Ben
I felt like hell the next morning. The couch may have looked comfortable when I bought it, but I found out quickly it was a real bitch to actually spend the night on. Still, I didn’t regret my decision. I didn’t trust myself to be anywhere near Carmen last night. I wanted to be far, far away from her, far enough that I’d be able to crush my desire to claim her into submission. There was no trusting that wily bastard. It had almost gotten me to succumb when I’d grabbed her during her dizzy spell. Being that close to those lips, that body, those beautifully pale eyes—it was torture of a cruel and unusual variety. A weaker man might have crumbled. Hell, I’d gotten pretty damn close. But I made it out with my promise intact. No touching. No staining. Just distance. Pure, blissful distance, as uncomplicated as a straight line.
We bumbled around the house awkwardly during the morning as the sun grew hotter and stronger through the windows. We both reached for the coffee pot at the same time, and when our hands brushed by accident, each of us leaped backwards like we’d been shocked by electricity. She giggled nervously, but I just turned and walked away. I needed to get the fuck outta there. I felt like a teenager again, all bristling libido and not the faintest clue of what to do with my eyes or my hands. Carmen looked as uncomfortable as I felt. By the time my phone rang and Slick’s caller ID popped up on the screen, I grabbed it like it was a float and I was a drowning man.
“What’s up, Slick?” I asked. I winced as the words came out of my mouth. I knew I sounded like an overeager little bitch.
“Damn, boss, what’s gotten into you? You never sound this peppy in the morning.”
I shifted my tone down an octave, noting as I did that Carmen’s eyes flicked up to me from where she sat on the couch filing her nails absent-mindedly. I winced again. This was a train wreck. I needed to get out. Fresh air. Clear the ole head. Too much shit floating around in this room for me to think straight. “Nothing,” I said brusquely. “What’ve you got for me? Any follow-up?”
“Unfortunately not,” he replied. “I’m having the boys pull old files from the storage room, just like you asked, but you know what it’s like down there.”
I did. It was a fucking shithole, to put it lightly. The previous presidents had never much bothered to keep things in order, preferring instead to just chuck boxes full of crap down the stairs of the basement without caring if they landed with any semblance of organization, the dumb bastards. I’d had the cleanup languishing on the very bottom of my to-do list for years, but I’d never quite gotten around to it. Looked like that was going to come bite me in the ass just when I needed a break desperately.
“How long?”
“Hard to say. Have you seen the rats down there? They’re fucking huge. I’m not letting Fang anywhere near that basement.” Fang was Slick’s Rottweiler. He was huge in his own right, and vicious when provoked.
“No, I haven’t seen the rats, and I don’t think I want to either.”
“Probably a good call,” he mused. “I wonder if you can train them. Couldn’t be that hard…”
“Focus, Slick.”
“Sorry, got a little carried away there. Anyway, like I said, they’re sorting through the files, but between the rats and that little leak we sprung last year, it’s going to be a long time before they find what we’re looking for. And even if we do, the boxes could be too damaged to be of much use. I’d say it’s a few weeks at best before they’ve done a decent enough job to start analyzing what we’ve got on hand.”
A few weeks. Goddamn it. After my conversation with John Robinson, I’d tasked Slick with digging through the club’s old records to see if there was anything else we might have missed. Newspaper clippings, illicit photocopies of police documentation that our informant on the force had managed to slip us—anything like that that could provide an extra clue, some context, whatever it took to double down. But by the sound of it, we weren’t exactly going to be racing to an answer.
“All right, thanks, Slick. Stay on top of this shit. I want results as soon as possible.”
“You got it, Ben.”
“And Slick…”
“Yeah?”
“Keep those fucking rats downstairs.”
He chuckled. “Will do.”
I hung up and sighed, tossing my phone onto the kitchen counter before burying my face in my hands. I could feel Carmen’s eyes still locked on me.
“Trouble on the home front?” she asked. It was the first thing we’d said to each other all morning. Her tone was cautious and deceptively light. But it was a peace offering, or something close to it. I needed to stop being such a child and just accept that things were either going to be bearable or they weren’t, and it was up to me to decide which one. We were coexisting now, for better or worse, at least until a better option arose.
“Rats the size of dogs, a filing cabinet that makes burning junkyards look like the goddamn Dewey Decimal system, and nothing for me to do but sit around and twiddle my thumbs. Yeah, things are going swimmingly. Christ, I need a drink.”
“Little early for that, isn’t it?” she asked as I dug through the cabinet over the stove and found a half-empty bottle of Jack.
The first sip hit my throat with that hot, familiar fire, immediately taking the edge off my nerves, although I was still jangling and fidgety. “No such thing as too early,” I replied with a belch.
“Lovely manners there, dear,” she shot back sarcastically.
I whirled around to face her and narrowed my eyes. “Yeah, well, Mama wasn’t around often enough to correct me, so things kinda just are what they are. What you see is what you get, more or less.”
“Hmm. What’s the return policy on husbands?”
“Very funny,” I mumbled, but I screwed the cap back on the whiskey and tucked it away again. She was a sassy little spitfire when she wanted to be, but I had to admit it was growing on me. Nice to have someone around who didn’t fall all over themselves to do my bidding. A man got soft when he wasn’t challenged every once in a while. I never would’ve imagined that this girl—barely five feet tall, frail as a twig, with a snowball’s chance in hell of defending herself if she were ever to be suddenly tossed into the wild—would be the one to do it, but hey, life’s full of surprises.
I went into the bedroom and tugged on a fresh t-shirt, then swung my jacket around my shoulders before coming back out. “I’m gonna go to the clubhouse for a bit,” I said. “Check up on things.”
She looked up at me and smiled. I felt my chest surge with something that, once again, I couldn’t quite identify. It was like a big weight settling on my rib cage, but I felt lightheaded at the same time. Twenty-five years of life and my body was choosing now to start acting up on me? I didn’t like it any more than I had the first time I started feeling these weird little tingles when Carmen was around. Then there was the ever-present pang in my cock when she switched her crossed legs, revealing a sliver of tanned skin high up on her inner thigh. That particular reaction was expected, though, and I crushed it as brutally as I had every time before. No touching, I reminded myself. Don’t even think about it.
“I’ll see you later, Ben.”
# # #
A few weeks went by and we settled into somewhat of a rhythm. It took a while to come down off my constant edge, but eventually it became almost normal to have the low-level tension rumbling in my stomach whenever I was home with Carmen. She’d been hard at work buffing and rearranging the house. It seemed like she was really throwing herself into it judging by the amount of change I saw every time I came back from a day hauling half-eroded boxes out of the club’s decrepit basement.
I’d slink in through the door, my neck screaming with a million different aches and pains after being hunched over all day long, to see her beaming with pride at the newest blooming plant or tastefully chosen picture hanging on the wall. I didn’t know the first thing about decorating, and my idea of feng shui was having the liquor and my gun close enough that I could grab either one without getting up from my seat. But even I had to admit that the place had started to look pretty damn good.
“Where’d you learn how to do all this shit?” I asked one day, almost three weeks after the wedding had gone down.
“I dunno.” She shrugged, turning her sparkling smile on me. “I just see something and know what’s supposed to be there. Kinda weird.” She crinkled her nose. “You like it?”
“It looks great,” I said. I turned to face her squarely. “But—what are these called?” I asked as I rubbed the velvety white petal of a flower between my finger and thumb.
“Gardenias,” she said. She smacked my hand. “And don’t touch the petals; you’ll kill it.”
I dropped the flower, but went on to say, “If you tell any of my boys that I have goddamn gardenias in my house, I’ll dropkick you into the next county.”
“Is that a threat, Mr. Killmore?” she asked coyly. She’d taken to calling me Mr. Killmore whenever she wanted to get under my skin. I hated it. For some reason, it made my hackles rise like no other.
“Watch it, little girl,” I growled. “You’re gonna get yourself into trouble that you won’t be able to get out of.”
She batted her eyelashes playfully. “That sounds just awful.”
I turned away to hide my grin. Behind me, I could sense her disappointment, but it was for the best. There’d been too many moments scattered throughout the last few weeks like this, when the tension between us was so damn obvious that I’d have to be an idiot not to notice. It was like a ticking time bomb, one that I was doing my best to keep batting down the road so I wouldn’t have to deal with it. The strategy was working so far, and I kept telling myself, If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
But the whole plan to find an exit out of this marriage was looking more distant and unlikely with each passing day. I’d assured myself then that it would be a cinch to find an easy way to nullify the thing and get the hell out of Dodge for a little while, but thus far, nothing presented itself. I didn’t have any other choice other than to batten down the hatches and keep myself to myself.
Another day, I was sitting in the bar, shooting the shit with Jay, Slick, Duncan, and Spark as we took a break from schlepping the crates of files up and down the basement staircase. All of us were filthy from head to toe, covered with spider webs, dirt, and an impressively colorful array of mold and fungi. But the beer had never tasted so good.
Duncan was telling a story about the night before. He and Spark had gone out to a local bar, on the prowl as usual. The kid was a walking, throbbing erection. He had a hankering for pussy like I’d never seen before.
“Damn, son, I used to think I was bad back in my younger and wilder days,” I said, shaking my head. “But you, kid, need to be stopped. Jesus.”
He laughed. “It’s like shooting fish in a barrel, prez,” he said. “You know how it goes. You walk into a bar and every townie girl there is crawling on hands and knees just to get in the line that leads right to your dick.”
Spark nodded in agreement. “It really is something else,” he said in his baritone rumble.
We all chuckled and took another sip of our beer. “I’m sure the married life is a little different, eh?” Slick asked casually after a moment had passed.
The smile fell from my face instantly. I saw Slick pale out of the corner of my eye. I slowly wiped the foam off of my lips, then stood up, cold and grimacing. “Enough chit chat,” I said. “Let’s get back to work.” No one said a word. They all left their beers on the table, half-finished, as I turned and strode towards the basement.
I couldn’t explain why Slick’s comment had struck such a nerve with me. It was burning a hole in my brain as I lugged yet another box up the stairs, taking them one creaking step at a time. He’d meant it innocently enough; the guy didn’t have a mean bone in his body. And yet I’d turned on him like a junkyard dog. Part of me wanted to apologize, but it was too late for that. I couldn’t back down in front of my men. It was one thing to joke around with them—they were my brothers, after all—but it was important to show that some lines were not meant to be crossed.
Still, why this one? Why let that get to me? I just couldn’t put my finger on it, the same way I was still struggling to come up with a way to describe the way I felt going home every day. The sudden but predictable surge of joy that slapped me sideways every time I put my key in the lock of the apartment door and opened it, when I knew Carmen would be waiting for me on the other side with a sunny smile and something new around the place to show me.
It felt domestic as hell. Downright silly, if I thought about it logically. And yet, somehow…right.
I shook my head and redoubled my effort. This wasn’t the way I’d expected shit to go, not by a long shot.
I dropped the box in the hallway with a thunk next to the pile of other crates that had yet to be inspected. I walked into my office, where Duncan and Jay were handling the job of sorting through the documents to see if there was anything relevant in the mess. Both of them were bleary and red-eyed. I saw papers, weighed down at the corners with random objects, beneath the stream of an oscillating fan in an attempt to dry out some of the wetness that had crept in after the floods of a few months prior. “Any luck?” I asked coldly.
“It’s slow going, boss,” Duncan said. His voice was thick with exhaustion. He ground the heel of his hand into his eye socket and blinked hard a few times like he was having trouble getting the world to sit still. Jay, sitting next to him, looked patently ridiculous with reading glasses on. In normal circumstances, I would have made fun of him, but I was still stewing over how sharply I’d reacted to Slick a little bit earlier.
“We’ve found a few things here and there. Whoever first organized that basement deserves a medal. They should be designing fucking cryptography puzzles, because I can’t make heads nor tails of any semblance of logic to the way they boxed shit together. And of the little pieces we do find that’re relevant, half of ’em are drenched or molded all to shit.”
I nodded. “Well, nothing else to do but keep on moving. This is important. Robinson gave us something valuable. I’m not about to let this investigation fall apart again. They murdered our brother. Don’t forget that.”
Both men nodded. They were beat to hell by the tedious job, but they knew how much it meant to me and to the club. They were good men, some of the few left in this shithole of a world.
“Both of you should go home for a bit. Get some shuteye,” I said. “You’ll be more useful in the morning when you’re fresh.”
Nodding again, Jay stood and rubbed at a kink in his neck. He and Duncan trudged out of the office with their heads hanging tiredly. I followed them out, pulling the door shut and locking it behind me. As we approached the open staircase that led down to the basement, Slick emerged with a dusty box in his hands. He dropped it down and straightened up.
“That’s the last of ’em,” he said.
I looked around. “Where’s Spark?”
Just then, we heard a series of smacks, shouts, and then a gunshot from below. I was the first down the stairs, with the other men close on my heels. We tumbled down and fanned out onto the dank wooden floor below. I saw that every man had a gun or a knife drawn in his hand.
Spark crouched with his back to us. “Spark, you okay?” I asked cautiously.
He slowly pivoted around and stood up at the same time. As he did, we saw that he was holding up by its tail the biggest, ugliest rodent I’d ever seen in my life. What was left of its head was a bloody mound. In his other hand, Spark held a smoking gun, and on his face, he wore a huge, idiotic grin. “Got the fucker,” he announced proudly.
The tension was sucked out of the room as we all laughed or groaned.
“Goddammit, Spark,” Jay cursed. “I thought you got fucking ambushed or something.”
“You big, dumb asshole, you had us all going for a second,” added Duncan.
We trooped back up the stairs, feeling worn through but still managing to find the humor in the situation. Little by little, the anxiety that had been working its way into a tight little knot in my stomach began to loosen.
The men said their goodbyes and took off one by one, loading up on their bikes and rumbling down the road to sleep for a few hours before getting back to the files. I was the last one to leave. The sun was starting to kiss the horizon.
Grabbing my cell phone, I dialed the number of the little burner I’d bought for Carmen. She picked up on the second ring. “Hi,” she said brightly.
“Hey, you at home?”
“No, I stepped out to get a quick couple things I needed.”
“Need a ride?”
“Sure! If it’s not too much trouble.” She rattled off the name of a store I vaguely recognized, and I took off to pick her up.
She was waiting out on the curb with a small pale green bag looped over her forearm when I pulled up out front. “Get anything good?” I asked.
“Maybe,” she quipped. “It’s a surprise, though.”
“Who said you were allowed to have secrets?”
“Certainly not you, Mr. Killmore.”
“Carmen…” I growled warningly.
“I know, I know, you hate that. But I think it’s funny. You’re gonna have to make me shut up.”
“I just might. I just might.”
She clambered on and wrapped her thin arms around my waist. We slid out smoothly onto the road. It was only a half mile or so back to the apartment. But just as we approached the intersection where I normally took a left to go back home, I paused, rolling to a gentle stop. “Are you in any rush to get back?” I asked cautiously.
“Not in particular,” she said.
“Want to see something?”
“Yeah, sure.” She sounded confused but I could hear her smile.
“It’s a bit of a ride, just warning you.”
“That’s fine, Ben. I like riding with you.” She adjusted her grip on my sides.
I nodded, settled back into the seat, and swung the bike to the right. We took off, headed for the highway.
Twenty minutes of open throttle later, we edged off the road underneath a big sign for the state park. The asphalt turned into hard-packed dirt that got gradually less and less smooth as we rode deeper into the grounds. The landscape on either side of us was lush with late summer flowers blooming in the light of the setting sun. Yellows, purples, and faded greens were swept across the ground as far as the eye could see, like big, messy brushes of paint.
We approached the foothills and slowly the road died out altogether, leaving me to weave the bike around the bigger potholes. I tried to go as carefully as I could, since I was worried about jolting Carmen around too much. The idea of the baby was constantly gnawing at the back of my head. Until now, it had been just a theoretical thing, not a real one. But it was happening, whether I liked it or not. I hadn’t yet decided if I did.
Soon, we were cruising between the rolling hills. We reached a point where the terra cotta clay gave way to gravel. I brought the bike to a halt and killed the engine. Silence took over. I sat still for a second, listening to nothing but the hush of the window in the tall grasses. I could feel Carmen tensing behind me, wondering what was going on.
I climbed off and then helped her off as well. “Come on,” I said. “Not much farther.”
She followed me as I wound my way confidently behind one hill, towards where two massive boulders were nestled against each other. I turned to face her. “This is the last part,” I said, “but it’s the hardest. Think you can handle it?”
She screwed up her face in a pouty scowl. “Of course I can,” she said.
I grinned. “Let’s go, then.” I walked up to the boulders and found the familiar handholds. Even after all these years, I remembered exactly where they were. “Watch how I do it,” I instructed over my shoulder. I began to climb. It was easy. My body knew the path. Right hand up, right foot followed, left hand, right hand, then swing over the top. Before I knew it, I was ten feet off the ground. I spun back around to look down at Carmen where she stood below me. “There’s not enough room for you to get up if I’m up here, too, so I’m going to drop off the other side,” I said. “But I’ll still be right here. Don’t worry.” She nodded.
I tried to ignore my nervousness as she got ready to climb. From this angle, the belly she was growing was even more obvious than it was when I looked at her straight on. I couldn’t believe that there was a baby in there. My baby. It was too crazy to comprehend. I never thought I’d see the day when I became a father. On the other hand, I still wasn’t sure I would.
I turned around and looked below. The ground dropped off sharply, and a thin patina of high branches hid the ground from view. It was a completely blind jump. But it was one I knew. I slid off the rock and landed with a gentle thump on the other side.
When I’d regained my feet, I dusted off my hands on my pants and turned to look back up at the way I’d come. Then I held my breath and listened close as I waited for this girl—my wife and the mother of my child—to come careening through the treetops.