22
Finger and I managed to continue seeing each other—irregularly, very irregularly—but we managed it. Three years had passed, and I’d moved out of Tania’s apartment and gotten my own place in the same neighborhood. A teeny tiny studio, but it was all mine. I set up a second-hand sewing machine I’d bought on a long table in the center of the space. At any time of day or night I’d sketch and pin patterns and cut and make a mess while Etta James sang for me on my portable CD player, and I loved it.
I decorated with Tania’s help and made pretty things out of the simple, sometimes broken objects around me, just like my grandmother had done for me. I missed Grandma.
My own mother never had the time or the inclination for such creativity. She’d glance at me and Grandma, our heads bent over a piece of embroidery, as she’d be getting dressed to head back to the bar. “That’s nice for some,” she’d mutter, slipping on her high heels, that eternally pissed-off look etched on her face, a cigarette hanging from her lips. “But the rest of us have to live in the real world.” My grandmother would ignore those swipes, only taking in a tiny tight breath as she continued showing me her needlework. On her way out the door, Mom would always mumble a “Later” to us, as if it were some kind of promise of better things, but it was a later that would never come.
Once things got busy for me with school, I wasn’t able to hang out with Ciara as much as before, which was just as well as far as Finger was concerned. At school I met photographers and models through my various internships, and I volunteered to style their shoots which eventually turned into paying jobs. I kept my job at the store and was now the weekend manager. There, I learned about the business of running a business, about marketing and the art of designing a great storefront window, cultivating clients and keeping them.
Plenty of attractive guys buzzed around at school, at work, at the parties I went to, but none of them were My Man. Every sexy come on smile, every gym-trained body, clever twist of phrase, and suggestive look had a certain appeal, but none had any power over me. Only he did. Only Finger could unwind me with a look, destroy me with a touch, tangle me with a hoarse whisper against my skin.
Being true to him wasn’t a hardship. It was the way it was.
Finger got me a cell phone when he got himself one, and he either called me a lot or not at all for stretches of time. I would offer to meet him somewhere halfway between wherever he was and Chicago, but he’d always refuse to let me take the chance to travel alone. He was traveling a lot, rising the ranks of his club, proving his dependability, his resourcefulness. And ruthlessness, I had no doubt.
We’d had a close call that one time when he’d used his signal to tell me to stay away, that our rendezvous was cancelled and to not contact him until he did. He’d put his long hair up in a ponytail, something he rarely did. That spooked me. A reminder that neither of us could ignore. Being happy was dangerous for us. Happy together meant letting our guard down. It meant fucked up consequences for us. We would never ever be safe to live freely. We couldn’t ever get comfortable, we had to stay vigilant.
I would never forget that afternoon. I’d walked past Finger and the biker he was with in front of that hotel and tracked down Tania and Neil at a restaurant. I spent the night club hopping with them, forcing myself to appear to be having fun, not a care in the fucking world. I got drunk on purpose and crashed at Tania’s apartment for the whole weekend. It took me days to get over the anxiety and the disappointment of having been so close to him, of seeing him again, and yet having to walk away as if he were invisible. I felt invisible. My heart hollow.
Up until that aborted meeting, I’d been feeling almost normal, content even. Afterwards, I’d eventually managed to settle into a routine again. Three years had gone by since then, the best three years of my life, and I’d almost forgotten to keep looking over my shoulder.
Almost.
“Do you have any maxi skirts with high slits?” came the loud, nasally voice from the center of the store.
A voice I knew.
My pulse sprang in my neck as I lifted my eyes from my computer screen at the front where our two cash registers were lined up on a high platform. From my perch I had a great view of the entire store.
A short blonde woman on high heels, in her late thirties, waved a long skirt on a hanger at Beth, my best salesgirl. Beth led the blonde to a set of racks further down the aisle.
Luckily, today I wore my brown contact lenses, but I took the oversized aviator sunglasses that rested on my head and slipped them down over my face. Why take any unnecessary chances? My long black hair was now streaked with green and blue and shaved on the sides. New tats swirled around my upper arms. Would she recognize me?
She’d barely spoken to me my last year at the club, but I knew her. Anne Marie, the old lady to one of Med’s men. She was friendly, she was smug, she was arrogant. She was everything I’d never wanted to be. And here she was shopping in my corner of Chicago, Illinois.
Was Ann Marie here on purpose or was this simply a coincidence of fate? Had they found me and sent her in as a preamble to the slaughter or to make me some sort of deal? Did she have friends or relatives in Chicago? I couldn’t remember. Was her old man, Scrib, in town too?
Scrib. Scrib had carved up Finger’s face.
My breath shorted as Anne Marie swept out of the dressing room wearing a tight cheetah print maxi skirt Beth had found for her. She smoothed the material down her thigh as Beth adjusted the cropped top at her swollen middle. The outfit wasn’t right for her body type, and I was sure she knew it, too, but Anne Marie always got what Anne Marie wanted.
I steadied myself and scanned the store window. People passed by on the busy sidewalk. Cars and buses cruised up the street. No men in leather stood on the street from the sweeping view I had of the outside. I shifted my weight and returned to my work at the computer. I wasn’t going to run and hide. And anyway, there were a number of customers in the store. I couldn’t just take off and leave Beth on her own. I took in a quick breath and focused on the computer screen, returning to the emails detailing upcoming deliveries.
“Ashley will take your purchases. Thanks again.” Beth’s sweet voice snapped me to attention as the cheetah print skirt and the striped crop top slid on the counter in front of me. Beth left me with Ann Marie.
I shot her a quick smile and rang up the two items. “That will be sixty-seven twenty-three.”
She snapped a credit card on the counter, her long, glossy, French manicured fingernails glinting in the overhead lamp. I slid her card through the machine, handed her the receipt the register spit out, and she signed, her dangling earrings swinging.
“You finished or what? Let’s go already.”
My blood froze in my veins. My throat constricted at the sound of that deep voice. A heavy set biker stood in the entryway of the store, a little boy at his side. Scrib was here with his son, Logan.
I used to babysit Logan. Feed him, read to him, give him baths. I’d give him popsicles when he had a fever and sing to him. Once he even insisted on my spending the night at their house. Logan had to be eight or nine years old now.
Anne Marie rolled her eyes as she tossed the pen on the counter toward me and grabbed at her receipt from my hand. “Don’t ever get married. Husbands are always trying to tell you what to do.” She turned to her old man. “I’m done! Geez, would you relax?”
My lips curled into a small grin as I handed her the shopping bag. I opened my mouth to thank her, but shut it quickly. I’d been lucky my appearance had thrown her off, but maybe my voice would spark a memory.
She snatched the bag from my hand and sauntered over to her husband. Logan stared at me.
“You got what you wanted?” Scrib asked his old lady, throwing a glance at me.
I paid no attention, pretending something I didn’t understand had just appeared on the screen.
“Yeah, I did,” Anne Marie said as he pushed back the door for her.
“Logan, let’s go!” Scrib bellowed in that demanding voice, and my stomach cramped. But it wasn’t just the voice of a stressed out parent. The last time I’d heard it, he’d been jamming his cock into me, holding my wrists over my head. “Come on, come on, yeah, bitch. This is how it’s done.”
“Look at that lady!” Logan’s clear voice rang out.
“What lady?” asked his father.
“Her!” Logan pointed straight at me, and my eyes darted to him like arrows, my heart hammering in my chest, the hairs on the back of my neck standing on end.
Scrib shot me an impatient look, but this time his eyes lingered. Ann Marie glanced back at me, flipping her hair from her face. Scrib’s head suddenly slanted as he took me in, and my breath burned in my throat.
“She’s got the same green and blue hair like the magic witch in my comic book!” said Logan.
“Yeah, yeah, she does,” his father muttered, guiding his son out the door by the shoulder. The three of them stalked off down the sidewalk.
“Twenty, nineteen, eighteen...” I counted as much to keep my breathing steady as to time when I should look up from my screen once again, in case they or anyone else was watching me. “...two, one, zero.”
My knees gave way, and I slid down to the floor, shuddering, taking in great big gulps of air. I wrapped my trembling arms around my chest and bit down on my tongue to stop the moans from escaping.
The next time we spoke, I told Finger what had happened.
“Oh fuck. Baby…” His breath hissed sharply over the phone. “Goddammit.”
“They didn’t recognized me,” I assured him. “It was okay. I’m okay.”
But silently, I asked myself how long could that “okay” possibly last?