Shay Savage - Otherwise Unharmed

“I’m sure that’s true, but she tries.  It’s pretty good money, at least, so she could afford to set aside money to send me to school.  I still haven’t managed to get a degree anywhere, of course, because that was about the time Dad died.”

“How did he die?”

“Cancer,” she said with a shrug.  “It fucking sucked.”

I watched her closely, noticing her fingers twitch and her eyes blink rapidly a few times to hold back the moisture forming in them.

“You were with him,” I said.

“I had just finished high school when he was diagnosed.  They said he had maybe a year, but he didn’t make it past eight months even with all the chemo and shit.  I took care of him because there really wasn’t anyone else, and William did all the business stuff while he was sick so we could afford medical bills.”

“So your fiancé worked for your dad?”

“Yes, for about six years.”

“While you were in high school.”

“We started dating when I was fifteen.”

“How old was he?”

She blushed a little, and my suspicions about him being quite a bit older were confirmed before she answered.

“He was twenty four at the time.”

“Around here, we would’ve called you jail bait,” I said.

“Only if the parents pressed charges,” she said, and I knew she was right.  If the parents were okay with it, well, at least one parent, then the law would turn a blind eye.

“What did your mom think?”

“She didn’t like it,” Lia said.  “She didn’t like Will, anyway, and definitely didn’t like me being with him.”

“Just because of the age thing or something else?”

“I think just age initially, but I also think she realized, long before I did, that he wasn’t quite what he pretended to be.”

“You mean before he threw you out of a moving car and left you for dead?”

Lia glanced at me with dark eyes and then looked down at her hands.

“Something like that.”

“Have you seen him since then?”

“Yes.”

“When?”

She looked back up at and me and bit her lip for a moment.

“He was there at my mom’s house.”

“After I dropped you at the bus station?”

Lia nodded.

“What happened?”

“The usual,” she responded.  She seemed to want to leave it at that, but I wouldn’t let her.  Eventually she told me the rest.  “He was drunk; Mom was yelling, and I was stuck between them.  The major difference was that I had decided I wasn’t going to do it anymore.”

“Do what?”

“Put up with him and his crap!” she growled.  “He could have really hurt me when he pushed me out of that car, and then he just left me there!  I wasn’t going to listen to him go on about how he came right back and was so sorry and spent hours looking for me—it was bullshit, and I wasn’t going to listen to it!”

She took a deep breath before she went on.

“I told him I’d found someone else.”  Lia glanced at me, seeming embarrassed for a moment.  “I know we didn’t really…well, it’s not like we committed to each other or anything, but for the first time since high school, I realized there were other options out there besides Will and how he treated me.”

She looked up at me, and her eyes began to sparkle with tears.

“It’s all right,” I soothed.  “Go on.”

“He didn’t like that answer,” she said with a shrug.  “He started yelling, and Mom told him he needed to just leave.  She came up near us, and he pushed her away.  Then he grabbed my arm and squeezed really hard–”

Lia’s breath caught in her throat, and the tears that had been building up since I stopped her at the door finally cascaded down her cheeks.  Dealing with crying chicks was definitely not something within my repertoire, so I went with the only thing I could think of—I grabbed the box of tissues from the bathroom and handed them to her.

Lia wiped her eyes and gripped her fingers around the crumpled tissue as she composed herself.

“I had bruises there for over a week afterwards.  Mom started yelling—said she was going to call the police—and that made him let go.  I told him we were through and that I never wanted to see him again.”

“What did he do?”

“He laughed.  He said I was his, and nothing was going to change that.”

A tickle in the back of my head—one that was rarely wrong—told me that I was going to kill that motherfucker someday.

“He still wasn’t leaving, so Mom ran inside the house and came back out with the phone in her hand.  When he realized that she really was calling the cops, he got in the car and left.  That was the last I saw him.”

I tried to clear my head enough to listen to the rest of the story, but it wasn’t easy.  I didn’t know what the asshole looked like, but I had enough of a vision in my head that I could see myself with the business end of my Beretta in his face.  At some point, I was going to have to find a picture of the guy and make all that come true.

Lia continued.

“Mom immediately started quizzing me about the ‘new guy’ and if that meant I really was done with William for good.”

I sat still, wondering just what she might have told her mother about me, not that Lia knew much at that time—even less than she did now—but it still left me feeling a little uneasy.  I wondered if any other girl had ever described me to her mother.

“What did you tell her?” I asked.

“Not much.”  Lia shrugged one shoulder.  “I mean, I didn’t know much, did I?  I said you were retired from the military, and we had just met by accident.  Once she found out what the ‘accident’ was, it kind of distracted her from the original conversation.  We never really talked about you again until I was leaving.”

Her eyes found mine.

“She told me to be careful,” Lia said.  “She told me that I didn’t really know much about you and that you might not even be who I think you are.”

“What did you say?”

“I told her I would be careful and not to worry.  I didn’t know much about you, but I was sure you weren’t like William.  We both considered that a step up, so that was it.”

Lia stared down at her hands as tears started spilling off her eyelashes again.

“And then…and then…” Lia sniffed and wiped at her nose with the tissue again.  “Then I found that cabin and your note, and I just…I didn’t know what to do or what to think.”

Without knowing what else I could do, I reached out and took her hand again.  Lia’s fingers gripped mine, and she leaned against my shoulder.  With one arm around her, I pulled her against my chest and rubbed up and down the top part of her arm while she cried.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered against her hair when she stopped sobbing.  “I didn’t want to leave like that.  I didn’t have a choice.”

“Where did you go?” she asked.

“Back here,” I said.  “My boss told me I had to come back.”

“Your boss?”

Shit.

I wasn’t ready for this yet.  I needed to wait until morning.  It was selfish and probably shitty, but I wanted inside of her one last time before she knew the truth.  There was no telling how she would react, but she seemed like a normal, rational person.  The likelihood of her telling me to stay the fuck out of her life was pretty high.

“Where do you work?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

She shoved against my chest and glared at me.

“Who is your boss?” she demanded.

“I thought we were saving my life story for the morning.”  I tried to make light of it all and failed.

More glaring.

I sighed.

“His name is Rinaldo Moretti,” I said.  “He’s a pretty demanding guy, and that’s all I’m saying for now.”

Lia kept her narrowed eyes locked with mine for a minute, but I didn’t falter.  Her shoulders rose and fell with the breath she huffed out as she stood up from the bed and tossed the last couple pieces of pizza into the tiny refrigerator in the corner.

“Fine,” she said, “but I want to know tomorrow.”

“I’ll tell you,” I promised.  “I just need a little time to…to prepare, I guess.”

She walked back and stood in front of me.  I reached up and placed my hands on her hips as she leaned forward and placed her lips to mine.  She started with just a quick, closed mouth kiss, but I grabbed the back of her head and deepened it.

Nothing was going to stop me from having one last night with her.

The cool breeze from the ceiling fan chilled my back, which was coated in sweat after our second session of hard fucking that night.  I swallowed and tried to regain my composure as Lia’s fingernails dug into my shoulders.  As she panted and her body shuddered a final time, her grip relaxed and she brought her arms up over her head, grasping the pillow above her.

“That was incredible,” she said.

I smiled a cocky half-smile and rotated my hips against her again.  I couldn’t move much, or I was going to slip out of her, so I just rocked my hips a little instead of actually thrusting.  I wrapped my arms underneath her shoulders and held her chest to mine as I ran my lips and tongue up her throat.

“Do you have any plans to actually sleep? Lia asked.

Bending my elbows, I slid my hands down her sides and then up her arms until my fingers could grip her wrists.  I pushed them against the pillow as I pressed her firmly to the bed with the rest of my body.

“I was thinking I’d just hold you down here until I got hard again.”

“Such a romantic!” Lia snickered.

She was joking, and even though that was clear, there was something else in her eyes as they tightened just a little as she glanced to the side.  She wasn’t pissed off by the comment, but didn’t all chicks want some level of romance?  I had no idea how to play the role of an actual boyfriend.  Was I supposed to buy some fucking flowers now?