House of Payne: Rude (11 page)
It was just a coincidence.
That was all.
“I’m sure this has nothing to do with you, or with Rude.”
Sass turned to look at her former foster sister, so shocked she had trouble processing her words. Tonya didn’t know about the letter her biological mother had left her; only Scout knew about it. And Scout had laughed at it just as much as she had, so what the hell was Tonya talking about?
“What?”
“This whole Liam thing. I’m sure he tangled with something he shouldn’t have, something that has nothing to do with you or Rude.”
“Rude? No, this wouldn’t have anything to do with Rude. He flew to Toronto for some security thing after our non-date at the amusement park on Tuesday. He wasn’t even in the country when this happened.”
“Oh, thank God.” Tonya clutched at her chest and collapsed back into her chair. “Because, honey, I was totally thinking it was Rude. I mean… my God, that fool got himself killed. Holy
shit
.”
“Shit,” Sabrina said solemnly, and chewed on the edge of her play yard while staring at her mother.
Sass couldn’t settle. Not surprising, considering one of her former lovers—a total dickhead and worthless human being, but still—had wound up on a slab. She didn’t feel bad about Liam’s death, mainly since he’d tried to kill her. But her cage was now officially rattled.
Instead of getting her usual ton of ingredients ready for what she did every weekend—cooking five to six dishes, and photographing every step along the way—she’d burned much of the afternoon waffling about calling the police. But as she had no clue what had happened to Liam, she finally decided it was best to leave it be. Since Rude had forced her into reporting her former boyfriend for smashing her face in and throwing her down a ginormous flight of stairs like the crazy-pants asshole he was—or,
had been
—the authorities knew where to find her. No doubt they would get in touch with her if they had any questions for her.
And she’d tell them exactly what she knew. Nothing. Wednesday night she’d been babysitting for Frankie and her husband Rocco until the wee hours of the morning. She had a rock-solid alibi in case she needed one.
Wow. Her life had taken a sharp left turn straight into Crazy Town if she was making sure she had an alibi. How wrong was that? Hadn’t she had enough bullshit to deal with in her lifetime already?
The faintest trill and a flash of movement out of the corner of her eye made Sass glance at the end of the sofa, then just as quickly away again. Red The Skittish, as Sass was now calling her, had decided to appear voluntarily and without the coaxing of food, and it was suddenly as special a moment as being visited by the Queen of England. She didn’t want to spoil it by making eye contact and freaking the cat out.
“I think your new foster mommy might be a nut, Red The Skittish,” Sass told the black tufted ottoman in front of her, while out of the corner of her eye she watched the wary calico slowly slink closer. “If someone was mean to you—like throw you down the stairs kind of mean—you wouldn’t give them another thought, would you? Because I’m sitting here worrying about that jerk’s death like it has something to do with me, and it doesn’t. I’m
sure
it doesn’t. Totally sure.”
The cat stopped its advanced and backed up a pace.
“I’m not lying, so don’t act like that, okay? And I’m also losing my grip over how Tonya made me realize I have no clue how to do long-term. I think that’s like a learned skill, but people like me—and
you
for that matter, though some might say you don’t qualify as a person—never had a chance to learn what long-term is. Strays like us count it as a win when we just get through the day. And there’s nothing wrong with that, right?”
She hazarded another sneaky glance Red’s way. The cat sat on her haunches and was staring at her like she was trying to figure out why Sass was talking to the ottoman. Sass couldn’t blame her.
“But there’s something to be said for stability and permanence, isn’t there? I’ve lived in this apartment for over six years now, can you believe it? That’s the longest I’ve ever stayed in any one place, by far. And I’ve gotten used to it. I love this space, but the major thing I love about it is that it’s
here
. It’s real, it’s solid, and it’s something I can believe in. So doesn’t that prove that maybe long-term stability is something people like us can pull off, despite our shitty backgrounds? Yeah, we’re strays, but can’t strays find a home so that they’re not strays anymore? That happened to you, right? You have a permanent home now with Scout, and you’re happy.”
She chanced another glance.
Red The Skittish was washing her unmentionables.
Lovely.
Since sitting at home was clearly making her crazy, Sass decided that getting out of the silent apartment was the best possible thing she could do for her mental health. Making sure Red had fresh food and water, she grabbed up a slim-fit zip-up hoodie that matched her hot pink and black yoga leggings and pink running shoes, and headed across the street to the park. Earlier, while she’d been nervously waiting for the police to come pounding on her door, she’d tried writing herself into a Zen state, moving through a section of her cookbook manuscript that focused on recipes inspired by what she’d learned in Mama Coco’s kitchen. But even after she’d finished that and moved on to getting a couple weeks ahead on her diet and nutrition column, her mind was still on tilt-a-whirl mode. Since she’d already decided to put her grocery-shopping off until tomorrow followed by a busy day of being either in the kitchen or behind the camera, she hoped a brisk walk around the park would flush the stress out.
And if that didn’t work, she’d ignore the carb and calorie knowledge she had on wine, and chill the hell out the old-fashioned way. It wasn’t every day an ex wound up naked in the Chicago River, after all.
She’d just stepped onto the park’s well-manicured grass when her phone went off with Scout’s ringtone of Aretha Franklin’s “Respect.” Thanking whatever gods were in charge of serendipity, Sass had the phone out and up to her ear before Aretha had even finished spelling out the song’s title. But when she heard Scout on the other end, she almost put it back in her pocket.
“I cannot
believe
you! How the fucking hell could you
not
tell me that that skinny-assed, goddamn cocksucker Liam whatever-the-fuck-his-loser-asshole-name-was put you in the fucking
hospital
?”
Eep.
“Ah.” Despite thousands of miles separating them, Sass still believed Scout was scarier than the Hulk when she got in a snit. “Hey, Scout. Uh, so I guess you’ve had a wee chat with either Tonya or Frankie?”
“Oh my God,
Frankie
knew? Fucking
Frankie
, but not
me
?”
Damn it, Tonya, you blabber mouth
. “You’re on your honeymoon, you idiot. I’m not going to interrupt one of the most important times of your life by running to you with every little problem that crops up.”
“A piece of shit dickhead ex-boyfriend lands you in the hospital because he tried to kill you with a set of huge-ass stairs. Rude—oh my God,
Rude
, of all people—comes to your rescue and you wind up playing tongue-tag with him twenty-four hours later.
Then
the ex becomes fucking fish food with fucking
Russian
scrawled all over his pasty ass. And you’re talking about
little problems
?”
Any second now Scout was going to burst a blood vessel. “I believe the Russian shit was written on his pasty chest, not his pasty ass. If we’re going to be dramatic, at the very least we should be accurate.”
There was an explosive beat of silence. “It’s Russian, Sass.
Russian
.”
“I know.” Tonya certainly hadn’t left out any details, that much was clear. And while Tonya didn’t know there was any significance to that particular detail, Scout did. Funny, how it didn’t seem to be as ridiculous now as it had when she was eighteen. “Do you remember how we laughed at that letter?”
“Yeah, I remember. I thought it was the funniest thing I’d ever read.”
“I did too.”
“I don’t think it’s funny anymore.”
That made two of them. “It could be a coincidence.”
“It’s
not
, Sass.”
“You don’t know that.”
“You’re right,” came the measured reply, and Sass recognized the shift in Scout’s tone. She’d gone into crisis-management mode. That meant Scout believed there was a crisis that needed to be managed. “I don’t know that. But it would be the biggest fucking coincidence the world has ever known, if that’s what it is. Which it isn’t.”
“I don’t need you to scout out trouble for me.” It was finding her just fine all on its own.
“I’m going to tell Ivar we need to come home early, so—”
“Don’t you
dare
.” Horrified, Sass heard the emotional crack in her voice, but having another drop of pressure applied to her now was going to make her shatter. Blindly she began walking toward the Cloud Gate, more commonly known as The Bean, a kidney-bean shaped sculpture the size of a commercial fishing boat, made out of stainless steel and had the seamless, mirror-like finish of liquid mercury. “Please don’t ruin your honeymoon, Scout. Your being here isn’t going to change anything, and right now there’s nothing to be done. Tonya and I had a long talk about Rude, and I have a lot to think about on that score, which means you can’t help me there, either. Don’t make me feel even worse by allowing my crazy shit to ruin your special time with your man, okay? More than anything right now, I need you to be deliriously happy, and stupid in love, and exhausted from too much sex. Please, please do this for me.”
“You ask the hardest things,” came the frustrated reply, before she offered a reluctant laugh when she clearly realized what she’d said. “But okay, I’ll soldier through.”
Sass expelled a relieved breath. “Thank you, hon.”
“I’m still going to be worrying about you during the non-sexy times, though, and we’ll be back home late Sunday night whether you like it or not. Please don’t disappear into the grip of some crazy Russian Mafia dude between now and then, okay?”
“I’ll do my best.”
But since she had no idea what was going on around her, she couldn’t promise anything, Sass thought as she hung up. It seemed like eons had passed since she and Scout had laughed at the immature ramblings her birth mother had left behind. It had been easy to dismiss, because the odds of any of it being true had been so minute she couldn’t begin to calculate it.
But now…
She sighed. She had no idea what to do. Getting the hell out of Dodge was her first instinct, but for how long? And where would she go? She’d never been outside of Illinois. She didn’t even know if there was anything to run from, for God’s sake. And she’d be leaving Rude behind…
You’re the epitome of a stray.
If you’re going to do this with Rude, then do it.
Or get out.
No matter where she turned, she didn’t know what to do.
Her text chime went off just as she made it to the plaza that held the Cloud Gate, and as she blinked at the sun reflecting off its mirror-like surface, she fished out her phone yet again. When she saw Rude’s name, she swore out loud.
Sass, where u at?
Maybe this was a sign, she thought, staring at the screen. Do a clean break with him quickly, before their new relationship gained any more momentum. She didn’t
do
relationships, for crying out loud. She had to make him understand that.
So that was what she’d do.
My message got read, I can see that. Answer already.
Stupid technology. Now she couldn’t even ignore someone without being tattled on.
“At The Bean across the street.”
Stay there. Be with u in a minute.
She didn’t answer. Something told her Rude wouldn’t want to hear that his imminent arrival tied her stomach in knots.
The moment Rude caught up with Sass, he knew something was wrong.
Way
wrong.
She turned when he called her name and looked right through him.
That look.
For a second he suspected he’d pushed things too far too fast, but that idea got bounced just as soon as it surfaced. Sass was skittish, but she wasn’t a wimp. If she had an issue with him, she’d tell him, flat-out.
This was something else.
Something not good.
“I didn’t know you were back in town.” Her voice matched that look—flat, without emotion. Indifferent. She’d pulled the plug and shut down, all right. But now he knew what that look was, and what to do about it. “I hope you had a nice—”
Without speaking or even breaking stride, he caught her by the hand and dragged her across the Plaza, heading straight for The Bean. Ignoring the bright sunshine bouncing off of it, the crowds of tourists that milled about and Sass tugging at her hand to get free, Rude kept moving and didn’t come to a stop until he was directly under the metallic sculpture.
“Rude—”
“Look around.” He turned her so that she faced him, before he wrapped his arms securely around her. Her body pressed to his from chest to knees, and even as her warmth seeped into his skin he focused on enveloping her in the living cage of his arms. “What do you see?”
A baffled frown appeared between her brows, and she looked up at him with eyes that were starting to lose their detached blankness. Halfway there already. “What?”
“We’re under the very center of the biggest, most reflective piece of sculpture in the country, so I know you can see it. Look at the reflections and tell me what you see.”
“I see… us, a whole bunch of times, along with about a hundred other people.”
“Look just at us. Look at every angle.” He waited for her to finish giving him a glance that doubted he had all his marbles. Then she cast her attention over the highly polished metal that arched over them, reflecting their image over and over, some twisted and curved in a funhouse-mirror style, some with perfect clarity. “Tell me what you see.”
“Us. I see us.”
“Do you see me standing with you?”
“Of course.”
“Do you see my arms around you?”
She made a sound of impatience. “Yes. Why are you—”
“Look at us closely and tell me if you think anything in this world can get to you when I’m holding you like this.”
Understanding dawned in her expression, followed by something much darker before her troubled gaze found his. “You can’t always hold me.”
“I can give it one hell of a try.”
“I don’t know that I want you to. If you were anyone else, I’d be more than happy to give you a spin around the block,” she added before he could get his mouth open to ask what the hell she meant by that. “And yeah, I’ll admit I’ve been pleasantly surprised that you and I are more compatible than I ever thought possible.”
“There better not be a ‘but’ coming up,” he muttered, his arms tightening. “I just got home after a grueling thirty-six hour day, and I’ve got no patience for a ‘but,” Sass.”
“
But
,” she said, clearly not taking his warning seriously, “you’re not just anyone else. You’re Papa Bolo and Mama Coco’s baby boy, and I love them. I can’t be messing around with you like I do with every other guy in my life. Panuzzis do relationships.
I
don’t.”
“I remember the crash course you gave me on your dating practices after that asshole landed you in the ER.” When she sucked in a sharp breath and looked away, he brought a hand to the back of her head and guided her gaze back to him. “I don’t see what that has to do with us.”
“We can’t play around, then go our separate ways like nothing happened. Unless,” she added on a quick breath, as if struck with sudden inspiration, “we keep everything on the down-low? If we decide to hop into bed together, no one has to know about it, right?”
“Wrong.”
“Oh, so you plan on advertising it, do you? Maybe taking pictures and video of us going at it like rabbits so you can post it on the family Facebook page?”
“No, though I’ll probably take more than my share of pictures,” he added honestly, while his blood heated at the thought. “You’re sexy as hell, Sassy, so I’m not going to lie. Pictures of you wearing nothing but the smile I’ve put on your face… yeah, I’m totally gonna do that.”
“Rude—”
“But those pics will be for my eyes only. No one gets to see you naked but me. I’ll only post the non-naked ones.”
“Geez, you are going to advertise it.”
“No, but I’m not going to hide anything, either. I don’t give a shit who knows that we’ve decided to hook up. All that matters in any relationship are the two people involved—no one else. It’s when other people are dragged into it that things get fucked up. I’m not going to let that happen.”
“Your parents will have expectations.
Long-term
expectations. I don’t want to disappoint them when we inevitably go our separate ways.”
“Other people. Not listening.”
“And Frankie’s head would explode if we got hot and heavy, then brought things to an end.”
“Other people. Still not listening.”
“Damn it, you’re impossible.” She popped completely out of her Nowhere Place to blast him with a baleful glare full of nice, healthy pissiness. “Try to understand my position, okay? You’re not the one who’ll have to deal with the fallout when we break up, do you understand? You’re a Panuzzi. You’ll always be a part of that family.
I’m not
. I’ll lose the only thing I’ve ever had in my pathetic life that I can call family when we’re no longer together, and the thought of that makes me want to throw up.”
“So, let me get this straight. You’ve already got us hooked up, going at it like rabbits, and then broken up? Talk about thinking ahead. Sass,” he said when she tried pushing him away in a huff. His arms locked her to him, rocking her side to side in a way that slowly took the fight out of her. “I get it, okay? You’re scared. The situation’s volatile, it’s brand new territory, and you have no idea what everyone’s reaction will be, or how to handle it yourself. I don’t either. But I’m not going to let any of that unimportant bullshit stop me, or you, from exploring just how hot we can get.”
“Yeah, you jerk, because you have nothing to lose, unlike me.”
“You don’t know your Mama Coco and Papa Bolo as well as you think you do, if you think a breakup between us would ostracize you. They don’t choose sides. They don’t interfere, and they don’t judge, so if you’re looking to them as an excuse to get out of being with me, it won’t work. And they sure as hell wouldn’t appreciate being used like that.”
That made her frown deepen, but still she shook her head. “You’re not listening to me. For all I know you can’t even hear what I’m saying. You know why that is? Because you’re safe. You’ll
always
be safe. You’ll always have people around you, a family who loves you. You have no clue what it’s like to be utterly alone. Shit, no wonder you can’t hear me. It’s like I’m speaking in a language that’s totally incomprehensible to you.”
“Not nearly as incomprehensible as you might think.” Rude searched her stormy, mistrustful eyes and saw he had one hell of a lot of convincing to do. “I know I’m lucky to have my family, because I know what it’s like to be without them, or anyone, to depend on.”
“I’m not talking about a few—”
“My last tour ended in the worst possible way,” he pressed, talking over her until she fell silent. “I’d been all over the world with my team, Sass. We ate together, trained together, bled together, partied together. Our CO, a guy by the name of Captain Maxwell Gold, had gotten us out of more scrapes that I can count, so after a while he’d earned himself the nickname Miracle Max. Before each mission he’d tell us to have fun storming the castle.” He smiled a smile that hurt, and she seemed to understand that, if the faint sorrowful sound she made and they way she rested a hand against his cheek was any indication. “He was walking only three feet in front of me down this dirt pathway in the middle of a refugee camp when his head just… exploded. I still don’t know what hit him. The docs have told me not to fixate on that, but it’s so fucking hard not to. I
loved
that guy, Sass. And he’d always been there to be loved—not just by me, but by all of us. I depended on him the way a kid depends on his father to save him whenever the world turns to shit, and suddenly I’m wearing his brains all over me. So I just stood there for what seemed like forever trying to figure out what… the
fuck
… hit him.”
That vivid nightmare of a memory was so prominent in his mind’s eye, he was astonished when it was wiped out by the glitter of unshed tears in her eyes. No other sign of distress crossed her expression, save for a small puckering between her brows. She didn’t protest the violence he shared, and she didn’t shy away from it with a wince of distaste like he’d expected. She simply tilted her head, a gesture that told him without words she was listening, while the hand at his cheek slipped around to his nape to gently stroke his hair.
Until that moment, he’d never appreciated how much could be communicated through touch.
“Micah, a close buddy I’d had since our first MCTs together, knocked me into a tent and screamed at me to head for the foothills. I remember that distinctly. Yet when I looked back to see if he was behind me, I found that he was lying next to Miracle Max. Sloaney was a few yards away from him, sitting on the ground in a daze, one of his arms hanging off while a guy in a black uniform and mask popped out of a refugee tent and slit his throat. Then guys in black were swarming everywhere. It seemed like there were thousands of them.”
For just a moment her hand tensed before resuming its soothing rhythm. “How did you get out?”
“I laid down cover fire in the hope that at least some of my guys would come running out of that clusterfuck, but only one, Boomer, staggered out toward me. He was seriously fucked up, and even as he made it to me he passed out and stayed that way. I was just getting him on my shoulder when I felt an icy-hot sting in my back.”
“Oh, no.” It was barely a thread of sound. Any quieter and it wouldn’t have been audible. “You got hit. Whatever got Miracle Max, you got hit with it.”
He shook his head. “When I turned I saw a young woman standing there. She’d come out of the tent I’d fallen into, and she was holding a bloody knife that she’d just stuck in me. I knew just enough of the language to understand what she said—‘you’re here to kill our babies.’” He shook his head again at the memory and had to laugh, but even he could hear hopelessness in it. “These people… you really gotta feel for them. They have
nothing
, and they know even less about what’s happening around them. No internet, no cell phone towers, no electricity to get television reports, and many of them can’t even read. They have nothing to keep them updated about what’s happening around them—they don’t even know who their enemies are. They only know what they’re told by whoever is in charge that day. Most of them had lost their homes due to the assholes in black, yet those bastards had the balls to turn right around and tell these poor refugees that
we
were the ones who’d chased them from their villages and ruined their lives, not them.”
“She stabbed you, and you defend her?” Her breath trembled before she lifted a shoulder, and he could almost see her trying to shake it off. “You got away, obviously. She didn’t kill you. You got away.”
“At that moment I understood that every single person I ran across …they were the enemy. Whether it was their fault or not, it didn’t matter. That was just how it had to be looked at—they were the enemy. They wanted Boomer and me dead, and they were willing to do anything to make that happen.”
He thought she muttered “Damn it,” under her breath, but he couldn’t be sure.
“For eight days I dragged Boomer with me. I think the vital part of Boomer’s brain that made him who he was had already died, but his body was so strong it hadn’t gotten the message yet. I kept us alive by hiding out, trying—and failing—to keep our wounds clean, and taking anything that I could find to keep us alive, including lives. It wasn’t until I stumbled across another patrol that I was able to get us extracted from that hell, more dead than alive. And Boomer… he took his last breath just as we were being evac’ed out of there.”
She swallowed hard before nodding, accepting it in silence, her gaze never wavering.
“So while I lived like that for only eight days, alone and fucking helpless to fix any of the shit that was going on around me, I do know what it’s like to have no one to turn to when the worst kind of pressure’s on. I’ll never forget what it was like to be utterly alone, so don’t tell me I don’t know what it’s like.”
“I’d never presume to compare my life to what you went through,” she said after a long moment, looking
at
him instead of
through
him. “Thinking that every minute’s going to be your last, frantic over a friend’s life as it slips away and being helpless to keep it from happening, versus my ordinary child welfare upbringing… it’s embarrassing to even think of comparing them.”
