“And who you s’posed to be?” Bobcats took a step even closer to them, setting off hydraulics in Jo’s heart.
Menace circled them for the first time that night. Had it been this close all along? Just around the corner, one word, one encounter away?
Before either she or Cam could respond, another man walked into the light.
“We got a problem?”
The man’s slow drawl was at odds with the energy crackling around him like a magnetic field. His golden brown skin lay taut over sharp, high cheekbones. His eyelids seemed to droop a little, and Jo couldn’t help but think of that as a trick of nature, a defense mechanism to deceive his enemies into believing there was anything slow or lax about this man. Dreadlocks hung past the bulging muscles of his arms, like living things snaking around him every time he moved his head. His tawny eyes made a rapid assessment of the scene.
Bobcats shattered the brittle silence with a chuckle.
“I was just about to—”
“Cam?” The new stranger’s eyes narrowed and then widened, a younger man’s smile splitting his lips to reveal a white smile, studded with one gold tooth. “Well I’ll be damned.”
Cam watched the man for an extra second before an almost identical smile took over his face.
“Deuce.” Cam moved forward, grabbing the other man’s hand in that guy handshake Jo never quite got. “Man, it’s been a minute.”
Deuce looked Cam in the eye, and something passed between the two men, an understanding. A mystery that Jo immediately wanted to solve. He pulled Cam into a tight embrace. This man, who carried himself like the top of the food chain, held Cam like a brother. He pulled away, eyes straying over Cam’s shoulder to rest on Jo. His stare like a radioactive wave. Like she might need a hazmat suit to emerge uncontaminated.
“This yours?” He nodded to Jo.
He might remind her of a scorpion, poised to sting, but nobody talked to her—or about her—like that. Jo raised
oh hell no
eyebrows, waiting for Cam’s response.
“She’s standing right there.” Cam caught her eyes, his smile telling her he already knew what she was thinking. “Ask her.”
Deuce turned to her. “You his?”
Jo swung her eyes back to Cam, and even in this dark alley, where danger felt like breath on her neck, she couldn’t help but smile at him.
“Why don’t you ask him if he’s mine?” Jo didn’t look away from Cam even though she directed the question to Deuce.
“Ho ho ho!” Deuce stomped his foot three times and slapped Cam’s shoulder. “I heard
that
. So you hers, Cam?”
Cam’s good-natured grin held, but his eyes narrowed on her.
“Yeah, I’m hers.”
Jo smiled and pulled the hoodie up over her hair to ward off the dropping temperature. “Then I’m his.”
“Aw, she’s a keeper, man.”
“Don’t I know it.” Cam grinned at her, his eyes promising complete and total possession later tonight.
“This fool giving you trouble?” Deuce jerked his head toward the other man, who had watched everything unfold without saying another word.
“See, what happened was…well, I didn’t know you knew him, Deuce.” Bobcat’s tongue tangled with the words.
“Cam’s like family.” Deuced hooked an elbow around Cam’s neck. “Go check the corner off Third and Boulevard.”
Cam was like family? He’d never mentioned anyone named Deuce. He’d never spoken about anyone from Barfield with the affection his eyes held as he and Deuce continued their conversation.
“I haven’t been back much,” Cam said. “Sorry ’bout that.”
“I’m not sorry.” Deuce’s tawny eyes darkened, hard as bars of gold, shielding emotions and thoughts Jo knew she’d never uncover. “That was the point of you getting out, right?”
Cam nodded, one side of his tiny smile bitter, the other side sweet.
“I guess so.”
“I been keeping up with you, though.” Deuce’s grin poked surprising dimples into his lean cheeks. “You doing big things. Real big things. Movies, videos. All that shit.”
“I got lucky.” Cam looked at his fingers, smeared with paint.
“This”—Deuce pointed to the scene on the wall behind them—“ain’t luck. You always had talent, and I knew it would take you far. Far from here.”
“You ever want to get far from here?” Cam’s voice traveled the distance between the two men.
“Now why would I want to do that?” Deuce slipped a guard over his smile, his eyes becoming wary.
“Because you aren’t the only one who hears things.” Cam shook his head, scowling at Deuce in the dim light. “You’re deeper in than you’ve ever been. It’s not an old man’s game.”
“Who said I wanted to live to be an old man?”
“That’s not funny.”
“Wasn’t trying to be. Who would want to live here forever anyway?”
“Then get out.” Low and earnest, Cam’s words reached Jo’s ears.
“And do what?” Deuce’s voice turned rocky. “Work at McDonald’s? Walmart? Give me rich and short over poor and long any day.”
“Just get out. I’ll help you.”
“What, tit for tat? I helped you and you want to help me?”
For the first time since they’d started talking, Cam’s eyes flicked to Jo. He looked back to Deuce before Jo could read him.
“I know you think it’s too late, Deuce, but it’s not.”
“Man, this ain’t no after-school special.” Deuce firmed his lips, and all signs of affability vanished. He was the scorpion again. “We’re different.”
“We just made different choices.”
“Oh, you wanna talk about choices?” Deuce flashed a barbed smile. “Should I tell your girlfriend here about the choices that got you out of this hellhole?”
The look Cam gave Deuce was a loaded pistol. He started packing his paints into the saddlebag, movements controlled, but Jo knew him. A cyclone whipped around inside him. And she, fool that she was, instead of taking shelter, stepped into the eye of the storm. She walked over to Cam, taking his hand, asking him if everything was okay with just a glance. He hesitated, nodding, eyes clearing the longer he looked at her.
“Let’s go,” he said, hand at the small of her back and walking her over to the Harley.
“I’m sorry.” Deuce’s voice held no contrition, but the fact that he hadn’t unleashed any of the dark power at his disposal onto them in his anger said a lot.
Cam settled the helmet on Jo’s head and helped her onto the back of the bike before he faced Deuce.
“She’s off-limits.” Cam’s eyes sliced through the thick air separating the two men like a knife. “You don’t use her to threaten me. You don’t know her name, and I don’t want you to. Forget you met her.”
“I said I’m sorry. I crossed a line.”
“You sure as hell did.” Cam pointed to Jo. “That’s my line. Any of your shit ever touches her, I don’t care if you’re the biggest player in the game, I’ll find a way to make you pay.”
Deuce swiped a big hand over his eyes, shaking his head.
“I’m an asshole.”
“Yeah, you are.” Cam picked up his helmet, tucking it under his arm. He ran a hand over his wild hair, sucking his teeth in exasperation, a softer form of anger. “But it was good to see you.”
Deuce’s face lightened with a tentative smile.
“So we good?”
Cam held on to the last bits and pieces of the tension between them for a few more moments before relinquishing a small grin.
“We’re good.”
“So when you gon’ paint me?”
Cam climbed onto the bike, crossing his hand over the hand Jo placed on his stomach.
“Paint you? Like you’d want that.”
Deuce somehow married cynicism and wistfulness in a laugh.
“You said yourself it’s not an old man’s game. Your painting may be the only thing to remember me by.”
Cam started the bike and revved the engine, foot pressing to the gas.
“It’s not inevitable, Deuce.”
“Oh, we back to choices, huh.” Deuce looked around the alley, fixing his eyes on the cartoon violence Cam had animated on the wall in paint. “Sometimes your life chooses you.”
T
he pillow beneath Cam’s head was no longer cool. He scooted to the edge of the bed, not wanting to wake Jo with his fitful twisting. She’d been exhausted by the time they got home and had gone right to sleep. She’d actually looked surprised when he let her drift off without making love. That was a first. He was surprised she could walk some mornings. That’s how hard they went at it.
He loved it. He’d met his match, in bed and out. She was sassy, fierce, compassionate, proud, loyal. What the
hell
was she doing with someone like him? If she figured out she was getting the raw end of it, too bad. He couldn’t give her up now. The only person who would separate the two of them would be him. And then only to protect her.
Heat licked up his neck when he thought of that guy stroking her hair tonight in the alley. Presuming to touch her. That hour in the alley was what had him awake even now. He couldn’t shake the conversation he’d had with Deuce. Hell, just seeing Deuce after all these years. It had been good, but it had only reinforced the sense that the past and the present were working together to drive him out of his mind. Where did memory end and nightmare begin when it was all the same?
Jo sighed in her sleep, a small frown drawing her neat brows together. Cam leaned over, pushing the hair back from her face, rubbing the soft strands between his fingers. Even in her sleep Jo might be trying to solve the world’s problems, one child at a time. What he wouldn’t have given to have someone like her in his corner when he was a kid. To protect him from scum that preyed on the weak and the young.
“She sure is pretty.”
The room temperature plunged, turning the room into a morgue, and icicles trickled into Cam’s blood, sharp and frozen. He looked at the foot of the bed, drawing a deep breath and scooting back to the headboard. Not frantically, but calmly as if he faced the cleaning lady who came once a week, not a demon on leave from hell. Cam refused the fear that wanted out. Wanted to leak into his voice, into a whimper, into a moan.
“You’re not real.”
“Oh, I’m very real.” Mac leaned one arm against the bedpost, spreading his full lips wide into his alligator smile. “You and me have a rendezvous every night. I’m more real to you than she is.”
“You can’t hurt me.”
A chuckle billowed from Mac’s lips like black smoke.
“I’m not here to hurt you.” Mac’s eyes slid like a reptile’s over to Jo, sprawled beside Cam, bare shoulders visible above the covers. “I’m here for her.”
“The hell you are.” Fear was a tundra covering his heart, but Cam sat up, forced his back from the headboard. “I’ll kill you.”
“Like that works.” Mac walked around to Jo’s side of the bed, his hand hovering over her hair. “That mouth. Gor-geous! Just think how those lips will look wrapped around my dick. You remember that, right?”
“No.” Cam shook his head even as the fear infiltrated his fingertips and laid siege to his lungs. “I won’t let you.”
“Oh, same way you didn’t let me hurt your mama? Or you?” Mac curled his lips around the poisoned words, sucking at them like venom. “You’re pathetic. Still. You ain’t gon’ do nothing.”
He was so wrong. Cam
could
do something. This time he’d get it right and deal with this regenerating evil once and for all. Somehow he had messed it up, but he wouldn’t this time. Not with so much at stake. Keeping his eyes fixed on Mac, he leaned toward the floor and ran his hand under the bed until he found the gun. Tonight, it wasn’t cold. It burned his hand, spreading fire through his body and melting the fear away. He pulled himself up on his knees, reached across the bed, and grabbed the back of Mac’s head, pressing the barrel to his forehead.
“I’ll kill you this time. You’re going back to hell.”
O
h God. Oh God. Oh God.” Jo was afraid to even swallow, but she couldn’t keep that prayer from slipping past her lips. “Baby, wake up.”
Cam’s eyes, frozen over with sleep and hate looked right through her. One hand tightened around her skull and the other around the gun. He pressed the barrel deeper into her forehead. He had wrenched her from sleep, pulling her to her knees in the middle of the bed and told her she was going to hell.
The man she loved holding a gun to her head in the middle of the night—she was already in hell. One false move and he might pull that trigger.
“Cam, wake up.”
“You’re not real, but I’ll kill you anyway.”
“I am real.” Salty tears flooded the sides of her mouth. Tiny droplets of sweat crawled down her naked spine. Fear was a wet blanket covering her from head to toe. “I love you.”
“No.” He shook his head, and Jo saw a crack in the ice. “No.”
“I love you.” Jo steeled her voice, and for the first time she realized that he might hold the gun, but she held the power. “I do. I love you more than anything in this world. I always have. You know that. Cam, I need you to wake up for me, baby.”
Deeper, deeper, harder, harder—the barrel pressed into her until she knew the skin would bruise or break.
“You’re not real.” His voice cracked but didn’t break. “I won’t let you hurt her.”
Her? In his dream, was Cam protecting
her
? From who?
“Cam, wake up.”
She reached for him; even when he flinched from her touch, she reached for him. She stroked her hand up his arm until she gripped his hand holding the gun. Slowly, so slowly, she moved it by increments into the air away from her head. He still held the gun but seemed lost somewhere between the dream and the nightmare he was about to wake up in. She forced herself to his chest. Gulped back the fear and wrapped her arms around him, pressing her face into his throat, kissing his jaw, waking him up with her love.
His breath jerked into his chest. The gun fell to the bed.
“Jo?” Her name on his lips blossomed with knowing dread. “Did I…?”
Cam peeled her away from him, his eyes on her face like a searchlight in the dimly lit room. There was no mistaking the horror in his eyes. He smoothed the sore spot on her forehead with his thumb before jerking back. He ran his hands up and down her arms.
“Did I hurt you?” Pain and terror and disgust brawled on his beautiful face. “Oh God, what did I do?”
“I’m okay.”
“I just held a gun to your head. That’s not okay.”
“You were dreaming, baby.” Jo swiped the tears from her face, falling back from her knees to settle her bottom on her legs and feet. “Just tell me what you were dreaming about.”
“I…I need a minute.”
Cam fled the bed, the sight of his naked body for once the least of her concerns. He slammed the bathroom door. The sound of the lock turning hit her ears like a warning shot. Every moment he stayed on the other side of that door, she was losing him, but she couldn’t bring herself to drag him out. She sank to the floor, pressed her back to the bed, heedless of her naked butt on the cold hardwood.
The shock was setting in. The gun was gone, but she could still feel the unrelenting, deadly pressure of the barrel at her head. Terror still coated her tongue. A scream lay curled at the base of her throat, begging to unfurl. She gripped her knees to stop her hands from trembling. A sob climbed her throat, but she stuffed it down ruthlessly. Cam would not come out of that bathroom and find some sniveling girl on the floor crying and weak. Afraid of him.
The door opened, the bathroom light etching his silhouette from the darkness. His camouflage shorts must have been in the bathroom because they clung to his lean hips now. She lost the minutes as he stood there, silent and studying the floor. Goose bumps sprouted on her arms, reminding her she was naked. They always slept naked, and she had fooled herself that their hearts lay bare in this bed, but she’d been wrong. All these nights, he’d slept with a gun beneath them and she had never known. He’d hidden so much when she had given him everything.
He squatted in front of her and pulled her to her feet. She barely registered him slipping her silk robe up her arms and onto her shoulders. He tied the belt at her waist and freed her hair from the neck of the robe. He cupped her face and pressed his forehead to hers.
“I am so…” Cam’s deep voice gave up and she heard him swallow in the eerie quiet of the room. “Baby, I don’t even know where to start.”
Jo knew that the only weapon she had in this battle was her love for him. It was unconditional, even in this crucible where fear and confusion threatened to consume everything. This was a test she could pass.
“I love you.” She wrapped her fingers around the back of his neck, kissing his jaw and trapping his hand against her face. “Everything starts and ends there.”
“I was dreaming, but it was like it was happening.” He eyed her like he thought she might think he was crazy. “He was in this room.”
“Who was?”
“Mac. He’s supposed to be dead, but it’s like he’s not. He’s alive and in my dreams.” Cam dropped his hands away from her face, clenching them at his sides. “And he was going to hurt you the way he hurt me, and I had to stop him.”
“I know you don’t want to do details, but I need to know what we’re dealing with.”
“I thought it was taken care of. I thought it was over, but it’s not.” Cam shook his head, eyes fixed on the floor. “He’s dead, but he’s not.”
Jo recalled the way Cam had rushed past the details of Mac’s death before. She had to demand the truth, no matter how ugly and difficult.
“Cam, how did Mac die?”
He pushed a shaky breath past his lips and ran one hand through his hair. He gestured toward the bed he’d abandoned.
“I guess it’s time I tell you.”
Past time.