Authors: Jessica Lake
I was sitting on the sofa in my flat, drinking a glass of red wine a little too fast and trying to think about anything other than the Linda Trout video when a text from Sam, my erstwhile FWB, came. A single smiley. No words. I sighed and waited a few minutes to see if anything else would come up. Eventually, it did.
"What are you up to?"
I ignored it. My mind was occupied almost entirely by the case, and whatever leftover space there was now found itself all wrapped up in thoughts of Callum Cross.
The text from Sam didn't make my heart beat a little faster. It didn't make me smile at the feeling of my own wet panties against my skin the way it used to. I'd messaged Callum back the day after the fight, telling him I wanted to see him again, too. He'd immediately replied, asking if I was free that weekend. I'd played it cool, not giving him a definitive answer. Streatham is a long trip from Hackney, car or no car. That wasn't the only reason I was stalling, though. I was stalling because I knew Callum was dangerous in a way I hadn't quite been able to articulate to myself just yet.
Work was first, I told myself. Work. Not men, not socializing, not torturing myself over the what-ifs of my life.
Another text arrived: "Bored? Wanna come wreck shit with me?"
I almost didn't read it, assuming it was from Sam again. It wasn't from Sam, though. It was from Callum. I stared at the screen for a few seconds, smiling, before texting him back.
"Yes, of course, I love 'wrecking shit.' Can't tonight, tho, work tomorrow. Sorry, boring."
"Is the UK not exciting enough for you, Lily? Not too many bears to wrestle in London, I'm afraid. Although I could probably give you a decent fight."
"I bet. How about this weekend?"
Just texting back and forth with Callum changed my entire mood instantly. Was this the danger I sensed? A man I barely knew with the seemingly out-of-nowhere power to have me biting my lower lip like a teenage girl over a few flirty texts?
Another message popped up: "I'm actually busy this weekend - can I see you on Monday?"
I thought for a few moments before replying:
"No chance. This weekend or nothing."
"Then I guess I'll just have to cancel the £5000 job I've got lined up. I trust you'll compensate me...?"
Callum had a five thousand pound job lined up that weekend? He wasn't fighting, I knew that. I sent him another silly reply, but a small pit had opened in my stomach. Five thousand pounds. I tried to tell myself it could be anything. Labor, security, anything except illegality. My gut knew otherwise. Men like Callum - well, men from Callum's background, living their lives in the milieu he lived his life in...
My phone chimed again and I looked down. That time it was Superintendent Akin.
"Ring me."
I checked the time. Almost midnight. He wouldn't be messaging me this late if it wasn't important. I dialed his number. When he picked up, he started talking right away, without saying hello.
"Morgan. I'm sending you a photo - I got Jenny to do a cursory search and she found it online."
"OK, hold on, let me open my e-mail."
I yanked my laptop across the coffee table, almost knocking over my wineglass in the process, and opened the photo attachment Akin had sent me. It had been taken inside what looked to be a crowded nightclub.
"Do you notice anything?"
I looked at the photo more closely. Four men were on stage, standing behind the DJ. One of them had his back turned to the camera. And there it was, on the back of his t-shirt. That logo - the one on the back of the hoodie worn by Linda Trout's killer.
"His t-shirt. Where was this taken?"
"2013, gig in Brixton. The sponsor had these shirts printed for promotion, they were never mass-produced. Guess who the sponsor was?"
"Wayne Karswell?" I asked, tentatively, thinking it was too easy. It was.
"Gary Wilson. Gazza, from the Streatham Club."
I sat straight up. "Really?"
"The one and only. When's the next time you can get in there?"
"I have to wait for the girls to make plans. There's no way I can show up there alone at this point and not arouse suspicion. And they only go on fight nights. A week, maybe two? I'll pester Pandora, maybe I can wrangle something sooner."
"Good, good. Sorry to call this late, Morgan, but I knew you'd want to know."
"Yeah, thanks. I've got a few hours at the PR agency tomorrow, but I'll come into the office after that, let's go over the files on Gazza Wilson again."
"See you then."
I hung up and lay back on the sofa, my head whirring. The shirt was a real, concrete connection to the Streatham Club. The feeling of euphoria when a big break happens was there, but it was accompanied by a buzzing background anxiety. Callum. Shit, Callum! I looked down at the phone again, checking to see if there was another message from him. There was, sent two minutes previously:
"How about Sunday night, then? Fancy a pint? Doesn't matter where, not sure you North London types can tolerate it down south for too long, though."
I smiled and texted back:
"Sorry about that, got interrupted. Sunday's great. How about we meet halfway? Dog and Duck in Soho - seven-ish?"
"Done. Does this mean I can't wear sweatpants? x."
An 'x'. A single 'x'. No matter how long I spent in the UK I still couldn't quite work out the meaning of the x's - and sometimes the o's - that often ended e-mails and texts. Men didn't send them to each other - well, I doubted men like Callum and his crowd sent them to each other - but they were apparently not significant in any romantic sense. So why was I all giddy to see that one little letter? I jumped off the couch and wandered into the bathroom, looking for a distraction.
My reflection in the mirror looked a little tired. I grinned, hard, and leaned in, examining the faint smile lines that appeared around my eyes when I did. Fuck. Sooner or later, I was going to do something about them. Maybe a little touch of Botox or some subtle fillers. Or both. Pandora and the other women at the PR agency, not all of whom were thirty yet, had all had minor work done, not all of it flattering. Not now, though. Later. After the investigation had finished and we'd found out why it was exactly that Linda Trout had to die for whatever it was she would have told the court about Wayne Karswell's activities. The state of my skin could wait until then.
I glanced at the clock on the kitchen wall when I came out of the bathroom. 11:48 p.m. The little voice in my head, normally so sensible, piped up unbidden:
why not tonight?
Indeed. Why
not
tonight? I could stay home alone getting drunk and morose or I could go out and see Callum. If anything was going to take my mind off my own failings with regards to Linda Trout's murder, it was him. I grabbed my phone and texted him.
"On second thought, fuck work. How about tonight? Clapham, The Windmill, right now."
I put my phone on the coffee table and sat there staring at it, immediately worried I was going to get shot down or, even worse, ignored. He replied almost immediately.
"See you there, Lily Parker. Last one to arrive buys drinks."
I got to the Windmill before Lily and, unsure of how long she was going to take and not willing to wait for her to arrive and buy me the drink she now owed me, ordered two pints - cider for her, stout for me - before grabbing a table in the corner and looking around. Not my scene, really. Lots of well-dressed thirty and forty-somethings getting tastefully drunk. It was late enough in the evening that the edge of nerves you get whenever British people have to congregate together had been worn off by the reliable old whetstone of alcohol, our national drug. I gulped my stout and pretended the strange feeling in my stomach, the one that had been there ever since Lily messaged me to meet her, wasn't there. I didn't even recognize my own nervousness it was so unfamiliar.
When she walked in, I saw her before she saw me. I also noticed more than a few guys eying her up and felt a new kind of protective anger rising up in my chest. Over a few looks! Before Lily I had never, not once, ever felt jealousy over a woman. If they wanted someone else - and to be honest, they usually didn't - they could have them.
I watched Lily standing there, looking around. Her hair was down this time and she was wearing a red sweater that did absolutely nothing to hide those car-crash curves. Jesus. What was this woman doing to me? When she saw me she just gave me a little wave and walked over.
"Hey you," she said, raising her eyebrow at my nearly-empty pint. "Got stuck in already, huh?"
God, her accent was so adorable. She sat down across from me and smiled. I think I may have detected a slight self-consciousness in her body language.
"I hope I'm not keeping you from any wild parties in Mayfair," I said, unable to keep myself from smiling back.
She laughed. "No. That's not really my thing. Besides, I can't afford nice enough shoes to get into any of those places. How about you? Did I interrupt a night of beating the shit out of bad guys?"
She was teasing me again, and it was almost embarrassing how much I was enjoying it.
"Nah, probably would have been down the pub playing snooker with my mates."
"Snooker?"
"Yeah, it's like pool but-"
"Oh, I know what it is. I guess I'm just surprised you play."
I leaned forward, closer to her, nearly mesmerized by her lips - full, soft and slightly parted.
Perfect.
The thought of kissing her very slowly, until she was impatient for more, started to get me hard.
Keep talking about snooker.
"Why?" I asked.
"Uhm," she giggled, "I don't know. I've got it in my head that only older men play snooker."
"Ha! Where did you get that idea? You've been hanging around the wrong people, Lily. Round here people of all ages know the joys of snooker. You should come play sometime."
She reached for her glass of cider and I noticed her nails were still chewed, with traces of chipped polish on a few of them. She instantly knew what I was seeing and started to draw her hand back before rethinking and leaving it where it was.
"I'm sorry, I didn't really have time to get myself properly ready, I'm a bit of a mess."
"I don't care about your nails. It means you have things to do, doesn't it? Not all of us can spend all day at the beauty salon."
"Mmm, no, we can't."
I took the opening.
"So just how did you get in with that crowd - the Posh Fillies? You just showed up one day from Canada and got work at a PR agency?"
Lily looked down at the table briefly, her long, dark eyelashes standing out against her creamy cheek. For a split second I thought I saw a sadness in her expression, but whatever it was she pushed it away and answered my question.
"Uh, no. I worked as a temp for a few months, and one of the managers at an office where I spent a few weeks knew the owner. He got me the job."
I nodded, my curiosity in no way satisfied.
"You like it?"
"Yeah, it's alright. Why? Is there something odd about working at a PR agency?"
"No," I started, trying to choose my words carefully. "You just - no offense - you seem way too smart to be doing work like that. Everyone knows it's-"
"Not a real job?" She asked, cutting me off but showing more signs of amusement than annoyance.
"I, well, I wouldn't say that. It's just that-"
"It's OK, Callum, you're right. It isn't a real job. It's only temporary, until I get something better."
Hearing my voice spoken in that clipped Canadian accent sent a hot bolt of lust racing downwards from my chest. I actually had to shift my body to accommodate the sudden tightness in my trousers. Following the conversation was becoming somewhat difficult.
"Something better? Like what? You're beautiful, maybe you should be a stripper. I hear you can make pretty a pretty good living taking your clothes off."
She actually blushed at that comment, covering her face with her hands so all I could hear was muffled laughter.
"Thanks, but I don't think so. I'm not sure how much money a thirty year old stripper would make, anyway."
I tried - and failed, mostly - to keep the look of surprise off my face when she mentioned that she was thirty. I guess I hadn't given it much thought but, wow, thirty.
"What?" She asked, looking me in the eyes playfully. "Too old for you? What are you, sixteen?"
I considered lying, telling her I was twenty-nine or twenty-eight or something that didn't sound so far from thirty, but in the end I knew I wouldn't get away with it, not with her.
"Twenty-three."
Lily visibly cringed a little when I told her that and I jumped in, fumbling my words.
"I, ah, it's only seven years, Lily. I've been with a lot of women over thirty."
"Oh have you?!" She asked, clearly enjoying my fluster.
"Well, yeah. I...yeah. I mean, not too many. Not too many women I mean, not just the ones over thirty. Being over thirty isn't a problem is what I'm saying. I, uh, yeah I'm just going to stop talking now."
"Good plan," she ribbed, having thankfully not taken offense to my rambling. "And I don't care how many women you've slept with. You're young, you're hot, do your thing."
She was so forward. I wasn’t used to forward women. At least, not forward in the way Lily was. I'd known a lot of mouthy types - hell, I was a mouthy prick myself at times - but they're only like that when they're angry. Lily was just naturally forward. She actually succeeded in shutting me up for more than a few seconds when she called me hot. I pulled it together as fast as I could.
"Hot, huh? You think I'm hot? Are all Canadian women this...outspoken?"
She reached across the table and gave my hand a light slap. "Don't be coy, Callum Cross. Something tells me you're more than aware of your genetic blessings."
She was so good at putting me on the spot, right from the very beginning. I had no idea how to respond to that comment and she thought it was all hilarious. She dipped her head down at one point, laughing, and a lock of her glossy, chestnut-brown hair fell across the little wooden table. Without thinking, I took it in my fingers and she caught me when she lifted her head again, losing the smile instantly. I knew she wasn't angry, or upset. I knew what the look on her face meant. I tucked her hair behind her ear and let one of my fingers trace the outline of it before running it slowly down her jawline. When she blinked, her eyes stayed closed for a second too long.
"We should get out of here," I said suddenly, without thinking. I've never been able to control myself.
Lily met my eyes and I could see that she wanted to say yes. When she spoke, her voice was low and soft.
"I can't, Callum."
I leaned my head back and ran a hand through my hair, clenching it into a fist behind my neck.
"Why? Are you married or something?"
"No, not married."
"Boyfriend?"
"No - you already asked me this, and the answer is still no."
"Think I'm a stupid limey chav with too many muscles and not enough sense?"
She shook her head, not giving any indication that she knew my last question had been intended to make her laugh.
"No. If I thought you were a stupid limey chav then I guess I'd be a stupid Canuck asshole for coming all the way down here for drinks with you, wouldn't I?"She hesitated for a second before continuing."And don't you worry about your muscles, Callum. They're...um, they're actually kind of perfect."
I reached across the table and took her hand in mine. She half-heartedly tried to pull it away and then gave up at the last second, leaving my thumb resting on her open palm and looking up quickly, catching my eye. It was as if the volume in the room around us had suddenly been turned down almost to zero. I swear I heard the way her breath caught when I slowly started to run my thumb in small, gentle circles over the soft, sensitive skin right in the middle of her hand. If someone had told me that the most erotic moment of my life up to that point would involve a fully clothed woman in a crowded pub, I would have told them they were full of shit. But Lily's reaction - the way her lips parted slightly and her eyes seemed to lose focus just did something to me. It felt like a fuse had blown in my head. I wanted her so badly I could feel the tension in every muscle of my body.
"Callum..." she whispered, not looking away from me.
"Lily, my flat's not far from here. Let's go."
"I can't."
She curled her hand around mine and squeezed it before pulling away.
"You're killing me," I said, tightly.
"Am I? Killing you? If this is the most resistance you've ever had from a woman I can't say I feel too bad for you."
She softened a little when she saw the look on my face. "Callum, I want to go home with you. You have no idea. I'm not playing a game, I'm not trying to torture you. I'm torturing myself as much as you."
"Well stop torturing yourself. Just come back for a drink. I'll behave."
"Yeah, but I won't."
Jesus.
Maybe she had been sent to torture me? She was doing an excellent job of it.
"Please don't be insulted, Callum. I know this is lame to say but this isn't about you. It's about me - my life, where I am in my life. Things have been going really well for me since I moved here. I don't want to - I don't want to jeopardize any of that."
I had no idea what she was talking about. To be fair, my cock was so ragingly hard I wouldn't have been able to count to three. Although we didn't know each other very well, I sensed that Lily wasn't the type to indulge whining. So I sucked it up as best I could and tried to focus on the conversation itself instead of how goddamned much I needed her. Easier said than done.
"Are things going well, then? Really well?"
It was still difficult for me to connect the kind of fluffy PR job she was in to the way she was talking about her life. Something about it didn't make sense. She knew what I was thinking.
"Yeah. And it's not so much about my job. It's about - well, it's about everything. I'm an only child. My whole life up until a few years ago was lived based on what my parents wanted. Get good grades, go to university, get a prestigious degree, get a prestigious job, make lots of money, get a house, get married, get kids. You know? You said you aren't academically minded and I have to say, even though I always got straight A's, I don't think I am, either. I suppose I just never really gave what I wanted much thought. Everything seemed like it would be automatic. Do things x, y and z, follow this path, achieve happiness. Maybe I'm just a slow learner."
"Yeah, I know what you're talking about, I think. You've probably already noticed this but I'm not from a wealthy background, so in a way I'm grateful I never had that pressure to stick to one narrow path. I saw it in a few of my mates, though. I dunno. My mum raised me with a lot of love. Maybe too much love?"
Lily was listening to me. I mean,
really
listening. It was a strange feeling, in a way, to be talking like that with a woman. I'm not much of a talker, believe it or not, at least not when it comes to serious matters, but she made me want to tell her things. She made me want to listen to her, too. I almost didn't recognize myself when I was with her.
"Too much love?" She asked, sipping her cider and making it impossible to take my eyes off her mouth."What do you mean? My heart's breaking, by the way."
"I'm sure it is. I just, I feel like she - my mum - kind of worshipped me. Well, both of us - I have a younger brother - but mostly me. She's always been on my side, even when I did some stupid things when I was younger. It's like she has this inability to even consider that I might not be one hundred percent perfect, all the time. Whenever I got in trouble she was always convinced it was someone else's fault, that someone else made me do it. The truth was it was usually me making other people do dumb shit. She still tries to come over and do my laundry, clean up my flat."
"I hope you don't let her."
"No, I don't. I mean, I have her over for tea, but I don't let her mother me in the way she wants. The Italian woman who runs the café by my flat is always on at me about whether or not I'm eating properly. Maybe I invite mothering?"