The Original Crowd (38 page)

Brian was looking at me when I crossed to the porch. He stood up just as I stepped to where he sat.

“Hey,” I said softly, remembering the little boy I’d fell in love with. And seeing a faint shadow in the boy before me, merging with the reflection of manhood.

Brian had changed. I knew that, I just hadn’t wanted to accept it.

“Hey,” he breathed out, absorbing me.

We both knew.

It was time.

“I’m…I’m going to leave it alone. Whatever Jace, whatever arrangements he made for me. I want you to know—I’m leaving it alone.” I said first, rushed. I wanted it out there between us. He had to know.

“I didn’t beat up Geezer,” he spoke, glancing where Tray was parked. “You gotta know that. I don’t want you to think I’d do that.”

“I know,” I murmured. “Now.”

“Good.” He looked relieved, and he was. I knew him, still. I knew that look. And the knowledge brought a smile to my face.

I still knew him, who stood before me.

A part of my history. But no longer my present.

“Look,” he started, “I don’t know about that Evans guy, but keep a good twist on his balls. Like you did with me.”

That brought a grin to my face.

Brian the poet, he was not.

“I still love you,” I announced abruptly.

Brian’s eyes whirled to mine, startled, but not surprised.

I added, “I still love you, but—”

“I know.” He nodded, shifting in place. “You’re in a better place now. Which is good. You deserve it.”

“Brian.”

“You got a good family. That’s a good house you live in now. And there aren’t any Lansers in Rawley, that’s gotta be a good thing. It just took me awhile to accept it, you know. But I get it now.

“Brian,” I murmured, stepping closer, “I loved you. Not Jace.”

He grinned, the look stabbing me in the heart. “No, you didn’t.” He let out a deep breath. “You loved him, you just never did anything about it.”

He raised a hand, brushing a tear from my cheek.

“I loved you,” I whispered. “Jace was just—”

Brian shook his head. “You loved Jace. I know that—now. I knew it then, I just…didn’t want to admit it.”

“Brian, don’t.” I brushed some more tears away. Fucking tears—a nuisance all the damn time. “Don’t…okay.”

He flicked away his own tear and then pulled me into his arms. Resting his chin on top of my head, he murmured, “I love you too. I’ll fucking be here, loving you until I die.”

I wrapped my arms around him and sighed. Resting into him, feeling the warmth of his embrace once more. This had been my home—in his arms, for so many years.

He’d been my rock. He’d just never intended to be.

And it all started back when he tried to brush me off in the fourth grade. And I’d ‘twisted his balls.’ We were Bonnie and Clyde. We thought we ruled our fucking school and town. And we’d been right. We had ruled. But that part of our lives was over.

I pulled away and looked up at him. “Whatever I felt for Jace—it was you. Okay. It was you.”

He couldn’t say anymore. I saw it.

So I stood on my tiptoes and kissed him one last time—a tender kiss goodbye.

Then I pulled back and walked away from him, leaving the only home I knew behind.

It started to rain again. . And it totally fit my mood.

Tray and I didn’t talk as we drove back. It was a good silence, a comfortable silence. And I didn’t stop to let myself get scared. I couldn’t, not right then. Not after saying goodbye to Brian.

When we pulled into his driveway, it was eerily empty. As we walked into the main house, and into the kitchen, our footsteps on the tile was deafening.

Tray went first to the fridge and pulled out some food. Pizza—what else? As he heated it up, he jumped on the counter and looked at me.

“What?” My voice was hoarse and painful.

He just watched me, without saying a word.

The microwave alarm rang and he jumped back off, putting his pizza on a plate. Grabbing my hand he pulled me out onto the back patio, where I’d found his friends this afternoon when I first arrived.

It was beautiful. Sitting there with the rain coming down on the glass that encased every wall except the open wall that connected to the house. Tray sat and ate while I pulled a chair up beside him and curled my knees against my chest. I sighed, resting my cheek on my knee as I looked sideways to Tray.

“When was the last time you saw your brother?”

Tray frowned slightly, I saw he was a little surprised by my question. “When I told him I wasn’t helping him against Dad,” he said smoothly.”

“What was that like?”

“It was rough,” he replied.

“Did you get to say goodbye to him?”

Tray let out a brusque laugh. “Fuck no. Chance beat the shit out of me and then took off after telling me he didn’t want anything to do with me. Dad screwed our family up and I was supposed to pick sides. Dad never got along with Chance anyway, even when I was little. I don’t remember a lot about their relationship. But I do remember them fighting, all the time.”

“What about your mom?”

“Mom was…she was always quiet. Not really all there, you know. I think she was just scared.”

“Of your dad?”

“Ah, hell no. Dad wouldn’t do a thing to harm her, at least not in the beginning. Towards the end, when Galverson got him hooked on drugs, yeah, she might’ve been scared then. I don’t know. I just think she didn’t know what to do with Chance and Dad. They both liked to have us pick sides.”

“How old is he?”

“He’s my half-brother, from Dad’s first marriage. He’s fifteen years older than me. So he’d be thirty-two now. He joined the DEA when he was twenty-six.” Tray chuckled. “Yeah, Chance always wanted to top whatever Dad did. Drugs were so rampant around here and that was Dad’s focus as chief of police; he was successful in cleaning up Rawley and received a lot commendations for it. I think that’s why Chance chose the DEA over the FBI or any other agency—so he could outshine Dad.”

“What about your dad?” I asked softly. Hearing the bitterness in his voice, I couldn’t tell who or what his anger was at specifically—his dad, his mom, his brother, or just the whole situation.

Tray shrugged and sat quietly, staring out at the rain.

“I’m sorry,” Tray said hoarsely.

I looked at him in surprise.

He was watching me and gave me a soft grin. “For…I can relate. I’m sorry.”

I stood and sat in his lap, straddling him. Tray just watched me, still leaning back in his chair, but his hands came to rest on my thighs.

I slid my hands down his chest and moved to intertwine my fingers with his. I kept them there, feeling the contours of his hands, his fingers, as I watched him, watching me. Without making a conscious decision, I had inched closer to him, bringing him fully against me. Then I slightly rocked my hips.

Tray’s eyes had turned amber.

I knew mine were dark with lust, too.

We stayed that way, not moving, but both of us were affected nonetheless. I could hear the rain pounding on the glass in front of us along with our heavy breathing in the room.

“Fuck,” he moaned as he slid one of his hands underneath my shirt, gliding it against my skin.

I let my head fall back and closed my eyes, lost in the feeling of his hands on me.

Tray moved to untie my tank top and it slowly fell aside. He sat forward and pressed his mouth to mine—kissing and caressing me lovingly.

I sighed in content.

I tipped his head back and met his lips tenderly.

Tray picked me up, my legs wrapping around his waist, his hands underneath them, he stood and walked into the house. He took us to a room I never knew existed; however, I’d only been inside his parents’ room.

This room was gorgeous. That was my only coherent thought before he laid me on the bed and bent to meet my lips once more.

That night we didn’t have sex. It was something else, something more.

*

The combination of the doorbell shrilling and pounding on the door woke us up in the morning.

“The fuck—” Tray cursed, rolling out from beside me. He stood and lifted the curtain. Whatever he saw, he froze. He went absolutely still.

And then I saw what Tray always let simmer just underneath. I gasped, sitting up, when his eyes fall on me. There was a cold ruthlessness in his expression. His whole being looked capable of anything at that moment. He looked powerful.

I quickly sat up. “Who is it?”

“Stay here,” he ordered crisply.

I scrambled to the window and looked.

Holy fuck.

There were four cars outside. Each had a guard at the driver and passenger doors, with guns held in open view. At the door stood a middle-aged man, with two guards behind him. Jace was behind the guards looking scary and shut off from all emotion. I’d seen that Jace before too, but he didn’t look as powerful as Tray.

I shivered again when I turned and saw him walk to a safe in the closet. He opened it and pulled out a 9mm and a .30 caliber.

“What are you doing?” I asked, now embracing my panic. I couldn’t hold it back any longer.

“Get dressed,” Tray ordered. “If you hear any gunshots, you run, Taryn. I mean it. They might to want to search the house, see if you’re here. There’s a hidden tunnel that connects most of the house.”

“Why do you have a hidden tunnel?” I asked. I wanted to act like a panicky little girl at the moment, but there’s no way in hell I’d do it. I wasn’t weak and I wasn’t spineless.

“Because my dad was running drugs with Galverson,” Tray snapped, swearing when he saw his cellphone was dead. Crossing to the phone, he lifted it and heard a dial-tone. “That’s good. We have a dial-tone.”

He moved the bed back and underneath it, he peeled back a square piece of carpet that was attached to a panel in the flooring. No one would ever know it was there if they were to walk by it.

“This is where you go, okay. If you hear them searching for you, just climb underneath the bed, and put the panel back in place. They’ll never know. Just follow the tunnel until it ends. It’ll go down. It curves through the house and then goes underneath the pool and pool-house. It continues until it connects to the street a ways down.

“Have you ever had to use it?” I asked, my eyes entranced.

“Yeah,” he hesitated, “once.” He pushed the bed back in place.

“Tray, come with me. I don’t want you to go down there.”

“I have to. They might just be here to ‘talk.’ If I go missing, everything I have on him surfaces. It’s the rules of the game and he knows it. I have so much on him, he’d have to go into hiding for the rest of his life. Plus, drug lords tend to find drug lords. He’d be hunted down and killed.”

“Tray,” I insisted, grabbing his hand.

I recoiled, feeling the gun instead.

“When Lanser asks if you’re here, I’m going to tell him that I dropped you off late last night because you were upset. The plan was that I’d come and pick you up this morning to get your car. Call the houseline in a little bit. If this is what I think it is, you might not have to run.”

Oh God.

“Tray,” I whispered.

He took one second to kiss me before he left, tucking the 9mm in the back of his pants. It was a little while later when the pounding and doorbell finally stopped.

Tray had opened the door.

I snuck to the door, it was still opened a crack so I could hear everything.

“What the fuck are you doing here?” Tray clipped out, sounding like he could murder someone.

It must’ve been Galverson, because I heard a relaxed chuckle in response.

“Sal,” Jace started.

“Relax, Tray. We’re not here to kill you,” Galverson soothed, sounding at ease, in control.

“Right, because we do tea and shit like that,” Tray said sarcastically.

“Is Taryn here?” Jace asked. “Her car’s outside.”

I snuck away and scrolled to Tray’s name and selected his home line. A second later the phone rang in the house.

“Yeah?” Tray answered, sounding irritated.

“Hey. I’m awake. Can you come pick me up?”

Tray hesitated a second, then answered, “I’ll be there in a little bit. If I don’t call you back in ten minutes, call the cops.” And then he hung up.

I put my phone on silent and crept back to the door.

Galverson was laughing again. It was a creepy laugh, like a perverted psychopath laugh.

“I see why you’re Mitchell’s favorite.”

“Shut the fuck up about him,” Tray growled.

“You need to learn to relax. Really,” Galverson murmured, shaking his head. “So your little girlfriend’s not here, hmmm? That phone call was nicely timed.”

“It’s ten in the morning. Taryn doesn’t sleep in longer than that,” Tray merely said.

“He’s right. She doesn’t,” Jace spoke, “and she’s not known for being patient.”

“Yes,” Galverson said heartily, “I hear a lot about this little girlfriend.”

“Sal,” Jace murmured. I heard the warning in his voice.

What the hell?

“I’m getting tired of this bullshit we’re playing, Lanser,” Galverson rushed out. You could hear the suppressed anger. “Your little girlfriend was removed for a reason, but she keeps resurfacing. I’m growing tired of it.”

“We already went over this. You don’t touch Taryn. Ever,” Jace bit out, sounding hostile.

“Fine. Fine. But this is why we’re here, Tray.” He’d put on his cheerful façade again. “I have an understanding that you’ve become ‘close’ to this little girl that Jace seems hell-bent on keeping alive.”

“You know our previous deal, Galverson. That includes Taryn now,” Tray said firmly.

“Now, now. You don’t have to raise that gun to me. Just keep it down where it’s supposed to be.”

“Look,” Jace spoke up, taking charge, “keep Taryn away from Pedlam. That’s all we want.”

Tray let out a short laugh. “Are you serious?”

“I know. Taryn doesn’t listen, so…just find a way around her. I got her to Rawley in the first place. Keep her here and we won’t have any problems.”

And how the fuck did he get me here?

“Look, Taryn told me last night that she’s not going to ask any more questions; she’s going to leave everything alone,” Tray murmured, his voice a little bit more distant.

“Yeah, that’s what Brian said, but she broke into the Seven8. So we need to know that whatever she took, she’s not going to do anything with it,” Jace replied, tense.

Tray remarked, “She stole some tickets to a concert you’re having there. That’s it. She stole ‘em for someone else.”

There was a moment of silence. “Are you kidding me?” Jace asked in disbelief.

“Jace,” Galverson spoke up, “could this possibly be true?”

“Fuck. Yeah, she does shit like that,” Jace cursed.

“It doesn’t matter, she’s a loose cannon and she has the capability to get inside places I don’t want her,” Galverson explained in a patronizing tone. “I don’t like that. I’ve already had my balls handed to me by a kid once. I’d prefer that it not happen again.” I could hear the barely controlled patience in his voice.

I waited with bated breath for Galverson’s next move.

“Keep Taryn away from Pedlam. It’s for her own good,” Jace ordered.

“I’ll keep her out,” Tray shot back. He was furious.

“And as long as you do that, we shouldn’t have a problem. Should we?” Jace shot back, equally enraged.

The two hated each other. I didn’t see that the last time they were in each other’s company. They barely acted like they knew each other.

“Fine. We have an understanding,” Galverson said soothingly. “Now, Jace, I’d like a moment in private with Tray. It’s a family matter.”

“Fine,” Jace yielded, shutting the door behind him.

“Now, now that it’s the two of us, I have a proposition for you, son.”

I was surprised Tray hadn’t shot him. That was the second time he called him ‘son.’

“If it’s killing Lanser, I’m in,” Tray said easily, but you could hear the violence in his voice.

Galverson chuckled. “Oh, there’s a little bit of your father in you. Both of you make me laugh. But, no. It’s not about killing a very promising partner of mine. It’s about you, Tray.”