13. Tim
13
TIM
SO YOU’RE SAYING THERE’S STILL A CHANCE
“ I gnore them all.” I steer Aubree with my palm wrapped around the back of her neck, my fingers digging in just firm enough to give her direction, but not nearly so tight that my touch causes her pain. And though her little cheer squad takes up prime seating at my bar, I keep us walking. “If you stop and talk, you’ll think of a reason to be mad at me again. So walk, Emeri.”
“You’re bossy.” But she blushes warmly and smiles all the way past her pals and through the commercial kitchen. The skin on the back of her neck pebbles with goosebumps. They’re contagious, because they work up through my arm and into my shoulder, sparking my heart and making the fucking thing stutter with nerves.
Or maybe that’s just me… tempting fate and defying everything I was bred for.
“This appears to be a hostage situation, just so you know.” She starts up the stairs and reaches back to knock my hand off her neck. But then she scoops her arm around mine instead, curling into my side and forcing us to walk together. No one leads. No one follows. Equals . “To outsiders, anyone who doesn’t know better, one could assume you’ve coerced me into being here and I’m actually being led toward danger.”
“Yeah?” I carry a bag of Chinese noodles in my free hand, the plastic crinkling against my leg every time I move up a step. But my eyes are for Aubree. For her perfect ocean-blue stare and the glisten of her thick, pouty lips. “Do you feel coerced?”
She snorts. “Yes. Often.”
“Well… do you feel sad about that?”
“Not particularly.” We come to a stop at my door, locked up tight and accessible to only a few. But she doesn’t release my arm to allow me to grab my keys. Instead, she reaches across and takes our food, fluttering her lashes when I accept her hint to keep holding on. Then I use my non-dominant hand instead. “Is this a date?” she wonders out loud. “Or another one of those kidnap situations where you force me to stay the night and won’t let me leave?”
“Same means.” I unlock my door and push it open. “Same end. But two very different versions of the same story. The version you tell the cops matters quite a lot in a court of law.”
“So I suppose we’ll see how things go.” She moves into my home of her own accord. There’s no kicking or screaming. No shouting. No arguments. She throws nothing at me, nor the walls, and she doesn’t release feral animals to shit on my rug.
This is a good start to what may be a positive future.
Setting our dinner on the counter, she turns back to face me, peeling her coat off and revealing perky, pebbled nipples that my Malone-eye can’t help but notice. Because she’s delicious, and I’m a thirsty, thirsty man. “If we continue to do this Stockholm thing, I should probably store a pair of pyjamas here or something. Sleeping in my jeans gets to be uncomfortable.”
“Eventually you’ll sleep naked.” I close the door and hide my smile when her eyes flare wide in reaction to my words. Then I shuck my coat away and hang it on the only remaining hook attached to what was once a perfectly functional rack. It’s a little broken now. A little dented and imperfect. But then again, so am I.
There’s no need to throw it away.
“I’ve kept my shorts on while you’ve been here.” Turning back again, I meander closer and fold my sleeves up, grinning when her gaze drops to my arms. She’s shameless. “To undress completely when you’re here under less-than-ideal conditions would be a violation, I think.”
She drags her eyes up and tries for hoity-toity . “I tend to agree. A misdemeanor in this state. Multiple counts will upgrade you to a felony charge. Can you handle that kinda smoke, Malone?”
I slide my tongue across the front of my teeth and try not to grin too wide. “My legal standing is… under control. You’re welcome to borrow any of my clothes if you want to get comfortable. You’ve managed before.”
“Now explain to me why I get the feeling you prefer things this way?” She raises a brow and circles the counter before I can reach out and touch her exposed hipbone. The tiny gap between her jeans and the top that sits skewed to the side. She snags a knife first. Threat. Promise. Then she sets it down and selects forks second. “Do you think I haven’t noticed how possessive your people can be?”
I take a seat at the counter and reverse our roles. She can serve me for once. For the first time ever. “My people?”
“Arrogant. Egotistical. Controlling. Look up Malone in the dictionary, should be right there.”
“You sure have a lot to say about my family, Doctor Emeri.” I catch my fork when she tosses it, neither stabbing myself in the hand, nor losing an eye. Success . “Most folks who know that name certainly aren’t brave enough to disparage it.”
“Uh-huh. Do you have any soda?”
I tip my chin toward the fridge. “Help yourself. Who was your first ever serious boyfriend?”
She comes to a screeching stop, her feet skidding on the tile and her shoulders jumping almost high enough to touch her ears. Wrapping a hand around the fridge handle, she slowly rotates her head and eyes me over her shoulder. “What?”
“First serious boyfriend. We’ve been friends for a long time, but I didn’t know you existed before your twenty-first birthday. And dinner at your family home this week tells me I have no fucking clue who you are outside of this .”
She snags two cans of Sprite and slams the door, bottles rattling on top to create a musical cacophony. Then she circles back around and stops on the opposite side of the counter. “ This ?”
“I see you in the bar. I see you as a medical examiner. Very few times—as in, twice—I’ve even seen you interact with the New York portion of my life. But I’ve never seen you at a packed dining table with all those other Emeris, discussing vaginal pH levels, gay brothers, and pregnant sisters. You have an entire existence outside of what you and I have. So…” I reach across and take my soda. “Who was your first serious boyfriend?”
“And you think I’ll answer private questions about things you have no right to know, because…?”
“I asked nicely.” I pop the seal and bring the can up to sip. “I’m not your enemy. We’re not even fighting right now. Why can’t we talk about our lives?”
She stares for an impossibly long, heated beat, burning me with her gaze so her probing look is almost like fingers tickling the back of my mind. But then she nods. Short. Sharp. Damning.
“Okay.”
I sit taller and smile. “Okay?”
“Ask me anything you want. I’m an open book.”
“First serious boyfriend?”
“Chester Samson. Nerdy name, I guess, but he was the star quarterback at our high school and went off to college to play pro.”
Stunned, I look her up and down once more. “He’s a pro football player? Right now? He’s in the NFL?”
“Mmhm. We have no horrible break-up story. He was good to me. He was kind and gentle, considering how large he was.”
My stomach turns at the images populating my mind, greasy black sludge rolling in my gut. But I push it down. Down. Way fucking down, so I don’t burn the bridge we’re so carefully rebuilding after the last few I torched.
“We graduated high school together. Dated till the end. But then he was headed to Alabama, and I went a different way. He still texts sometimes to say hello, and he’ll be at Eli’s wedding this weekend, since they’ve been best friends their whole lives.”
“The… your…” I fucking stutter. I don’t even stutter when staring down the barrel of some other asshole’s gun. “Your ex-boyfriend was your brother’s best friend, who remains his best friend to this day , never broke your heart, and is now a pro football player. That’s what you’re telling me?”
“Yeah.” She bops to the word, bouncing so her breasts move too. Then she opens her dinner and looks inside. “ Roll Tide . I’m excited to see him this weekend. It’s been too long.”
“Right.” I regret my choices. All of them. Every single fucking one of them. But I’ll be sure to collect my pocket squares from the seamstress before the weekend and escort Aubree to the damned wedding. Chester Samson won’t be reuniting with his high school sweetheart this week. Or ever. “So it was pretty serious?”
“As serious as high school romances get.” She forgoes her fork and pinches a long noodle between her fingers. “Junior through to senior. He did up the prom proposal thing. It was a whole production. And then we walked the stage together. But once summer hit…” She shrugs and sighs, wh imsical as fuck. “We were smart enough to know we were incompatible, so we said our goodbyes but promised to stay in touch. The fact he and Eli are still close makes it easy for us to do exactly that. Now I want to ask you a personal question.”
Startled, I bring my eyes back to hers. “What?”
“You ask one. I ask one.” She flashes an angelic smile that could convince the devil she’s good. “Equals, or no dice. You ask one, I?—”
“Ask one.” I look down at my dinner and accept that I’ve been had. “Fine. My first girlfriend was?—”
“Oh, hahaha. No.” She picks up her fork and continues to eat. “I’ll ask my own questions, thank you very much. How many men have you killed in your lifetime?”
“Jesus.” My heart damn near thunders out of my chest. It crashes against my diaphragm and threatens to keel over. “Aubree!”
“I’m not wearing a wire,” she teases. “Feds have never tapped my phone.” But then she stops and widens her eyes. “I mean, I don’t think they have. Could they have? Would they have?”
“Aubree.”
“I don’t think they would have. You’re not active anymore, and we’re not even dating.” She stops. Breathes. Straightens her spine and tries again. “Yep. That’s my question. I’d like to lock it in. How many people have you killed in your life? Don’t worry about incriminating yourself. I’ll take it to the grave.”
“I’m not worried about incriminating myself! I’m worried about looking like a fucking monster. I’m not answering that question.” I shake my head. “No chance.”
“Because it’s a lot?”
“I’m not answering.”
“So it’s a lot,” she concludes, wrinkling her nose. “More than two?”
I grit my teeth and stare down at my dinner. “Stop it.”
“More than five?” Two murders, to her, are two too many. Five is mass status. But the reality is so much worse. “Ten?”
“Stop saying numbers.”
“More than ten?” Her voice breaks with the question. “Seriously?”
The answer is: I have no fucking clue. Too many. Uncountable. And I can never tell her that and not expect that information to change the very fabric of her soul. “I’m not answering your questions. This is one of those it’s in your best interests situations and I will not budge.”
She sets her fork down and lowers to rest on her elbows, narrowing her eyes when I peek up from beneath my lashes. “Okay. Fine. Have you ever killed someone who was innocent? Someone who didn’t deserve it?”
I shake my head, swinging it from side to side. “No.”
“Any women or children?”
“No.”
“Only ever to protect yourself or someone you care about?”
She’s like a fucking dog with a bone. Constant. Unwavering. So I drop my gaze again and sigh. “Not always. Not my first. Not for as long as I was living in New York. When I was there, I was being trained to be someone else, and if I didn’t do the things my father ordered me to do, then?—”
“He’d hurt you?”
I nod. But then I shake my head. “Sometimes he’d hurt me. Most of the time, he’d hurt one of my brothers. He learned quickly that none of us minded taking a beating. But we all minded one of our brothers taking a beating for us. So if he ordered me to do something, I usually mostly followed those orders.”
“So then it was to protect someone else.” She reaches across and traces the tips of her fingers over my exposed wrist, playing with the leather bands and smiling over our steaming dinner. Healing scars she never created. “It’s your turn to ask me something.”
“Um…” Shit. Why is she so pretty? So forgiving? So wildly fucking insane to think there could be a way to justify the things I’ve done? “Why medical examiner?”
“Oh, that’s easy!” Straightening out again, she cracks her soda open and beams behind the lip of the can. “I don’t know if you caught it during family dinner and all the sex talk, but my dad is an anthropologist. He started in the field and then moved into forensics. For the last fifteen years, he’s been a professor at Copeland U. He retired last year, and now he spends all his time at home with my crazy mom, but for my whole life, he’s studied bones. While Katie was off dreaming about the universe, and Eli was getting artsy, Duane was playing sports, and Liam was doing his thing… Well, all of my siblings have their own thing, and all of those things were fostered and developed with love and care. But while they were doing that, I followed my daddy around everywhere he went. If I could be in the lab with him, that’s where I was. If he had a case and brought his notes home, I was reading over his shoulder.”
“Hardly appropriate for a child.”
She grins. “But it was how I found my passion. I knew what track I would take all the way back in my freshman year of high school, so I took all the AP science classes I could and I studied hard. I had a boyfriend, but he was driven and had his own goals. So instead of getting in each other’s way, we encouraged and supported. I got into the college I wanted, and moved through the med program as quickly as I could. I was singularly focused, which is how I’ve come to be Minka Mayet’s second. And she’s the youngest chief medical examiner in this city’s history. Perhaps even the country.” She stops and searches the room. “I should Google that.”
“Later.” I reach across and grab her chin, forcing her eyes back to me. “Medical examiner is not anthropology.”
“No. But I was reading his case notes, remember? The mystery intrigued me. The drive to find answers roped me in. The fact they were dead and their voices had been taken from them drove me to listen harder. Ultimately, I’m my daddy’s little girl, and I wanted to grow up to be just like him.”
“And that’s how you ended up here, walking in people’s blood and studying…”
“Flayed penises. My turn.”
My stomach drops. Every fucking time she looks at me the way she does, so innocently asking questions she never should know the answers to.
“Is there a part of you that wishes you could be what your name represents? Set me aside. Copeland City. Archer being a detective. Felix being Felix. Do you wish you could be the one leading the family the way your father intended?”
“No. I didn’t want it when I was younger, and I don’t want it now. I’ll never truly escape, because my brothers are still part of that world, and there are gonna be times when Felix needs us to be a united line of five. For his safety, he’ll need that. And for him, I’ll step up and be who my name represents. It goes with me everywhere I walk, and like it or not, the Timothy before me created a reputation that grants me power when I’m in New York City. People know I’ve refused my place amongst those ranks. They know I’ve said no, but I guess they figure I could change my mind at any point, so they still, and will forever, treat me a certain way.”
“Like call you Boss ,” she teases again, spinning her fork. “Do you like it when they do that?”
“I’m… impartial. I don’t care either way. But I appreciate that if I need to exert power, I have it. And I like that I’ve made my stance clear, which means I can live here, and I can be with you, and this can be a relatively normal life. ”
“Is there a point in the future where you feel you may need to exert certain reputational power?”
“Yeah.” Sighing, I drop my chin and nod. Subtle. Small. But there’s no hesitation. “Even if I hate the man who came before me, I will hold on to the power he created me with. I’ll keep the name I was born with. I’ll make deals when I need to, and I’ll procure documents when I must. I’ll control men who can control the world we exist in. And I do it all in the name of protection. If the people I care about are safe, then I’m just Bartender Tim.”
“And if someone is threatened?”
I set my fork down and straighten on my stool. Then I search her eyes and know , this is the life Timothy brought me into. “If someone I love is threatened… If at any point they experience fear, or pain, or worry because of my world, then I’ll become the man I was bred to be. I’ll take care of business and if I have to, I’ll put people in the ground. I’ll ensure your safety, Aubree. That’s all anyone needs to know.”
“Y-you mean ensure everyone’s safety.”
“Hmm?”
“You said… You…” She wraps her hand around her soda and frowns. Questioning, but momentarily silenced. “You meant to say you would be that Tim to ensure your family’s safety. But you said?—”
“What I meant to say.” I place my fingers under her can, guiding it up. “I’m obsessed with you. Like a common fucking junkie just hanging out for his next hit. It’s been that way since you first sat your curvy ass at my bar and paid more attention to your books than you did to anyone else who thought to try their luck. There are no limits I won’t go to keep you safe. Even if those limits piss you off.”
“Uh…”
“What do you wanna watch tonight? And what does Chester look like? I’ll keep an eye out on Saturday. I’d like to introduce myself.”