MEMPHIS
I finally tell him a little about Mom on the plane. About her mental condition. That she’s had it a for a long time and it’s tough, but she’s making headway because of this new treatment. How Ruby and I are trying to support her.
“Not easy, Evie,” he says.
I nod. “I know. But she’s doing better. Turning a corner.”
“Not easy for you either.”
“Thanks. Enough about my exciting life – let’s talk about you!”
“Let’s not,” he says. “Tell me more about you. School. Friends. What you want to be when you grow up.”
“I have a Master’s in Education. I have friends at the Agency, pals on my softball team. What I want to be when I grow up? I’m not sure.”
“All that education and you don’t know yet? Pick the first thing that pops into your head.”
“I want to be, hmm — I want to be someone who puts her own needs first every once in a while.”
“That’s not what I thought you’d say.”
I’ve never been to Memphis and I’m kind of excited about it until we arrive. Turns out Memphis is simply another airport, another ride sharing service, another motel. I shower, dress, and apply makeup in front of the bathroom mirror. I can’t wait for Dylan to kick ass tonight.
We talk about meditating and I show him how to do it. Getting quiet, going still, can actually change the structure of the brain and thicken areas that deal with learning and memory. It can still the chatter, reduce anxiety, and reboot the brain. It’s like taking a chill pill without the pill.
I’m crossing my fingers that Dylan will tune into his feelings and together we’ll figure it out. He’ll get his mojo back and turn his game around. Then we can see each other, meet up on paid engagements. I can still pay for Mom’s medical treatments, help Ruby out with school, and keep a roof over my head. He and I are a team. If he gets his shit together we can do this.
I fashion my hair into a messy bun, apply a coat of lipstick and check the mirror. I’ll pass. “Ready.” I walk into the room.
Dylan’s half naked on the floor doing pushups.
“Hello?” I say. “What are you doing?”
“You said that you controlled your empathic reactions with exercise,” he says, sweat glistening on his bare shoulders, that muscle ticking in his jaw.
“Yes. Sometimes.”
“If I get the blood flowing maybe I can get more in control for the game,” he says, straining his breath.
“That’s not how it works.” I sigh. “It’s about letting go. Finding the calm when you’re hurtling through the storm.”
“Thank you, Obi Wan Kenobi,” he says, and knocks out one armed push-ups, grunting on the exhalations.
“Fuck you, Rocky,” I say when my phone pings. “Shower and get dressed. I’ll wait for you outside.”
I pace on the grass circling a fenced in play area. A few kids dig in the sand, the girls making castles with buckets and water, love and care. The boys race around like their hair is on fire. I check my texts.
Madame M: Are you feeling better?
Evie: Getting there TY.
Evie: Chicken soup and Vit C.
Madame M: Glad you took my recommendations.
Evie: Of course.
Madame M: I have a new client for you.
Madame M: You’re not contagious anymore -- right?
My throat dries up and I hack. Um…
Evie: Still coughing…
Madame: I’ll send him to someone else. Heal up.
Evie: TY.
Madame: How much longer do you think?
Evie: Soon.
I sigh and scroll.
Amelia: Victoria and I are hitting a club tonight.
Amelia: Join us.
Evie: Sorry. Can’t.
Amelia: Mom?
Evie: No.
Amelia: A date?
A door slams and I startle. Dylan exits our motel room. He’s wearing a white shirt, open a few buttons and charcoal dress trousers. He’s a panty melter for sure and I bite my lip.
Evie: Nope. I’ve fighting off a cold.
Amelia: You need anything?
He moves toward me like a guy appearing out of a mirage in a desert in a cheesy movie. Inside my ribcage my heart rattles about and my knees go a little weak.
“Happy?” He asks.
“You’re super hot when you’re pumped, Rocky.”
I text back while I’m still able to feel my fingers.
Evie: Thanks for the offer but I’m good.
Amelia: Change your mind and we can drop it off on the way out.
Evie: TY but no TY. Xo.
Amelia: Xo.
“I’m ready for the game, Lucky Charm,” Dylan says, our ride share pulling up into the parking lot and he opens the door for me.
“Good,” I take his arm and step inside. “You’ll get it done tonight.”
“I’m feeling it, baby. We might not even need your empathic powers, tonight,” He says. “I predict the McAlister mojo is back.”
But twenty hours later Dylan’s hopes and dreams are ambushed by darkness tearing through him like a hollow point bullet. He loses again and swims in sadness and regret. We collapse into bed, no sex this time. He stares up at the ceiling, and I soothe his bare arm, shoulder to elbow and circle back again. “Sleep. Tomorrow’s another day.”
“You’re young. Your life lies ahead, waiting for you to enjoy it. Time’s running out for me.”
“It’s just a bad turn,” I say. “A crappy detour.”
“What if it’s not? What if this is just the new normal? I’m the king of reinvention but even kings can hit a limit on heartache. Even kings abdicate.” He rolls away from me.
I fall into a fitful sleep dreaming of boys lying broken in the snow, birds circling a country field, cawing as they wing their way toward the horizon.
A large one swoops down, sinks its sharp talons into my shoulders, and lifts me in the air. I pinwheel my arms trying to get out from under its black wings but no matter how much I struggle, the damn bird is taking me with him, winging its way through gaps in the clouds.
The ground lies thousands of feet below. Our car that we ran over the Wolfe brothers with is a speck, and I scream. The bird screeches and releases me. I drop like a stone, the earth coming up below me fast. Too fast, and I slam my eyes shut bracing for the impact.
I wake up in a sweat, the morning sun filtering into the room and Dylan already seated in a chair at the little desk, hunched over his phone. “What are you doing?” I ask.
“I booked a game in Dallas for tonight.”
I run a hand through my hair. “You’re not taking any time off?”
“Dallas is home turf. Friendly. Buy in isn’t bad. You don’t have to come if you don’t want to. I’ve got to be at the airport in three hours. I’ll book a flight for you back to Chicago.” He looks at me, sadness drawing lines in his face. “I’ll miss you but I can’t let you do this with me forever. It’s not right. It’s not fair.”
“What day is it?”
“Friday,” he says, and walks into the bathroom and turns on the shower.
The sun poking through the curtains warms the room but I shiver. It’s a cold August day in Memphis, the kind of mean girl cold that doesn’t care that it’s not supposed to trespass into a warm, luscious southern summer.
Despair and grief are sneaky, malicious thieves, stealing a man’s soul in bits and pieces. I fear they have latched onto Dylan the way that black bird latched onto me.
Maybe I should go home, let Dylan’s darkness win the round. Mom’s voice plays in my head, echoing from the day we ran into the Wolfe brothers: ‘Evie, you can’t heal everybody. You can’t fix everything.’
I’ve learned over the years that she’s right. But I’ve also learned there are some things I can fix. I was scared senseless the day of the accident and yet I crawled out of that damn car and stumbled past one broken boy on my way to the other. I stared down at Wyatt Wolfe lying twisted on the hard snow, not knowing if he was alive or dead. And I wondered—could I save Wyatt if I touched him?
I couldn’t feel my hands or my feet. My breath was trapped in my throat, completely useless, so instead I gathered my courage. I knelt down next to him, placed my hand on the soft white divot of skin that lay between his neck and his chest, and I willed my life back into him.
I willed it so hard the warmth abandoned my body and practically bled into his. Paramedics hustled Wyatt into an ambulance and screeched away. I was pushed onto the sidelines and watched first responders hustle Easton Wolfe past me on a rattling gurney.
Mom went to prison for six months charged with reckless driving. Ruby and I went into foster care. My whole world turned upside down and yet I still wondered about the Wolfe brothers. I heard through whispers and school gossip that both boys survived. Easton suffered a badly broken arm, leg, and busted ribs. But Wyatt nearly died.
His organs ripped, bones smashed, his brain injured, he almost bled to death. A friend told me the Wolfe family moved to California to be close to a children’s hospital. They pieced Wyatt back together surgery by surgery. Fragment by fragment. And he lived.
Perhaps it was coincidence, maybe fortune, even all the praying, but I wonder if I did something, no matter how small, that gave Wyatt just enough healing to stay alive. That boy did not deserve to die on that cold day just for crossing a damn road. And if I did help Wyatt heal -- I sure as hell am not ready to give up on Dylan McAlister.
An idea percolates in my brain. I follow Dylan into the bathroom, strip off my T-shirt and panties. I step in the shower at the same time he is stepping out, dripping wet, muscles tight, abs ripped. “No shower sex?”
“Not today,” he says.
I run soap over my body and rinse off in record time, and step out of the shower. Dylan drags a towel over his hair, across his beautiful body, and wraps it around his waist. “Anyone ever tell you that you’re a hot piece of stripper ass, McAlister?” I towel off, throw my clothes back on. I sit on the countertop.
“Sadly, you’re the only one,” he says, and grabs a tube from his toiletry bag. He squeezes a dollop of cream into his hands and rubs them briskly together.
“Let me do that.” I place a hand on his.
He quirks a chestnut eyebrow. “Okay.”
“Tell me.” I scoop the cream from his palm and smooth it on the scruff of his beard. “What do you feel like when you suspect you’re going to win the hand? When you’re almost sure the other guy is bluffing?” I draw the cream down along his jaw onto that soft area under his chin.
“Relieved.” The artery in his neck throbs under my touch.
“Before relief.” I pick up his razor and run it under the faucet.
“Do you know what you’re doing with that?” He quirks an eyebrow.
“Not really.” I lean in closer. “Trust me?”
“You’re one of the few people I do trust.”
“Good.” I concentrate and draw the razor up across the stubble on his cheeks, shaving in straight lines. A few careful swipes later and I haven’t cut him or killed him. Progress.
“Maybe you’ll be a barber when you grow up,” he says.
“Nope. When you look across the table at your opponent, squaring off at the last person who stands between you and victory and something clicks inside you and you just know—you’ve got ‘em.” I run the blade under the water. “You know that moment?”
“Yes,” he says, his eyes clouding over. “It’s been a while, but I do.”
“Tell me.” I shake the water off the blade. “What’s that feeling?”
“Calm,” he says. “I feel calm.”
“Chin up, please,” I say.
He does.
I angle the blade on the upper part of his throat and continue shaving him. “When’s the last time you felt calm?”
He knits his sexy eyebrows together. “Months ago.”
“Where did calm go?”
“I don’t know. It vanished.” The big muscle in his jaw ticks. I nick him and he flinches.
“Crap. Sorry!” I wet a washcloth, blot the blood, then fold the cloth and blot off what remains of the soap on his face.
“We’ve gotta get to the airport, baby.”
“We’ve got time.” I seize his hand and place it on my throat. “Humor me. Close your eyes.”
He arches his eyebrows but he closes his eyes.
“Tell me what you feel.” Warmth courses through my body. My hands tingle.
“I smell the soap on your skin. You’re making me hard, Evie. We don’t have time for this right now.”
“We have plenty of time.” I’m dying to put my hands on him, not just to undress him or fuck him. I want to heal him. “Tell me what you feel, Dylan. Not what you’re thinking.”
“Fine.” He sighs. “Your skin is soft.”
“What else?”
He slides his fingers across my neck. “This vein pulses when you get wound up. It’s sexy. I want to fuck you.”
I catch my breath under his fingers. “Veins don’t pulse. Arteries pulse.”
“I watch veins pulse in the necks of people I play card games with.” He opens his blue eyes and stares into mine. “It’s a subtle tell.”
“What else?” I ask.
He moves his hand and tugs strands of my hair. “The way your neck curves into your shoulder.” He works his fingers lower, brushing them across my shoulder. “Your collarbone. It’s elegant.” He lowers his hand to my chest and the V between my legs grows wet. “The way your heart beats faster, harder, when I grow closer to your heart.”
He slips his fingers inside my T-shirt and fondles my breast, tugging a nipple. His erection pushes against my leg – warm, throbbing, growing harder by the moment. “Dylan,” I say. “Do you still want to fuck me?”
“Yes.”
“Lose the towel.”
He drops it with a flick of his wrist.
I take his hand and lead him from the bath to the bed. “Lie down,” I say and strip off my clothes, tossing them. “On your back.”
He does as I ask, his breath coming quicker, his dick growing thick in record time. He reaches for me but I pull back and shake my head. “Tell me details. What changed when you moved from my throat, when you moved your hand toward my chest.”
“Your heartbeat increased. Your skin grew warmer. Your lips grew fuller. Biteable.” His cock is swollen and hard, bobbing up toward his abdomen.
I caress the top of his hard dick, using his precum as lube. I circle his erection and slide my fist down his dick, crown to base then back up and repeat. “More.”
“Evie,” he groans. “This isn’t fair.”
“Life’s not fair and yet we find ways to deal with that. Tell me more. Things you haven’t told me before. Tell me details.”
“Details? Things I haven’t told you before? I’ve told you a lot.”
“Something happening in the here and now. Something you feel.”
“You have a scar. Right here,” he says, reaching his hand an inch into my hairline. “I never noticed it before.”
My heart bumps around awkwardly in my chest right before it plummets into my stomach.
‘That’s your scar from the accident.’ Queasy says, wringing his hands. ‘Think about all the panic attacks you had. Think about the anxiety you suffered. Don’t go there.’
My scar from the accident with the Wolfe boys is a centimeter within my hairline. I stroke his dick harder, his breath coming faster. My breath comes faster because I’m starting to panic. “Tell me about the scar. How do you think I got it?”
“Knowing you? Doing something fearless.” He caresses it with his fingers. “Hiking the woods in the cold winter snow when you were a kid. You tripped and fell into a barbed wire fence. Or, something flew through the air and smashed into your head.”
My sister Ruby’s tablet flew through the air in the backseat of Mom’s shitty SUV and sliced into my forehead when we hit the Wolfe boys.
I freeze. I am blindsided. Smashed. Just like when those boys flew off our car. I can hear the tires screeching. I can hear the thuds in my head. I wince and glance down at my hands. They’re trembling.
“Baby,” Dylan says, pushing himself up, staring at me. “What’s going on? Are you all right? Evie!”
“What?”
“Are you all right?” He seizes my hands. “Is it your empathic thing?”
“Not my empathic thing,” I say, holding onto his hands like they are a lifeline, the irony not lost on me because I’m supposed to be his lifeline. I shake my head. “It’s something else.”
“Can I do something? Do you need me to do something?”
“Yes.” I’m so close to helping him and yet I can’t do it right now. I just can’t go there. “You, Dylan. I need you inside me. Now.”
And just like that we switch roles. Protector becomes protected. Wounded becomes healer. He folds me into his arms. He kisses me. He makes love to me slowly. Sweetly. When I orgasm I cry his name.