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It’s your choice
STRANGER
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“STOP,” I say, gun still trained on Greg.
He shoots me a grim glare, his shoulders bunching, fists tightening, but does as I say.
“Back against the wall.”
He steps back until his shoulder blades bump against the wall... begrudgingly. “I need to check on the babies.”
“Couple more minutes. Don’t move.”
He doesn’t.
I listen for the sound of infant crying but hear none, so I dump his wife on the bed, dropping her over my shoulder. She lands with a thump. Her skinny limbs bounce, but her eyes don’t even flutter. She looks bad, skin gray and pasty.
I roll my shoulders. “Mia, go shower. Ten minutes. Start with luke-warm water. Transition to hot slowly.”
She sags against the door, her fingers fumbling with the zipper at the front of her coat. Keeping my eyes on Greg, I tuck the gun into my jacket pocket and tug on her zipper.
Those big eyes blink up at me, and I can’t resist it.
I press a quick kiss to her shaking lips. It’s good that she’s shivering again. There’s so much I want to say, so much still between us, but she needs to get warm first. “Go.”
She shuts the door with a click.
Greg shifts in his bare feet. “Can I go to my wife yet?”
I nod, but pull my gun out again.
He touches Annie’s neck, checks her pulse. “What happened?”
“She tried to shoot Mia.” I sit down on the foot of the bed, watch as he shifts Annie into a more comfortable position. “So I shot her.”
“How bad is it?”
“She’ll be fine.”
He doesn’t move. It’s normal. Freezing like this in the face of unpredictable and sudden changes. Inability to make a quick decision. “Who are you?”
“Mia’s friend.”
The water turns on in the bathroom. There’s a glassy click and I picture her stepping under the spray, the water dripping down her skin. I hope she listened to me about the temperature.
“The tattooed guy.” Greg’s still staring down at Annie, his face stony.
“One and only.”
“You know anything about gunshot wounds?”
I know some. The bullet passed through. I don’t think it hit the bone. “Probably more than you.”
His jaw ticks. “Can I go check on my kids?”
“If you try anything, I’ll kill her.”
“Can I take her to the hospital?”
“Not unless you want her to go to jail.”
He walks to the doorway, hovers, ear cocked toward the stairs. I’m guessing he’s listening for crying and doesn’t hear anything, because he pads back in on the carpet. “What do I do now?”
Not that I want to help Annie, but I’m certain Mia would say it’s the right thing to do. “Get gauze or something to wrap around it. Some water, gauze. Iodine if you’ve got it.”
He says nothing, just pauses for a minute like he’s gearing up for something. Then rises, and leaves the room.
He comes back a few minutes later with his arms full. I can’t help but like the guy in a weird way. He doesn’t waste time with questions. He feels like a hundred other guys I worked with in the Marines. Adept, confident, unflinching. Makes me wonder what the guy did, the one he curbsided, but I don’t ask.
We work together in silence.
When Mia comes out, her hair wrapped up turban style, wearing a robe of Annie’s, her cheeks are pink. She doesn’t come to me though, just leans against the door jam.
We’ve cleaned Annie up. She’s on the bed, the bloodstained clothes gone, a fresh bandage around her biceps, blankets tucked around her to keep her warm. She’s just waking up.
Greg’s sitting next to her.
The babies still haven’t made any noise.
We all stand around awkwardly, watching as Annie blinks, and shifts her feet, moans.
“Did you know?” asks Mia from the door, her eyes on Greg.
“Know what? I still have no idea what’s going on.”
Mia clamps down on her lips. “She tried to kill me.”
“I only see one person who got shot.”
I pull Annie’s gun from the back of my pants. It’s an old Beretta 8000 from the 90s. The silencer makes its weight off balance. I press the magazine release and it clicks out into my palm, stuff it in my pocket. I pop the slide. Someone’s been keeping it oiled and clean. It’s in decent shape. It slides out clean, revealing the bullet in the chamber. The cartridge ejects, and I tuck that into my pocket with the magazine, lock the slide back and engage the safety, before unscrewing the silencer. I set it down on the bed beside the gun. “Recognize this?”
Greg stares at it. “It’s Annie’s dad’s.”
Her boney, pale hand lifts up weakly and touches her bandage, there’s a small smile hiding on her lips.
I want to smack her so bad my fingers twitch.
“She made me put rocks in my coat.” Mia yanks on the belt of the robe like it personally offended her. “She was going to shoot me and sink me in the pond.” It comes out fast, like she just passed some threshold. Her gaze flits to me and back to Annie’s face. “We played in that pond as kids.”
No one says anything. Those words hang in the air, and suddenly I can picture it. Mia as a child, innocent, carefree, the bird not yet caged, laughing, playing make-believe around that pond. I shake the image from my mind, stare at Annie, who’s still unmoving, that sick little smile still lurking on her face.
“You hired someone to kill me?”
Annie’s throat bobs. “Where are my babies?”
Greg pats her thigh awkwardly over the covers, then pauses, his hand hovering over her in the air like he’s not sure he should touch her. I try to imagine how I’d feel if I suddenly found out a woman I cared for, a woman who’d had my children, was a murderer. I fail.
“They’re still asleep downstairs. Did you...” He clears his throat, and runs his hands through his hair like he can’t quite believe he’s about to ask this question. “Fuck. Did you hire someone to kill Mia, Annie?
She gives a jerky nod.
Two babies, a wife who’s batshit, a slew of debt he took on for her family. This guy’s got problems longer than smoke.
Mia’s lip starts to wobble.
I know that face. I want to go to her, but she wouldn’t like it. So, I just stand there taking up space.
“Why?” she whispers.
Annie lifts a bony shoulder, then clutches her arm and winces. “We sunk the last of the money we had into the business and Jer just pissed it away. But you.” Her voice goes ugly, the darkness inside her bubbling to the surface. “You have plenty of money. If you hadn’t insisted on the pre-nup it would all have been fine, but then you had to go and force Jer to sign it. It was you or the babies. I needed the money back for them.”
Greg presses his knuckles to his lips, his brows drawing together.
Mia squeezes her hands together, nods tightly, and it’s almost proof of their shared history, their friendship that she walks right over to the dresser opposite the bed, roots around and pulls out a pair of black stretch pants and a gray sweatshirt. She knew exactly where they were. “I’m taking clothes from you.”
Annie just rests her head back on the pillows. “Be my guest.”
“Where did you get the money?” I ask. I need Mia to hear all of it. That way she’ll know, every last bit. She won’t be able to tell herself it wasn’t so bad later on, forgive this bitch.
She pulls the pants on under the robe.
Annie laughs, but the sound lacks any real joy. “That’s the best part. From your own dad.”
Mia’s gaze flits my way before she turns her back to us, drops the robe. I have a quick flash of her perfect smooth back. The new tat on her upper right shoulder blade. Then she whips the sweatshirt on and shoves her damp hair out of the way.
When she turns around again, she’s not crying. There’s no wobble to her lips. Her eyes are blazing. She knows. She’s known since she saw me at the pond with my finger to my lips.
Greg looks at me. I think he’s connected the dots too.
Annie’s the only one who hasn’t figured it out yet. She glares at me.
Part of me wants to thank her. If she hadn’t found me, I’d still be a stone man, an island. Now I have a brother, a dog, a life. And hope that maybe I’ve got a woman too.
We stare at each other, Mia and me. Greg and Annie, sitting on their bed, an ocean of shit between them, their tiny newborn babies downstairs, they fade away. I hope she can see it on my face, the truth, all of it, no lies.
I want to reach for her but I can’t. So I shove my hands into my pockets. “When did you figure it out?”
Annie says something, but we both ignore her.
“At the pond.” Mia swallows. “I had to make a choice. Trust you or not. I didn’t even really have time to think about it. Just went with my gut. I guess I trust you.”
I remember the moment. Her face frozen, mouth open as I walked across the bank toward Annie. Her eyes had gone wide. She threw the stone... jumped toward the only place there was any cover from Annie and her bullets.
That’s Mia.
For me, she jumps.
Something uncurls inside me, some tightened cord I’ve been holding since she saw my computer. I think it’s hope, I’m not sure. For the first time, I can actually believe there might be a chance for us, despite everything.
I cross to Mia and do what I’ve wanted to do since the morning she threw my laptop at my face. I get one hand on her jaw and the other around her waist, my fingers on the swell of her ass, and I kiss her. There’s the Mia taste, honey and peaches. Her fingers hook into the top of my jeans, but she doesn’t hug me.
The kiss is over fast, but I keep her body pressed against me, reassured by the warmth of her.
“What happens now?” Greg asks, voice thick. He’s still slumped forward like he can’t quite wrap his head around the sudden change of his entire life. An hour ago, he was a happily married, new dad, now he’s the husband of a would-be-murderess.
I take Mia’s hand, look down at her, raise a brow.
Her lower lip pushes out. “Can we get my dad back his money?”
I nod. Lex can do it. Or we can make Annie run the transfer.
“What do we do?” she asks, her voice cracking.
“It’s up to you.”
She looks at Annie.
Annie’s feet move under the covers on the bed, the white bedspread shifting like clouds in a stormy sky. “You can’t tell the police.”
Mia’s big honey-gold eyes move to me.
“That’s not true.” I squeeze her shoulder. “We could, but I’d have to leave. Disappear. It’s your choice.”
I don’t want to leave. I want to stay in New York, with James and Gogo and Mia. I want to be the guy who gets to have a life. But for her, I’ll go. If that’s what she needs.
Mia pulls her hand from mine. “Do you want that?”
The old temptation to avoid the emotions is there, tell her it’s not my choice, what I want doesn’t matter, take the coward’s way out, make sure I don’t let anyone see that I care. Instead, I grit my teeth. No more lies. I tell the truth, take a stand, try to reach toward the life I want instead of the life I have. “No. I don’t.”
For the first time in my life, I don’t want to leave. Not at all.
She doesn’t answer. For a long, long minute, she just stares at me, something moving across her face. Fear, hope, regret. Finally, she presses her face against my chest, her nose resting right between my pecs. I slide my fingers through her hair, breathe in the smell of mint shampoo, whatever detergent Annie and Greg use, and somewhere under it all, the peaches.
Then she pulls back, stepping away from me.
“I’ll start a college savings plan for the babies,” Mia says suddenly. “With my own money. Not much. I’ll add to it each year.” She blinks a couple times, the corners of her mouth deepening. “Give my dad back the money. But don’t ever contact me again.”
I splay my hand across her back, wondering if she’ll say that again, only at me instead of Annie.
“Know this,” I say, turning to face Greg and Annie on the bed. “If anything happens to Mia, I’ll come for you.” I let Annie see my face, the darkness in my eyes, I let her read the depths to which I’d go for Mia, written there as clear as day. All the assholes I’ve killed, none of them were personal. For Mia, it would be personal. “The babies too.”
I’m not even sure if I’m lying as I say the words, but they have to be said either way. Annie may not care about much, but she does care about those babies.
She flinches, her eyes sliding away from mine.
Mia pulls even further away from me.
Greg sits up straight. “Nothing will happen to Mia.” His shoulders bunch. “Or the babies.”
“Then get your wife some help.”
Mia walks to the door, and I follow her out, not bothering to spare either of them another glance.
She’s moving fast. Too fast.
I jog down the steps behind her, skidding to a stop when she rounds on me in the foyer.
Her feet are bare, and I step up close enough the tips of my boots nearly touch her small, pink-nailed toes. Just like in the bathroom at the winery. Only this time, her eyes are clouded.
I touch her cheek, and she closes her eyes.
“When?” she whispers.
“When what?” I ask, though I’m pretty sure I know what she means.
“When did you decide you weren’t going to kill me?”
A cry rings out across the house. One of the babies has woken. Greg says something from upstairs and comes running down the steps.
A second cry joins as he hits the bottom, and he sends us both a wary glance. We should go. But first...
“You asked me if I could trust you,” I say. “I was walking in the woods, about to swim in a waterfall.”
Her eyes drift out of focus like she’s scrolling through memories. “The day you said you liked peaches?”
“Yeah. I said you could trust me. I knew then. I’d been doubting already.”
She takes a deep breath, steps back from me, walks to the closet and digs out a pair of boots that must be Greg’s. She yanks them onto her feet. “I need some time. I can’t... I can’t make any sense of this.”
I follow her through the door, into the cold, watch her slide into the front seat of her car. “Can you drive?”
She sends me a sidelong glance. “Yes.”
I’d rather she didn’t. What I really want is to drive her home, feed her hot soup, fuck her until we both know she’s alive and safe and that we belong to each other, but I can see on her face that’s a non-starter.
So instead, I ask, “How long?”
She shakes her head, a tight little move, mouth grim, eyes drawn. “I don’t know. I’ll be in touch... if I... when... I don’t know. I didn’t...” She twists in the seat, punches the ignition button, grips the wheel with her fingers, looks ahead so our eyes don’t meet. “I considered a lot of options, but that you were trying to kill me wasn’t one of them. And Annie... there’s been a lot of revelations this week. I just... I just need some time.”
I drop my hands into the pockets of my jacket. “Fair enough.”
She doesn’t look back. Just switches the car in gear. I close the door for her and try to ignore the sullen thunk that echoes across the still gray day.
I stand there a long time, watching as she turns her car, and drives away from me, out of sight.
Then I get in my own car, drive home to James, home to Gogo, home to start a new job, one that doesn’t involve killing anyone, and I wait for Mia.