Experiment in Terror 07 Come Alive (9 page)

And at that, everything around me began to spin and swirl: Perry, the pig, the tourists, the brick road, the Starbucks up on 1
st
, as a heavy hunk of lead settled in my stomach. It wasn’t the crab, it was that I knew who he was talking about, and that the person was also standing across the road from me, staring at me above the crowd of people and passing cars.

One ginger fucking head.

I dropped the phone and it clattered to my feet. Perry let out a little cry, trying to go for it while juggling the crab cocktails. I didn’t know if it was yet another phone broke and I didn’t really care. Because I was locked in a surreal staring match with someone I had hoped to never see again.

Maximus was outside of a bookstore, rain jacket on, white and orange plaid shirt peeking out underneath. He smiled at me, at the dumb fucking expression that must have been on my face, and started to cross the street.

“Oh good, it’s not broken,” Perry said, straightening up and peering at my phone, shaking it. “I think you lost Jimmy though. Dex?”

“We’ve got bad news,” I managed to say, still staring at Maximus as he sauntered over.

“What did Jimmy propose?” she asked. “What was the…the
fuck
is he doing here?”

Yup. She saw him too. I reached for her hand, as if we were preparing to meet a ghost head-on, but no ghosts deserved a punch to the nuts as much as this vag-burglar did.

“Howdy, Dex,” he said in his stupid drawl with his stupid lopsided grin. He nodded chivalrously at Perry. “Little lady.”

“Little lady? Who the fuck are you, John Wayne?” I sneered.

“Here to save the day,” he said, his legs wide apart, arms folded across his chest.

“The hell you are.”

“So Jimmy already told you, has he?”

“Told him what?” Perry asked. “What the hell are you doing here anyway? How did you find us?”

He shrugged with one shoulder. “It’s a small city.”

I narrowed my eyes at him, this feeling of unease spreading through me. It wasn’t just the unease of him here, of Jimmy proposing that we work with him, but that he had just found us here, randomly and at the right moment, which seemed to make it not random at all. Suddenly, it occurred to me that nothing with Maximus was random, and I had to bury that little insight away so I could concentrate on the greater threat.

“Dex, what’s going on?” Perry asked.

I shot her a quick look. “Jimmy was about to tell me that we can get the sponsorship if we add a third person to our party. Him.” I jerked my head in his direction.

Her eyes got big like saucers. It was a relief to know she felt the same way I did. Now that I knew that Perry and Maximus had slept together while we were…well, not talking…a part of me wondered if she still harbored feelings for him. And when I was feeling really insecure, I wondered if her reluctance to be with me was a cause of that. Even if she didn’t have feelings for him, his dick had been inside of her, and that made me want to go on a killing spree every time I was reminded of it. Such as now.

“You can’t be serious!” she exclaimed, looking horrified. That’s my girl. Keep at it, kiddo.

“Oh, I’m afraid Jimmy is very serious,” Maximus said. “And you two don’t have much of a choice. You either bring me on board or you’re out of a job.”

Perry shook her head. “No. This is ridiculous. Dex, Jimmy is always saying shit like this and it doesn’t stick.”

I sighed loudly, running a hand through my hair. Oxygen seemed rare at the moment and solid thought was escaping me. The universe was conspiring to bring Maximus Jacobs back into my life, and I couldn’t figure out why, other than that the universe had a shitty sense of humor and liked fucking me up the ass. Horny bastard.

“This time it’s sticking, honey,” Maximus said.

“Don’t call me that,” Perry sniped.

I glared at him too. “Don’t you act like you know shit all, dickweed, because you don’t know shit. I’ve been working with Jimmy for the past three years.”

“And yet here I am, brought in to be your saving grace.”

“How much did you bribe him to get the job?” I asked, not holding back. “How much?”

He rolled his eyes. “Right, because this is my dream job, chaperoning you two.”

“You aren’t chaperoning anything! Perry and I have agreed to nothing, and like hell if we’ll let you be a part of what we started.” My phone chose that moment to ring. I eyed it. Jimmy. Fuck.

“What?” I yelled into it.

“You hung up on me.”

“I dropped my phone. It doesn’t matter. I know what you were going to say. He’s right here. Somehow.” I squinted at Maximus over that last part. He smiled back at me. It was so fucking hard to get to him and so damn easy for him to get to me.

“So then you know. So what do you guys say?”

“I say you can shove this idea—”

“Dex!” Perry interjected, grabbing my arm. “How about discussing it with me first before you screw us both over.”

My mouth flapped open. “You can’t be seriously considering this!”

She looked at Maximus and back to me and nodded at the phone. “Jimmy said we have no choice. It’s either this or nothing at all.”

“She’s right, Dex,” Jimmy said in my ear. “This is your option. You either bring Mr. Jacobs on board as your, I don’t know, let’s call him a production manager, or you don’t have
Experiment in Terror
anymore. One choice gives you security and a sponsorship. The other choice gives you nothing. Or you can keep being a stubborn ass and screw your partner out of something good just because you and your ex-buddy have some old beef to deal with. What do you say?”

I say fuck you. I say no way. I say I’d rather cut off my balls and I
love
my fucking balls. But I looked at Perry, and even though I knew how much it would bother her to do this with Maximus, I also knew she needed hope in her future. I saw how desperate she was for that, how badly she needed something solid in her life right now, something more than just me. She wanted to have something be a constant when everything with her family and her mental health and her income was up in the air. She wanted something she could count on and I didn’t even have to hear her thoughts to know that.

I took the phone away from my ear and looked at her. “So what do you want to do? You know what I want to do.”

She frowned. “Quit? Just like that?”

“Always a quitter,” Maximus murmured under his breath.

I spun around and slammed my fist into his chest, sending him stumbling off the curb while Perry cried out in surprise. I hadn’t meant to do that, the dude was usually as solid as a tree, but then I remembered the new dynamic. I felt almost bad, but that didn’t stop me from spewing, “What the hell did you mean by that?”

Maximus rubbed at his chest, his chin dipping, eyes becoming green slits. I rarely saw him mad and it was kind of scary, I had to admit.

“I mean,” he said carefully, “just because I’m involved, your first reaction is to quit. That’s how much you can’t handle being around me. I didn’t think I got to you that badly, Dex, really.”

I knew what the asswipe was doing and damn it was working. My ego never went down without a fight.

“Hey, I can handle being around you, I just prefer not to work with douchenozzles, that’s all. You’re only going to get in the way. You don’t know what the hell you’re doing.”

He stepped back on the curb, towering over me. “Oh, and you do? I can see how well you’ve done so far.”

“Dex? Dex?” Jimmy’s tinny voice came through the phone in my hand. I forgot he was still there.

I lifted it to my ear. “Yes, Jimmy, sorry, working out the kinks here.”

“I can hear that. If you want a minute to discuss it with Perry, I can wait. I’d try and leave your feelings toward Maximus out of it.”

“Fine. I’ll call you back in a few,” I told him and hung up. I felt like tossing the phone as far as I could, but I reigned in Hulk Dex and tried to think about Perry.

I exhaled sharply and cracked my head back and forth before turning to her and said, “So what do you want to do? We’ve got a few minutes to decide.”

“Well obviously you just want to say no and shut this whole thing down,” she said, sounding annoyed.

“Look, just a few minutes ago you were horrified at the idea of bringing him on board.”

She pulled at her hair hard, looking frustrated. “Well yeah, I am. The three of us can’t even have a conversation without a fight breaking out.”

“That wasn’t a fight,” Maximus piped up cockily.

She glared at him. “You, shut up.” She then looked at me. “I think it’s a bad idea, but I think right now, at this very moment in time, the other option is even worse.”

I took a step toward her, reaching for her hand, and lowered my voice as I gazed at her. “Baby, I told you I would take care of you.”

She smiled and laced her fingers into mine, which was doubly nice considering who we were in front of. I could
feel
him frowning at us behind me. “I know you can take care of me. But I have to try and take care of myself too. Let’s just give this a shot. If it doesn’t work, then we can still quit and do our own thing. But if it does work, this could change a lot of things for us. I would…I would just feel a lot better knowing I had a solid job to rely on.”

My heart felt like it had been stabbed with a very fine needle and I fought hard to keep it showing on my face. I hated, hated, hated that I wasn’t enough for her at the moment. It was stupid and selfish and immature to think I should be her world and her only world, the only thing she needed, but damn. I needed that from her like I never needed anything before.

I smiled at her, hiding everything, and said, “Fair enough. If that’s what you want, then that’s what we’ll do.” I really, really hoped I wouldn’t start resenting that.

I turned around and looked at Maximus. He was eyeing our hand-holding with puzzlement, and I couldn’t wait to rub this shit in his face but now wasn’t the time. “Fine. Perry says yes. I guess that means I’ll just have to suck it up and deal with your ginger-ass ruining everything.”

He looked my way, observing me like only he knew how to do, like he was on the inside of a joke I knew nothing about. “This is really going to tear you up inside, isn’t it?”

I forced myself to shrug nonchalantly. “Well, I got through college with you following me around like a lost pooch, so I suppose I can get through this too.”

He raised a brow but didn’t say anything. I knew what he was going to say too, that I didn’t actually get through college, that Abby started showing up and ruining everything, that he stopped being my friend, that I was locked away and everything was taken from me. But I suppose even he knew when to keep his mouth shut.

“You better call Jimmy,” he said, turning his attention to the market and the people going to and fro with bags of specialty olive oil and dried peppers.

And ginger-douche bossing me around had begun. I exchanged a tepid glance with Perry then dialed Jimmy’s number.

“Well,” he answered. “I don’t have all day.”

I took in a deep breath, looking deep into Perry’s baby blues. She was hopeful. That was all I needed. “We’ll do it. I suppose we don’t get to negotiate this a bit further.”

“Nope. From now on, you’re the cameraman and editor, same as ever. Perry is the host. Other than that, Maximus Jacobs is in charge of absolutely everything.”

“Fucking fantastic.”

“Thought you’d agree,” he said. “Now the best part of this whole arrangement is that I don’t have to deal with you and you don’t have to deal with me. Everything will be dealt with through him.”

“Where did we go wrong, Jimmy?  Don’t the good times count for anything?” I pleaded mockingly.

“Things went wrong the day I met you. Take care, Dex. Watch out for Perry. And listen to the redhead.”

He hung up and I stared at the phone dejectedly before shoving it in my cargo jacket. Well, that was that.

I looked at Maximus, who was grinning to himself and pretending to not pay attention.

“I feel like I just signed a deal with the devil,” I said.

He grinned wider and eyed me briefly. “Oh, Dex, didn’t you know? I’m one of the good guys.”

CHAPTER SIX

I saw my mother again. Well, I didn’t see her, but I could
feel
her and that was more than enough.

I woke up in the middle of the night, 3AM, right on the fucking dot, and had to piss like a racehorse. Perry was snoozing beside me, beautiful and peaceful in the dim, and I was careful not to wake her.

I didn’t feel that anything was wrong at first, in fact I didn’t even turn on the light, keeping the door open and using the hazy glow from the hallway to illuminate the bathroom. It wasn’t until I was pissing away, when I heard the door slowly shut behind me. The bathroom grew very cold, very suddenly, and I knew that it wasn’t caused by some random breeze.

I shook the last drops off my dick and was about to get out of there when the door clicked fully shut. I tried to swallow my panic and fumbled for the knob. When I found it, it wouldn’t open. It was locked. I was trapped. Oh my shit.