Chapter 6
Nobody screws with me
March 27
Wednesday early evening
Their bodies moved together,sweaty, hot, sultry.
The muscles in his back flexed as he slowly slid his erection in and out of the woman. The blonde’s breasts were large, her nipples hard peaks. She moaned every time his chest grazed her breasts, and she gasped as he thrust into her and drew back out.
The smell of sex was strong and his gaze was focused entirely on the woman’s face as she tipped her head back and moaned even louder.
It could have been a real tum-on to watch.
If it wasn’t my boyfriend with another woman.
The pain in my chest and the flames flushing my body had nothing to do with the heat between Gary and the woman with her long legs wrapped around his hips.
“You sonofabitch.”
Gary jerked his head up and the woman let out a scream nearly loud enough to shatter one of the lamps.
“Lexi.” Gary’s face flushed red straight up to his blond crew cut. He scrambled from the bed as he grabbed a sheet and wrapped it around his hips. “Oh, shit.”
“You better believe ‘Oh, shit.’” It wasn’t far to the closet where he kept his baseball bat. Everything I touched seemed to burn my hand, from the closet’s doorknob to the grip of the aluminum baseball bat.
“What the hell are you doing?” When he saw what I was holding, Gary backed away so fast he tripped on the edge of the sheet he clutched.
My fingers ached from gripping the bat hard with one hand while slapping the thickest part against my palm.
“Uh, Lexi.” Gary managed to keep on his feet. “Damn, I—I’m sorry.”
“You’re going to be a lot sorrier.” I ground my teeth so hard I probably came close to cracking a molar as I headed for the kitchen, carrying the bat. The ache in my gut grew as his betrayal hit home.
The knife drawer squeaked when I jerked it open. Perfect. This one would do. I clenched the handle of a butcher knife in my free hand. Both weapons felt good and solid as blood pounded in my temples and I faced Gary.
His jaw dropped. “What the—”
A shriek cut off the rest of his sentence. The very tall blond he’d been in bed with stood in the bedroom doorway. Apparently he wanted a lay with longer legs to spread than me.
She was wearing his T-shirt.
When my overshirt fell open enough for her to get a good view of the Glock holstered at my side, I winced at her shriek. Oh, yeah, he’d gotten himself a real screamer.
I hefted the bat against my shoulder and Gary’s eyes widened as I met his gaze. I didn’t blink.
“Lexi—” His Adam’s apple bobbed as he glanced to the bat and knife.
At that moment I could almost feel the satisfaction of hitting a grand slam with Gary’s balls. I gave an evil smile and glanced at his nuts before looking back at his face, which had gone white. He knew exactly what I’d been thinking.
Forget that. I knew a better way to damage his manhood.
I jerked open the front door of his first-floor apartment hard enough to rattle the hinges, then strode to the front door of the triple-decker apartment building. Cool spring air smacked me in the face when I headed for the short flight of stairs leading to the concrete sidewalk. Each step creaked as I jogged down to the street.
I went straight for what Gary loved more than anything—His shiny black F-150 parked in front of the trip where his apartment was.
A bunch of Gary’s neighbors hung out on the back porches of their trips, listening to a game on the tube and shouting at each other from one balcony to another as the game blasted from their TVs. Smells of popcorn, hot dogs, and beer floated from the balconies.
Not likely anyone could hear what I was about to do over all the noise.
The butcher knife sank between the tread of the rear driver’s-side tire as easily as Gary had been sliding into that blond who was starting to get the neighbors’ attention with her shrieking.
I focused on the truck and tried not to picture what I’d just seen. That…that…
The pain that had taken hold in my chest now made my entire body ache. I’d trusted him. I’d cared for him.
The front driver’s-side tire seemed like a good place to leave the butcher knife. Gary cheated on me hammered my mind, and by the time I picked up the baseball bat I was practically on fire again.
“You.” My Southie accent revved up. “Fucking.” I raised the bat just over my shoulder. “Sonofa—” I reached the driver’s door. “—bitch.”
Glass scattered over the back of my hands as the driver’s side window shattered. My hair swung in my eyes as I gave another good swing and took the bat to the door. Metal gave way with a satisfying crunch, the impact reverberating through my arms.
Coach Pacholewski would be proud. What a way to put to use my four years as a star player on my high school softball team.
Then Randolph’s death hit me again like another blow. I’d come over for comfort and intimacy with Gary. I’d needed him.
More anger, hurt, and pain went into every swing of the bat. The headlights and fog lamps went next as I put every bit of pain into each swing. The windshield spider-webbed when the bat made contact, but the passenger door window shattered all over his leather seat.
Like a hammer punch to my heart, Gary’s betrayal and Randolph’s death hit me hard enough that my eyes began to ache.
Not now. Not now, not now, not now.
I didn’t do tears. I didn’t do crying.
If I couldn’t cry over Randolph, I certainly wasn’t going to cry because of Gary.
Damn it. Moisture gathered at the corners of my eyes and I had to fight to keep even a single tear from rolling down my cheek.
Screw Gary.
Putting everything into every swing helped me fight back the pain, and I let it all out with that bat.
This one was for Gary.
This one was for Randolph.
This one was for me.
Some of Gary’s neighbors now leaned over the railings of their porches or came out and stood in the street. A few were laughing their asses off and made cracks at Gary while one guy said, “Fuck, that’s gotta hurt.”
In this Boston neighborhood, no one interfered—we Southies stuck together and stayed out of each other’s business.
Before I could take a swing at the passenger door, large hands grabbed my shoulders from behind.
My heart hurt when I whirled around and met Gary’s blue eyes.
He wore a pair of jeans but no shoes. I wanted to pound on his large bare chest. To shout, to scream.
Gary gripped me harder by the shoulders. He’d seen me bring down men twice my size when sparring, so he was taking a big risk. Didn’t matter that he was a massive bodybuilder. I’d put him in a world of hurt.
“How could you?’’ My voice came out hoarse as I looked into his handsome face. A face I had trusted.
“I’m sorry.” He squeezed my shoulders, and he looked like the Gary I had cared about—before now. “I was going to tell you, but I didn’t know how.”
I shook out of his hold. My throat felt like it was closing off. “You don’t screw around before breaking off a relationship.”
“I’m sorry—”
“Fuck you, Gary.” I gestured to the door where the blond had disappeared. “Better yet, go back to screwing her.”
He didn’t let me go. “You’ve been closing me out, Lex. More and more all the time. There are parts of you that I could never reach even when we were together.”
For a moment I couldn’t say anything. The job. The job that meant the world to me forced me to keep secrets, even from Gary.
“You could have talked to me.” My voice was hoarse with anger and pain. “You never said a word.”
“Lex—”
I was trembling all over now. “Stacy Randolph is dead.” The shock on his face was real. Gary thought Randolph worked for the same language interpreting agency as I did, so he knew her.
He dropped his hands away from my shoulders. I could see his desire to comfort me, to wrap me in his arms. No friggin’ way. “Oh God, I’m sorry.”
So much more pain wanted to explode from me that I backed away from him, turned, and took the hardest swing yet. This time at his passenger door. I don’t know why the crunch of metal was so satisfying, but it was.
Pain, anger, hurt, betrayal, shock, guilt. Could anyone feel so much balled up within and not be turned inside out?
I raised my chin and whirled to face Gary—
And came face-to-face with a pair of men in blue.
Damn.
The frantic beat of my heart increased as I looked from one stern face to the other.
Not jail. Oh, God.
One of the cops looked at the damage to the truck. “Must have pissed you off good,” he said in a strong Southie accent. I swore I heard amusement in his voice.
The other officer marched me the few steps to the cruiser and forced me up against it, my back to him, my arms and legs stretched out as I braced myself against the car. I could smell the soap he must have used to shower, and the dry-cleaner scent of his pressed uniform.
My anger started to fade, and instead a sense of defeat made my body ache. Right then I wanted to curl up in a ball and hope this was all a dream. A nightmare as bad as the ones I had nearly every night.
“I’m not pressing charges,” Gary started to say when the cop’s words cut across his.
“What the hell—?” the cop was saying as he found the Glock at my hip, before he discovered the knife strapped to my ankle. “Do you have a license to carry concealed weapons?”
Oh, shit.I always locked my handgun in the glove compartment of my Cherokee before I saw Gary, but today I’d been too distracted.
“No,” I muttered, part of my anger draining away into cold, hard reality. Lexi Steele was an interpreter. She wouldn’t have a concealed weapons permit. “I don’t.”
“Then I guess it’s a trip to the station for you,” the cop said.
“I’m not pressing charges,” Gary repeated.
“That’s fine,” the officer said. “But we’re taking her in for possession of illegal weapons on her person.”
I was so in for it when Oxford found out.
The people standing around or peering over their balconies only knew me by my real name of course—I’d grown up with a lot of them. To everyone I knew in “real life” I was just Lexi Steele, pint-sized tough chick who could speak nine different languages.
The officer finished searching me, and I heard the jangle of cuffs. He jerked my arms behind my back before the cold metal bit into my skin.
The officer started reading my Miranda rights.
Icy realization hit me.
I was really going to jail.
I was going to be put behind bars.
Now I’ve really blown everything, haven”t I?
When they shoved me into the back of their cruiser, I met Gary’s eyes. His were filled with regret, not anger. And that hurt worse than if he’d been furious with me.
I looked out the cruiser’s other window and swallowed so hard I coughed. Everything familiar now seemed alien as the officers drove through Southie toward the District 6 station on Broadway.
Like an egg separated from the yolk, what was real separated from what couldn’t be.
Gary had been a safe place in my not-so-safe life, and now that was gone.