Narcos…
Well, so much for that, I thought to myself as soon as I stepped out the bathroom to the spectrum of looks ranging from cool and appraising to downright tempestuous from my brothers.
Driller looked, I don’t know, resigned? Golden looked amused, Skids gave me a cool, detached cop-face, and Yale? Yale looked pissed.
“Are you, seriously, fucking my witness?” he demanded, and I knew shit wasn’t right with him. I don’t think I’d ever seen him lose his shit so completely. He was always a man in control, but something was going on back home that had his fuse fucking lit. It’d been burning for a while, considering how he’d snapped off on Everleigh just for talking.
“Think she’s going to be your witness if you treat her that way?” Driller asked, and scowled.
Yeah. He knew; he had my back; we were at least cool. Best friends for-fucking-ever.
“You knew about this?” Yale demanded.
“Come off it,” Golden said, and rolled his eyes.
“Didn’t expect to see you here, Pres,” I greeted Skids.
Skids shrugged laconically.
“Shit’s real deep. What kind of leader would I be if I weren’t here?”
I walked over to the table and pulled out a chair. “How about you stop seething for thirty fucking seconds and catch me up; you fuckers know I’ve been livin’ dark out here. And I ain’t no mushroom, so don’t even think about feeding me some shit, either.”
The guys all drifted over and sat. Six seats, one left for Everleigh. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t worried about her, but I refused to make shit any worse than it already was, by looking at the door she was behind too much.
“The defense has come out swinging,” Yale said with a harsh sigh. “Trying to force my hand, speed everything along. I’m assuming it's because they know Everleigh can talk – ”
“She can talk, but she can’t,” I said, unhappily.
“She can, I just heard her.” Yale scowled at me.
I shook my head. “She probably thought you were me,” I said, shifting slightly.
“Again, I ask, how long have you been fucking my witness?” Yale demanded starkly, his eyes stormy.
“If it’s good enough for Youngblood…” Golden said, and it was gentle for him. He gave Yale a pointed look.
“That was different,” Yale said defensively, and Driller arched a brow.
“How so?” my best friend demanded.
“Knock it off, the lot of you,” Skids growled. “This isn’t getting us anywhere productive.”
“She’s capable of speaking, but only under certain circumstances,” I said with a sigh.
“Those circumstances being?” Yale crossed his arms, and shit had to be rough, had to be getting to him, because even though he could be a dick, he wasn’t usually this big of a pain in the ass.
“Calm, secure; she’s got to feel safe and completely at ease,” I said.
“Which she’s not going to be, in front of King or a courtroom full of people,” Driller said unhappily. “She hasn’t said a damn word in front of me, that’s for sure.”
The bathroom door opened and we all turned. It took several moments, but finally, Everleigh peeked around the corner. It was so childlike and innocent and it damn near broke your heart, the expression on her face. It was like she was checking to see who was mad and how mad they were at her, like she was expecting to be yelled or screamed at, or worse, that someone was apt to tow her out from around that wall and beat the living daylights out of her.
“You’re safe, babe. Coast is clear, I promise.”
She bit her lips together and looked miserable anyway. It was as if someone had rubbed off some of her sparkle and I hated it.
She stepped out carefully, wearing a white, fitted tank top with those thin straps and one of her gypsy skirts that brushed the tops of her feet. The skirt was a light cream at the top and got progressively darker in brown toward the bottom, the different bands of the skirt set with these tiny round and diamond shaped mirrors that sparkled and flashed in the sun coming through the windows.
She was lovely and I held out a hand to her to try and entice her to come nearer.
She hesitated, hanging back, her shyness full force despite the fact that only two of my brothers at the table were unknown to her.
“It’s okay. I apologize. It’s no excuse, but I have been a bit frayed; this case is very complicated.” Yale at least tried.
She nodded carefully, forgiving as ever, but still wary as she padded nearer. She took my hand and I decided, Fuck it. The cat was already out of the bag. I pulled her down into my lap. She sat atop my thigh, and with a hard swallow, put her arms around my shoulders to steady herself.
“Look at me,” I murmured and she met my eyes with her own. “Just take your time, and talk to me… you okay?”
She swallowed hard and opened her mouth, but closed it as she glanced down the table at the expectant faces there.
I stopped her.
“Don’t look at them, baby. Look at me.”
Her eyes snapped back to mine and I tried to put everything she needed into my gaze.
“Just one word, babe. How are you doing? Good? Bad? Scared? Sad? Just one word, tell me what’s up.”
She swallowed, determination flooding her expression as her jaw worked, once, twice, then… “S-s-scared,” she whispered.
I smiled and she flushed beet-red, and I nodded.
“It’s okay to be scared, brave girl.”
She shook her head and I tucked the hair she’d used as a curtain to shield her face from the rest of the table behind her ear.
“It’s the very definition of bravery to be scared as shit to do something, but going ahead and doing it anyway,” Skids said. “For us, it was one word; for you, it was a whole lot more. You did good.”
“I’ll try to keep it to ‘yes’ or ‘no’, okay?” Yale said, and though he was tense, his tone had gained more than a few measures of control. Everleigh nodded and he asked, “Does King know that you are capable of speaking?”
Everleigh nodded.
“You’ve spoken to him before?”
She nodded again and I caught her eyes as she bowed her head in something like shame.
“I think she trusted him, once. They were in a relationship.”
“You know what happened?” Golden asked.
Everleigh bit her lip and took a deep breath and our eyes met. I nodded slowly and said, “He started using more, drinking more. The real him started to come out, and I think, ultimately, nailing her to a tree probably did some irreparable damage to that relationship.”
Everleigh nodded emphatically.
“Yeah, I suppose that would,” Skids said, drawing a deep breath and huffing it out. He looked Ev in the eye and said, “I’m sorry that happened to you.”
She nodded solemnly and I asked, “So what’s this mean, in the grand scheme of things?”
Yale sighed and said, “It means, she’s going to have to get up and testify, otherwise she’s pretty much a useless witness.”
Everleigh’s jewel-bright eyes widened and she looked stricken.
“Do you think you can do it?” Yale asked point-blank and she took a deep breath and we could all see she thought about it, and I mean really thought about it.
“I’ll be right there in the courtroom, babe. We can practice as much as possible between now and the court date.”
She nodded but looked apprehensive. But she was willing to try. As hard as it was for her, she was going to try. She was brave as hell for it, too.
“Y’all figure out where the leak is coming from out of the department, yet?”
“Ugh, God…” Driller looked a little green. “Been working with the rat squad, do you have any idea how much fun that is?”
Chuckles went around the table.
“Worth it to catch a rat,” I said.
“Too true, and we’ve come up empty for the most part. I hate to say it, but it was a dead end.”
“Which is why we have to move you two,” Golden chimed in.
Everleigh sat up straighter and turned her full attention on him.
He smiled a little sadly and asked, “You like it here, do yah?”
She nodded and he shrugged and said “Sorry, darlin’, but it’s not safe here for you anymore.”
“Ah-huh, is that why the backup?” I asked.
Driller, Yale, and Skids nodded.
“It was Skids’ idea, actually,” Golden continued.
“What was?” I asked; Everleigh had gone rock-still in my arms, her fingertips biting into my shoulder.
“Had Driller let it slip out in the open about the fishing cabin, and that he owned it, but not where it was,” Skids said.
“Before that, he had me make a trip down to the assessor’s office, and drop notice that if anyone should come looking for information with my name attached to it, that they should give us a call.”
“Rat squad sitting on the office?”
“Yup.”
Everleigh stood up abruptly and was out the back door in a flash. I stood up and so did the rest of the guys. I waved them down and said, “Let me go talk to her.”
“Guess she really likes it here,” Yale muttered and I nodded.
I found her standing by the river, her chest heaving, bent double with her hands on her knees as if she’d just run a marathon.
“Easy, just take it easy, it’s only me,” I said when she’d like to hit the roof when I came up on her.
“Why would they do that?” she asked, her tone agonized.
I shook my head. “Sometimes, it’s what you have to do. When all else fails…”
She shook her head violently, as if she didn’t want to hear it, and it clicked for me: she was angry and she didn’t have anywhere to put it.
She’d told me how she’d grown up. How her dad was an abusive fuck and how her mother just let him do it, sided with him over her own daughter, told Everleigh to stuff it down, to be a good girl, to not rock the boat, etc., etc.
She’d been a girl with a stutter and he’d beat her ass for it more than once, until she’d just stopped trying to talk altogether. She’d grown out of the stutter, but her anxiety about speaking in front of anyone, well… it’d reached epic proportions. Left her scarred, left her broken in some ways, and made her so much stronger in others.
I couldn’t blame her for hopping on the back of the first bike to roll through that shit town of hers. I also couldn’t blame her for not looking back. No matter how bad it’d gotten, back there was worse for her, so she only looked ahead.
“I know you love it here, babe, and this isn’t forever. You knew we’d have to go back eventually…”
“No, I know,” she said. “I just… Why did it have to be so soon?” For this, she did start to cry.
“I feel you, there,” I murmured and went to her, and she folded herself against me so beautifully.
“Where do we go from here?” she asked, voice muffled by my still-wet tee-shirt.
“I don’t know,” I said. “We’re going to have to go back inside to find that out. I can tell you one thing, though…” She tipped her head back to look up at me when I didn’t finish right away, which is what I wanted her to do. I needed her to look at me for this. “It doesn’t matter where we go, I’m going to be right there with you.”
She nodded and I dipped my head to kiss her. She met me half-way, standing on her toes. Our lips touched and fire raced through me, breathing tired muscles back to life. I held her close, but carefully, my hands gentle against her waist, curving around to her back as her hands slid over the swell of my arms, over the caps of my shoulders to twine around my neck.
It was one of those movie-perfect kisses that made women sigh and men wish they could be that guy on the screen, and damn, did it ever feel good to be her man. To be the one to hold her, to be here for her, and to love her… because without a doubt, I did.
Out of the ashes… I thought to myself, because that was definitely what we were. A couple born out of the ashes of bitter circumstance, and while those circumstances weren’t over yet, we had this. We could take on anything as long as we had each other. I needed her to know that. I needed her to believe me.
A gentle clearing of a throat, and we broke apart, though not guiltily. Not in the slightest. There wasn’t room for anything negative between us.
“Damn, that was hot,” Driller said, and Everleigh blushed and hid her face against my chest.
“The natives restless?” I asked, and he nodded.
“Fuck ‘em,” I said. “They can wait.”
“What can’t wait is you guys packing your shit up. We’ve gotta go first thing.”
“You get a call?” I asked, and he looked at me like I was dumb.
“Ain’t none of us getting a call out here, you know that! Which is why we need to go first thing.”
“Where the hell you even got us going?” I demanded. I didn’t like not being a part of the plan, but I trusted Driller with my life, and there wasn’t anything about to change about that.
“Youngblood and Chrissy’s,” he said.
I rolled my eyes.
“You serious?”
“You rather park it in yet another shitty hotel?” he inquired patiently.
Everleigh answered that one for us both, shaking her head violently.
Driller laughed and said, “That’s what I thought.”
She turned her face up to mine and sighed, the heartbreak turning to resignation.
“Guess we need to get this place sorted,” I murmured, and she looked back longingly at the cabin. She reluctantly nodded, and led the way.
Driller put an arm around her shoulders and she smiled at him. I could tell they’d had a little bonding time before this misadventure, being cooped up in a hotel room for long hours. Still, she didn’t look at him the same way she looked at me. When she looked at me, there was something – I don’t know – a little extra.
I was glad my girl and my best friend got along, and were the circumstances different, I might have even been brave enough to ask if she’d be willing to let us share her. I’d shared with my best friend before, and there wasn’t anything like it. I don’t know, maybe it was because I loved him too, and it was the closest we could comfortably get in that regard without completely crossing boundaries – fuck. It wasn’t like I was in love with him, just… It was hot sharing a woman with him and was something we did every once in a while, and felt amazing and all that jazz.
I shoved it out of my mind and we climbed the stairs, Driller holding Ev’s hand while I had my hands lightly on her hips, a great view of her ass as we ascended. Everleigh paused, just before going inside the back door and took a deep breath. I fitted myself to her back and pecked a quick kiss on the cap of her exposed shoulder and she shuddered slightly before stepping over the threshold, back in with the boys she didn’t know.
“We good?” Skids asked, eyeing my girl.
“We’re good,” I affirmed and he nodded.
Driller sighed and tipped his head back, freezing as he caught sight of the loft.
“Damn, you guys have been busy,” he remarked and Everleigh smiled.
“Actually,” I said, “most of it has been Everleigh’s doing.”
“Yeah?”
“Yup.”
Everleigh tried to hide behind her hair but I wouldn’t let her, gathering it up and laying it over one shoulder.
“Well,” Driller said, and looked to my woman, “where would you like us to begin? We can’t leave that bed out on the porch like that.”
She smiled and it was brittle, but she made a motion with her hands that we should sit and she stepped around me and back out the door.
“I think she’s going to pack,” I said, and Driller bowed and shook his head.
“Where’s your shit?” he asked.
“I guess that’s my cue that I should pack, too.”
“You get busy,” Skids said. “Yale and I are going to avail ourselves of this chess set you got sittin’ here.”
I nodded. “Everleigh found that up in the loft a couple days ago. She wants to learn, but I’m afraid I suck at it.”
I saw her pop up over her bed outside the window at her name, and Skids chuckled, “I’d be happy to teach her. I think she’d be good at it.”
I smiled and said, “She’s good at everything,” casting a look her way. She blushed and ducked back down.
We got to packing so we could clear out the next morning. Everleigh came in with folded piles of her clothing and placed them on the unoccupied end of the table, looking over at me a little helplessly.
“Bag full?” I asked.
She nodded and I smiled.
“How is your bag too full?” Driller asked.
“Found some things at the local thrift store right up her alley,” I said looking over at him.
Golden rolled his eyes and said with a smile, “Leave it to a woman. In protective custody and still manages to clothes shop.”
Everleigh was warming up to their presence, because she gave Golden the finger.
He laughed and shook his head, putting down my book he’d been thumbing through, back on the night stand.
“I’m a military guy. I can pack with the best of them. Can I see if I can help?” he asked.
She raised an eyebrow and eyed him cynically and finally nodded. He went over to her and asked, “Where’s the bag?”
She went back out to her bed and brought it in, and set it beside the clothes she couldn’t get into it. He unzipped it and looked in, and said, “Here’s part of the trouble, you’ve folded things you can roll. Here, let me show you.”
“Gah! Dammit!”
Everleigh jumped but Yale wasn’t even looking at her, but rather at the board. Skids sat back with a shit-eating grin. Yale scowled and let his dark eyes rove over the pieces. Everleigh picked one up, a pawn, and cocked her head. Yale looked up and she set it down and pointed to herself.
“What? Do I think you’re a pawn?” he asked. She nodded somberly. He scowled and looked angry. “No, and I deeply apologize if I’ve given you that impression.”
Skids took her hand and she jumped and looked him in the eye.
“The pawn might be small, but it can be a mighty piece in the right hands. Come here and let me show you…”
I smiled to myself as he stopped their game, had Everleigh pull up a chair, and had Yale reset the board.
Golden didn’t complain, just worked at repacking her bag, only stopping them to ask if she’d kept out what she’d wanted to wear to bed and what she wanted to wear tomorrow.
A sort of truce fell over the cabin and Driller and I focused on bringing in her bed, the apple crate shelves, and just generally deconstructing her area out on the porch to take it up to the loft.
“I’m sleeping with you guys,” he said, straightening from fitting the bottom sheet to her bed.
“Motherfucker, this is a full.”
“Don’t care, she’s gonna be the ham in a man-sammich tonight, because I’ll be fucked if I’m cozying up to Skids or Golden. Junior down there is gonna fit his ass on the couch just fine.”
“Fuck you!” Yale called up. Everleigh was fixated on the wooden chess board, not really hearing us, but rather listening to Skid’s low voice as he explained something or other.
I sighed.
“Babe!” I called down, and she peered up at me curiously. “You good with squeezing between me and Driller tonight?”
Her keen green eyes flicked from me to my best friend and searched his face. He smiled down at her and tried to look harmless, which was a joke, and less like the perv he usually was, which was even more laughable. Although, I have to say, for a perv, he was still a bigger gentleman than me; respectful of boundaries, super-big on consent. I mean, I was too, but he was next-level about it.
She smiled faintly and nodded, and he raised a knee and jerked his elbow back and was like, “Ungh! Yeah, baby!”
“Stay on your own side of the fuckin’ bed, old man, or I’m totally handing you over to Lys when we get back.”
Skids rolled his eyes and said, “Because Lys is totally someone I need to be afraid of.”
“You’ve never pissed her off.”
“Which I am sure you have with fair regularity,” Yale said with a smirk.
Golden smirked back and said, “She’s fuckin’ sexy when she’s angry.”
Everleigh smiled and yet still managed to roll her eyes. I came down the loft stairs and said, “Babe, you might want to make sure it’s set up to your liking up here.”
She looked up and nodded, standing reluctantly from the chess board.
“Doesn’t have to be right now, I ain’t done showing you this yet.” Skids smiled at her and she gave a smile back that was bordering on her impish self, and I felt a knot of tension ease in my chest. She sank back down in her seat and turned her eyes back to the board.
Driller and I exchanged a look and his eyebrows went up, questioning. I nodded and he nodded too, getting my meaning from my expression alone.
Patience. It would come up, I was sure, but now was definitely not the time, with how overwhelmed and stressed the fuck out we all were.
“It’s starting to get dark in here, where’s the lights?” Yale asked.
Everleigh stood up and went and got the lantern from the kitchen and he blinked at her.
“You’re joking.”
She smiled brightly and shook her head.
Skids chuckled. “I can see why you love this place.”
She beamed at him as she lit the lantern with a strike-anywhere match and I went down to light up some of her candles along the porch rail outside. Driller got the hurricane lamps we’d brought up to the loft, and pretty soon, the cabin was a warm, cozy glow.