Fight for Her#3 (7 page)

I think of that window on the Vegas Strip with the wedding bouquets and Parker’s happy hope. It was before everything happened, before the night turned hard.

But I can’t hold on to that happy part. I picture the van and that one fighter, coming forward to try to rip off my panties.

I force my thoughts away from that and drift back into Parker’s hands. But the dark memories want to come back. I need something more, something demanding to keep me in the moment. I squeeze his shoulders and rock my hips against him, deliberately disrupting the languid pace he’s set.

My hand snakes between us and wraps around him. His skin is feverishly hot, the skin so taut that it barely shifts as I work my palm along his length. He’s managing to hold back remarkably well, but that’s not what I want now. I need him inside me, blasting away the dark thoughts and the demons crowding into our moment. “Now,” I whisper.

His fingers spread me wide and he bends his knees to drop low enough for me to guide him inside. As my body surrounds him, the pleasure drives the other thoughts away.

Parker paces us carefully, slowly, but I grab his face and kiss him with a fervor that lets him know I need it harder, faster, driven.

He grabs my thighs and lifts my legs around his waist. I cling to his neck, letting him lift my body and thrust me back down. Now I’m spinning, and there’s nothing but him, and the powerful muscles of his thighs taking control of me. His strong arms hold me in place.

My cries are louder. I can feel every small sensation. The water on my back. A trickle running down my belly. The ends of my long wet hair smacking against my skin.

The muscles around him tighten and release, tighten and release. I feel like there’s a lightning storm between us, energy crackling out each time we fall flush against each other.

Then it all just bursts open. The orgasm breaks across my skin, intense where we’re joined and sparking through my body. I ride it out, still feeling the rhythm of the movements, the slide together intensifying the shudders.

I’m not looking at Parker, my eyes shut tight, but I can see his face in my mind, his eyes squeezed closed, eyebrows drawn together. He holds me still, pausing, and a low growl comes from his throat. Then, with one long last push, the warmth of him flows into me.

My body still pulses against his, unwilling to let go just yet. Parker holds on to me, letting me ride it out. As the adrenaline drains away, I want to weep, scream, sob. I’m still so emotionally overwhelmed by all the things that have happened since last night. I don’t know how long it will take to go away, or if it ever completely can.

“Maddie, my Maddie,” Parker murmurs. “We’re all right.”

I turn my cheek to rest on his shoulder. I have to believe that things will get better, and that the worst is over. Otherwise I don’t know how I can go on each day.

“Talk to me,” Parker says. “Tell me what’s getting to you.”

I don’t answer. It seems so obvious. I don’t know how he can live his life in constant upheaval, around people who feel dangerously entitled and have the skills to attack anyone who dares start a confrontation or threaten their dominance.

Parker lets my legs fall back to the floor of the tub. With great care, he picks up a bottle of shampoo and works it through my hair. He’s never done such a simple thing, and I am profoundly moved by it.

His fingers work the long heavy strands as he tries to rinse it out. Once again I’m able to forget everything else and fall into the moment. To be protected, loved, cared for. It’s what I wanted, right? It’s what I was looking for with him.

But scenes come back to me, my hands bound, Striker sending that other fighter into the van to do whatever he wanted.

A sob catches in my throat. I jerk my head forward and shampoo suds race into my eyes. I let go of Parker to wipe them away and almost fall down. He tries to catch me, but I’m angry now, sick of the thoughts, the way the horror won’t leave.

I push him away and fling the shower curtain aside. I don’t even care about a towel but race for the bed. Only when the covers are over my head and the whole world is hidden from view do I feel any better.

The bed tilts as Parker sits on it. I can’t see him inside my tent of sheets and blankets.

“Are you okay?” he asks. His voice is muffled by the layers of bedspread on top of me.
 

I feel like I’m six years old, but I don’t care.

The silence goes on. Neither of us moves.

“Lily was right, there are monsters under the bed,” I say finally.

“And who did she call when she wanted to get rid of them?”

Damn it. He has me there. “She called you.”

“Did we get the job done?”

“She went back to sleep.”

Another long moment. Neither of us knows how to fix this.

“Do you remember that night we saw your father drinking from empties behind Drake’s Bar?” he asks.

I do. Mom threw my dad out of the house when I was twelve. He’d always been a drunk, but not the mean kind. The sad, contemplative version. My mother was a shrew, always on his case, pecking at him one way or another. She discovered he was with some other woman and threw his clothes out on the street.

I came home from school to find him trying to organize his shirts and underwear into piles. It was too much for me. The boxers strung across the yard. My dad, so stumbling drunk he could barely hold himself upright. And then my mom, pacing the house, screaming and cursing into the phone at her various friends who hadn’t told her about this other woman.

For a while, he was just gone. Then I guess something went wrong with the other lady and he ended up wandering the streets, bumming cigarettes and drinking cheap whiskey from a paper sack. I saw him a few times sitting on park benches. I didn’t try to approach him. I was scared of my mother and she made it very clear I was to stay far away.

He must have lost his job somewhere in there, as the next time I saw him he was dressed in tatters. It was my fourteenth birthday. I barely recognized him. He didn’t know what day it was, and when he saw me, he just waved. I turned and ran.

I didn’t start to feel empowered until I turned eighteen. I knew I could leave home whenever I wanted. My mother had no control over me.

I stayed because I could live more cheaply and always managed to arrange my school and work hours so we were never in the house at the same time during waking hours. We rarely crossed paths. I kept some food in the fridge and tidied up enough that she didn’t fuss. We got by.

Then came Parker. She despised him. Saw all the no-good in him, living as a fighter.

The night we ran into my father behind Drake’s was bad. Mom had unexpectedly come home, not feeling well, and flew into a rage when she saw Parker in my room.

We raced out of there, me feeling upset and embarrassed. We got to our favorite bar, but someone new was behind the counter. He carded me. I was not quite nineteen, so he told me to leave. Instead of going out the front, where some friends of mine were standing around and might laugh at me, Parker steered us out the back.

I was pretty sore at the world by then, between my mother and not getting a drink. When we heard the clink of a bottle falling in the dumpster, Parker pulled me behind him.

An overhead light on the back of the bar provided enough light for us to make out the man digging through the trash. Parker relaxed, realizing it was just a hunched-over old man.

“You got a buck you can spare?” the man asked, and I almost didn’t recognize his voice, as old and gravelly as it had gotten.

But when he looked up, I knew him. His bushy eyebrows hadn’t changed, nor the sad sorrowful look in his eyes.

“Madelyn,” he said. “You’re all grown.”

Parker looked back and forth between us. “You know this man?”

“He’s my dad,” I said. At the time, I thought Parker might up and leave after all this. My mother hated him. And now he would know my dad was a vagrant.

But Parker said, “Can we help you somehow? You need a place to sleep?”

I remember the tightness in my chest that came with Parker’s words. I had done nothing to help my father all this time, just feeling shame, and Parker was offering him his home?

Dad waved his hand away. “I got my own little spot,” he said. “It works for me.” He kept his eyes on me. “You’re even lovelier than your mother.”

“She is,” Parker said. He pulled out his wallet and emptied it, handing it over to my dad. “I’m sure you could stand to pick up a few things.”

Dad hesitated a second, then accepted the money. “You hang on to this one,” he said to me. “He’s one of the good ones.” He pulled out one of the three bottles tucked under his arm and swigged the contents. When it was empty, he tossed it into the dumpster with a tinkle of broken glass. “Nice seeing you.”

And he wandered off into the dark.

I seriously thought I would faint. “How are you going to pay rent now?” I asked Parker.

But he laughed and stuck my arm through his. “I got a lot of fight in me. I’ll just book another one.”

And he had. He’d gotten the job done. He’d always gotten the job done. Until I didn’t let him do it anymore. I left and let my Aunt Delores take care of me for a while.

“Maddie?” Parker asks. His hand bumps my head, feeling along the lump where I sit under the pile of covers.

I pull them off. He’s wrapped in a towel, his face full of concern.

“What about my dad?”

“That night he said —”

“I know. That you were one of the good ones.”

“Not that. He had nothing, you know. But he was proud. He had his own little spot, he said.”

“Probably under a bridge.”

“But he was still proud. And strong, in his way. You’re like that too. No matter what life throws at you, you’re going to make the best of it.”

Water droplets roll down his neck and slide across the tattoos on his arms. He’s totally earnest about this.

The thing is, I don’t know if he’s right. I don’t know how to recover from this.

Chapter 15: Parker

I pull on a pair of jeans and wait on Maddie. She’s in the bathroom, trying to comb her long hair. I’m relieved I got her out from under the covers. I don’t know what all happened to her last night. Maybe it’s more involved than I know.

I picture Striker’s hands on her and I want to kill him.

My phone has been buzzing for a half hour, but I ignored it while Maddie was so upset. Now that I’m dressed, I pick it up.

It’s a link from Jax, then some running commentary from Colt.

I click on it.

A grainy image of the black van moves onto an on-ramp to the highway. The camera’s behind it, looking at the rear tail lights and the back doors. One of the tail lights is out where Sam removed it when we placed the explosives. I see why Sam did that. It makes it easier to know which car is theirs in the dark. Plus it’s cop bait.

There’s a sudden flash of white light from the rear passenger wheel.

Hey, that’s my handiwork!

The brake lights come on, then another flash from the front.

The van sits there for a moment.

Then all the doors fly open. The interior lights come on.

The voice from the box must have told them about the self-destruct.

The fuzzy forms of several people dash out of the van. They are freaking out, running up to the highway, then back down to the ramp. The explosives begin popping inside the interior and they start jumping off the ramp and out of view.

The camera backs away and turns. We see a couple figures limping at the base of the ramp as the car with the camera drives by.

I scroll down to the comments. Colt has said, “That was killer. Do it again.”

Sam responded, “Any time. Just say the word.”

Colt said, “I’ll make a list of top choices.”

Maddie comes out of the bathroom. I decide watching it won’t make her feel better, so I set the phone down. “You ready to get connected back to the world?” I say. “There’s a brand-new iPhone ready with your name on it.”

She looks beautiful and haunted in jeans and a simple brown tank top. Her hair is braided down the back. “Lily is probably writing me,” she says.

“I told her you broke your phone,” I say. “She decided not to ground you.”

Maddie gives a small smile. “Are you worried?” She sits next to me. “That they will learn about her?”

I put my arm around her. “Not in the least.”

“Do you think those people Colt knows would — would kill them?”

I grip her a little tighter. I’m not sure what she’s asking. “Would you want them to?”

She jerks like she’s been slapped. “No! I mean, will they?”

“I imagine if Jax had planned to kill anybody, their bodies would already have vanished.”

Maddie relaxes a little. “Okay.”

“Let’s get out for a while. We’ll stay in super-public places. Big crowds.”

She nods. “That’s fine.”

“You want me to get Colt and Jo? More company?”

“Not just yet. Maybe later.”

I kiss the top of her head. “Anything you want.”

We head out of the hotel and along the Vegas Strip. Maddie has lost all interest in everything. She doesn’t exclaim over the lavish hotels. She just walks along.

“Let’s go in Caesar’s Palace,” I say. I’m feeling more concerned as we go along. She’s not acting anything like her old self. I know I’m impatient to see her better, but I can’t help it. I had so many ideas about how this weekend would turn out. Striker’s destroyed them.

Maddie shrugs. We go inside the casino. Just like in New York–New York, the lights and sounds of the slot machines beckon.

Maddie looks up, and I feel some hope she will snap out of her upset. We walk up to a machine with the image of a cowgirl on it. It’s a digital game. “Try this one,” I say.

She sits down. Much better. I send up a prayer and a wish and a Hail Mary to cover all the bases to make this fun for her. We’ve had enough bad stuff.

I stick a twenty into the machine.

Maddie looks over the buttons and selects the number of lines she wants to bet on. The screen begins to roll with three rows of gems and cows and images of the cowgirl’s face. When it stops, she’s matched a few lines. The recording of coins hitting a tray is cheerful and encouraging.