Burn Down the Night (14 page)

My instinct was screaming to get the hell out of the condo.

My garbage-bag luggage was packed at my feet and my ice-cold hand was on the doorknob, but somehow I couldn't quite get my wrist to turn.

Pick up your shit and get gone. Only an idiot would stay. Don't be an idiot.

I had Max's phone—the only real connection to Lagan I needed. I was never going to be able to convince Max to help me. Never. I'd used every weapon in my arsenal and he'd been unmoved.

The shower thunked off, the old pipes in the building sending up a chorus.

Go. Go now.

But I didn't.

Here's the truth when you live a life like mine. I was not allowed the comfort of lying to myself. The delusions other people got to use to keep themselves warm during the long, cold nights—they were not available to me. I could lie to everyone else. But not to myself.

I stayed because this place was paid for. Because it was safe. Because it was comfortable. Because I had no place else to go.

And I stayed because Max was going to fuck me.

And I really, really wanted that.

See, no lies.

“Joan?” he said, and I could tell he was right behind me. In the hallway. I felt the damp, warm air from the bathroom, curling around my ankles. Banishing the cold air. Pushing it aside.

I exhaled slowly. “Yeah?”

“You leaving?” I heard his nearly silent footsteps on the carpet. I felt like all my frequencies were tuned to him. Everything was Max.

Slowly, I turned, trying to keep all my nerves from showing. All my fear. He had a towel around his waist, gripped at his hip in one hand.

Water dripped from the ends of his black hair onto the smooth skin of his shoulders, running across his tattoos and sleek muscles. He was lean and cut and deadly.

Still as a snake.

And all I could think about, looking at him, was his eyes on me as Sarah made me come. I felt all the words he'd said sown in my womb. In my gut. They were branded into my skin and I would never not be turned on by the memory. I had the sinking feeling that nothing would turn me on like that ever again.

He'd ruined me without ever touching me.

“I was thinking about it,” I said honestly.

“Coward?”

“Something like that.”

“How long have we got this condo?”

“Four more days.”

“Four days.” He looked around. The long blinds on the sliding glass door were open and he walked over in his towel to stand at the window. His back rippled with muscles. Every movement he made, I could see the mechanics under his skin. Muscle to muscle, ligament to tendon. Sleek, beautiful skin over all of it. I wanted to touch him. I wanted to trace his spine with my fingers. My tongue.

I wanted to pull that towel off his body and hold his ass in my hands while he pounded into me until nothing else mattered. Ever again.

“You ever go on vacation?” he asked.

I blinked, stunned out of my thoughts. “What?”

“Like as a kid. Everyone in the station wagon? That kind of shit?”

“No.” I laughed. Shitty truck with the door tied shut only made it to Madison.

“Yeah, me neither. We tried once. It was a disaster.” He turned, his thumb pointing over his shoulder toward the world outside the window. “There are grills down there, on the lawn by the pool.”

I literally had no idea what he was saying. I stared at him like an idiot.

“Can we use them?” he asked.

“What…what are you talking about?” Grills? The hell?

“The grills by the pool. That's part of this condo right?”

“Yeah.”

He smiled, and goddamn, he was beautiful. The beard and the eyes and the white flash of his teeth.

It was so surprising that smile, so real and pure and not malicious or hiding some dark intent. He was just a really good-looking guy smiling because, for the moment, he was happy.

I nearly smiled back.

“I'm going to go get a steak,” he said. “And I'm going to cook it on that grill. And I'm going to get some beers. And I'm going to drink a bunch of them by the pool. You hungry?”

“Yeah. I…I could eat.” I was starving. Ravenous.

“And tomorrow I'm going to wake up and go down and sit by that pool in the goddamn sun. You should come with me.”

I blinked at him like he was speaking French.

“It's our honeymoon after all.”

“You want to…”

“Sit in the sun for a few days. Drink beers. Look at you wearing that white bikini.”

He was telling me I could forget, for just a little bit. Or I could try. I could put down the load I carried and pretend for a little while that life was simple. Easy. I could take a breath. Make a new plan without the panic of not knowing where I was going to spend the night or how I was going to pay for gas.

Vacation.

Something easy. For once.

I was shaking my head no, I was pushing the idea away before the words were even out of his mouth.

Because I didn't deserve easy. I didn't deserve a vacation. Not while Jennifer was out there with Lagan.

“All right then, Joan,” he said, his face somber. “It was good knowing you.”

I turned around to face the door and all I had to do was pick up my garbage bags and turn the doorknob. But I couldn't, somehow. I couldn't.

“I don't know how,” I breathed.

“To do what?” His voice came from just over my shoulder. I could feel him there. His living breathing sleekness. His danger and his charm. He was going to unlock me if I Iet him. He was going to pull me apart.

“Not…worry. Vacation. Sit in the sun in a bikini.”

I felt the gust of his laughter against my shoulder. “I've spent the last four years waiting for a bullet to the back of my head. So yeah, I'm not sure I know, either. But I'm gonna give it a try.”

Impossible, I wanted to say.

But instead, I opened my mouth and said, “Get dressed, I'll drive us to the grocery store.”

And that was how I found myself sitting outside by the pool at midnight, eating a very rare steak and drinking a very cold beer.

With a very dangerous man.

The underwater lights were on in the pool and it glowed blue, illuminating Max's hard face in eerie light.

He lifted the bottle to his mouth and took a long drink. He set the beer down in the grass beside his chair and cut into his steak with gusto. Relishing every bite like he'd never had something so delicious. He wore a pair of loose pajama bottoms and no shoes. His feet were crossed and every once in a while, his toes would curl, like the pleasure of a steak and a beer was just too much.

Watching him eat was like watching a commercial for beef. Or beer. Or masculinity.

Yeah, that was it. He was a commercial for how a man should enjoy the simple things: a good steak, a cold beer, a warm night.

“You don't like it?” he asked.

“No, it's great. It is.” I took another bite. Tiny. Like I had to ration out the meat, the pleasure. Too much at once and I'd choke.

I couldn't stop staring at his toes.

I was a commercial for self-denial. I always had been.

“I feel like a caveman,” I said. There was nothing but meat on our plates. “We could have at least gotten the potatoes.”

“Waste of plate.” He took another bite and leaned back, chewing and very nearly smiling.

“You're beginning to freak me out,” I said.

“That's because you clearly don't know how to vacation.”

“Honeymoon.”

He snorted. “I don't think either of us knows how to do that. Unless…” He looked at me. “Have you been married before?”

“Well, I was the fifth bride of a fucked-up cult leader. Does that count?”

He nearly spit out his mouthful of beer. A classic movie spit-take. I swallowed down my own laugh with a sip from my bottle.

“No,” he said definitively. “It doesn't count.”

“What about you?”

“Hell no.”

“Were you ever close?”

He blinked like the question was a weird one and then he shrugged. “Yeah. Maybe. High school girlfriend. She was…real good to me. Good to my brother. I would have married her for sure.”

“What happened?”

“She was a good girl. Smart enough to dump my ass once I got heavy into the club.”

“You're breaking my heart. I was close once, too. I mean to marriage. A real one.”

“The bad boyfriend with the fake badges.”

“No, Bad Boyfriend #2 came after Hector. I was with Hector for two years. Two really good years.”

“What happened?”

“What always happens. I got scared. Fucked it up.”

“Here's to fucking it up,” he said and held out his bottle. I laughed and tapped mine to his.

He took a sip of beer and watched me over the bottle. The bruises on his face and his ribs were black in the shadows. The combination of the tattoos, the very real whiff of danger that rolled off him, and the weird smiling condition he was currently suffering from made him look like a recently released inmate.

Possibly of a mental ward.

“You don't look like a man on a honeymoon,” I said.

“What?” He pretended to be offended.

I pointed to my own eye.

“Right. Maybe my bachelor party got out of control.”

“Maybe you like me to beat the shit out of you?”

He chuckled. “Not likely, honey.”

He cut through more of his steak, demolishing the thing in record time. I drank more beer, trying to squelch this strange fire in my belly.

“So, tell me about your aunt.”

I scowled at him. “I thought we were on vacation.”

“We are. I am making vacation conversation.”

I laughed, without much humor. “I may be new at this, but Aunt Fern is not vacation conversation.”

“I should know something, right, since we're family now.”

“What do you want to know?”

“You guys close?”

Not at all. I didn't have to say it.

“What happened?”

“She's was woman who didn't understand kids. I was a teenager bent on destruction. The usual.”

“Nothing—absolutely nothing about you is usual.”

Was that respect? I didn't look over to make sure.

“She took me and my sister in when my dad died. I was sixteen. I was angry. She didn't know what to do with us. We…we didn't stand a chance.”

“Where was your mom?”

“She died when Jennifer was a baby. Heart attack.”

“I'm sorry.”

“Me too.”

“Why don't you tell Fern about your sister and Lagan? Maybe she could help.”

“Help? No. She won't help.”

“She'll blame you?” His words were a sharp jab so I said nothing. I sucked in my breath.

“I deserve to be blamed,” I said. “It's my fault. What happened to Jennifer, it's all my fault.”

“Somehow I doubt it.”

The underwater lights made the pool glow blue at the bottom but black at the top. Like it was covered in a thin layer of solid dark Wisconsin lake ice.

I turned away fast so I couldn't see the pool, not even from the corner of my eye and somehow with the movement, I just started talking. It was like the words I had denied and held back and swallowed over and over again, had been waiting, for just such a shift, so they could make their escape.

“Bad Boyfriend #2, with the badges, he took all my money. I had to drop out of nursing school and Jennifer and I had to work a bunch of crappy jobs just to get back on our feet. It was…it was a really awful time. And then I lost my job at this shithole restaurant along the highway outside of Raleigh,” I said, not looking at him. Not looking at anything, really. Certainly not that pool.

“And I wanted…God, I wanted to just give up. Just crawl into a hole and sleep. But there was this woman that came into the truck stop all the time. Nice lady. Older than me. She found out I got fired and she offered to let Jen and me come stay with her out at her farm. Jen didn't want to go. She had a job at a mall, piercing little kids' ears. She loved it. And I was sort of pissed at her because she was like genius smart and she'd dropped out of college and all she wanted to do was work in this stupid mall with these stupid kids. We couldn't live off what she made and we didn't have money for rent. So there wasn't any choice. Again. Having no choice is kind of a theme in my life, in case you're wondering.”

“I'm familiar with the situation.”

“Anyway, I practically dragged her out to this farm. We met Lagan. We met the other women who lived out there and I was so…” I blinked, realizing the burn in my eyes were tears. “I was so ready to stop moving. So ready to stop being desperate, I didn't even question why there were almost no men. When Lagan gave me attention I ate it up. With a spoon, I ate it up.”

“He said…in the club…that he hurt you.” He wasn't eating anymore. He'd put his plate down in the harsh Florida grass, the blood from his steak draining into the ground.

I blew out a ragged, low breath. “He didn't hurt me,” I said, like I was trying to convince him I couldn't be hurt. I could be bruised. But I couldn't be hurt. Maybe this was a lie I told myself so many times I believed it. But whatever—it was true when it came to Lagan. “But the sex was…mean in a way. But I ate that up, too.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him nod. Maybe he did know. If anyone in my life would understand my need to punish myself, he would.

“Did he make you wear a bonnet?” he asked, being callous, but trying to be funny at the same time. I appreciated that.

“No. No bonnets. No weird dresses.”

“What made you leave?”

“I found out about the drugs. He had most of us working at normal shit. Jennifer was taking care of all the little kids. I cooked—”

He scoffed.

“I baked bread, asshole,” I said with a smile. “Like for real. You should be so lucky as to have some of my bread.” I had forgotten that. Those brief weeks in the hot kitchen with the oven and my hands buried in dough. Gwen—the woman who brought me into the camp—she told me I had a knack for it. And I'd eaten that up with a spoon, too.