Read Burn Down the Night Online
Authors: M. O'Keefe
Burn Down the Night (16 page)
“So do you,” I said, and he nodded.
He was right. He was exactly right. There'd be no comfort between us. There would only be more pain.
So, I left him there. His bruises and his tattoos black in the light of the glowing blue pool.
I went to sleep on the love seat, but I woke up alone in the bed. The sheets beside me were cold, but the pillow next to mine still carried the dent from his head.
He'd moved me in the night. Picked me up in his tattooed arms despite his hurt ribs and carried me into the bedroom. And then didn't spoon me, or try to seduce me. He didn't even cup my breast.
Bastard.
Screw him and his kindness and respect. He didn't have to rub it in.
I crawled out of bed, feeling a little like I'd been hit by a car. I'd slept so hard, for perhaps the first time since we got down here. The clock on the microwave in the kitchen said 10:30.
Jesus. Almost twelve hours of sleep.
“Max?” I said. He wasn't in the living room or the bathroom. There was no note from him.
Perfect.
I'd had this thought last night, before drifting off, that I would go back down to Eric and ask if he could put some kind of spyware on Max's phone. That way, I might be able to find out something about the people calling that number. I ran into the kitchen where my phone was charging on the counter, but it was alone.
Shit.
I checked all the plugs in the condo to see if he had his phone charging someplace else. But they were all empty. The drawers in every room in the condo were also empty.
I opened up the blinds and looked down at the pool deck only to find Max sprawled out on a deck chair, facing our side of the condo unit. He was wearing black trunksâwhere he got those, I had no idea. His chest was bare and his arms were lifted above his head, wrapped around the plastic strap above his head.
That tree and skull tattoo was revealed to the world. It felt intimate, that tattoo. I wanted to run down there and cover it up.
Every wiry muscle in his body stood out in relief. The bare skin of his chest not covered with bruises or tattoos glistened with sweat and his black hair was damp, slicked off his head.
His features were so defined. Elegant almost. Like if he were picked up and dropped back in some ballroom in England, he'd work there just as well as he worked here. All those women in corsets would faint at his feet.
Seeâ¦historical romance novels: fueling sexual fantasies since I was too young to be reading them.
He should not be so hot. Not after last night. Not after we ripped open our pasts for each other and walked away because we were both too damaged to deal. Because we knew that if we touchedâif we had each other it would only ruin everything.
But there he was. Sitting in the sun with all his tattoos and his bruises and even his gunshot wound like there was no part of himself he was ashamed of or felt like hiding.
And that was pretty goddamn hot.
And his phone, a small black rectangle, sat on the cement deck beside him.
“Hello there!”
I opened my eyes to what had to be the twentieth little old lady standing over me. I shifted my head so she was blocking the sun. They all looked the sameâthe only variation being their skin color. Some were brown, some were black, most were white, but they all had curly white hair in a weird halo around their heads. All wore tank tops and skirts or hugely flowered swimsuits, like they just didn't give a shit about the cellulite on their knees.
You kind of had to respect that.
This one had a swimsuit on, a baggy, nearly see-through thing.
I kept my eyes on hers.
“Hello,” I said.
“You're one of the newlyweds in 304?”
“I am.” The lie was easy at this point, I'd been telling it all morning.
“Well, congratulations! Dean!” she yelled over her shoulder to a man sitting in the shade reading a newspaper. “It's one of the newlyweds from 304!”
Dean lifted his hand, but didn't lower the paper.
“Oh, ignore that man. He wouldn't look up from
The Times
if the condo was on fire. Well, we're just so thrilled to have you here. It's nice to have younger people to liven the place up.” Now she was really getting excited. If I didn't scare her away soon, she'd sit down on the lawn chair next to mine like the last old lady. I'd had to pretend to fall asleep to get her to leave. “With all us old folks around, it can get pretty boring! And you sitting here has already made it more exciting.”
I was pretty sure the dirty bird was talking about my body. Nice. Or maybe my bruises. I did look rough. I rubbed my hand over my beard which had grown bushier than I liked. Between the bruises, the ink, and my beardâI was pretty outlaw.
“Has anyone told you about the cocktail hours in the lobby?” She pointed toward the two-story building that linked the two wings of the condo building. Every single woman had told me about the cocktail hour. Cocktail hour was a big deal with the white-haired ladies.
“Gayle is making her Chex Mix tomorrow night andâ”
“Hello, Susan,” a woman's dry voice interrupted, and Susan and I both turned to see Aunt Fern standing there in another tennis outfit. This one was orange. It made her hair look like a fire on her head.
“Fern,” Susan said, her voice decidedly less chipper.
Not surprisingly, Aunt Fern was a total buzzkill.
“Hello, Aunt Fern,” I said showing a lot of teeth. Yes, she might have saved my life, but there was the hypodermic needle to my neck, too.
And the catheter.
She stared down at me and then, like it hurt, she smiled. “Hello, Max.”
Susan just kept talking. “I was just inviting Max and his wife⦔
“Joan,” I supplied.
“Right. Joan, to the cocktail hour tomorrow night.”
“I'm sure they're too busy,” Fern said.
“Not at all.” I could tell she was mad because she somehow got even more expressionless. “We would love to come!” I said, just to grind it in a little bit. Fern looked like if she could actually swallow her own lips, she would.
“Lovely!” Susan said. “I am so excited to talk to you about your tattoos. My grandson is a tattoo artist in Portland; he does just the most beautiful work.”
“Susan!” Dean yelled from across the pool and behind the paper. “Leave the poor man alone. It's his honeymoon.”
“You're right!” Susan said. “Congratulations again. I hope we meet your wife at the cocktail hour.”
“You sure will,” I said. I had zero intention of going but it was fun punishing Fern.
Susan left with a jaunty little wave and jumped into the pool for some kind of exercise that seemed to mostly consist of yelling at her husband and then helping him do the crossword.
Marriage was weird.
“You're feeling better,” Fern said, looking me over. The bruise on my ribs was particularly colorful. Purple and black with green edges. It looked poisonous.
“I am.”
“How is the leg?”
“Fine.”
I wasn't going to tell her anything I didn't have to, and she seemed to realize that. Her job as my doctor was over and we were both relieved and showing it in the same clenched-jaw way.
“You will not be going to the cocktail hour,” Fern said and then turned to walk away, standing military straight.
She was right and I didn't care enough to argue, so I closed my eyes for what would be my first nap of the day.
“What about the cocktail hour?”
Oh shit. It was Joan. I cracked open my eyes to see Fern and Joan in stand-off mode. I got distracted momentarily by Joan in that white bikini. Seriously. The girl had a body.
“It's the same one the residents organize. Every Friday and Wednesday.”
“I completely forgot about those!”
Oh, that she actually looked excited broke my heart a little.
“You are not going to go.”
“Why?”
“Joan⦔ Fern said like a warning. “We had a deal.”
Hmmmâ¦I guessed the deal had something to do with keeping a low profile and not embarrassing Fern.
That killed the excitement on her face and for a second she looked hurt. And I never would have seen that, never would have been able to recognize that split second of hurt before last night. But now I was wise to it. Now it was all I saw, even after she put it away, hid it behind an expressionless face. Behind all that bravado of hersânothing but pain. “Right. Keep my head down.”
Fern blinked like maybe she saw that second of hurt, too.
“They're dull. You must remember that.”
Joan smiled, briefly. “I remember Jennifer got drunk on tequila sunrises that one time.”
“She thought it was juice.” Fern's expressionless face cracked just enough to register some other emotion. Not that I could tell what it was.
“No, she didn't,” Joan corrected her, kindly. “That's just what we told you so you wouldn't get mad.”
Fern shook her head. “I should have known.”
“I told her she could have one, but she must have had like ten. Threw up all over the beach.”
“You and I chasing after her with water and aspirin,” Fern said. “You were so worried.”
“She was never much of a drinker after that. A good lesson, I guess. But we never thought the cocktail hours were boring. The food was good.”
“It's mostly unhealthy garbage.”
“Exactly,” Joan said. “And that Murray guyâ¦who plays the piano.”
“He died a few years ago.”
Joan blinked, clearly stunned. Clearly pained. “Of course,” she whispered with a gruff voice. “He was so old. Thatâ¦shouldn't be so surprising.”
“I'm sorry,” Fern said.
“Me too. He was really nice. Reminded us of Dad.”
Now it was Fern's turn to look surprised. “Murray reminded you of Derrick?”
“They both really liked music.”
It looked for a second like Fern wanted to argue about something. About how unlikely the Murray-Derrick connection was. But something in Joan's face, that deep layer of nostalgia maybe, made Fern keep her trap shut.
“But I get it,” Joan said. “No cocktail hour.”
Fern nodded, short and sharp, and the matter was over. “Enjoy the sun,” she said. “Try not to draw too much attention to yourselves.” Her eyes glanced over Joan's body and then over to mine, covered in tattoos and bruises.
Me and Joanâwe were a scene just breathing.
Fern slipped her big sunglasses down over her eyes and walked away toward the small brick wall and the gate that opened onto the brilliant white beach. She left a chill in her wake.
“Old habits are hard to break, huh?” I asked, closing my eyes again, letting the sun soak into my bones. I grew up in Florida, but I felt like I never got to appreciate the whole Florida experience. Not like the rich folks that came down every winter with nothing to do but sit and pick up shells.
I never even had a boat. It was practically a lawâif you lived in Florida you needed to have a boat.
I had some money put aside. Not a lot. A few hundred thousand I kept in different safe deposit boxes and bank accounts. Some of that money could buy me a little fishing boat.
“What does that mean?” she asked. Something in her tone made me open my eyes and I saw her looking after Fern like a puppy who'd been left behind.
Right, I thought, softening toward her and not just because of the white bikini. Some habits were fucking impossible to break.
“Sit,” I told her, because I didn't like seeing her that way. “Come get a sunburn.”
“Sunburns are for chumps,” she said. I could feel her in the air all along my left side. I could smell herâa mix of flowery shampoos and soaps and lotions.
Sweet. She smelled sweet.
I would know her in the pitch black. Without touching her or feeling her body, I would know her.
Shit.
I shifted in the chair as my dick started to stiffen.
I glanced over at her and she was rubbing sunscreen on her shoulders. I closed my eyes, because I didn't need to make a scene with an erect cock.
“You left the condo early,” she said.
“Nice day, bright sun. Seemed a shame to waste it.”
“You really going to just sit here for four more days?”
“I'm thinking of buying a boat.”
That made her laugh and I reached over, my eyes still shut, and touched her leg. Ran my knuckles over the smooth skin of her thigh. She was like silk under my callouses and bruises.
Her laughter stopped.
“Your phone,” she said.
Ahâ¦now we were getting to the point of things.
“What about it?”
“Don't be fucking obtuse, Max. My sister is in trouble.”
I blinked open my eyes, staring right into her face. “Lagan didn't call. No one called.”
“You promise?”
“Yeah, I promise.”
“Why can't you let me have your phone?”
I cracked one eye. “Why can't pigs fly?”
“It's not like you care.”
“Doesn't matter if I care or not. The phone is mine. Stop wasting your breath arguing.”
“You're a dick.”
“No. I'm an asshole. Not a dick.”
“I'm beginning to get confused by the distinction.”
I grinned up into the sun and said nothing.
It took her a long time to relax. I could feel her radiating tension and anger and a kind of thwarted grief. She was reckless and strung too tight and not thinking clearly. It was the same kind of vibe Rabbit had, and Rabbit had been a sociopath who jumped at every shadow. He started fights with everyone who breathed his way.
And he had probably died a shitty death.
Come on,
I silently urged Joan.
Give yourself one day.
She kept fidgeting next to me. Just when I thought she might relax, she'd twitch around with her towel or her hair or her glasses.
It felt like life or death. I don't know why and it barely made any sense. But if she couldn't take a deep breath and let some shit go, it was over for her. She'd burn out trying to get her sister free. Trying to make things right. Blaming herself for everything that went wrong in her life, her sister's life.
Fucking Murray's life. She'd take it all on, all the guilt in the world.
If she couldn't let it go for a few moments, she'd be buried by her guilt. Buried by her regret. She'd go up in flames trying to make everything right.
I knew it because it was as true for me as it was for her.
I wasn't thinking about second chances today. About what might happen tomorrow. About if being the president of the Skulls was a game I wanted to play anymore.
I was thinking about none of it.
Except the boat.
Which made sitting here for a solid day a test we both had to pass.
Finally, the time between the twitches lengthened. And the time between her panicky breaths lengthened. And then there was a long slow sigh.
“One day,” she whispered.
“One day.”
“What the hell are you going to do with a boat?” she finally asked and I laughed, even though it hurt my ribs.
We didn't eat anything and around noon, another little old woman came out, wearingâof all things a T-shirt with Santa on a beachâand carrying a blender full of margaritas and poured each of us enough to fill a red plastic cup to the brim.
“Beer margaritas,” she said with a sly wink. “The beer makes it less sweet.”
Joan and I both thanked her and accepted her congratulations on our marriage.
“Jeez,” Joan said after a sip. “Mrs. Claus makes them strong.”
She did indeed.
And by the bottom of the cup, drunk Joan became a pleasure to watch, particularly when she jumped into the pool and then got out, that white bikini see-through in places.
I meant what I told her last night. I was all ready to invest in this woman's drama. Fucking her would burn us both down. But funny how after a beer margarita on an empty stomach, burning down the night didn't seem like such a bad way to go.
A while later, another woman came out with a plate full of little hot dogs with toothpicks. Another woman brought something called a cheeseball that tasted better than it looked.
There was cheap champagne and a few beers.
Each of them congratulated us on our marriage.
“Jeez,” Joan said again, rolling the mini hot dog in the cheeseball, which because I was a little buzzed on the super strong margarita and the beer, was the best idea I'd ever seen. “How do we upgrade the snacks into cash?”
“How do we get another round?” I asked, draining the last of the beer from my bottle.
One of the units on the second floor with open windows, unfortunately, started to play music. Loud.
“It's like our wedding reception!” Joan said, her eyes wide. She did a little shimmy, which I appreciated, but I closed my eyes and tilted my face to the sun.