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They were the only fond memories of my childhood. Those evenings with them, learning guitar, while Mrs. Drinnan brushed my hair and Benji told us stories about growing up in New York. I looked forward to that time of the day. Being included. Being loved.
“This was his.” I nodded at my guitar. “He gave it to me to practice with.”
“He sounds like an alright guy.”
“He was.”
“Was?”
I put the guitar down.
“When Barrett …” I paused. I hated recalling this time in my life, but I had to give Chance something to work with. He needed to know about the people he was helping me hide from. “When Barrett did what he did… I kind of confided in Benji. Asked him hypothetical questions. Asked for a friend. I told him things, not everything, just enough for him to realize something wasn’t right. I’m pretty sure he already had his suspicions about Barrett. He knew something wasn’t good with him.” Absentmindedly, I started to play with my necklace. “One night I saw him talking with Kerry. I couldn’t hear what he was saying but it looked tense. The next day someone new drove me to school. When I asked Kerry where Benji was, he curtly told me he had been relocated.”
Years later I learned Benji hadn’t relocated at all. He was made to disappear.
“I don’t know what my father did. But it wasn’t good. You don’t question Kerry Silvermane. Ever.”
Chance picked up the guitar, and to my surprise, started playing around with some chords.
“You play?”
He replied by playing the opening chords to Pink Floyd’s “Hey You.”
No. He didn’t just play. He slayed. This guy was fucking good.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” I said, surprised.
He smiled and winked at me and everything inside me turned to liquid.
“I’m not just a pretty face,” he joked, swapping Pink Floyd for the Beatles’ “Here Comes the Sun.”
I loved that song and started singing along to it. And slowly the bad feelings started to slip away. The darkness. The fear. The ache that swelled in me when I recalled my past. It all receded like the tide as we sat out on that deck under the stars and sang a Beatles’ song together.
When the song was over, he put down the guitar and turned to me.
“I know what you were running from. But what was Missy running from?”
His question surprised me because it was so random. But then I realized he was trying to work out how Missy may fit in to everything. If she was somehow still a threat. That was when I understood that even when we were playing guitar and singing, and even though it looked like his attention was elsewhere, it wasn’t. His mind was always on the task.
“She wasn’t running from anything,” I replied. “She just didn’t have anywhere else to be.”
CHANCE
Much later, when I lay in bed, I couldn’t get Cassidy’s story out of my head. I knew how it felt to be raised by a man you couldn’t trust.
As I struggled to fall asleep, another memory of my father invaded that quiet space between wakefulness and sleep.
I pushed her up against the wall and kissed her without control. It was wild and desperate. It had been days since I’d seen her, and I was crippled by the need to make love to her. Since she’d taken my virginity, we’d been sneaking around every chance we got. It usually meant I had to slip out at night and meet her somewhere no one could find out about us. She was a club girl, meaning she was at the beck and call of high-ranking club members. She took care of them and they returned the favor by ensuring her rent was paid, she had food to eat, and any medical bills were taken care of. It also meant she was untouchable to anyone but a King. Touching her would earn me a painful ass kicking. But I couldn’t care less. I was in love.
One of these days I was going to take her away from the club. We’d hitchhike out of town or something. Go to New York to see the Statue of Liberty or west to California and dip our toes in the Pacific Ocean.
And I would be free to love her. Free to lose hours kissing those sweet lips and caressing that luscious body of hers without fear of retribution by the Kings of Mayhem.
Tonight was unplanned. It was a quick, clandestine kiss out back by the dumpsters while a barbecue took place on the other side of the compound.
A kiss that was roaring into so much more.
“I missed you,” I rasped into the milkiness of her slender throat as I kissed a trail up to her ear. My fingers pushed through her long hair as I pressed my hips into hers. My cock ached. I wanted to slide into her warm pussy and embed myself so deep and hard inside her until we both couldn’t stand it any longer. I wanted to make her come, first with my tongue then with my cock.
