed my nerves so I could go join the beautiful, sexy woman waiting for me on my balcony. As the last little bit of work left my tired, beaten body, I shut off the shower and listened to the water dripping in the tub.

 

The dripping seemed to cover a profound silence, the dark silence on the side of the interstate in the middle of the night when we’d stopped shooting at each other. That silence seemed to be following me. It wanted to be addressed, but I couldn’t remember anything about it other than the fact that there were places in my memory where it seemed to steal the sound and the voices from me.

 

I tucked it away. I figured it was one of those things I had to handle on my own, alone, like Clara had said, but I wasn’t alone right now. I had a guest to entertain.

 

I grabbed a pair of boxers from my dresser and pulled them on over me before walking into the kitchen to fix my own glass of whiskey. Then, I joined the beautiful Clara Burton on my balcony.

 

It was already the afternoon. The day was moving quickly past us. I sat down with her at the table and looked out over the city with her while we sipped our drinks.

 

“You need to catch up,” she said playfully. “I’m already on my second one.”

 

“Well, I can make that happen,” I told her, taking mine down in one gulp. I set the bottle on the table and poured another glass.

 

“You came prepared, I see.”

 

“I did,” I told her, turning to look back out over my city. “I figured we would want more.”

 

“Yeah, I think the word is need. We’ll need more.”

 

I nodded, drinking to her assessment.

 

We sat in silence and sipped after that. Neither one of was wanted to talk. It was enough to just be there together. We’d gone through so much together that there was no point in using words just then anyway.

 

The golden afternoon light reflected off some of the glass towers standing in town. We were above most of the worst glares. We watched as birds flew by in clouds beneath us. Up where we sat, we couldn’t hear the streets below. The city seemed vacant, quiet, and peaceful. It was a great escape from everything.

 

“It’s a beautiful view,” Clara finally said after a few minutes of silence.

 

“It really is, isn’t it?” I agreed. “I love it.”

 

“I do, too, Mason. I really do. The city is gorgeous from up here,” she continued.

 

I took a deep breath and long drink from my glass, letting any apprehension I had burn off as the whiskey flowed down my throat. “How would you like to have this view every day?” I asked her.

 

“Who’s to say the view from my apartment isn’t better?” she asked.

 

“I’m serious, Clara.”

 

“I am, too, Mason. You haven’t even seen my apartment,” she teased, but I hadn’t.

 

We had spent all of our time here in my apartment. There had never been any discussion of going to her place. It might have been nice to give it a shot, I found myself thinking. “We should go to your apartment some time,” I told her.

 

“Only to get my things,” she said flatly.

 

I shot her a puzzled look.

 

“Yeah, I was just kidding. Your apartment is way cooler. You’ve got a much better view than I do. I’m sandwiched between two old apartment buildings, so when I walk outside, I get to see my neighbors across the street.” She laughed.

 

“My neighbors are at the tops of other buildings,” I told her, holding my hands out over my city. It really was going to be my city once we started consolidating after Skull’s collapse.

 

“You know what I would really like?” she asked abruptly.

 

“What’s that?” I poured myself another glass.

 

“A house,” she said.

 

I almost choked on my drink.

 

“Or not,” she added, laughing at me.

 

“A house?” I asked.

 

“Yes, a house, Mason. Something we could call our own. Something our kids could inherit from us.”

 

“What’s all this 'we,' 'our,' 'kids' stuff?” I asked.

 

“Oh, am I moving too fast for you, Mason?” she asked with a sly smile on her face.

 

“Not really, but it may be a little abrupt, I think,” I admitted.

 

“Oh, well, I guess we’ll talk about it some other time,” she said dismissively, turning to enjoy her whiskey and look over the edge of the balcony again.

 

“No, wait, what’s all this about?” I asked her.

 

“No, you don’t want to talk about it,” she said.

 

“You really want a house?” I asked her.

 

“I do.” She turned those deep blue eyes back my way.

 

I understood what my dad had meant about making decisions. I understood his choice to buy a home when he’d been able to get us out of that apartment. We could have walked out of my apartment right then and found a house to buy if that was what she wanted. Just like my dad, though, if it was what she wanted, it was what I wanted, too.

 

It scared me that I was willing to go along with whatever she wanted to do, but I wasn’t about to jump on anything new right away like that. We still had a long way to go to get to the point where we would buy a house. I just didn’t think I was ready, and I didn’t think we were at a point yet where it was a viable idea.

 

We were just getting started. We had our entire life together in front of us. There was no need to rush into anything, but I poured us both another glass of whiskey and held my drink up anyway.

 

“Here’s to the we, our, kids stuff,” I said.

 

“Indeed,” she agreed.

 

We tapped our glasses together and drank. It felt good to have someone who was on the inside for a change. She wasn’t just another woman I’d picked up along the way. She was my woman. She was my old lady.

 

I looked at her in the golden afternoon light. Her wavy blonde hair fell around her shoulders and glowed in the light. Her eyes were like pieces of the sky that had been pulled down and set against her soft, gentle features. I wanted to reach across the table and stroke her cheek. I wanted to kiss her delicate pink lips. I could see myself unbuttoning the shirt she was wearing and exposing her to me right there on the balcony, but I didn’t want to take her on the balcony. I wanted to make love to her in our bed.

 

I felt my desire growing harder for her the longer I stared at her. I watched her thin fingers around her glass and remembered how they felt around me. I wanted to feel that now. I knew we were both sore from last night, from the accident and the fighting. But that would just make it so much better, I thought.

 

“What?” she asked bashfully when she caught me staring at her.

 

“Nothing,” I said, shaking my head. “Just you.”

 

“What you mean?” Her face lit up.

 

“You’re beautiful,” I told her. “I can’t tell you that enough. You’re absolutely gorgeous, inside and out.”

 

“You’re sweet, Mason,” she said.

 

“No. I’m being honest, Clara. I’ve wanted you from the first time I saw you…well, the first time I saw you as a woman. When I took that cap off your face and saw your deep blue eyes, when I watched your hair spill out of your cap onto your shoulders, I wanted you then, and I’ve wanted you constantly ever since,” I said.

 

She blushed.

 

“Come on,” I said. “While we’ve still got some energy left in us, let’s go make love.”

 

She looked at me and smiled with her blue eyes. She took another sip of her whiskey, downing the rest of her glass, and set it back on the table.

 

“Yes,” she said almost cheerfully, “let’s do that. Let’s make love.” It sounded so much better when she said it.

 

I was about to rip through my boxers to get to her, so it was time to make something happen. I took her slender hand and stood up from my chair. She followed, walking behind me as I silently led her back through the apartment into my bedroom. I closed the door behind us and kissed her, pressing her body against the door.

 

“You are so irresistible in my shirts,” I told her.

 

“Be gentle, Mason. I’m sore,” she said, so I turned and took her over to the bed, where we made slow, gentle love all night. I took care of her and cradled her in my arms so she would know how much I loved her, and I gently made love to her so I could take her to ecstasy without breaking her worn body from the night before.