Burn Down the Night (15 page)

“For a few weeks at that camp, before the sex and before I found out about the drugs, I'd been really happy. Maybe for the only time in my life.”

“But then you found the drugs?”

“Yeah, some of the women and all the men worked in these other buildings. We didn't go near them. We definitely got the vibe we shouldn't go near them. But one day, after we'd been there for about three months, Gwen told me I was done baking and I had to report to Lagan in one of those buildings.”

“I know where this is going—”

“They were cooking meth. Lots of it. And it was like someone just ripped the blinders off. I stood in this shack, surrounded by high school science equipment and I realized what I'd gotten us into.”

“So, you bailed?”

“Not at first. I went back and told Jennifer we had to leave, and she was so pissed I wanted to leave. We'd been bouncing around what seemed like our entire lives, and she just wanted to stay put. So I had this big plan that I would leave, and I would get the cops and I'd rescue my sister and the rest of these women who'd been brainwashed.

“So, I told Lagan I wanted to leave. I made up some story about going back to nursing school, I don't even remember now. I was so scared, I was sweating so hard I could feel it in my shoes. I was sure he was going to beat the crap out of me or…something. I was totally surprised when Lagan told me I was free to go. But that the camp would move after I left. And that I would never be welcomed back. That I would never see Jennifer again—and I didn't really believe him, you know. I was so sure I could get to the cops and I'd save Jennifer and Gwen and everyone else. And it was like he knew what I was thinking. And he probably did; he always seemed to see into my brain better than anyone else. So, for his grand finale, while I watched, he asked all the women to take out those pills he gave them if the cops came.”

“Jesus.”

“He told Jennifer to put one in her mouth and I was freaking out and screaming at her not to do it. But she did it. She didn't swallow it. She just held it in her teeth like she was a dog he'd trained. That…that was just the power he had over us. And he said he was doing this to make me understand that when I walked away, I had to walk away forever.”

“Or he'd kill your sister.”

I nodded.

“Bastard.”

“Yeah. But I knew he had to sell those drugs so I followed him. And I followed Gwen and finally they all led me to the Velvet Touch.” I tipped my bottle to my lips but it was empty. “But then he had the camp moved and I couldn't find them again. Hand me another beer would you?”

He grabbed a beer from the bucket on the other side of his chair, popped the top, and handed it to me. But he didn't let go when I grabbed it.

“I'm real sorry,” he said.

I was a little too raw and his apology was like salt in a wound. I nearly hissed at the strange pain.

“Fuck you, Max.” I said without any heat and jerked the bottle out of his hand.

“Only if I get to put the handcuffs on you this time.” Ah, this was familiar ground. Good, solid ground.

“In your dreams, dick.”

“Ah ah.” He pointed his own bottle at the dark windows of the condos surrounding us. “Is that anyway to talk to your husband?”

“In your dreams, sweetheart,” I said with a smile full of teeth.

“Your aunt—”

“No. I'm done talking about my shit. You want to talk about your brother? How about your dad? You know I lived next to him for five beautiful months.”

“All right. No talking about family.” He reached down to grab another beer for himself. His back had that wide, beautiful muscle that fanned out from his shoulder down to his spine. I eyed him shamelessly.

“What's the tattoo?” I asked, trying to see the large tattoo that was on the inside of his arm.

“Which one?”

“Under your arm?”

He lifted his arm up and I turned my head and was able to make it out. It was a tree in full bloom, but its roots were tangled around a bunch of grimacing and laughing—or possibly screaming—human skulls.

“Jeez, Max,” I said.

“You don't like it?” He turned his arm toward his face and smiled down at the gruesome tattoo. “I always thought it was kind of pretty.”

The word pretty coming out of his mouth was hilarious. Or maybe it was the beer on an empty stomach.

“So, no talking about family,” he said. “What will we talk about?”

“Why you won't help me get my sister.”

He groaned. “You are lousy on vacation. Let's talk about you and your girlfriends.”

“That's none of your business.”

“Okay, how about you tell me about Annie.”

That made me pause.

“Annie? Dylan's girlfriend?”

“Yeah. What's she like?”

“Well, why don't you go visit your brother and find out?”

“You know her, right?” he asked, watching me out of the corner of his eyes, ignoring my little dig about visiting his brother.

“I know her. Not a lot. She's good, you know. Solid.”

“You make her sound like a table,” Max laughed.

“She's the kind of girl any guy would want to have as a girlfriend.”

“Sucks a mean dick?”

“Stop.”

“Loves anal in the morning?”

“Max!”

“What makes her so special? I mean, Dylan didn't come down off that mountain for nothing. And suddenly she's in the picture and everything changes.”

“She's sweet,” I said. “But she's tough. Loyal. Kind of fierce that way. She'll surprise you. She surprised the heck out of me. I think she's probably real good for your brother.”

He nodded and stared into the darkness, all that crude joking gone. “That's good,” he said softly and took another drink of his beer. “He deserves to be happy.”

“And you don't?” I don't know why I asked that question; I knew what he was going to say. It was like me taking the blame for Jennifer. Some things just were.

“I don't think like that Joan. I don't…happy doesn't matter, you know. Not in a life like mine.”

“I think you deserve to be happy.”

“Because you are?” he asked.

“Because I want to be. Don't you?”

His…ache was bleeding out into the air around us, and I felt that compulsion to make it better. To ease it. Ease him. To take on his pain. Bullshit ruinous nonsense.

So I kept my mouth shut and the two of us drank our beers in silence, my steak growing cold on my plate.

“You going to eat that?” he asked, pointing at my steak with his knife.

“No. I'm full.”

“Why are you lying?”

Surprised, my head snapped up.

“You're hungry, Joan.”

Oh God. That voice. Those eyes. That crazy tattoo under his arm like a secret.

Like a secret I understood all too well.

Completely and all at once, I was done talking.

“What if I'm not hungry for steak?” I asked, cutting through the bullshit, “getting to know you” small talk that didn't mean shit to people like us.

His lips twitched. “You want to have sex with me, Joan?”

“I want to have sex. You're here.”

He laughed, tilting his head back and just filled the pool area with the sound of his laughter.

“Such a sweet talker. I can see why I married you.”

That made me laugh. For real.

“I don't think you want to have sex with me,” he said.

“Why?” I laughed. “Because I'm bi? If you're unfamiliar with the definition—”

“Not because you're bi. Because you're scared.” We weren't laughing anymore. Our chests rose and fell in time, like we were on some kind of synced clock. Both of us forgot the beer and the steak. The pool in front of us, glowing like a bad memory.

“I'm not scared of you,” I whispered.

“You're scared of something,” he said. “So am I. It's why we haven't touched. It's why we stayed away from each other for months at the club.”

He was impossibly right. More right than I wanted to think about. Or look too hard at.

“It's like the thing with the neighbors,” he said. “Someone calls the cops and both of us get yanked in. Mutual assured destruction. You and I have sex, get involved in that way…both of us burn. Both of us. We'll tear each other apart until there's nothing left to walk away from.”

I swallowed, but my mouth was dry. It was like every bit of moisture in my body was pooling between my legs.

“And you got a self-destruct button a mile wide, Joan.”

Oh, it was my drama that was too much. Hilarious.

“Yours isn't? You're the president of a motorcycle club. If that's not a death wish waiting to happen I don't know what is.”

I drained the rest of my beer and swung my legs over the edge of the lawn chair, ready to get up. Ready to give him a little speech about how he would be sleeping on the love seat tonight.

“I went to Arizona,” he said, and I stopped. Half-braced to leave—I froze. “That's where I was when I was gone a while ago. I went to Arizona, because my mother is buried there and I realized I'd never seen her grave. And that I should. Because I was probably going to die. Either the assholes I called brothers were going to kill me, or I was going to get killed for them. And then I got out there and I got away from them, from the fucking back stabbing and the drama and the danger and…I decided not to go back. It was a fucked-up call, you know. Because the club was all I had ever known. It was all I'd ever wanted. Or thought I could have. But I had watched my Dad get fucked over by his “brothers.” I had watched them sell my mother drugs behind his back. I had watched them fuck her and then lie to Pops's face. I got the president patch and I thought I could make it different. I could force us, this like random group of sociopaths to be brothers. To love each other. To look out for each other…that was the dream. It's why guys paid dues and suffered through prospect shit. It's why they strapped on guns and did terrible things in the name of the club. It's why I did it. Because we were supposed to trust each other. We were supposed to be more family than our own flesh and blood. But in the end—there was no loyalty. No trust. Just a long line of men ready to put a bullet in my head for their own fucked-up reasons.”

He turned toward me again, his lips curled in a smile that made my heart ache. “So, yeah, I left. And I was going to stay away but my brother called me back and I went back, knowing it was the end for me. Lagan. The club. Pops. Any one of those things could have killed me. I never expected it would be you with a bomb strapped to a chair. But I wasn't even surprised when Rabbit pulled that gun.”

He hadn't been. I'd seen his face that night, resolved in the firelight. He'd seen that moment coming a mile away. And again, I understood that down to my feet.

“You should have stayed in Arizona.”

“Yeah, and maybe it would be my brother who was dead. Or Pops. Or Annie. For sure you'd be dead. Blown up by your own damn bomb. So, I'm glad I came back. And now…” He stared up at the sky for a long time. So long, I didn't think he was going to say anything. But finally he laughed. “Fuck. I've got four days in a condo by the beach with no brothers at my back. No Lagan. No drug deal. Nothing except a bunch of prospects who don't know what the fuck they're doing.”

“You could just…walk away. You did it before. You could do it again.”

Max stretched his hands wide, looking at the muscles and the tattoos. Or maybe it was me looking at the muscles and the tattoos.

“Jesus, Max, don't you see?” I said. “You're getting a second chance. Like…a real one.”

He didn't say anything and I understood that, too. Laying claim to something, owning up that you wanted more than you had was like asking for it to be taken away.

And second chances were a fucking miracle for people like us, because all our chances were used up before we were even born. For a second, I was so jealous I couldn't breathe. My throat was clogged with envy.

He got the light of a new day and I was heading down so dark a road, I couldn't even see the end of it.

It would be better when I got Jennifer back. It would be worth something once she was free. I would do anything for her shot at a second chance.

“I'm glad,” I said, the words squeezing through the tightness in my throat. “For you.”

“Joan—”

He reached for me and I shrugged away so fast I hit my shoulder on the lawn chair.

“Don't…just don't.”

It seemed proof of something, the way I turned away from comfort. The way he curled his outstretched fingers into a fist and then reached for his beer as if he'd never reached for me.

“You've got this bright, shiny new chance,” I said. “You don't want to get involved with me. I get it. I'd only fuck it up.”

“No!” he said. “God, no, Joan. That's not it.”

I laughed at him. Or at myself. I wasn't sure. I was laughing at something and it wasn't all that funny.

Laugh or cry, that's where I was. That's where I lived. Black and white. Survive or die.

“Listen to me.” His hand grabbed mine and I tried to wiggle it free, but he wasn't letting go. “You want to fuck, let's do it. Let's burn down the fucking place. We got that in us…between us. But when it's over…all I'll leave you are bruises. Because that's all I have to give you. And a few months ago, fuck…two days ago, that would have been fine.”

“Why not now?”

He didn't answer the question. And I didn't, either. Neither one of us wanted to talk about what had changed between us. The shit we'd shown each other—told each other…it made everything more dangerous. In ways I couldn't even see in the shadows we lived in.

“You got enough bruises, Joan.”

Oh God, he wasn't staying away from me to protect himself. He was doing it for me.