Chapter Five
~Tommy~
I release Kat’s wrists to clench her waist, then bodily pick her up and set her on her feet. The hair comes along for the ride, torn from Benita’s head—it wasn’t my intention to bring her hair with us. I know I have no need for it, but maybe Kat does since she refuses to release it.
Benita jumps up, whirls around, screams, and then pats her head dressed in only a stocking cap. I presume she’s searching for her hair that’s currently being waved from Kat’s fist like a flag as she struggles to get loose from me. A dark line of… something circles Benita’s hairline from ear to ear. I’m guessing it’s glue that was holding her wig in place.
Edison hugs his wife from behind, shushing and lugging her in the opposite direction as she pitches a fit about her weave. Both women are raising millions of dollars’ worth of hell, shouting at each other from one end of the yard to the other. And the shit is hilarious until the sheriff parks behind Benita’s car. It’s all fun and games and cathartic until somebody calls the authorities. I know I feel a shit ton better after wailing on Edison.
Blake’s wife, Astrid, who’s technically my niece, gets out of the cruiser, cupping her hand over her mouth. Her heaving chest gives away the silent amusement she’s trying to conceal behind her palm and bullet proof vest. Hopefully, her arrival works in Kat’s and my favor.
Astrid has put on her Sheriff Power’s face by the time she walks into the yard, to stand in the wide-open space dividing Edison and I, who are doing our damndest to keep the women apart. Kat’s every other word is ‘bitch’. Benita stops yelling at Kat to yell her side of the story at Astrid, who takes in the situation then sets her sight on me.
She lifts both hands in the air, effectively quieting down the women. “What is going on here, Tommy?” If she hadn’t been in uniform, I’d have mistaken her for Malisa at the distance she’s standing with dusk turning quickly into night.
“Nothing to whip your handcuffs out for, Astrid,” I reply quickly. “We’re just settling some old scores. It’ll be over in a second. I promise.” As soon as I can calm Kat.
Astrid frowns. “Old scores?”
Right, not everyone knows that I’ve been pining for Kat all this time.
“Why are you talking to him first, officer?” Benita inquires indignantly, doing more harm to sore eyes without her hair. “He started this shit! Are you even supposed to be here since you’ve married into his family?”
Astrid turns her head. “I will follow every procedure to the letter, Miss, and you will be treated fairly, and welcomed to file a complaint with the city council if you disagree.”
“How would you know who started what, Benita?” rockets out of Kat, who tries harder to get loose, to finish what she started with the wig-removal. “You weren’t here when it started!”
I have to clamp my hands around her waist tighter. Benita’s accusation seems to be giving Kat more energy. With one hand, she’s pulling at my fingers clinched around her waist, pointing a finger at Benita with the other that still has the hair in it, or maybe the hair is glued to her palm now and she can’t let go. I do know once Kat’s temper is lit, God help me, it can burn like a mile-long fuse, but at least there’s no potted plants around for her to throw. More than Benita’s hairdo would be in jeopardy.
“Miss,” Astrid projects at Kat without looking at her. “I’m going to need you to calm down, or I’ll have to take you in for disorderly conduct.”
Benita and Edison start explaining what happened in their own versions at the same time, which inflames Kat even more. “They came on my property, Sheriff!”
I enfold her in my arms, regretting going off on Edison’s ass at her home—it wasn’t worth it if Kat becomes the one with the felony because of my inability to keep it together around Edison. “Kat, we both are going to jail if you don’t calm down.”
She stops trying to get away, settling against my chest, probably realizing there’s no point in both of us going to the county lock-up. Somebody has to be free to bail the other one out. I have no idea why I believe she would post my bond instead of flying back on the first thing smoking to London where the drama is undoubtedly on the lower end of the totem pole for her. She certainly hasn’t been back to Arrow.
Astrid sticks her thumbs in her utility belt, keeping a wary eye on the Crafts. “I’m Sheriff Powers, and this is how this is going to go. Tommy and… Kat, is it?”
Kat nods.
Astrid mimics the gesture. “Tommy will take Kat in the house. I’m going to speak with… What’s your names?”
Benita’s raises her chin proudly, resembling a conceited, bald-headed drug addict. “Benita Craft.”
“Edison Craft,” her husband follows up with.
Astrid exhales. “Tommy, I’m going to get the Craft’s statements first, then I’ll get yours and Kat’s, and Tommy… keep her in the house,” she commands in her best authoritative voice that she has to use often with Blake Jr, who is everything his father was as a child: bad as fuck but no one could love the four-year old more than his self-appointed aunts and uncles in the Owens clan do, except his parents.
I crabwalk Kat into the opened entrance of her house that’s air conditioning the neighborhood, not trusting her to refrain from going after Benita again. I think I love Kat even more because she would, if loving her more is even possible since I never stopped for one second.
After closing the door behind us, I turn her around to raise her fists up for inspection, finding war wounds on her knuckles. They’re minor scratches, but Benita still got Kat good with her acrylic nails shaped like talons. I kiss the top of Kat’s hands in the name of making her boo-boos feel better.
“I didn’t get to punch her,” she whines, her chin wobblingliterally going to cry because she’s about to go down in history as resorting to pulling hair like a girl on this day.
I drop my forehead to hers. “Ah, baby, but you got her hair. She’s looking like a hooker and a junkie right now in front of everyone. That has to count for something.”
Kat giggles like I planned, but her regretful expression stays put stubbornly. “It’s still assault. Sheriff Powers is still going to arrest me. I need to call O to bail me out. I’m sure Arrow still doesn’t let people post their own bonds from their cells or let them out on their own recognizance for violent crimes. God, I came all the way here only to go straight hoodlum. I didn’t think I hated that woman that much.”
Me either.
“You’re my hoodlum, Kat, that I’ll bail out, but it won’t come to that. I’ll take the charges for you first. It is my fault you were fighting with Benita’s wig in the first place, and I’m sorry for losing my shit in your house… but I’m sure your boss would like to know that his lawyer might need a criminal lawyer though,” I quip.
Orion isn’t going to be thrilled that I’ve gotten what is perhaps his most dedicated employee and best friend tangled up with Arrow law. Kat is loyal to a fault. So loyal, she can’t handle being let down.
“This is not a joking matter, Tommy,” she scolds, then smiles, unable to deny her humor. “And you tossed Edison’s ass outside like a rag doll before you commenced to beating him like he stole something.”
“Then why are you smiling if it isn’t a joking matter, Kat? He did steal something, you. As for your war wounds, we need to clean them in case Benita is poisonous.”
Kat slumps against me, chuckling her delectable derriere off. “She does look like a Komodo dragon right now, doesn’t she?”
“Exactly!” I concur, then get more serious, which I detest to do. There are those rare occasions when I have to though.
Deep into her eyes, I stare. “Everything is going to be alright, Kat. I promise.”
Before she can respond, I gather her close, attempting to soothe the fears sitting plainly in her face. She comes easily into my embrace. We stand there, wrapped up in each other, and this is cleansing too. I knead her spine with my fingertips, until she goes slack against me and moans with her head nestled beneath my chin. I bear her slight weight easily, nuzzle her temple with my lips, transported back in time to when I had the right to do this. She hasn’t given me the privilege again yet, and I should back off because she’s given me an erection that’s harder than titanium.
I’m fifty percent sure that she will come back to me if the way her arms are enfolded around me is anything to go by though, and I look forward to her lips being mine again. Tiny waist. Mine. Erect nipples pressing into my chest. Mine too. Ass that had to be melted down and poured in her tight jeans. All mine. Not fucking Edison’s or anyone else’s. Ever.
Nevertheless, now isn’t the best time to ask her to be mine again when one of us might be headed to the slammer. First, I’m going to care for her like I always do.
“Come on, sweetheart. I’m sure you have an out of date first-aid kit somewhere… or a bottle of peroxide that is just water at this point. Black people have that even when we don’t have sugar to make Kool-Aid.”
When she’s standing on her own again, and she is real slow about getting there, pawing at my chest as she reverses, it’s as if she was right where she wanted to be. That’s fine with me. After she’s far enough back for me to think properly, I lead her to the bathroom under the stairs. Kat trails behind me, carrying that damn wig.
“Tommy, I’m okay and I want to hear what they’re saying about us to the Sheriff. I’m sure it’s all lies… and how does the Sheriff know you?”
I continue through the house that I know like the back of my hand. All of the wall decorations have been removed, giving the dust less places to settle on. Kat moves around me into the dark, tiny room with just a toilet and seashell-shaped sink on a pedestal.
I flip the light on. “Astrid is my niece by heart. She’s married to Blake now, and they have two kids. Briley and Blake Jr. who we call BJ.”
Kat, already knowing Blake’s history with the Owens, plops down on the toilet and glares up at me like I’ve grown another head. “Blake’s married with kids? The Blake that had just developed a crush on Malisa before I left, and had most of Colorado’s females chasing after him? That Blake? The first-aid kit and peroxide should be in the medicine cabinet by the way.”
Obviously, Kat hasn’t looked Astrid fully in the face yet, or she’d see that Malisa and Astrid could be identical twins. When she does talk to Astrid mano y mano, it’s going to be priceless and a fond memory of mine, so I give Kat no warning about the doppelganger in uniform in her front yard. Instead, I relieve the small mirrored-cabinet over the sink of the bottle of disinfectant.
“Well, yeah, Kat, I figured the medicine cabinet would have anything of significance in it because there’s like… nowhere else for anything to go in here unless you utilize the back of the commode,” I mock.
She shakes her head, eyes twinkling above a small smile playing on her mouth. “Smartass.”
“That I am, love. Anyway, Blake and Malisa are grown and married with kids. Incredible, I know, but things have changed a lot while you were gone.”
Her gaze falls to the floor. “I know that, but I think I froze the whole town in time right along with you, Tommy.”
That throws me for a loop as I unscrew the cap off the peroxide.
“Could you put that damn horse’s tail down for a minute?”
Kat snickers and places her knuckles over the sink’s basin, death-gripping the wig that’s flopping over the edge. “This is my trophy. I’m carrying it around like one until I go to sleep whether it’s on a cell bunk or in an actual bed.”
Oh. Well, if she feels like that, she can carry the damn wig until arthritis sets up in her bones. “What did you mean when you said you froze time, Kat?”
“The Tommy I loved went everywhere with me. My Tommy. I couldn’t get over you.” Then her mouth drops open, as if she’s remembered something. “Shit, I wasn’t supposed to tell you that.”
I drench her knuckles in the disinfectant that foams only a little bit, so I guess Benita is only a little poisonous. “I’m still the Tommy that didn’t cheat on you, Kat.” Her Tommy. “So, why not tell me?”
Her countenance returns to remorseful again.
“I know that now,” she says softly. “Again, I’m so sorry that I didn’t believe you, and I didn’t think you wanted me anymore. I can’t say I blame you, and if you did want me, how could we be together with an ocean between us? So, I was going to spare you from having to deal with my—”
A loud bang at the front door, like the one somebody who works for the sheriff’s department would use to violate the sanctity of a home, intrudes just when the conversation is getting to the place I was willing to wait to go until our current predicament is resolved. For instance, when I get out of jail.
I snatch a hand towel off the silver bar mounted on the wall next to me. “Dammit, Astrid! We’re coming! Jeez, usually that woman has good timing.”
Kat’s features take on a worried appearance.
I extend a hand to her. “It’s going to be okay, baby. Let’s get this over with.”
She wraps her fingers around mine quickly, clenching them almost too tightly, then rises up. We trod to the door quietly. Before opening it, I step between it and Kat, making sure she can’t resume trying to beat the ever-loving shit out of Benita, rewriting history of their scuffle—it most definitely was not a fight.
Astrid waits on the flat, concrete porch with the Craft’s behind her. “Tommy and Kat, Mr. and Mrs. Craft aren’t going to press charges, so I’m not going to make a report or need to take your statements, but Mrs. Craft wants—”
“Oh, I want to press charges!” Benita announces loudly.
“Do that, Benita, and we’re done,” Edison vows in a deadly serious tone. “And I’m taking the kids in the divorce. We’ve done enough to Tommy and Kat already.”
We? So, Benita was in on the con just like Kat suspected.
I have to admit I never did paint Edison’s wife as a participant in his scam, couldn’t look past his part in the ruse long enough to consider if Benita had a role in it. He was my friend who owed me his allegiance, not her. And I’ll go to hell willingly if Edison doesn’t truly love Benita. Hopefully, he wouldn’t have married her if he didn’t, but I can’t honestly say she loves him though. The woman loved nothing but herself when we were younger, and I can’t see how she’s changed any. However, Edison has gotten his just desserts for the shit he pulled on me and Kat a long time ago when he married her while I held a grudge against him and Kat uselessly. He didn’t hurt me anywhere near as much she did. It’s why I didn’t put more effort into making her listen to me after the plant was tossed at me. She’d made up her mind, and I wasn’t going to change it just to be with someone who didn’t trust me.
Astrid glimpses behind her. “Mrs. Craft, you need to make a decision. It’s now or never. Do you want to press charges against Kat or do you want your wig back? You don’t have any proof that it’s yours and Kat’s in possession of it. It’ll be her word against yours, and to avoid a wig war with you two, I’ll lock you both up along with the wig into evidence, and let the judge sort it out when the mood hits him.”
It’s a real nice corner that Astrid just pinned Benita in, who I bet loves her freedom and weave more than she does Edison.
Benita stomps her foot. “It’s mine and was expensive dammit!”
“Here!” Kat hurls the hair over my shoulder, out the door, not enough room to spare between me and the doorframe.
The hair lands like a lump of clay on top of Benita’s peep-toe shoes. I’ve never been so glad to see anything fly away in my life.
Astrid snorts, then regains her blank-face composure. “You two can leave now. It’s best if you don’t come here to apologize anymore, Mr. Craft. Just let bygones be bygones between you four. Five if I count the hair.”
He nods, then looks at me. “I really am sorry, Tommy and Kat. I have my own daughter and I can’t imagine, don’t want to, anyone putting her through what I did to you two.”
I tune him out. In another ten years, I’ll reflect on forgiving him. Maybe.
“I don’t know why the hell you came over here by yourself anyway,” Benita protests while bending over to snatch up her hair off the porch, mooning everyone on the other side of the street, and I bet they’re all running for the nearest bottle of bleach to scrub the image of her ass cheeks from their eyeballs.
Then Benita pins Edison to the spot with her two black, evil eyes. “I bet you still want her. Don’t you, Edison?”
“Not if he wants to live, he doesn’t,” I pipe in.
His eyes scour down then up her body, maybe wondering what the hell he ever saw in her. “I came over here for the same reason you go wherever the hell you want to, Benita, because I’m grown. How you knew I was over here is the damn question.”
“I have eyes everywhere, Edison,” she brags.
The owner of those eyes possibly called her and 911 too.
Astrid side-eyes me. I get repentant really quick for my threat to Edison.
“Sorry, Sheriff.”
However, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to calculate the odds of Benita being in the immediate area once her spy reported to her Edison’s whereabouts—she got here so quickly.
Maybe Edison should get his own eyes in the immediate area.
But the Craft’s are not my circus, therefore not my monkeys, so I resist giving the rest of my opinion on the matter. Besides, I have my own shit to work out with Kat. Finally, the Crafts take their leave, Benita adjusting her weave that now resembles a bird’s nest after Kat’s handling of it.
Astrid steps forward instead of following the Crafts’ brilliant idea to leave. She’s the cop, so I back the hell up and let her enter the house. Kat shuffles backwards, keeping possession of my hand. Once inside, Astrid closes the door behind her, then slides down it to her rump, and busts out laughing, elbows propped on her knees.
When she’s done, she swipes what’s left of her humor off her face with the downward swoop of her hands. “Oh my God! Wait ‘til I tell Blake about this shit. He’s going to be so pissed I didn’t call him as soon as I got here and found it was you in an altercation about a woman, Tommy. Hold grudges much? And yeah, Benita agreed to help Edison come in between you two and took him back to get his car after he’d parked yours, so he could show Kat the sights so to speak.”
Kat steps to the side of me. “We already figured as much.”
Astrid starts snickering again, then cuts the giggles short. “Sorry, guys, I know you need some privacy after all that drama with the Crafts, but it’s unprofessional as hell to be in public while laughing my ass off during a call. Everyone outside will know why because they’re laughing. I’ll be going to sleep tonight worrying if Benita’s going to file a complaint about me being bias on your behalf, Tommy, but there was no way in hell I was leaving this scene.”
The two-way radio strapped to her shoulder crackles to life, Deputy Copper calling in a traffic accident near the county limits.
“Well, shit!” She responds that she’ll be right there, then gets to her feet. “I hope the circumstances are more relaxed the next time I meet you, Kat. And from the look on your face, you’ve noticed how much Malisa and I look alike.”
I peep down at Kat, who’s mouth is sweeping the floor. I missed the beginning of her freak out, then remember my manners. “Astrid Powers, meet Katara Johnson. Kat, meet Astrid. The only way you’ll see Kat again, Astrid, is if I convince her to move back to Arrow to be my girl… again, unless she wants me to move to London.”
There, I said it. It’s out there and on Kat to decide where we go from here. However, she’s speechless, and staring at me with her mouth wide open.
Astrid does a double take. “London?”
Kat snaps her mouth closed and stretches a hand out to Astrid. “Yes, I moved to London for work years ago. Sorry about the staring, but it’s unusual how much you and Malisa look alike.”
Astrid grins and shakes Kat’s hand. “So, I’ve heard. I’m out, guys. Be good. Or at least one of you be good so you can keep the other in line. I don’t want to have to come back here, you two.”
She spins around to let herself out, shaking her head. “Blake is going to flip.”
I’m never going to hear the end of this.
No sooner as the door shut again, Kat swipes at my chest with an opened hand. “You could’ve warned me, Tommy! I just made a damn fool out of myself, staring at her like a star struck stalker!”
“And I meant to capture that as a Kodak moment too, but I was too damn late,” I confess, then chuckle.
She smiles evilly. “That’s what you get for setting me up, Edison Jr.”
Suddenly, nothing is funny anymore. “You’re going to pay for that insult, Kat.”
“Am I?” she asks with much sass, begins backpedaling for the stairs, and I realize I’ve been set up as well.
I’m just the only fool in here that fell hook, line, and sinker for the bait. Kat is expecting me to actually make her pay for the jibe. She’s damn near insatiable in the bedroom, and I didn’t eat my Wheaties this morning.
Oh damn, I’m going to try to fuck her spine out of place and I’ll pay for it tomorrow.
I look forward to that, too.