Shifting Gears (24 page)

“She was half-hidden by the closet
door, slumped against the wall in the corner, needle still in her
arm. She looked as if she’d been dead for a while, already cold to
the touch, her eyes looking back at me.

“I sat there for hours, just staring
at her, at what she’d become. I could still see her, though, behind
all the filth, all the needle marks. The only person who truly
loved me, took care of me. Who did the best she could. Fucked up
way to die, feeling like you’d been thrown away. Lonely.
Broken.

“Me and Uncle Lou buried her. The only
other people at the funeral were some of the other tenants from the
apartment building. My dad didn’t even fucking show up. I called
him. Left a message. He never called, never came, and I haven’t
spoken to him or tried to call him since. Have no fucking clue if
he’s even still alive.

“After her funeral, I went on a
rampage. I was determined to find Mom’s dealer. Uncle Lou warned me
to stay the fuck out of it. I didn’t listen. I didn’t care. I
wanted revenge. I wanted to bring my mom back. I found his ass,
Nicolette, and I shut him the fuck down.”

Somehow I know exactly what he did.
The thought pounds at my heart.

“After that shit went down, it caught
me some attention on the street. I was approached by Sid, who
offered me a job hunting for him. And the rest is history. I didn’t
ask questions, I just took the job, found my mark, got him and
delivered him.

“After a few jobs with Sid, I started
getting calls from other businessmen and, before I knew it, I had a
profession, and I was fucking good at it. Those first few years, I
didn’t pay attention to who I was picking up. I didn’t care. I just
did my fucking job and collected my money.”

There’s pride in his voice and a
glimmer in his eye. I can only imagine he’s remembering what it
felt like to be in control for the first time in his
life.

“After a while, though, I think the
ice around me began to melt, and I started actually talking to some
of the fuckers I was picking up. A lot of them, yeah, were pieces
of shit and deserved whatever they had coming to them. But some of
them, some of them, Nicolette, were just people getting caught up
in shit out their control, just like Mom.

“She was all I had, and she just
wanted to be loved. I left her there to die, and it fucking haunts
me still. Dad left her, and I left her. The only thing I could give
her in death was to send the fucker who’d killed her to hell, not
giving him a chance to ruin anyone else’s mother, or father, or
kid.”

Oddly enough, and to my utter shock,
I’m not bothered by his confession. Not one fucking bit. That
dealer took Holt’s mother away from him, forcing him to grow up
fast and on his own, pretty much.

Holt pours himself another shot,
apparently done revealing his childhood to me. I hold out my glass,
asking for another as well. We sit there in silence, for what seems
like hours. I don’t know what to say. I’m still taking it all in.
His fucked-up childhood, the fact that he’d just shared it with me,
that it seems he trusts me for the first time.

Everything I wanted from him
before...

I can’t keep all my emotions in. The
tears start flowing. Jesus, this man. What he had to grow up with,
what he had to see. Only wanting his dad to love him, be proud of
him. It’s too much.

I turn to look at him and grab his
hand. “Holt, I’m so sorry you had to go through that. It’s not
fair, what was taken away from you.”

He brings his hand up, wipes the tear
from my cheek, and shakes his head slowly. “Babe, you don’t need to
cry for me. It was a long fucking time ago. I don’t even know why I
told you all that sad shit.”

“But I’m...I’m glad you told me. I’ve
always...” I don’t want to tell him, to open up that
much.

He brushes the hair away from my wet
face and looks at me in confusion. “Always what, babe?”

Shit.

I take a deep breath. Here I fucking
go.

“You were always so distant...back
then. I didn’t know anything about you, which made it that much
harder when you left. I didn’t have anything to hold on to.
Nothing.”

“Babe.” He lifts his hand back to my
face, brushing away more tears with his thumb. “I never tell
anybody that shit. No reason to relive the past. Thinking about it
now doesn’t do a damn thing for me. It won’t bring my mom back, and
it sure as hell won’t wake my dad the fuck up to see how he failed
us.”

“But you telling me, it’s like you
opened the door a little, letting me in. Almost like you’re giving
me a part of you. Which is what I always wanted.”

“Babe, when are you going to realize
you’ve already got all of me?”

Caught up in his words and my longing,
I forget. I forget my shields. I forget everything. There’s only
him sitting beside me.

“Holt,” I barely whisper. Sensing my
need, he cups my chin and kisses me tenderly on my lips. The tears
are flowing a little more now.

My thoughts are still with him as a
child, with what he endured. Even though it was terrible, it turned
him into the man he is today. Strong, determined, and
compassionate. And for the first time I understand why he’s so
controlling. He needs it. He didn’t have it all through his
childhood. He couldn’t control his father, couldn’t keep him from
leaving. Couldn’t control the drugs that took hold of his mother.
He couldn’t save her.

He pulls away from me, looking at my
now dropped face. “Babe, you still crying?”

“I’m sorry. I can’t help
it.”

“It’s okay, baby. I know it was some
sad shit, I know, but it’s over. I’m good now.”

I lift my gaze to him and see that
he’s right. He is good. There’s no pain in his eyes. Instead,
there’s urgency. He’s feeling it again, just as I am. Sharing this
part of his life with me, it changes things.

I understand who he is more. I want to
hold him, comfort him, make him forget. I want to tell him more,
give him more of me, but I can’t. Can I really trust him not to
leave again?

He did it before, so he could just as
easily do it again. What hurts now is that he knows how it hurt his
mother to be left behind by his dad, to be alone. Knowing that,
seeing her struggle, and eventually lose that struggle, how could
he repeat history like that in his own life?

I still don’t understand if his
feelings for me were as strong as mine. He never told me, never
gave me a sign. Can I ask him now? Should I? I don’t speak. He
doesn’t speak. We just sit there, looking at each other.

The screen door creaks open, and Aunt
Helen is standing there, shouting for Kilo. He lags up the steps,
looking like he’s been in a battle with a slew of lightning bugs,
but the bugs won. He’s walking like he’s completely worn out as he
makes it slowly across the porch to Aunt Helen, who shoos him
inside.

“You two stay out here as long as you
want, but this old lady is going to bed.” She looks at me. “So glad
to have you here, baby. Love you.” Then she turns to Holt and winks
at him, giving him a big smile. “Thank you for bringing her and
your wonderful Kilo.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he says, grinning back
at her.

They exchange another look I don’t
understand, and then she’s gone.

What the hell?

“Want another?” Holt asks, holding up
the near-empty bottle. Fuck it. Why not? Two shots later, we’re
still sitting in silence, though he has his arm back around me, and
we’re swinging.

He’s waiting. I can sense it. Finally,
I summon the courage to ask the question I’ve wanted to ask for so
long. Even though I fear the answer. “So how could you just leave
me like that? I understand what was going on, Holt, what you told
me about the guy you were after. But was I so unimportant to you
that you couldn’t find a way to explain that you had to leave? You
made me think it was me. I wasn’t good enough for you. Wasn’t
pretty enough or experienced enough for you.”

Following Cass’s advice, I’m putting
it all on the table. Well, almost all. I still can’t bring myself
to tell him everything.

I’m hoping for an explanation, an
answer, but it turns out to be something entirely different. Holt
stands up and throws the bottle of Jack across the deck, shattering
it, and scaring the hell out of me. I sit there, frozen, not
knowing what to do.

He walks away from me, steps off the
porch, and disappears around the side of the house. What just
happened? Minutes later he returns, a cigarette in his hand. He
went to the car to get his cigarettes.

Damn.

I tremble as he climbs the steps, but
he doesn’t come toward me. Instead, he walks across to the other
side to sit in the chair that’s as far from me as he can possibly
get. His back is to me, and he doesn’t speak, just smokes as he
looks out into the pasture. I don’t know what to do, what to say,
so I sit there, hands in my lap, watching, waiting.

Finally, after what seems like hours,
I can’t take the silence anymore. I stand up and walk to the door,
but slowly, thinking he might stop me. He doesn’t. He just sits
there with his back to me, like I’m not even there.

I look at his back one final time then
I go inside, passing Kilo, who’s laid out on his new pillow bed. He
barely lifts his head, clearly too tired to move, so. I bend down
to pat his head. “Goodnight, boy.”

With a heavy heart, I climb the steps
to my room, which, thanks to Aunt Helen, looks exactly as it did
when I lived here. My massive Victorian-style white sleigh bed is
still pushed up against the far wall, along with the matching
vanity she’d insisted every teenage girl couldn’t be without. I
didn’t use it, unless burying it under my clothes and piles of
books counts.

The pink sheer curtains with the
dainty flowers all over them still drape the windows up against the
purple-power, as Aunt Helen called it, wall color. I’d secretly
hated the way she’d decorated, but I didn’t want to hurt her
feelings, and eventually, it grew on me, minus the
vanity.

After changing into my shorts and
tank, I walk down the hall to the bathroom to wash my face and
brush my teeth and hair then I trudge back to the bedroom and climb
into bed, only to lie there, staring at the ceiling. I can’t cry. I
want to, but the tears won’t come. My thoughts are downstairs with
Holt, sitting in that chair, in the dark. Maybe it’s wrong to
compare myself to his mom, but it’s how I feel. He damaged me. He
did. He needed to know it.

“Nicolette, baby, wake up.”

Holt’s voice.

I open my eyes to see him sitting in
the chair across from my bed. Startled for a moment, I cry out,
thinking something’s wrong with Aunt Helen. “What? What is it?
What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. Everything’s okay. I need to
get some shit out to you, babe.”

I push myself upright and drag my
quilt over my shoulders as the guttural sound of his voice makes me
shiver. “Okay.” I take a deep breath and prepare for words I’m
afraid are about to cut me.

“I was trying to keep you away from
the shit that’s my life. If you know that side of me, babe, you
might not like it. No, I know you won’t like it.” He shakes his
head as he puts both hands on his legs and blows out a frustrated
breath.

“All the bullshit I was caught up in,
the scum I dealt with, my fucked-up life, all that shit got wiped
away the moment I laid eyes on you. I wasn’t looking for someone
like you, babe. Didn’t think you existed. Not for me, anyway.
Totally didn’t fucking expect to find you that night sitting there,
with your shyness, your beauty pulling me from across the
room.”

I squirm under my quilt. Trying to
keep it together. Trying not to jump out of the bed and into his
arms. But I feel his intensity. He’s got to get these words out,
and I need to hear them.

“I followed my mark into Coral
Springs. Found out after a few days of tracking him that pissing
off the guy who hired me wasn’t his only problem. He was a drug
dealer. That made me his problem too. He sold to kids, babe. I
watched that shit go down every fucking day.

“The day I knew he couldn’t run and I
had him, I went in, but before I got the chance to even get out of
my fucking car, the feds pulled up and took him off the grid. Word
on the street was he made a fucking deal with them to testify
against the fucker supplying him with the shit, and he was going to
get a free fucking ride. No fucking way was I going to watch that
shit go down. I found out where they were hiding him, and I had to
go. I had to leave. You.”

My breath hitches. It’s killing me to
stay where I am when all I want to do is go to him. I desperately
want to tell him I’m sorry for implying he treated me no
differently than his father treated his mother. It was a mistake. I
was wrong. But I don’t. I sit. And listen. And wait.

“I had to wait until just the right
time, after he testified. That was the only thing the fucker was
doing decent, putting another drug dealer away. Even though it was
to cover his ass. But I wasn’t gonna stop that shit from going
down.