Losing Streak (The Lane) (11 page)

Chapter Thirteen

“What are your plans for this evening?”

“Hmm?” I glanced up from my phone’s calendar, frowning at the interruption. Joshua looked at me in the entryway mirror as he adjusted his dull tie. His ties were always dull. Bland. They were proof that all the money in the world couldn’t buy style.

“I don’t have you scheduled for anything. How are you going to spend your night off?”

“Oh.” I frowned deeper. “I’m not sure. I’ll probably go see my mama.”

“And how is your mother doing?”

He didn’t care. Not really. He was asking only because he felt like he was supposed to. Still, I found myself answering honestly, as if it mattered. Maybe just because I wanted it to.

“Okay. She’s on a break from her chemo. It’s this new, semi-experimental kind and it’s pretty rough on her system, but her doctor feels pretty good about it. They’ve seen some significant progress in other patients. Didn’t cure it, of course, but slowed it down to a crawl.”

“Lovely,” he murmured absently, checking himself over one last time. “Well, give her my best, of course. And let me know if she requires anything.”

“I will. She’s fine, though. You’ve done a lot already.”

“Nonsense. We have an arrangement and I told you I would always live up to my end of it if you held up yours.”

I nodded, staring at a point just over his shoulder.

“I’ll be late,” he continued. “I need to run the numbers again at Duke’s and Bar 9. I may stop by the Tap Room after to check on Ted’s as well. He’s a dependable enough man, as you know, but has absolutely no head for business.”

“Should I take over his bookkeeping again?”

“No, that won’t be necessary. Give a man a fish and all that. It’s high time for Ted to learn to be self-sufficient. A kingdom is only as strong as its weakest member. Sometimes the king has to step in and force those inhabitants to toughen up.” He gave his tie a pull and straightened his shoulders. “It’s not easy being king, Rosemary. So many want the throne yet have no idea how difficult the job actually is once they’re seated upon it.”

“Maybe because you make it look so easy?” I offered lightly, knowing that was what he wanted to hear, expected to hear, and I was the one he wanted to hear it from.

“Undoubtedly.” He gave a long-suffering sigh, the weary ruler whose title exhausted him, yet he continued to rule out of the goodness of his heart. This was how he truly saw himself. The poor, delusional soul. “Have a good evening.”

“You as well.”

I waited until he was out the door and presumably in the elevator traveling down to his warehouse below before crossing the dark, perfectly buffed wood floors to the large window that overlooked the parking lot. The lights of the Lane cast the street in a warm glow and from this vantage point, with only a pane of glass between me and it, it was easy to pretend I was a queen surveying her kingdom and people. No wonder Joshua had chosen this lifeless apartment building to convert into his castle. It wasn’t about giving back to the town that raised him or proving to business owners that the Lane was worth investing in, his favored party lines. The view helped feed his fantasies.

After a minute or two, headlights cut through the night, swinging out from the underground garage. The car they belonged to barely paused at the entrance before pulling out onto the street and accelerating. I watched until the taillights were swallowed up by the sea of other slow-moving cars, letting my forehead rest against the cool glass for a moment longer.

The Lane hummed with life below, yet the silence of the penthouse was thick. Complete. It loomed over me, shoving at my back and shoulders, pushing me further into the window.

Alone. Alone. Alone. It was a heartbeat. A bass line that vibrated against my bones. There was only me. Maybe there’d only ever been me. Maybe it would only ever be me.

Mama had told me once, when I was a little girl, that I never had to be afraid of the dark. I didn’t need to ever feel lost or alone in it. She’d said that out of all the things in the universe to be frightened of, I never had to fear the night itself.

“The stars, Rose. You are never alone. They’re there even when we can’t see them.”

“They’re only just stars, though, Mama,” I’d protested at the time, clutching her hand, a step above her on the apartment stairwell. “Just big balls of burning gas. Some of them don’t even exist anymore. They burned out millions of years ago.”

“Is that what they taught you at school?”

I’d nodded and gripped her soft hand a little tighter. Any minute now she’d have to leave and it would just be me and a snoring Jackson for the rest of the night.

“Well, then, you remember that. You hold on to that for tests but you listen to me. Those stars are little windows in the floor of heaven, and the saints use them to watch over us. You are never alone, Rose. Someone is always watching.”

She’d pulled away then and planted a kiss on my forehead, featherlight and over too soon. But her words lingered. For years, they lingered, swimming to the front of my mind at the oddest times.

My hand slid to my back pocket, the coarse napkin feeling like a promise. Then, with a grin, I lifted a finger to those all-seeing saints. They’d forsaken us a long time ago. They’d left me alone. I didn’t care if they were watching.

I crept out of the penthouse even though there was no one to creep from and took the elevator down to the garage. Jared was on guard duty since Duke’s was closed for the evening, and he barely glanced up at me from the paper he was reading as he waved me through.

The night felt different beyond the liveliness of the Lane. Heavier. Darker. The Miata Joshua had given me drew eyes that I determinedly avoided. Every headlight in my rearview mirror was a shot of adrenaline, making my palms slick and my heart bang wildly against my ribs. Serenity came only once they turned off and the road behind me was clear once more. Peace. Discord. Certainty. Doubt. Back and forth I flipped, living and dying minute to minute, one extreme to the other.

Then I crossed into Depot Town. My hands trembled on the steering wheel. My stomach burned from steel-winged butterflies that violently swooped. I was lost. I was found.

I was a wretch but salvation waited for me here in this dried-up town. On the farthest edge of it was a liquor store called the Roundhouse, bracketed by crumbling, graffitied buildings with For Rent signs hung in their cracked and smudged windows. There, parked at the end of the lot, was Brandon’s same truck, only now with a smashed fender. He straightened in the driver’s seat as I pulled into a space a little closer to the door and cut the engine, watching in my rearview mirror as he climbed out and crossed the lot toward me. Any doubts about being here withered away at the sight of him, those long legs encased in dark denim and his black jacket that looked like every dream I’d ever had.

He jogged the rest of the way over, as if he couldn’t wait any longer than he absolutely had to, and when I opened my door, he pulled me out from behind the wheel and tugged me close.

“Rose,” he whispered, breathed against my hair as if it was a prayer. As though salvation would come if only he said it with enough reverence. He said my name as if it was something he believed in. “Damn it.”

“What?” The part of me that was screaming to pull away, to put distance between us, was overshadowed by the relief of being so close to home.

“I swore I was not going to do this. I had the whole thing planned out in my head if you showed up.” He pulled away, but only far enough to look me in the eye. “I wasn’t even sure if you would come.”

“I almost didn’t,” I admitted. “Guess I’m a girl who can’t resist a napkin with shitty handwriting on it.”

“Penmanship was never one of my strengths.”

“I’d have never guessed.”

He grinned, a heartbreaking smile that pulled at his full lips.

God, I’d missed those lips.

A car suddenly pulled into the other side of the parking lot, causing us both to whirl in that direction, Brandon’s muscles tensing around me. I felt my eyes grow wide and my breath catch painfully when the single occupant got out, but he didn’t even glance toward us as he made his way inside the store. The damage had been done, however. Whatever spell we’d been under broken.

“This was probably a stupid idea,” Brandon muttered as he stepped away completely and rubbed the back of his neck. I felt myself nod a little hard, nearly as hard as my heart was still galloping. God, yes it was. Possibly the stupidest idea ever. Yet I didn’t pull away when he caught my hand in his and started to pull me gently toward the side of the building.

In fact, I kept pace.

He ducked into the space between the store’s two Dumpsters, leaned back against the wall and spread his legs slightly before pulling me to stand in between them. I came willingly, laced my fingers behind his neck and pressed closer, even while telling myself I was a fool and so was he.

“How’s your mama?” he asked. “I’ve been trying to find out, but there wasn’t a real good way to ask anyone else.”

I was grinning, wide and real, before he’d finished speaking.

“She’s okay.” I didn’t say anything more. For once, I didn’t have to.

“Okay? So not as good as I’d hoped, but I’ll take it.”

A rush of warmth like whiskey started in my chest, thawing numb parts as it blossomed outward. Before I gave myself a chance to think it through, I grabbed the lapels of his jacket, the leather worn and soft between my fingers, and pulled him in close until he was bent over me, making me feel almost small, delicate. Fragile, even. I didn’t want to be those things, of course, but it was okay to feel it. Just for a minute. Just while it was safe to. I felt the corners of his lips tilt upward and he brought them down to cover mine.

It was desperate, this kiss, full of heat and longing and the slightest tinge of remorse. Everything ceased to exist, every noise. Every emotion. There was only this. His firm, warm mouth against mine and the taste of mint and the cool breeze that slid over our skin like I wanted our hands to. I pushed myself closer, but it wasn’t close enough. It’d never be close enough. Not when we’d had so much distance between us for so long.

When he finally pulled away, breath ragged and shaky, he wrapped an arm around my shoulders and tugged me closer, pressing a hard kiss to my temple.

“That wasn’t supposed to happen.” He shook his head a little ruefully. “Good to know I’m still a masochist when it comes to you.”

“I’d be disappointed if you weren’t.” The muscles in my arms burned from the strain of not yanking him back toward me, and my throat felt tight around my next words. But I had to ask. I had to know. “Are you, though? Still a masochist?”

He knocked his forehead against mine gently.

“For you.”

I let out a breath, only realizing my lungs had been tight once they loosened. “Good.”

“And you’re clearly still a sadist.”

I laughed, full and real and damn, it felt good. “Yeah, well, the more things change, I guess.”

It was as if a switch had been thrown. Brandon’s shoulders sagged, a burst of air escaping his lips. “How’d it go with MacBain?”

I tightened my grip on his jacket, wanting desperately to draw him back from wherever my words had sent him, back here to me, to these stolen moments between moments stolen from us.

He was watching me with an expectant look on his face. I sighed.

“He’s not interested. Not even a little bit.”

“How will it affect you? If he doesn’t give in?”

“We hadn’t really discussed that part of it. The reward is too good for me to consider failure.”

“Always consider that. Not considering it is how we ended up here in the first place.”

“Fair enough.”

“What do you get if you succeed?” His tone, overly casual, clashed with the sudden tightening of his grip on me, indicating he wasn’t sure he wanted to know the answer.

“Money. A lot of money. Enough to set Mama up until I figure out what my next step is. How I’ll keep us from the situation we were in before. Plus I still get to keep anything considered mine on top of that.”

“Blood money.”

“Excuse me?” I pulled back. “I’ve worked my ass for every bit of it.”

He looked as though he wanted to say something more but thought better of it at the last minute. Instead, he nodded.

“I know, babe. I know.”

I searched his eyes for a minute before I finally returned the gesture.

“Damn straight.” I buried myself into his worn shirt and inhaled deep, unable to resist. “And don’t forget it.”

“I never do.” He fell quiet for a minute and I spent that time committing this moment to memory, laying it atop the broken pieces of the one from our last night together. Then, “What can I do to help?”

I frowned into his shirt.

“Nothing. There’s nothing you can do. I told you, I’m not worried. MacBain isn’t the first I’ve had to bring over to the dark side. He’s not even the first to put up a fight. They all give in eventually and always to me. They know what happens if they don’t.”

“They call you the Closer.”

“What?”

Brandon shrugged around me. “That’s what I’ve heard. Around. They call you the Closer. As in, ‘How did you end up here?’ ‘Oh, the King sent in his Closer.’”

I felt my spine straighten.

“Oh, I like that. The Closer. MacBain’s wife called me a wolf. Kinda liked that too.”

“I don’t.”

“Why? Jealous you don’t have a nickname?”

His hands flexed against my hips once before relaxing.

“No. That’s not it. I just don’t like that you’re in so deep that you have a street name. Think about it. We only have about two more months until this is over. In two months we can walk. But you have a name. You’ve become such a big part of what King does. You can’t just make a clean break. How? People know who you are and who you work for. They either hate you or respect you, but they all know you.”

I’d known that, of course. That I was known, even if I wasn’t really, but I’d never thought of it like that. I hadn’t really thought about it, period. I just did because doing was safer than thinking.

“I’ll be able to walk,” I finally said, hoping my voice didn’t sound as uncertain to him as it did to my own ears. “That was the deal. There’s no way Joshua would back out of it.”