Campbell (41 page)

Lucy laughed. “No. Now I’ve got an alligator and I’m not sure how to prepare it.”

“If you think that sleeping with me is going to be as exciting as catching an alligator, I think you’ll be sorely disappointed.” Tal stretched out in the bed and nodded at the TV on the dresser. “Do you want to watch a movie?”

“Yeah,” she nodded, curling herself around him, her head on his chest as she enjoyed the intimacy of being close to him in the place he was most comfortable. “In a minute.”

***

“Goose?” Bull called from across the narrow stream. “Hey, over here!”

She shook her head and realized that she’d fallen asleep, and here, in her dream, she was entirely naked. She wondered where the t-shirt she was certain she was sleeping in had ended up, and what her nudity was symbolic of.
 

“Fuck!” she giggled, doing her best to cover herself up with her hands.
 
“Come over here.”

He did as she asked and trudged through the stream, bringing himself with a few feet of her. “You’re dreaming. You haven’t been. I’ve been looking everywhere for you for a week now. And you’re naked.”

Lucy then saw Tal out of the corner of her eye, asleep on the soft grass in the meadow, in only his underwear. Bull didn’t seem to notice him. Sometimes her dreams made no sense.

“I am naked. I guess I’m sleeping better,” she said, with a nonchalant shrug. “And I’ll see you tomorrow?”

“I’ll be in LA tomorrow,” he said, his voice laden with regret. “I’m sleeping in the car. I’ve got to sort shit out with your little friend. He’s got a theory that’s worth following up on.”

“I’m there, Bull. I’m in LA with Tal.” She shook her head and glanced at him again, noticing he’d spread himself out on his back like he did, blissfully unaware of the conversation that was taking place five feet away. “We flew down yesterday.”

Bull crossed his arms and raised his eyebrows suspiciously. “You flew down?”

“He came up to see me, and I came back with him. If Connor did kidnap us—”
 

“There’s a chance he’s responsible for everything.” Bull nodded, irritation flashing across his face. “So you came to find out with him. You wanted to see. Last time I saw you, you weren’t interested in anything.”

She twisted her face up. “He makes me feel…better, somehow.”

“You need to be careful. You don’t know if you can trust him—”
 

“I do know,” she said, in a tone she found whiny. “How’s Zoey?”

He sat down on the soft grass. “She’s very worried about you, but she’s much more tolerable when you’re not around.”

“Thanks,” she grumbled.
 

“She’s going to be hurt that he was able to do what she couldn’t.”

Lucy closed her eyes and thought of all the things Zoey had said, all the ways she’d tried to get her to respond before she’d finally thrown her hands up and left with Bull, desperate to have some influence on something.
 

“I can’t help that,” she finally responded. “I can’t help that I don’t feel like I think I should, and I can’t help the way I feel around him. I like the way I feel around him. I don’t want to shove it down. It is what it is.”

Bull nodded, a sad look crossing his face for the briefest second, and she knew it wasn’t just Zoey who felt hurt that she’d been unable to help. “I trust that you know what’s right for yourself.”

“Thank you,” she said, and as she looked down, she saw that she was now in her usual jeans and a t-shirt. She reached for him and embraced him, knowing that what she’d said without saying anything was going to change their relationship in a million ways.
 

She had to make sure it was for the better.
 

Chapter 23

February 2003

Los Angeles, West

“Juan, you’re doing it all wrong!” Rika squealed as he pushed the Scrabble board to the ground, tucked her under his arm and carried her to their bedroom. “You can’t do that.”

“It’s a stupid game,” he chuckled. “I have a game that I’m better at.”

The last five months had been the best of Rika’s life. In Juan, she’d found a family. Love. Support. It was so overwhelming that sometimes she’d find herself crying with happiness for no reason. She remembered reading about soul mates in a philosophy book at summer school, and decided that Plato was probably right about their soul splitting at some point, no matter how absurd she and Juan would look fused together in person.
 

“Can we go to San Fran soon?” she asked, after her body stopped vibrating from his attentions. “I want to see some of my friends.”

“Your dorky math camp friends?” Juan joked. “Sure, Baby. Whenever you want. Not today though, because Connor’s coming over.”

She gave him a bright grin. “Why are you still working for Connor?”

“Because he pays well, and it’s easy.” He pulled the blanket up and looked at her body. “Your boobs are getting bigger.”

“They hurt lately,” she said with a shrug. “I read that can happen when you’re pregnant so it’s a good thing we’re not having sex or I’d be freaking out.”

“Me too,” he agreed. “This girl I grew up with just had a baby and she almost died. Someone had to learn how to stitch—”
 

“Stop,” Rika cringed. “Don’t. We both know what happens.”

“Someday I want you to have my babies. When we’re much older.”

“How many?”

“Two,” he said, pulling her on top of him.

“How about one?”

“You hated being an only child. Two, at least. Maybe three or four. Maybe I’ll shackle you to the bed and we’ll have twenty.”

She rolled her eyes. “Two, maybe.” Her mouth met his and she slid her tongue ring along the roof of his mouth. “All those kids and I won’t have much time to put my other talents to use.”

“Two’s great,” he chuckled. “Someday I’ll stop working for Connor. Someone will take him out and everything will change.”

Rika nodded, nuzzling her face into the crook of his neck. “Hopefully for the better, because it can’t get much worse than those shitty movies he’s making. Maybe we should—”

They both jumped when the doorbell rang, quickly dressing to meet their dinner guest. Rika rolled her eyes as Juan opened the door and greeted his boss with a hearty handshake.

“Great place,” Connor said, looking around their large living room. “Rika, how are you?”

“Fine,” she said, putting on a smile. She didn’t like Connor. She thought he was a self-centered egomaniac, and he always looked at her like he felt sorry for her, which was infuriating. “I’m…I’ll go start dinner.”

She listened from the kitchen as Connor berated Juan about them moving into the house

“…I just think you’d be better off in your parent’s house, you know? More comfortable.”

“I’m pretty comfortable here,” Juan replied abruptly. “Just because I couldn’t have lived here before doesn’t mean I shouldn’t now.”

“You don’t feel like a fraud?”

“Nope,” he said with a shrug. “No more than you should, since you didn’t exactly earn the money for your parents’ house.”

Rika couldn’t help but interrupt. “You’re really putting that class shit on us? There’s no one to live in these houses. We had to bury the guy that was here and fucking fumigate the place.” Rika cringed at the corpse that had been in the back yard under a tarp when she’d first started coming over. “Besides, my parents lived in a house a lot like this, and your dad hadn’t done a good movie in almost a decade. If you want to start comparing bankbooks, I’m game.”

Connor looked taken aback by her forwardness. “Well, aren’t you a firecracker.”

“Aren’t you an asshole,” she muttered, making her way back into the kitchen.

“That’s my girl,” Juan said brightly, without a hint of an apology.

Rika waited for Connor’s response, but instead of replying or commenting, he changed the subject and turned his attention to Juan.

“So, how’s the flying going?”

November 2012

Los Angeles, West

Lucy kissed Tal’s cheek before slipping out of the bedroom and making her way downstairs and out into the backyard. She needed a few minutes to think before the emotionally charged situation she knew she was bound to find herself in once Bull and Zoey arrived. She’d insinuated her breakup with Zoey to Tal, more than once. Unless Lucy’s silence and comatose state had somehow convinced her otherwise, Zoey thought they were still together. Struggling, but together.
 

She knew Bull was unlikely to tell Zoey otherwise, even after their dream conversation. He usually wasn’t one to interfere in her relationships, not since they were fourteen, when Lucy had taken the competition factor out and decided that she liked women exclusively.
 

All bets were off now, however, since he’d caught a glimpse of her interest in Tal. She’d seen the early indications of that when they’d been in Grove.
 

Tal’s backyard was a masterpiece in urban gardening, nearly every inch of it covered in something useful and mostly edible. She assumed it was Leah’s handiwork. She stretched out on a lounger and looked over the pool.

They came from very different worlds.

The patio door slid open. “I made coffee,” Leah said, raising her eyebrows at the intruder in her sanctuary. “There’s enough for you, but Tal will have to make his own.”

“Thanks,” Lucy replied, wrapping her sweater around her. “That’s really nice.”

“I made it anyway,” she said with a shrug. “No big deal.”

“You and him are close,” Lucy said, looking at her. “I know that.”

“You seem to think you know a lot more than you do,” Leah replied, her brow furrowed. “You come in here, and you think that a week in the woods together makes you an expert on him.”

“He saved my life out there.” Lucy neglected to mention how he’d aided her much more recently than that.

Leah crossed her arms and frowned. “So repay your debt and help us with Connor, then leave.”

“I’m not here to stay. I have this little territory called Campbell? Perhaps you’ve heard of it?” Lucy raised her eyebrows. “It’s straddles your measly little universe.”

She turned and went inside, closing the door behind her. A minute later, a large cup of coffee was deposited on the table beside the lounger.
 

“I’m sorry about your brother,” she muttered. “I lost my sister in the early days.”

Tal’s cousin, Lucy remembered. “He was my twin.” She squeezed her eyes shut but a defiant tear escaped. “How do you do it?”

“Do what?”

“Get up in the morning. Breathe.”

Leah sat on the edge of her lounger and clutched her mother’s coffee mug. “I think about her every day; what she’d be like, what she’d look like. I imagine how life would be different, and then I remember how important it is to live, for her.”

“And the boy who killed her? What about him?”

Leah’s expression changed, and Lucy realized that she had completely disregarded her as an intelligent woman, because it was easier to see her as a sniveling, whiny girl. “He’s got a kid now. I check in on him now and then. Make sure it mattered to him, what he did. If it hadn’t?” She shrugged. “His life would have been different. It would have been shorter.”

“What if Connor did take Tal? He could have—”
 

Leah leaned in. “Why do you think I slept with him? Do you think I had some illusions of grandeur with that little shit? That I thought I needed him to live? Gaining someone’s confidence after a lifetime of disdain has its price.”

“So you knew? You know.”

She raised her eyebrows. “I didn’t know what it all meant then. I know more than I want to, but exactly what I need to. He blamed it all on you, you know. To justify it. Why it happened.”

“Where’s my brother?” Lucy whispered, her heart pounding.

“I don’t know,” Leah replied honestly. “But I can show you where he died.”
 

***

When Tal woke up later that morning, it was to the phone beside the bed ringing. He hadn’t meant to stay with Lucy, but he’d fallen asleep and the prospect of moving and waking up alone had kept him in place. She was gone, a rumpled blanket in her place. She hadn’t cried until she was moments from falling asleep, and she’d tried to hide it from him but he’d known right away, and when she’d buried her face in his chest and fallen asleep, after murmuring ‘thanks’, he’d never felt more useful.
 

The more Lucy talked about Cole, the angrier he was at Connor, and not just because Lucy was upset. Cole was, as far as Tal was concerned, an innocent in a game he’d never been good at. Connor had, knowingly or not, unleashed the beast that was Andrew Campbell, and that was, from what Lucy had told Tal, a grave mistake.
 

“Hello?” he answered gruffly, rubbing his face to wake up.

“All’s good on the eastern front,” Connor said brightly. “Good morning, sunshine.”

“Hey, buddy,” Tal said, rolling his eyes at his phone. “What’s up?”

“How’s Rika?” he asked suggestively.

“What…oh,” Tal rolled his eyes. “She’s great. I…should have got to know her a long time ago.”

“That tongue ring always made me curious. There’s only one reason a woman—”
 

Tal laughed to shut him up. “Come on. It’s not like that.”

“You always did see yourself as more of a lover than a fucker, Bauman. So here’s the deal. I need you to release a hundred grand. We’re trying to buy some support and everyone in Phoenix seems to need a kitchen appliance of some sort.”

It was the call Tal expected, with an extra dose of bullshit.
 

“No,” he said, smiling to himself as he said it. He knew this conversation should have happened years earlier.
 

“Ha ha,” Connor laughed. “I’m going to send someone over for it. We’ll need cash. You get a better deal if you pay—”

“I mean it. No.”

“What the fuck, man?”

“I’m cutting you off. This is it.”

“You’re cutting me off? It’s my—”
 

“It belongs to the kids of West. It’s not yours. I don’t think this is a good use of it.” It felt incredibly good to finally put it out there. “No.”