Forbidden: A Standalone (49 page)

“Do you have to eat that here?” she asked Jonathan, pointing at his steaming plate of protein with her fork. “It smells disgusting.”

In answer, he speared a slab of meat and potato and shoved it into his mouth. Karen sighed and dropped her eyes to her plate. She cut the tiniest sliver of melon with a steak knife and put it in her mouth without letting the tines touch her lips.

“How is it?” I asked.

“Not bad.”

I looked at Jonathan then back at her.

“You’re eating,” I said.

“Don’t make a big deal about it, or she’ll stop,” Jonathan said around a mouthful of lunch.

“Okay.” I poked at my plate. “It’s good to see you guys. Good to be out.”

“Now that he’s gone,” Karen said softly, “it’s better in here. Like I can breathe and think at the same time.”

I nodded. We ate in silence, air heavy with all the things I wanted to know. I kept glancing at my brother and my friend.

“I noticed the cracks in the ceiling for the first time last night because I wasn’t sleeping in a ball.” Karen swallowed a paper-thin sliver of melon as if she were swallowing an entire beefsteak tomato. “I thought, wouldn’t it be cool to have a georgette scarf with those cracks in it? Such a nice print. And then last night, I thought about how Warren was hanging. All twisted and tangled up like he was fighting his way out. That’s what they said. It was so complex, and I thought… ropes. A print of ropes on a scarf that when you tied it, the print was straight, but when it was flat, it was like Warren. Twisted.”

“That’s a plan,” I said.

“He was hanging by the throat for three hours and didn’t die. Just a broken neck,” she said as if continuing the same conversation, glancing at me sidelong. “Because of the way he was snarled.”

I swallowed my food with effort. “What else?”

Karen and Jonathan glanced at each other. Jonathan smirked.

“The whole camera system was on the fritz,” Jonathan said. “They think Warren did it because he met me on the roof.”

“No.”

Two letters one syllable for,
Tell me you didn’t do it. Tell me he didn’t do it to you. Tell me you weren’t involved
.

“He was passed out up there,” Karen said, tilting her head toward Jonathan.

“Fuck you,” he replied then turned back to me. “We had a few drinks.”

“I told you not to,” I growled.

“I had my reasons.”

Three days had gone by, and in my brother’s green eyes were another few years of maturity. A few more decades of experience in seventy-two hours.

“What did you do?” I practically spit the question in half whisper, half growl.

“I’m just a stupid kid,” he said flatly. “He roofied me.” A little smirk touched his lips, and he didn’t break my gaze.

“And Nortyl’d himself pretty good,” Karen said. “Without that, I don’t think he would have tried to commit suicide. Westonwood’s in big trouble for leaving that stuff where a patient could get to it.”

My gaze didn’t leave Jonathan’s.

“He didn’t try to commit suicide,” I said.

“The Nortyl wiped his memory of everything that night but the need to die,” Jonathan whispered “die” with a pop, as if pulling the trigger on the word.

He’d fooled me, and maybe everyone. He’d never been Warren’s friend. Never believed him, at least not during my second turn in Westonwood. He’d known what Warren did to me—maybe from Margie, maybe from the rumor mill—and had kept it to himself until he could do something about it. The face I saw over the cafeteria table wasn’t sixteen years old. It was a hundred and sixteen.

“You’re scaring me,” I said.

“I was passed out.”

“Alibi notwithstanding, asshole.”

“You know what was weird?” Karen said, still intent on the cantaloupe pieces. She was really making a dent in them. “They fixed the holes in the fence after we left. And there were no new ones. The paramedics spent ten minutes looking for keys then just cut their own hole. No one can figure out how he got back there.” She scrunched her face up as if she was sick. “Oh. I have to lie down.”

“You’re not going to puke, are you?”

“No. It’ll pass. I just…” She didn’t finish but got up and went for the couches, leaving my brother and me alone.

I held up my hand. “Open pledge.”

He held up his hand. “Open for yes or no questions.”

“You don’t get to dictate what you answer.”

“I was passed out. I went up for a drink because I was mad at you and I didn’t believe you. He gave me mine. He drank his. We had a few laughs. I forget the rest. Cameras went back on an hour later, and I was still there. Passed. Out. Ask the cops. Pledge closed.”

“No! You’re leaving stuff out!”

He stood and scooped up his tray. “I love you, sister.”

The bell for afternoon sessions rang.

I grabbed his arm before he could walk away. “Jonathan. Who got to you?”

“You did, stupid.” He kissed my cheek and strode off.

I was supposed to be in group session in five minutes, but all I could do was put the Nortyl and the complex knots together with Jonathan getting Warren out of his room when the cameras were down. Pack that all in a bong and smoke it, and even with the hundred holes in the story, it added up to one thing.

I was loved by a team of smart, shrewd, criminally-inclined vigilantes.

But I was loved.

If I denied that any longer, I was calling them all liars. And if I denied I was worthy of it, I was convincing myself they were delusional and stupid.

I wasn’t lying to myself anymore. Not about that.

fiona

R
umors about Warren were vicious and horrifying. I could tell the truth from the lies, because every detail traced back to someone who loved me.

LIE: Warren was practicing autoerotic asphyxiation.

TRUTH: The knots were so tight they broke skin.

LIE: Warren had been given Nortyl for bipolar disorder.

TRUTH: The rope he’d been tied with wasn’t from anywhere inside the institution.

Bottom line: Warren had been in a state of soul-ripping, mind-blunting pain when he broke his neck, and he woke up dickless. That was all I needed to know.

I didn’t try to get out. Didn’t strategize the right things to say or do. No tricks. No games. Without Warren around, a calm fell over crazytown. No one was taking off-script drugs or paying for favors in blow jobs. Mark got let go a week after Warren was wheeled away, and couple of guys in security were let go quietly. A PA confessed to getting him pills but swore he never doled out Nortyl. No one believed him.

Sol stayed around. Deanna stayed. There was a rumor Frances had to fight for her job. Elliot was gone.

I knew he was waiting. I told Sol I had someone. He was from outside my world. He was loyal and decent. He set the right path by example, not force, and he loved me. Crazy as it was, he loved me. Of all the world’s gifts, that was the greatest, and I wasn’t going to decide I didn’t deserve it. Only he could decide that, and if he said I was good enough for him, I wouldn’t argue otherwise.

Except when I did. Old habits died hard, but they died.

“Your brother’s getting out in a week,” Sol said from behind his desk.

“I want to wait for him.”

“That can be arranged. Why?”

“I want to walk him out. And this way we can share a ride.”

“I didn’t know carpooling was so important to you.”

“There are ten of us. Think about it. The Drazen Carpool can probably wean the US off foreign oil.”

He shifted forward. “Besides running the biggest carpooling organization in the country, what are your plans when you leave here?”

“Get lunch?”

He cleared his throat, which was code for, “I get the joke now answer the question.”

I looked out the window. The sky was a flat blue. A black speck of a bird shot across it and was gone. “I think I need help. Deanna talks about meetings. I know the ones in Hollywood. Big celebrities go, and they’re not treated any different. No one notices.” I brushed the velvet pile on the chair until it was all the lightest color. “I need new friends anyway. The ones I have are nuts.”

“You might need a job.”

I laughed. Right. I’d been cut out of Drazen money like an infection. “Yeah. I don’t know. I can sell the condo and a car and invest in something.”

“Such as?”

“I know a guy who makes excellent designer drugs.”

“Fiona,” he scolded.

“I’m joking.” I joked because I didn’t have an answer. I didn’t know what I wanted to do, but I wanted him to know I was thinking about it. I took my life seriously, even if I didn’t have the answers. So I riffed on a pebble of a notion Karen had left for me. “Maybe something with scarves and clever prints.” I moved my hands around as if spooling an idea around them. “I don’t think making stuff is my thing, but I’m good at people. People who make stuff. Like that. And I can wear the scarves out to parties. Calmer parties. The ones people with babies go to. Be seen. Get photographed. You know, that-do-that-I-do.”

“It’s a start,” he said. “Risky, but I guess your family won’t let you starve.”

I laughed. I thought of Karen, how she wouldn’t starve if she had something about herself to love.

Maybe this wasn’t a bad idea.

elliot

I
 got to the Westonwood parking lot before Margie Drazen. We had a cup-of-tea bet going on about whether she’d make it first from Beverly Hills or I’d make it from Torrance. I cheated and left twenty minutes earlier than I said I would. She pulled in right behind me.

“What time did you leave?” she asked as she walked from her Mercedes toward my shit Honda. She had tall paper cups in each hand.

“Seven ten.” Admitting it made me a lousy cheater.

“You beat me fair and square.” She handed me a cup.

“We were starting at seven thirty.”

“I left at seven.”

“See you in hell.” I took a sip of my tea.

I’d just gotten done with an overnight at Chino State, where I usually waited for something to happen then felt grateful when nothing did. On-call crisis counselor was the only job I could get with my license being under review. It had been three months, and another three years could go by before I would be off probation. The board never approved of my relationship with Fiona, but I was clear she was the first and the last, and I wasn’t giving her up. They called it “lovesickness,” and I had to laugh. I was sick, and they were sick, and everyone who ever touched love was most certainly terminally ill. We all died from this disease of love.

“What color did you decide on for your office?” I asked.

“Green for money.”

Margie had left her job and started her own firm. She said she needed freedom to pursue her own interests. Like getting Deacon Bruce on a plane in the middle of the night. Like pressing the license review board in my case. Like delivering a set of keys to the director of a mental institution without being seen. Or aiding Declan Drazen in the expensive backhand dismantling of the Chiltons’ business. Bit by bit, movie by movie, relationship by relationship, Margie and Declan were moving the pieces on the chessboard to block, sabotage, and break the family. I didn’t have details, only the knowledge it was happening, and the news. Charlie Chilton had lost a huge directing deal in the previous week, and all permits for their half-built house had been rejected.

I pitied them. Their son would never recover. But I was just a man. They were in denial over the danger their son posed to other people, and he’d targeted someone I loved. My compassion had limits.

“They’re coming,” Margie said, putting her cup on the hood of my car.

Jonathan exited first and held the door open for his sister.

She was as breathtaking as ever.

Her strawberry hair bounced when she walked, her chin tilted upward when she saw us, and her body was the most perfectly fuckable thing to ever grace the earth. When she smiled at me and picked up the pace, I couldn’t help myself. I ran to her. She was worth running for. Worth every loss in my life. Worth stepping outside the law. Worth living, dying, and everything in between.

She fell into me, and we became arms and lips and hands. Breath and movement. I tasted her, felt her, understood in the way she moved that she and I were connected, and nothing had changed for her in the months we were separated. Even when she pushed herself against me and I felt the extra curve in her belly, nothing had changed.

“You’ve never been fucked like I’m going to fuck you,” I whispered.

I felt her shudder in my arms. Warm and pliable, sharp and twisted, fuck her was the least of it. I was going to love her brutally and unconditionally.

Forever and ever, amen.

fiona

W
e said our good-byes and hurled ourselves into Elliot’s car. He took off down the winding road through Rancho at the speed limit. It was warm, so he wore a button-down shirt and slacks without a jacket. I saw his body move, the way his fingers controlled the wheel, the flicking of the wind in his sandy hair.

He didn’t say anything. No small talk. No dirty talk. His ocean eyes stayed on the road.

“You’ve been working out?” I asked.

“It helps redirect my energies.”

I put my hand on his knee. He took his hand off the gear shift and clasped mine.

“We have a lot to talk about,” I said.

“Yep.”

I had phrased the next part in my head a billion times. I didn’t know if I’d bring it up right away, but I didn’t expect the car ride to be the best time. The fact that he wasn’t looking at me would make it easier.

“I’m going to have a baby.”

“If it makes it easier for you, I already knew.”

“It does,” I said. “I don’t have to talk you down from shock.”

“How are you feeling, by the way?” He turned to me for a second. “They wouldn’t tell me anything, and Margie just said ‘fine.’”

“No morning sickness or anything. Just hungry.” I cleared my throat. “I did get this test done a couple of weeks ago.”

“Yes?” he asked.

“I was worried because I did some partying, and she seems okay.”

“She?”

“It’s a girl.”