Convict: A Bad Boy Romance (13 page)

I nod.

“Was there any unprotected genital-to-genital contact?” Raine asks.

I cover my eyes with both hands and shake my head, because I can’t look my little brother in the eye right now. Thank
God
he’s using his professional voice and sounding clinical as fuck.

“Oral-genital contact?” he asks.

I turn bright red, my hands still over my eyes, and nod.

“Were there any open wounds or sores?”

“No,” I say.

“Did you come into contact with any of the other party’s fluids besides saliva?”

“No,” I say.

Raine puts his hand on my shoulder again and squeezes.

“You’re probably fine,” he says. “That’s the good news. Bad news is, everything I’d test you for takes more than a couple of hours to show up in your blood work.”

Somehow, that hadn’t occurred to me. I take my hands off my eyes and lean on one fist, looking at Raine.

“Right,” I say. “I think I knew that.”

“You’re up to date on your vaccines, right?” he asks.

I nod.

“Dude, you’re gonna be fine,” he says, and squeezes my shoulder again. “You’re not gonna pick up anything worse than what you’d get making out with a stranger at a bar. Get tested in a month, just to be on the safe side, but I think you’re good.”

I want to say
dude, I don’t make out with strangers at bars
, but given that my little brother is coaching me through a sex-related freak out, I keep my mouth shut.

“Sorry for making you come out here,” I say, taking a long drink of my tea. “But thanks.”

Raine grins.

“It sucks that you’re upset, but it’s kinda nice that I’m not the one who fucked up this time,” he says.

“It wasn’t even my fault,” I say.

“Yeah, it’s never your fault,” he says, still grinning.

“Shut up.”

“Loony fucked uuuuup,” he says in an irritating, sing-song voice.

“What are you, eight?” I ask.

He does a goofy wiggle dance in his chair.

“Loony fucked up and this guy—” he jerks both thumbs at himself, “—saved the day.”

“You didn’t
save the day
,” I say.

“You stopped crying,” he points out. “Plus, now you’re annoyed at me instead of upset about boy problems.”

He
almost
has a point, and I sigh.

“You know what helps me when I’m bummed?” he asks.

“You get high and watch cartoons?” I say, because I already know the answer.

“Exactly,” he says. “I’m off tomorrow, so we can order pizza and go to
town
.”

Sometimes I can’t
believe
he’s entrusted with saving lives, even though I know he’s actually good at it.

“Okay,” I say.

Raine blinks.

“Really?”

“I’m not gonna get high, but I’ll eat pizza and watch dumb shit with you,” I say.

Raine drums both hands on the table, grins, and stands.

“Sweet,” he says.

L
ife is just so fucking
unfair sometimes. It’s not news to me, but when that unfairness rears its head I still want to take a sledgehammer to everything in sight and then set it all on fire.

Luna drives away, and I turn back to my house, slamming the door.

“FUCK!” I shout. “FUCK!”

I punch the wall next to the door before I even know what I’m doing. It fucking
hurts,
because it’s a wall, but the pain at least distracts me.

“Goddammit,” I mutter, walking through my living room. A box gets in my way, and I kick it. It spins into wall and I hear something inside crack, but I’m already stalking away, hand throbbing.

I don’t know why I ever bothered to do the right thing, because now I’m fucked both ways. I keep the terms of my parole and witness protection and Luna never looks at me again. I spill, and the last six months of my life could be for goddamn nothing.

The kitchen sink is full of silverware, and I grab some with my left hand and throw it across the counter, where some of it bounces off the fridge and most of it clatters to the floor. I plug the sink, throw some ice in, run the cold water, and plunge my right hand under.

Then I stand there for a long time, buck naked and still furious in the dark. I still want to punch shit with my other hand, like maybe the window in front of me, but for once I’ve got the consequences on full display already so I don’t.

Far away, an engine roars. It sounds like a motorcycle, probably on Highway 1, which isn’t too far from my house.

I could just fucking go back
, I think.
I can’t talk to anyone I used to know, but I could find someone to fence stolen cars for me no problem. Do a job or two a month, live easy.

It’s pure fantasy, and I know it, but I still let myself think about it for a minute. I’m no goddamn good at getting along in this world. Even before I did time, most of my shit fit into a duffel bag and most nights I went to bed at sunrise.

I’d be alive a month if I went back. Maybe two. Word would get out about me, and next thing I knew, the Syndicate would be knocking on my door.

This, right here, this house and these boxes and this lopsided futon? This is my only choice if I want to stay alive.

I flex my hand under the ice water. It hurts, but I’m pretty sure nothing’s broken, just bruised pretty bad. I look at the counter full of thrown silverware.

I fucking deserve this
, I think.
You can’t be good enough for her. There’s no way. Not ever.

Stop thinking about her
.
Just stop.

* * *

L
una’s
all I think about for three days straight.

I drive to work remembering how she saw through my spray paint ruse in about two minutes. I do oil changes and replace brake lights thinking about her legs around my waist. I go home with her voice whispering
please fuck me
rattling through my brain.

The only solace comes after I get home, because then I get drunk in front of the television. There’s a perfect level of intoxicated just below “blackout” where I can watch terrible sitcoms and not think about the look on her face, half terrified and half angry, as she ran out of my house.

She left her panties behind. I haven’t touched them. They’re just lying on the floor of my living room like a dead bat.

Good thing I never have company.

I’ve thought about going out and getting laid, but even that doesn’t appeal to me. The effort it would take just to hump some drunk woman missionary-style in a motel bed wouldn’t be worth it.

The Syndicate is burning cars in my town, and I’m a fucking wreck over some girl. Over a goddamn
cop
. I may as well just chop my own balls off and throw them into the ocean.

Just come for me already
, I think.
Let me at least take a couple of those fuckers out.

I pour myself another finger of Jim Beam and flip the channel to some infomercial for a frying pan that’s nonstick or some shit. I don’t care. I drink my whiskey and then fall asleep on the uneven futon.

* * *

A
nother day goes by
. At 3:55 I lower the lift and take the keys of the car I’ve been working on back into the office, nodding at Eddie, and hang the keys on a hook in the lockbox. Then I fill out my time card.

“Stone,” Eddie says suddenly.

I look up. He’s behind the desk, leaning back in an old chair that used to be white, studying my face. I get the feeling that he’s been studying me this whole time.

“Yes?” I say.

“Is everything all right?”

I fill out
4 p.m.
on the “out” line, then initial it. It’s a low-tech office.

“Everything is fine,” I say, and try to smile at him.

Shit
, I think.
He’s noticed I’ve been off, and now I’m going to get fired
.

“You haven’t been yourself lately is all,” he says.

My stomach lurches. This job is the one normal thing I’ve got going right now, the only thing that’s made me feel like a person and not like some kind of animal. I can’t lose it. I can’t.

“Sorry, Eddie,” I say. “I know I’ve been working a little slow lately, I’ll try —”

“No, no,” he says, waving one hand in the air. “Your work is fine, Stone. You just seem down is all.”

I’m not about to explain this all to Eddie, but I know I have to say
something,
so I take a deep breath.

“I’m going through a rough patch in my personal life,” I say.

I think a character said that on a TV show I was watching last night.

Eddie nods sagely, his short gray pony tail bobbing slightly. He was doing something on the computer, so he’s got reading glasses on, and he looks at me over the rim.

“When I was about your age, I wasn’t doing shit with my life,” he says. “I worked every so often, but mostly I was hitchhiking around the country, getting by doing odd jobs here and there, letting the road take me wherever she wanted. That kind of bullshit.”

I blink, frowning. I can’t imagine that Eddie at all, because the Eddie I know is straight-laced and hard working.

“You look surprised,” he says dryly.

“A little,” I say, leaning back against the wall.

“Anyway, I was over the moon for this girl who lived in Boston. Charlotte. Man, I thought she hung the sun and stars and everything else. We were supposed to meet up in Denver, at this place our friend knew about,” Eddie says. “Then I found out that my father had died.”

“I’m sorry,” I say automatically.

“So I came back here to be the good son for once,” he goes on. “Only to find out that he’d been lying to everyone for years. Up to his eyeballs in debt that my mother didn’t know anything about, no savings whatsoever, and here’s the kicker: he had another family.”

I raise both eyebrows in surprise, because
that
wasn’t what I was expecting.

“Holy shit,” I say.

Eddie nods. I have no idea where this story is going, but it’s kind of interesting.

“My exact reaction,” he says. “I had to stay here a while, get everything ironed out. Meanwhile, I hear that Charlotte’s taken up with someone else, got too impatient to wait for me. Father’s dead, mother’s destitute, I got half-siblings I don’t know, and my girl’s moved on.”

I stay quiet, waiting for something else even more awful to happen in the story.

“Anyway, at the funeral, this old guy — some friend of my dad’s — comes up, claps me on the shoulder, and says, ‘Son, it’s never as bad as it seems.’”

Eddie holds both hands palms up, leaning back in the chair.

“He was right,” he says. “It felt pretty bad for a while, but I got through it and figured everything out. You will too.”

“Thanks,” I say.

There’s a brief pause in the conversation, and I think,
was that the point of the story?
I like Eddie, but he has a tendency to tell long, rambling anecdotes with no real ending.

“Come on, say it,” Eddie says. “It’s never as bad as it seems.”

I guess that was it,
I think.

“It’s never as bad as it seems,” I say.

It’s pretty fucking bad
, I think.

“There you go,” Eddie says, then looks at me over his reading glasses again. “And Stone, I know you’re still new, but you’re a hell of a mechanic. You need help, you can come to me.”

I look at Eddie for a moment before the offer sinks in. I can’t remember the last time someone just said they’d help me without expecting something in return. Hell, it might be never.

Threats about what’ll happen to me if I don’t follow through with something? Warnings about my future? Those have been a dime a dozen my whole life.

Offering help out of the blue is so new it’s strange and foreign.

I swallow, then nod, hoping I don’t look too surprised.

“Thanks, Eddie,” I say.

“Any time,” he says. “Good luck, son.”

* * *

T
hat night
, I go to the grocery store on my way home, then actually make food. My right hand still looks pretty rough, and it’s a little stiff, but it could be a lot worse.

Not as bad as it seems
, I think, and eat my turkey sandwich.

I lied to Luna, but I think I’ve got a pretty good reason, and I can’t see a way around it.

I’d never
hurt
her. There’s a lot wrong with me, and I know it. I’m not a good person, I’m kind of an asshole, and I don’t have a lot of regard for the law or my own well-being.

But I’d rather cut off a toe than hurt Luna. Ten toes.

I take a sip of Jim Beam to wash down the sandwich. For the first time in days I don’t want to get near-blackout, but that doesn’t mean I don’t want a drink.

Eddie got his shit together
, I think.
People can change
.

There’s mustard on my finger, and I lick it off.

Maybe I’m not stuck
, I think.
I don’t have to be who I was. Hell, I don’t even have my old name any more
.

I eat the last bite slowly, then finish off the Jim Beam, staring into space. I think the answer is staring me in the face, and it’s
been
staring me in the face for a while.

Luna deserves better than me, that’s for damn sure.

But there’s no reason I can’t be better.