Center of Gravity (Marauders Book 3) (20 page)

“Yes,” I said and nodded with my eyes still closed. “Think you can help me with that?”

He stroked my nose with his and gave my lips a short kiss. “Absolutely. That’s what fuck buddies are for.”

-o0o-

I was resting on his shoulder, and I was finally starting to feel relaxed. His hand was stroking my hair, and he had a cigarette in the other. After putting it out, he turned towards me and put both his arms around me.

“Wanna talk about it?”

“I don’t know,” I murmured, buried my face in his chest, and hugged him tight. Then I just did. “They want me to see a shrink, see a ballet, and... other things I’m not sure I want to do.”

“So what do you want to do?”

That was probably the crux of the problem. I had no idea what I wanted to do. I’d had a plan my entire life, and I didn’t anymore. It was confusing to not have the slightest idea of what I wanted—to no longer having any real, measurable goals.

“Would it be okay if I didn’t know?” I finally said. “I mean, I used to know what I wanted to do, but now... I think I just want to figure out what I am if I’m not a dancer.”

“Might not be the right guy to tell you, since I didn’t know you when you were a dancer,” he chuckled, “but I’d say there’s a lot more to you than dancing.”

“Yeah?” I looked up, and when he felt that, he smiled at me and gave my nose a kiss.

“Yeah.” He smiled. “My mom has this thing she keeps saying, swim or sink. You either fight or give up. I’m not saying you’re about to give up, but sometimes you just gotta keep going and trust that shit will sort itself out.”

“Isn’t it ‘sink or swim’?” I asked.

“Not to Mom—always the positive first, to make it the easier to choose. Think you need that, too.”

“Thank you. For... that and for today. I think this is what I needed. This and not being around people who seem uncomfortable whenever I’m near.” I closed my eyes and relaxed even more. “What else is on your list of things I might not have done?”

“Ever fired a gun?”

“Guns scare me.”

“Need to fix that. Ever been a babysitter?”

“No.” I hadn’t had a lot of kids around me, and babysitting wasn’t something I’d done to earn money. “You mean Joshua?”

“Yeah. Promised Mac I’d give him and Vi some time to themselves. We’re gonna have a kid and godfather day.” He yawned. “He’s a month old tomorrow.”

I found it kind of sweet how he added the last part, that he was keeping track. I wasn’t used to kids at all, but Mitch had talked about how calm Joshua was. Besides, he’d be the responsible one, so it wouldn’t be that much work to go there with him.

“Okay. I’ll babysit with you.”

“You staying the night?”

“Yes.”

I felt him kiss my hair and give me a squeeze, but he didn’t say anything, and he fell asleep soon after.

I still didn’t feel sleepy. Instead I let my mind wander. Maybe it was as simple as him not knowing me as a dancer, like he’d said. That to him I was just... whoever I was now, and that was enough. Which was why was I was relaxed and comfortable around him. The way he kept calling me ‘Gimp’ just to tease me felt like something that should upset me, but it didn’t. Quite the opposite. Strangely it felt like the leg wasn’t a big thing for him instead, and that made it easier for me to breathe when I didn’t have to try to be something I couldn’t be anymore.

I felt like enough when I was around him.

-o0o-

I woke up with Mitch tugging my hair, like he so often did, and that was another thing I was growing quite fond of.

“Wake up, baby. We’re gonna go to the shooting range.”

“Guns scare me,” I said as I tried to rub the sleep out of my eyes. “I told you that.”

“And I told you we need to fix that.”

“I’m a pacifist,” I tried instead. “Very non-violent and against guns.”

“It’s very sexy with chicks shooting.”

“Can’t I just be naked to get you going?”

That made him laugh. “How about this? I take you there, you try, and if it still freaks you out we’ll leave, but at least you can cross it off your list.”

“I never had that on my list.” I sat up and stretched carefully to see how good or bad it was. Mitch sat down on the bed and started kneading my muscles. “Can’t we have, like, normal things on the list? Like riding a horse, petting a tiger, skinny-dipping—” The second the last thing slipped out of my mouth, my eyes flew open and I stared at him. His smile became so wide.

“You’ve never gone skinny-dipping?”

“Shit!”

He leaned over and gave me a kiss. “We’re definitely gonna do that, but today you’re gonna give shooting a chance.”

“I need breakfast.”

“I know. Do your thing while I make breakfast.”

“Okay.”

“Wanna do it here or in the kitchen?” he asked when he let go of my leg.

“Kitchen.”

I took my panties and a t-shirt lying on the floor. After he’d picked up my cane, he turned around, and I got up on his back.

“You like this, don’t you?” I asked him.

“Yup.” I felt his hand slip into my panties. “Especially when you’re half naked.”

Once we got downstairs, he put me on the counter and started making breakfast for me while we were talking, and I was doing ‘my stuff’ as he’d called it. The breakfast and I were done at the same time, and he helped me to the table.

While we were eating, he told me about Dawg and Edie. I’d met her both times at the clubhouse, and she was really sweet—I liked her. I had, however, somehow missed that she was Mel’s sister. Mitch told me she’d spent years traveling around the world before coming back, had fallen in love with Dawg, and had stayed here since.

“I was crushing like crazy on her,” he admitted with a small laugh. “So was Mac. We’d heard about her, and I thought she was so awesome even before we’d met her, and then we did and she was so hot. Still think she’s pretty fucking awesome.”

“She’s still pretty hot.”

“Sure, but she’s Dawg’s old lady. You don’t mess with a brother’s old lady. Ever!”

“They have two kids?”

“Yeah. Travis and Jacob.”

“And your brother and Violet have a boy. Is it all the testosterone that makes you guys only have boys?”

“Maybe,” he laughed.

I tried to get out of the shooting once breakfast was done and cleared away, but he got me down to his truck, inside it, and drove towards the shooting range. When we got there he handed me a small gun.

“There are four things you need to keep in mind. First:
Always
assume that the gun is loaded. Second:
Never
point your gun at something you don’t want to kill.”

I took a deep breath. “Pacifist, I don’t ever want to kill
anyone,
so can we please skip this?”

He looked at me and bit down on his lower lip, pulled me towards him and gave me a deep kiss. He kept his arms around me.

“Okay.” He took my hand and started to walk towards the truck again. “Still think you’d like it.”

“You’re just trying to lure me into it.”

He turned around and studied me, and I immediately knew that sneaky expression. He’d figured something out. He took a step towards me with a smile on his lips.

“Tell you what, you try this, and I’ll go with you to watch a ballet when you feel ready for it.”

I stared at him, trying to figure out if having him with me would make it better or worse. I tried to imagine it. For some reason it did make it easier to picture myself watching a ballet with him next to me—the guy who’d never known me as a dancer.

“So what’s the third rule?”

“Always keep your finger off the trigger until you’re ready to fire. And the fourth is always know what’s behind your target.” He started to walk back to the targets. He nodded to the guy who obviously owned the place, picked up the ear protectors and some sort of orange glasses, and handed them to me. “You’ll need those. I’ll stand behind you. You’ll be fine, but be ready for the recoil.”

He had one hand on my hip, and the other gently supported my left hand. Resting in my left hand was my right, and in that one, I was holding a damn gun.

He moved my ear cup to the side. “Need to relax, baby.”

“How? I’m holding a
gun.
”

He took the gun and put it on the table in front of us before he kissed the side of my neck, up to my ear, and down to my collarbone. Then his hand went down into my jeans.

“That’s not helping,” I mumbled.

Instead of answering, he spun me around and kissed me. I had no idea how what he was doing was supposed to make me relax, but I wasn’t going to fight it as long as it meant I didn’t have to deal with the gun. I felt a very distinct bulge pressing against me, and I smiled, which made him stop and look at me.

“You’re very cute in those glasses, Gimp.” He picked up the gun, checked something, and took my hand. “Come on, we’ll do this some other time.”

“Are you still going to come with me to the ballet?” I asked as I took off the glasses and put them on the table next to us.

“Have a feeling I’ll get you to fire a gun before that happens,” he said, and he looked... sad? “But I’ll go with you whenever you wanna go.”

I took a deep breath, and I realized something. Sometimes you had to just face your fears, just do things that might terrify you without thinking too much about them. This wasn’t a ballet, it wasn’t even something I had ever considered doing, but it was a start.

“Swim or sink, was it?” I asked, and he chuckled. “Okay. I’ll try.”

He nodded, no gloating, no questioning or anything like that. Just nodded, gave me the glasses and turned us towards the targets. He was standing behind me again, and I tried to focus on him and his supportive hands on me.

“Tune everything out, focus on the target, and then
squeeze
the trigger. And be ready for the recoil.”

I closed my eyes, took a few deep breaths, opened them, and focused on the target.

Then I squeezed the trigger.

-o0o-

I spent New Year’s Eve with my parents, Irina, and her boyfriend, Maurice. I’d met him briefly a few times, but this was the first time I’d spent some time with him. I was glad he was with us because he made the conversations flow much more easily. Dad seemed to like him as well, and Irina obviously adored him. We went out to the town square at midnight, like most of the Greenville citizens, to watch the fireworks. We also did our traditional New Year’s Wishes. As I wrote the words down on the paper, I took a deep breath. ‘I want to find myself.’ At midnight we set the pieces of paper on fire and soaked the remnants in champagne before toasting, yelling ‘S Novim Godom,’ and drank it.

I noticed Lisa and Violet on the other side of the square and handed my glass to Mom.

“Mama, I’m going to say hi to some friends.”

“Do that. We’ll see you at home.”

“I might be away for the night, but I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Have fun, love.”

“S Novim Godom and good night,” Dad said and waved at me.

I walked through the crowd and for a second I lost sight of her, but she waved at me to get my attention again.

“See you’re still doing that burning and soaking stuff,” Lisa greeted me with a hug. “Happy New Year!”

“Happy New Year!”

“Yeah, what was that burning thing?” Vi asked.

“It’s a Russian tradition. We write our wish for the next year on the paper.”

“Oh,” she nodded. “Kind of like the idea of that. What else do you do?”

“We eat.
A lot.
”

I felt two hands grabbing my hips, and then Mitch whispered in my ear, “So how do you say ‘Happy New Year’ in Russian?”

“S Novim Godom,” I said and turned around. He was wearing his cut and had put a lot of time into fixing his hair—he looked really good. “Drunk?”

“Planned on getting even more drunk,” he smiled and grabbed the collar of my coat to get me closer. “Any chance I can convince you to come with us back to the clubhouse?”

“Sure.”

That was what I had hoped for when I had told Mom and Dad that I might be away for the night. He put his arm around me, and we all started to walk towards the clubhouse. Since I was a bit slower than the rest of them, the two of us ended up behind the others.

“Are you naked under that coat?”

“No,” I laughed. “Sorry.”

“Think you can come to my place wearing nothing but that coat some time?”

“I’ll consider it,” I said with a serious nod. “Would at least be something I haven’t done before, walking around in just a coat. Like some perv.”

“I know there’s a little perv inside you just waiting to come out of the closet.”

I looked up, and the others were pretty far ahead, so I took his hand and pulled him into an alley.

“What?” he asked.

“I have nothing but thigh-highs and panties on under this dress.”