Play It Safe (22 page)

Then he rolled me to my back and did it again.

Then he lifted his head, looked me in the eyes and muttered, “I gotta do this or I won’t.”

I knew it. I knew by his words that it wasn’t easy leaving and it was getting harder.

I loved that just about as much as I hated it.

And I knew it because it wasn’t easy letting him go and it was getting harder.

“Okay, honey,” I whispered.

He lifted up, kissed my forehead then slid out of the bed making sure the covers never left me but still, once out, he pulled them to my shoulder. I slid my hands under my cheek and watched him dress. When he was done, he got close and smoothed my hair back, leaned deep and kissed my temple.

I turned my head, lifted a hand and caught the side of his neck before he pulled away.

“Thanks for tonight, honey,” I said quietly.

“Anything for my girl,” Gray returned quietly. “See you tomorrow. I’ll talk to Audie, see if I can get him to take an extra night.”

I knew that wasn’t going to happen because Gray did this daily. But I was glad he wanted to try.

I nodded. “That’d be good.”

“Say you love me, Ivey.”

“I love you, Gray.”

He grinned, gave me the dimple then whispered, “Love you too, baby.” He bent again, touched my lips with his then whispered against them, “’Night.”

“’Night,” I whispered back.

Then he was gone, using his key to lock the door behind him.

I closed my eyes, sighed then threw back the covers, got out of bed, pulled on undies and a nightie, put away my pretty new dress, my pretty high heels, dumped my hose in the hamper, washed my face, brushed my teeth, turned out the lights and went to bed.

And I did all of this not knowing the path to beautiful I was on was going to veer crazily under my feet.

* * * * *

Five hours fifteen minutes later…

“Ivey!”

I woke with a start, my heart racing and a hand shaking me.

“Ivey!”

I scooted across the bed, terrified.

“Ivey, sis, it’s me,” Casey whispered.

I blinked at the shadow in the dark.

What on earth? How did he get in?

“How’d you get in?” I asked.

“Doesn’t matter, Ivey, I don’t have much time. I don’t…I don’t have much time, honey, they’re after me.”

Oh God.

“Who?” I asked, moving toward the lamp by my bed.

“Don’t turn on the light!” Casey hissed and I stopped dead.

“Who’s after you, Casey and why can’t I turn on the light?”

“’Cause I’m worried they’re close and I don’t want them to know where you live.”

Oh God!

I shoved up to sitting and demanded to know, “What’s going on?”

“I ran into some of our history.”

Oh God!

No.

What we’d always feared.

Always.

“Casey,” I whispered.

“Worked me over,” he whispered back. “Bad dudes. Serious bad dudes. Wanted to finish me off. Don’t even know how I got away. Just know I did and they followed me. You turn on that light, you’d see. It’s bad, sis. They’re pissed, they wanna do me and while they were workin’ me over they asked for me to give up you.”

I closed my eyes.

Then I opened them. “Right, I’ll get dressed, we’ll go to Gray.”

“Are you
crazy?
” he hissed. “There are five of them, Ivey, they are on a mission and they got hardware. You want your cowboy steppin’ up for you and gettin’ his denim shirt filled with holes?”

My heart started beating wildly.

No, I didn’t want that.

“We’ll go to the police,” I told him.

Something filled the room. Something I forgot seeing as Casey had been out of my life awhile. Something that was not good. And it was something that told me Casey messed up big.

“When I left you, Ivey, I was hurtin’. Did somethin’, we go to the cops, they might put two and two together and know it was me.”

God!

My
stupid, stupid, STUPID
brother.

“What’d you do?” 

“What I did, they nail me, I’ll do five to ten in the local penitentiary.”

Yes, my stupid,
stupid
brother.

“Get up, pack a bag, we gotta go,” Casey ordered.

At that, my heart clenched.

“Go?” I whispered.

“Go, honey,
go.
We gotta
go.
”

“But I can’t. I have a job, rent to pay…”

Gray.

“They followed me, they’ll find you. Won’t be hard, Ivey and all these folks, someone shields you, they’ll buy it. You cannot do what you’re doin’. You and me, we gotta evaporate, sis, to stay alive and to keep these folks safe.”

“Who are these people, Casey? Where did we play them? How are they here?” I asked.

“I’ll explain on the way,” Casey evaded.

“Casey!”

Then he turned the light on, just for a flash but in that flash I caught his mangled, swollen face then he plunged the room back to darkness as I sat frozen in my bed, his image burned on the backs of my eyes.

“Get up, get dressed, get packed, Ivey, we don’t got a lotta time if we have any at all.”

I sat in the bed, breathing heavy.

Then I told my brother, “I have to write Gray a note.”

“Sis, I told you,
we don’t got a lotta time.
”

“I’m writing Gray
a note!
” I hissed.

“Fuck! Whatever! Just do it and
let’s go!
”

Heart beating wildly, lungs working overtime, I got up, got dressed, got packed and wrote Gray a note.

Then I stole out into the dark spring night that was still cold but not freezing and took off with my stupid, stupid brother.

* * * * *

Buddy Sharp

Eight hours, twenty-three minutes later…

“You gotta go to her place, she left a note,” Casey whatever-the-fuck his name was whispered in his ear.

“That’s been seen to,” Buddy Sharp told the moron. “Be sure to lose this phone.”

“Good phone, shame to dump it,” the idiot replied.

“Yes, it would be, so do whatever you want. It isn’t me who has to explain the phone to your sister.”

There was a pause then, “See your point,” he muttered.

Fuck, this guy was a total, fucking moron.

“You go to the bank in Cheyenne I told you about, you’ll find the rest of your money just like I explained,” Buddy informed him.

“Right,” he kept muttering.

“This is done. You do not come back. You do not hit me up again. You do not bring that bitch back here. And you make certain she doesn’t come back or what me and my boys did to your face to convince her to go with you we’ll do for real and we will not stop. Is that understood?”

“Jeez, bro, I speak English. I know the deal I agreed to.”

“No communication between her and Grayson Cody at all. She tries to phone, you stop her. She tries to come back, you tie her down if you have to. She sends a fuckin’ birthday card, you infiltrate the United States Postal Service to steal that thing. I’ve paid you ten large to make this happen, you fuck it up, I’ll find you and you know I will. I got the resources and I got the motivation. Now is that understood?”

“Seriously, bro, I’m not an idiot.”

He was wrong.

“We’re done,” Buddy stated then flipped his phone shut.

Then he looked out the window of the bank.

Then he grinned.

* * * * *

Six hours and thirty-six minutes later…

The door to Buddy Sharp’s apartment opened and Cecily walked through, lugging a bag and grinning.

Buddy didn’t grin on the outside but he sure as fuck was smiling on the inside.

“You take care of it?” he asked.

“Got in right after I saw them take off. Got everything that was hers. There was a bunch of stuff, looked like it was Janie’s or something, sheets, an old TV, shit like that. Left that.”

“Tomorrow, you get your girls talkin’. They saw the brother. They saw her go with him. Right?”

Cecily nodded. “They’re all set and my cousin in Grand Junction is gonna come for a visit and talk about friends of his that got hustled at pool by a blonde with attitude and a lotta hair.”

That was when Buddy nodded then asked, “Did you get the note?”

Her grin got bigger; she dumped the bag, opened her purse, pawed through it and came out with a folded piece of paper.

Buddy took it from her.

Then he read it.

Then his lips curled into a sneer.

Then he took it to his fireplace, grabbed a match, struck it, set it to Ivey’s note to Gray and it caught fire.

He threw it in the fireplace and watched it burn to ash.

Only then did he smile.

Then he turned to Cecily, threw her on the couch, pulled and tugged her clothes just enough to provide access to the areas he wanted and he fucked her even though she was still mostly dry. Then again, Cecily was shit in bed, never loosened up, never got very wet.

And it never occurred to Buddy Sharp that she didn’t because he didn’t put enough effort into getting her that way.

All the time he drove his cock into Cecily, he did it with his eyes closed.

And he did it visualizing Ivey.

Fathoms Deep in Concrete

Two years, eleven months and one week later…

I looked in the mirror over my bathroom basin and saw it.

Hard behind my eyes, hard around my mouth.

I stared.

Then I pulled my hair away from my face and secured it in a ponytail.

It happened often. Still, after nearly three years, it happened. The memories coming back to me. Sometimes it was okay, I could deal. Sometimes it hurt like a mother.

But every year on that day, it killed.

Gray’s birthday.

I went back, when I got shot of Casey, I went back to Mustang.

I called beforehand, five times and each time, Grandma Miriam answered and put the phone down on me. I called his cell too but that number was no longer in service. I also called The Rambler, twice, and both times Janie put the phone down on me.

I didn’t get this.

So I went to Mustang.

And I drove right through.

Because while driving, on the sidewalk right on the square I saw Gray strolling with a pretty girl about my age, his arm locked around her neck, pulling her close, his face near hers, aiming his dimpled smile straight at her.

So I drove on through.

I’d been gone three months.

Three.

And I’d been replaced.

Really, I shouldn’t have been surprised. Before me there was Cecily and Connie, Donna, Debbie, Nancy all the way back to Emily.

For three months I’d had not one thing to smile about but not Gray. Strolling down the street with his arm around a pretty girl and giving her his dimple.

How could I ever have convinced myself that he would want me? A pool hustler. A virgin who, until him, had never been kissed.

I shouldn’t have been surprised.

But I was and that hurt like a mother too.

Devastation so complete, it left my heart in tatters.

It killed me to admit it but my stupid, stupid brother was right.

I should have played it safe.

Now I did. I learned my lesson. It took months just to breathe easy, scared my heart would shred with just a breath. But once I succeeded in that, as it healed, I went to work. Layer by layer, block by block, I built a cement wall around my heart. Then, right up next to it, another. Then up next to that another. And another. And another. Until my heart was fathoms deep in concrete.

Fathoms deep.

No one would get near it again.

My mother was a slut, a bitch and a loser. The men she brought into our house were dangerous and she didn’t care.

One in particular.

And she didn’t care about him either.

My brother saved me then used me to guard the fact he, too, was a loser.

And the first man I loved didn’t give a shit I was gone. His grandmother didn’t. His friends didn’t. I disappeared into the night, left a note about the trouble I was in and he just moved on.

Just moved on.

So I was done. I was through. No one else got to my heart.

And so yeah, some of that cement I used to protect my heart made it to the backs of my eyes, settled around my mouth. So be it.

Smart men took one look at me and they knew. Dumb ones got the point another way and this was usually me laying it out for them.

No one got close.

Ever.

I’d learned to play it safe and that was the only way I’d play it until I stopped breathing.

I heard the car honk and my head turned in the direction of the front of my house.

Then I moved out of my bathroom to my bedroom, grabbed my designer bag from my stylishly flowered down comforter cover and walked on my high-heeled, strappy designer sandals through my house to the front door, out of it and to the waiting car.

* * * * *

“How’s my girl tonight?”

My head turned to the dressing room door and I saw Lash coming through.

Lash was my boss. Lash owned the club. Lash had taken one look at me serving drinks in a skimpy outfit in a casino and hired me on the spot. Lash was a tall, built, handsome man who looked as macho alpha as they came but was a closeted gay.

Of all Lash’s girls, only I knew that.

All Lash’s girls thought he was doing me.

Lash and I let them.

Best boyfriend to have, being the beard to a handsome, rich gay guy, trust me. If I could share this secret without exposing Lash’s, I would. Every girl should know it. It would save a lot of heartbreak.

I knew he was gay because Lash was my one and only true friend in this world and I was the same to Lash.

He knew me. He knew everything about me.

And I knew the same about him.

And I knew he’d guard my secrets with his life as he knew I would his.

“Doing good,” I replied, looking back at the large mirror with its big, round lights, putting the makeup brush back to my eye and sweeping.

My makeup was already heavy, it was always heavy but that was show business.