Disengaged: A Dangerously Forbidden Love Affair (11 page)

TWELVE

Slayton

I was trapped in this fucking church. Taking my bike out, walking out—all of it was a risk I couldn’t take just yet. The cops were all over the place, sure that there was another shooter. I knew this place, though. Every nook, every forgotten door. I should. I was raised here. Well, I ran away to this place, and they let me stay. A big, fucking mean church mouse, that’s me.

It was too damn hot to stay there on the regular in the summer, so I saved it for the winters. For when I needed to hide.

Leaving Ember soaked in blood clinging to that bastard father of hers was hell on me, but I never once took my eyes off her, not until she was safe and being rushed down the street to the hospital. I balked to go after her then, but I knew if I had, I’d only make this worse. I needed to fucking think.

In a rushed rage, I made it back to the attic. I flipped the mattress we’d been using up and slid it behind broken pews along the wall. I used what was left of her ice to drown the candles then scattered them so it like looked like they’d been stored in the attic.

I tossed Ember’s clothes in the trunk then changed mine. I held onto the blood-soaked ones and pushed the others in the dresser. Before I stacked everything I could on it, I made sure incense was with the clothes, around everywhere we’d lingered just in case they decided to bring the dogs. From the sound of things below, this group of cops hadn’t gotten the call to back down yet.

Those fucks never knew what payroll they were on half the time.

I ran through the attic when I thought I heard someone coming up. I was down the back stairs, ducking through a hall and in the school moments later. Down and down I went, until I made it to the incinerator. I shoved my bloody clothes in. I went to put the kids’ gun in too, but I wasn’t so sure I was ready to ditch that evidence. It was the one I’d killed Vinnie with. I didn’t want it for the law’s sake. I wanted it for Malcolm’s sake. The gun would either save my life or start a street war. I didn’t know what the right answer was right then.

I paced and listened. Beyond the sounds of my phone going off every second, I didn’t hear much. Vinnie and Channing were point men that I answered to. Channing had been in place since before I came ‘round. It had only been a year or so for Vinnie. Channing was a royal fucking asshole when it came to most things. Always glaring me down like I was two seconds away from a major fuck up and maybe I was.

Every day, I regret stepping out on that stoop and laying eyes on Ember Bloom that first time all those months ago. The dark, sick part of me said I should have just let Sugar get her kicks, and have a story to tell her other hooker friends. At the time, there was no way I could. I couldn’t let her or anyone else fucking touch me.

For the last year, I was the asshole in our crew. It was my natural reaction before I was punished for having an independent thought. Nah, it wasn’t a thought. It was more like a ‘fuck you, I’m not fighting—not your way.’

I’d stepped out of the cage. The whores. The money. I left the life they were conditioning me to grow into. It had no good way out.

When my life inside Malcolm’s inner circle began, I was good with the pit of sin I found myself in the middle of. In some jacked up way, I was happy. I thought I could keep who I was and also march to their beat. But then I felt myself slipping. I was thinking things were okay when I knew they weren’t. So, I stepped back.

It was a deadly choice. I didn’t care. I was ready to die, on my terms that is. The last thing I am is a fucking pity story, but I damn sure had not had it easy. I’d been a runaway, on my own, fighting my whole life—one step from jail or a coffin. I was so fucking tired that I was all but begging them to nail my fucking pine box shut. Yeah, I’d go down swinging, but not in the cage. Not for sport.

Malcolm didn’t kill me when I backed out. He wanted to, still fucking does. But I’m young. I’m fierce. I’m fucking smart. I was worth more alive than dead. And to top it off, he was sure that one way or another, down the road he’d get me right back where he wanted me. He told me as much.

I still had dues to pay for my actions. They had me running all over the damn town, working like a rookie to pick up bets, enforcing when needed. I went from fighting, getting what I wanted and when, to standing on freezing, then blazing hot street corners waiting for assholes to drop off money they didn’t have.

I was good at getting them to pay. So good, that my time out earned me respect. The kind that threatened guys like Vinnie and Channing. Yeah, the boss wanted someone who could follow orders, all loyal like. But he also needed someone who could fucking think for themselves when shit got tight. Someone fearless.

One by one, bigger jobs came. I wasn’t watching for drops but looking for Unicorns, bringing them down. With each one Malcolm pulled me in tighter, pushing girls and cash on me at the same time. He was taunting demons I’d barely escaped, knowing it would not be long now—I’d want back into the fold of his good graces. The promise of power he’d never give me.

I was at church the entire night before I saw Ember that first time. Hiding the way I always did, not in the attic—it was too damn hot, and it wasn’t set up since I left it the spring before—but in the sanctuary.

There is no place on earth like a church in the dead of the night. One by one, all those candles the faithful had lit would whisper their death, the sounds of the city long quieted. The stillness allowed thoughts I didn’t want to deal with to halt. Peace.

I ignored my texts that night until I couldn’t anymore—it was almost morning. Before I left, I strolled to the altar and gazed up at the cross doubting its power when all I really wanted to do was cling to it. I lit one of those fucking candles and tossed a glance up. I didn’t say a prayer. The way I saw it, if he knew me so well, then I shouldn’t have to spell it out for him.

Then I left.

I hated working with Vinnie and his punks. Their jokes were bad, and their taste in women was worse. I cursed when I figured out what address Vinnie had told me to go to. The girl that lived there was a wannabe cage whore. Girls like her are nothin’ but trouble. Hell, they’d make you believe they were the devil themselves at times. No one should act like that on the norm, with every dick that crosses their path. No girl of mine would.

I went in looking for Vinnie and my orders. It was a fucking orgy. No shocker there. We’d all been taught to be armed and ready to run at any time, so the crew was dressed for the most part. The girls were wasted and not.

“Are you fucking kidding me,” I growled in Vinnie’s direction. He was blazed, like always, a nasty whore was riding him so slowly I doubted he was actually fucking her.

“The place she works isn’t open yet,” he said with a groan.

“What’s the job?” I spat pushing two girls off of me. One had my belt the other had her nasty lips all over the back of my neck.

“Up and coming Unicorn. Gonna pinch his girl. Stop it real quick,” Vinnie said as his hand moved over the tits of the girl riding him.

“You don’t know shit about Unicorns or this fucking block. Quit trying to fuck up my brick road.”

The other two guys who were getting blown chuckled. Everybody knew Vinnie was threatened by me, that every time he saw me walk in a direction, he ran past me tryna get what I was after. All I was ever after was peace and fucking quiet. Pushing Unicorns was my gig now, but he just had to push in on it, one up my quiet ways by fucking with a man’s livelihood.
Sick fuck.

I was glaring Vinnie down, but he wasn’t looking at me, he was watching the girl on her knees in front of me. She was undoing my jeans. My skin went hot. My head spun. There I was again. Right back in a hell that would not let me go. I’d been here before. Let myself slip, swearing I wasn’t and all I found was more hate.

My lungs closed; I swear they did causing me to sway and crash into the wall. With my eyes squeezed closed, I saw those red candles I’d been staring at on the church altar again. The ones that extinguished on their own, the others fighting a breeze I could not see. A sick rush slammed into me. I knew I had to get out, and fast.

On the front steps, the first gulp of air I took woke me up, stilled me. I was putting myself together, trying to shake the disgust of my life and the whore reaching for me when I saw Ember.

There was a halo around her. I know it sounds stupid, and that what I saw was just the street lamp reflecting on her. But for a split second, I was sure she was the angel I’d prayed for, that any second I’d feel a bullet rush through me or some shit and she’d take me away. I was positive whatever sentence I was serving in my worthless life had been paid in full.

When I focused on her, when I saw those eyes, a beautiful, blameless blue, my whole world changed. Something like hope rumbled in my chest. Absently, I heard someone inside say, “She’s out there.” My moment of reprieve, of feeling something that wasn’t sick or tainted had ended, and I had no time to think.

Maybe I should’ve acted like I was hurting her, hid her, and then helped her escape when the others were not looking. Maybe laying a claim down on her was the last thing I should have done. I’ll never know. God knows I’ve thought about what I
should’ve
done a thousand times.

Since then, Ember and I had just been making it day to day. Keeping our eye on the ball. All the while, I had been hoping like hell her father would pay up and like magic decide to walk right, at least get his daughter far from the lair he had pulled her into.

Then it would hit me that if he did, I’d lose her. I didn’t know how I was going to handle that. After tonight, seeing her in the candlelight, I knew I’d never let her go. She may be out of sight, out of mind, but she would always be the one ray of light I had, rooted deeply in the center of my black heart.

Staring at my phone now, knowing I had to answer at least by sending a text, had my head scrambled all over again. Ember had done
exactly
what I told her not to do, I was sure she had. She’d gone on record as Bloom’s daughter. The second any of that leaked, Malcolm would know I lied. He’d think the worst and react.

I could turn this all on Zee’s people, and live with the bloodshed my accusation would cause. But I didn’t know how I was going to get Ember out of this. We’d have to run, fast and hard, never stopping. The insane thought that we’d make it had me moving through the school again working my way to the garage. I had to focus on a way out for us, not the idea of what Malcolm would do to her just because I gave a damn.

I was in the sedan, moving it so I could get to my bike when the cops surrounded it. I smirked realizing if I was the guy I was before I met Ember I would’ve gone down in a blaze of glory, even fucking welcomed it. But damn it to hell if I didn’t see her eyes flash in my head a million times over—she gave me a reason to live. I cursed, not because I was caught, but because I realized how far and fast that girl had brought me away from the guy I once was.

Being processed, moving through bullshit questioning, being stripped like an object and not a person was almost nostalgic. The first time I landed behind bars I was fourteen, then again at sixteen. I doubt I would have any kind of fucking education if I hadn’t been locked up, so I held no grudges. When I was out at seventeen, I had college credits, four semesters worth—which was more than the fools I should have graduated with could’ve hoped to have.

Those credits didn’t do shit for me out on the streets. At eighteen, I would’ve gone back in again if someone on Malcolm’s payroll hadn’t seen the assault that went down and thought I’d be a nice little treat to take home to him.

Things about my life that I never understood started to make sense not long after that. No, life didn’t get better, I always had my doubts I’d live long enough to see my first gray hair, but I knew full well where I stood. Who I was. Like it or not, I did. It wasn’t a blessing or a curse, just the luck of the draw. A hand I was still playing.

None of the assholes in processing or holding were fond of my smug expression. They like for the fucks they catch to feel remorse, fear, maybe even anger. Calm stares unnerved them, had them checking and double checking favors they owe. Smart of them to do so.

I didn’t even make it to my official interview before Channing had me uncuffed and walking outside. I was far from digging my way out of this conflict and fucking knew it when the bastard stopped the car one alley over from the station. Channing wanted to make sure I could see it. It was a ploy he’d used before.

Jail or the thugs. There was no good choice.

Channing liked to put me at a fucking crossroads, force me to make a choice. That way when it all fucking blew up in my face, and I figured out I’d rather be on any path but the one I was on, he could look my ass in the eye and say it was my choice.

He and I had gone fist-to-fist, gun-to-gun, more times than I could count. Channing got off on my stubbornness. Maybe that’s the wrong way of putting it. I was the only one that could rattle him. Make him break his cool. I could outride his stare, the one that would have most believing he already knew your whole story and was just waiting for you to fall all over the bullshit lies you were throwing at him. Everyone needs a challenge, and he found a familiar one in me.

Channing never once fucking believed Ember was mine before I claimed her, and it wasn’t because he always had eyes on me. Channing just knew it wasn’t my style, and if I ever did anything out of character, I had a damn good reason. I didn’t have one when it came to Ember. I couldn’t explain it if I wanted to.