Reckless (49 page)

She was crying, her mascara running. I’d never seen her looking this miserable. She held out her arms for me like a little girl.

I enfolded her with mine and pulled her into my chest. “Shh,
agápi mou.
I’m here. Everything’s going to be all right. I’m here.”

She broke into fresh sobs in my arms. I stroked her hair while she cried it out. After a time, she calmed. “Do you want some water?”

She nodded silently.

I filled a glass in her kitchen and led her to the couch. “Sit down,
agápi mou.
”
 

She swallowed some water. I noticed the remains of a burrito on her coffee table. It reminded me I was hungry. I might have to eat it later.

“My mom is evil, Christos,” she cried, hitching tears. “She, she said you’re going to, to, to
leave
me and forget my name.”

“That’s craziness, Samantha,” I chuckled.

“Don’t laugh,” she pleaded.

“Sorry. It’s just, hearing you say that doesn’t make any sense to me because I’m not going anywhere, no matter what your mom says.”
 

She looked at me with naked fear in her eyes. “I hope so, because I feel like my parents are abandoning me. Without you, I’d feel like I have no one. I couldn’t bear to lose you, Christos. Not even for a second.”

Hearing her words tightened my heart. I hoped to fuck I didn’t turn out to be a liar the day after my trial was over. No matter how badly I wanted to keep my promise to her, I might not be able to.

I spent the night with Samantha in her bed. She curled against me like a frightened child. Did she somehow sense that no matter how strong my arms were, they might not be able to protect her from my past?

Luckily, she went quickly to sleep. She must’ve been exhausted.

I tried to block out my own chaotic thoughts, and get some sleep too. But the reality of my shitstorm life kept battering me awake.

In the morning, I was drained.

Chapter 24

CHRISTOS

Samantha slept hard.
 

I didn’t.

I was jittery all night, kept waking up, and tossed until 8:00 a.m. when I checked my phone. I had a message. A very important one. I couldn’t take the call here.

Russell Merriweather.

He only called when things got worse. It wasn’t like he was going to tell me the District Attorney had decided to give up. Those guys were pit bulls and had their jaws clamped around me good.

I was antsy to hear his message. I treated bad news like Band-Aids. Better to get it over with quick.

But I wasn’t going to make Samantha wake to an empty bed. So I paced the apartment. Sat on the couch for awhile. Pulled the remainder of her burrito out of the fridge where I’d stashed it last night. Downed it in two bites. Drank some water. Twiddled my thumbs.

Fucking-A, this was driving me nuts.

What did Russell need to tell me?

When Sam finally awoke, I was sitting on the edge of her bed, fully dressed. “Sam, I need to go.” I felt like an asshole saying it. She needed me. It was obvious. But I needed to check my message.

“Why? What’s wrong?”

“It’s…” I didn’t want to tell her. “I’ve just got some stuff to do. At the studio,” I lied.

Her eyes searched mine. “What is it, Christos? You can tell me.”

No, I couldn’t. Then everything would shatter around both of us. “It’s nothing,
agápi mou
. I promise.” Man, I was a fucking liar.
 

“Do you want breakfast?” she offered.

“No, I’m cool. I really need to jet.”

“Please stay.”
 

The look in her eyes tore me apart. I wanted to tell her everything. I wanted to tell her nothing, hoping my problems would go away. She didn’t need to be worrying about this.

“Please, Christos,” she begged.

“I have to go,
agápi mou.
”
 

“Okay,” she nodded reluctantly.

I felt like shit when I walked out her front door.

I climbed in my Camaro and drove east toward the Five. I stopped at a gas station before getting on the freeway and checked my message from Russell.

“Christos, the Deputy District Attorney has made a plea offer. We should discuss this face to face. This is a big decision, whichever way you go. Come by my offices tomorrow, any time.”

I cruised onto the freeway and lurched through traffic. I had plenty of time to sweat bullets in my car while I thought about whatever plea bargain was on the table.

My guts were churning by the time I reached downtown. Too bad traffic was so heavy. If the road had been empty, I would’ve floored it all the way there.
 

After I passed SDU, I noticed the same landmarks that had taunted me back on the day the cops had driven me to jail, the day I’d met Sam in September. The surfer mural in Pacific Beach. The humpback whale mural in Mission Bay. At least this time I wasn’t caged in a squad car. Just caged in traffic.

I considered sliding my Camaro onto the empty shoulder and flooring it. But it was broad daylight.

And I was out on bail for aggravated assault and battery.

Fuck it. I was tired of rolling through traffic like an old man. I dropped the Camaro into second and revved the engine. It rumbled reassuringly, ready to tear up the road as I diagonaled across lanes toward the shoulder on the right.

Samantha’s eyes filled my mind. The sad eyes she’d given me when I’d left her apartment a half hour ago.

Fuck.

I couldn’t afford to be stupid. Not like when I was younger and didn’t give a shit. I had something to live for now, some
one
who needed me.

Samantha.

I huffed out a breath and slid the shifter back into third. My Camaro remained in the slow lane as I continued to cruise along at the same sluggish pace everyone else was going.

Traffic turtled along all the way downtown. I pulled off on Front Street and headed toward Russell’s offices.

I parked in the underground garage and marched up the stairs like I was going to a hanging. Every step got taller as my boots got heavier. I felt like I was going to collapse by the time I reached the 20th.

I walked through the double doors into Russell’s offices.

“Good Morning, Christos,” Rhonda said. “I’ll let Russell know you’re here. He should be out in a minute.”

“Thanks, Rhonda.” I walked over to the picture window and stared out at the San Diego bay once again. It was shrouded in fog. Appropriately moody.

“Christos,” Russell said as he walked into the lobby. He wasn’t his usual jovial self. “Come on back to my office, son.”

Man, had somebody died? Or was everyone mourning my impending funeral?

I walked into Russell’s office and dropped into the chair. He closed the door behind us and sat down.

“How have you been holding up, son?” Russell asked compassionately.

“Holding,” I said with a half-assed laugh.

He nodded understanding. I’m sure he saw in my eyes the weight I was carrying. “I’ll cut right to it. The Deputy District Attorney is offering you twelve months in county jail for a guilty plea. With time off for good behavior, you’re looking at maybe nine months.”

I ground my jaw. Nine months of lock-up. Nine months of calling Samantha collect from a jail phone? Nine months of her making weekly visits with all the other inmate’s wives and girlfriends? Sitting in the visitor’s bunker with a wall of steel and glass between the innocents and the convicts? Nine months looking her in the eyes trying to pretend I wasn’t miserable and stressed and living in a stinking pit?

I’d been on both sides of that window wall. Good buddies of mine had been in the can over the years for fighting, DUIs, all that immature young men’s bullshit.

Watching your friends on the inside struggling not to rot away from the emotional squalor that took hold of the inmates was not fun. Wondering every time you visited if your good friend was going to have a bloody eyeball with a detached retina or maybe be missing some teeth he’d had the week before. Or maybe, your buddy might not even show up to get on the short phone because he was in the infirmary for getting his leg kicked in by three guys in the shower, and he couldn’t walk.

Yeah, fun shit.

If I got locked up, my time on the inside was going to be bad enough. But thinking about how miserable Samantha was going to be made it worse.

I didn’t want to put her through any of it. She needed to focus on good things, on her classes, on her art. Not my bullshit.

Maybe I needed to let her go.

Russell cleared his throat. “Christos, I want you to know I negotiated my ass off with the D.D.A. trying to reduce the offered sentence. But Schlosser would not budge. He thinks he has this case all buttoned up. If we go to trial, he’s going to nail you to the wall on reasonableness and avoidance. You’re in a tough spot, son. Nine months in jail on a plea bargain is still nine months. But if we go to trial, and the jury finds you guilty on all counts, you could be looking at up to four years in prison.” Russell took a deep breath. “I’ve gone head-to-head with Schlosser before. He’s tough as nails, and he’s chomping at the bit on this one. If he wins, he’s going to push the judge for the maximum sentence.”

I nodded silently.

“It’s a gamble either way,” Russell offered. He watched me carefully. “I wish I had better news, Christos. Take some time to think this over. Discuss it with your family. You don’t have to make a decision until a few days before the trial.”

Somebody wake me up and tell me this shit was just a nightmare.

CHRISTOS

I cruised homeward on the Five in my Camaro, keeping it to the speed limit. Master of Puppets by Metallica was pounding out of my sound system at concert-level decibels. If I couldn’t speed, at least I could give my ears a good pounding.

My phone vibrated in my pocket. I pulled it out to check the call. Fucking Brandon. I didn’t want to talk to him. Fuck it. May as well get it over with. I’d have to talk to him sooner or later.

I turned down the tunes on my MP3 player and pressed TALK on my phone.

“Hey, man,” I said.

“Christos, always good to hear your voice,” he said.

“Yeah,” I said curtly.

“How are the paintings coming along?”

Man, he asked me that at least once a day. “Great.”

“Do you have an estimated delivery date on any of them yet?

“The one of Avery is done. So are the ones of Jacqueline and Becca. Isabella is in progress, so is Sophia, and I started in on the one of Victoria and one of Hannah.”

“Only three are complete?” Brandon sighed. “We’re going to need a lot more than that.”

Did he
think
I didn’t fucking know that? I grit my teeth. “I know.”
 

“When can we expect to set a date for your next solo show?”

He said “we” like “we” were hunched over the fucking easel seven days a week. I’d squeezed in a seventh day of painting when it had finally sunk in that my trial was not going to wait for my ass to finish my paintings at a leisurely six-day-a-week pace.

“Shit, Brandon. I don’t fucking know. Why don’t you come down to the studio and help out. I’ll hand you a fucking brush and you can stretch canvases and paint backgrounds and shit, like Rubens used to have his studio grunts do.”

Brandon chuckled mellowly. “Point taken.”

Damn right, point taken.

Brandon sighed. “We can’t keep the customers waiting forever, Christos. Eventually, they’ll lose interest and move on to the next big thing.”

I twisted the steering wheel in my grip. If I wasn’t careful, I might rip the wheel off the fucking steering column and throw it out the window while I tooled down the freeway at sixty-five. “I’m working as fast as I can, Brandon. There’s only so many hours in a day.”

“I understand. How’s the painting of Isabella coming along? She’s an amazingly beautiful woman. I’m thinking your portrait of her will likely be the center-piece of your show.”

“It’s coming.” Too bad I thought it looked like a poster for a porno.

“What does that mean?”

I slid my hand down my stubbled face. “I don’t know how to say this, but I’m not liking it.”

“Do you want me to call New York? Or Europe? Find some more exotic models?”

Flying models out from the east coast or across the Atlantic meant escalating model fees. They’d need hotels, meals, pampering (we’re talking top-end models here), the works. All that shit would cost me an arm and a leg, and since I only had two of each, I was reluctant to start spilling more of my blood paying more bills. The L.A. models would have to do.

“No,” I said. “I’ll make it work. I’ll tweak some things on the Isabella portrait, maybe change up the background, and it’ll be great,” I lied.

“I don’t think changing the background will make much of a difference,” Brandon scoffed. “Are you having trouble capturing her likeness?” He hadn’t seen the painting yet, so he didn’t know.

“Fuck no.” It looked like a goddamned full-color holographic photo of her.
 

“You’re not going to find a more beautiful model on the west coast than Isabella…”

“I know.”

“…unless you can convince Samantha to sit for you.”

That again. I had to agree. But I didn’t think I could convince her. Not with all the shit she was juggling. She needed to focus on her art career, not mine.
 

“No,” was all I said on that topic.

“Fine. If you change your mind about the European models, let me know. I’ve been looking through some Russian agency books and there’s three or four stand-outs you might want to consider.”

“Email me the photos and I’ll check them out.”

“Terrific. I’ll do that as soon as we’re off the phone.”

“Sure,” I sighed. I never thought I’d say it, but I was fucking sick of hot chicks. I wanted to chuck all of them out of my life and make more room for the only one that mattered.

Agápi mou…

“Excellent,” Brandon said in a smiling voice. “Call me if you need anything.”

How about an all-expenses-paid trip to the nearest firing squad?

“Will do,” I said before ending the call. I just about threw my phone out the window, but stopped myself at the last second.