16. Dillan
16
DILLAN
I immerse myself in my work. There are moments when I feel like I’m helping bring half of all newborns in New York into the world, and that’s a damn good feeling. Not because there are so many, but because it feels good and right.
Losing sight of Lizzie after our night together—for the second time since high school—and not being able to find her isn’t pleasant (as I casually mentioned to Gavin). Yet it also brings about something good: I rediscover something else that I’d lost in everyday life. The significance of my job. Three times a week, I open my waiting room to women who’re not insured or don’t have enough money for proper care during their pregnancy.
Lizzie’s exhausted look as I held her in my arms is etched deep into my memory. She had the eyes of someone with a goal, working towards it but exhausting herself to total depletion. The pregnant women who come to my practice often have the same look.
I can do something about it. I can take some of their worries away and stand by them at least until the birth. It’s what Patch Adams would do.
Admitting it out loud? No chance.
Though I’m almost certain Gavin has a hunch about it. Lately, he’s been on a mission to persuade me into a bike ride, or he tempts me into his workshop, where he’s diligently restoring some old treasures.
Most times, Colt and Gavin manage to steer my thoughts off course. Colt, with his infectious enthusiasm, and Gavin, in his rowdy way, appear to be on a mission to provide any distraction possible. Gavin, especially, treats it like a personal challenge to bombard me with suggestions, especially late at night. He employs all his determination to convince me to partake in the most absurd, downright unmanly activities.
A nocturnal tour of the New York Zoo is unconventional, yet acceptable, and I can’t fathom what the parents, teenagers, and hand-holding couples make of Colt, Gavin, and me. But when Gavin suggests a midnight showing of Sleepless in Seattle , I put my foot down. There’s nothing Tom Hanks can teach me about women that I don’t already know (or so I claim with a touch of pride).
Late at night, I check my phone, ensuring it’s charged, ready for any emergency. With a decisive swipe, I turn off the bedside lamp. I lie down, closing my eyes, feeling the crisp sheets cool against my skin, and let the day’s demands fade away.
She claims me in moments.
I begin stroking myself.
The boundaries between reality and imagination blur when I take one of her hands and guide it between her thighs. “Let me watch you pleasure yourself,” I growl against her neck, my voice rough and hard. “Touch your clit for me, yeah, just like that.”
She only nods, lips parted lightly, and soon enough, delicious moans fill the moonlit room. My eyes never leave hers as I work my hips, only slower this time. Much slower.
My hand runs up and down my rock-hard length, and I imagine feeling her muscles close tightly around me with every thrust. Her body feels tense from all the pleasure. She doesn’t know how much more of my slow torture she’ll be able to handle—but I draw it out over another few minutes. Feeling myself pulsing inside her, I know I’m torturing myself just as much as I’m torturing her.
“Eyes on me.”
If I could freeze time I would live in this moment forever: her beautiful eyes locked with mine, our breathing heavy as can be, her fingers on her clit, my cock spearing her cunt while her arrow spears my heart, pierces my soul. No way I can last inside her. I take her hands in mine and guide them above her head, pressing them firmly into the mattress.
“No…Dillan,” she begs, protesting. “I was so close…please let me come.”
“No, not yet.”
Oh she hates me.
“This will haunt me forever,” I growl, my forehead pressed against hers. I work my slow and excruciating pump to deeper, harder thrusts. Fuck. It feels so damn good. “You will haunt me forever.”
With force and a cry of my name, she comes. Her muscles close tightly around my shaft, and I groan, shooting streams of hot come into her.
Several beats later, I pull her up to sit in my lap, and she clings to me.
Keeping her head to my shoulder, Lizzie whispers, “Please don’t go, Dillan.”
W hen a call comes in the middle of the night, I initially expect an emergency at the clinic and sit up. Have Mrs. Chadwick’s contractions started too early?
Then I recognize Gavin’s number on the display. My first impulse is to push the call to voicemail. I can already sense it’s going to be another one of his twisted ideas to coax me out of the house.
“D,” he says so softly that I can barely understand him against the thumping bass in the background. It trembles with panic, as if the familiar voice has been replaced by a stranger’s. “Listen, I’m in trouble.” The urgency in his voice cuts through the noise. “I need a hundred thousand. In cash. Immediately.” The last word comes in a desperate sigh.
What the fuck?
I rub the sleep from my eyes. “Gavin?” I want to tell him to go to Hell. What comes out instead is, “Where the hell are you?”
The part of my brain responsible for recognizing and processing danger seems to grasp the seriousness of Gavin’s words more than my sleepy self.
“She-Devil’s Lair,” Gavin utters. “Back room.”
My fatigue disappears on the spot.
I’m already on my feet, grabbing my leather pants, a black shirt, and taking my phone and wallet. The She-Devil’s Lair is even more notorious than Sinner’s Lounge (before its transformation into a burlesque joint).
Now isn’t the best time for a sermon, but trust me, Gavin has got some serious explaining to do once I get him out of whatever mess he’s gotten himself into.
“A hundred thousand in cash,” I repeat, the phone clamped between chin and shoulder as I lace up my Docs. “One hour,” I say, “then I’ll be there.”
A hundred thousand isn’t pocket change, but it’s not going to break the bank either.
“Thanks,” Gavin mutters, his voice catching in his throat.
A cry of pain reaches my ear, followed by a crash as his phone falls to the floor.
Two seconds later, I hear a woman’s voice through the speaker, as cold as a corpse in the pathology lab. “Hello, Gavin’s best friend.”
I settle for an indistinct sound that could mean anything from “hello” to “hurry up.”
“In case Gavin hasn’t told you yet: cash only. No police. Otherwise, your friend might soon become your girlfriend. Patience isn’t exactly a virtue my friends are renowned for.” Her hyena-like laughter sends shivers down my spine.
Are they planning to castrate him? Who the hell are her “friends?” What the fuck has Gavin gotten himself into that a woman is threatening to emasculate him?
She-Devil. Of course.
Gone are the days when women read Jane Austen and gathered in needlework clubs. Long gone, it seems.
If it weren’t so damn dangerous, I might have laughed until tears streamed down my face. Ever since I brought my first child into this world, I’ve known that women are far from the weaker sex. Anyone enduring the pains of childbirth for the sake of humanity’s survival is stronger and braver than any random guy. If I hadn’t realized it before, I’d have to seriously reconsider the conventional definitions of “strong” and “weak” now.
Before swinging my leg over my bike and making a run to the next three or four ATMs (because there’s no way I’m getting a hundred thousand from a single machine), I bump up the daily withdrawal limit on my Platinum card to $120,000 in my banking app, just to be on the safe side.
Then I hop on my bike and ride off.
I n the She-Devil’s Lair, the next unpleasant surprise awaits me. The two hulking guys at the entrance compare my face with a picture on their phone and give me a nod after thoroughly patting me down for weapons.
The idiot Gavin has even provided them with a photo of me. I shove all emotions to the background, much like I do during a challenging birth, and navigate my way through the club. The bartender signals to a massive giant as soon as he spots me, and this mountain of a guy guides me to my destination: the back room. Standing over two heads taller than me, he has to bend down to reach the door handle. Of course, he lets me go first—not out of courtesy, but to ensure I don’t turn back immediately.
At the other end of the room, at a bar, stands a man who stares expressionlessly at me when I enter. His tall figure is clad from head to toe in black leather. His once-handsome face is marred by a web of scars, effortlessly catapulting him into the league of Freddy Krueger.
He’s the boss.
Amidst the muscle-packed, testosterone-bursting men, he seems almost slim, like a ballet dancer in the midst of a group of orcs. A delicate white-blonde beauty hangs on his arm, her cool, glittering cat eyes revealing that she’s the one who threatened me with Gavin’s emasculation earlier.
Speaking of Gavin. Where is my buddy?
A swift scan of the room yields no insights. However, as soon as Freddy Krueger starts speaking, it becomes immediately clear that my assumption about him being the head of the gang is correct.
“You got the money?” His gruff voice, deep and authoritative, effortlessly carries from one end of the not-so-small room to the other.
Behind me, the door softly closes.
A t sunrise, I stand in my kitchen and tend to Gavin’s injuries. He’ll have to move a bit more cautiously than usual for the next few weeks, but a few broken ribs and a black eye are more than an acceptable price for him still being alive.
“I can’t tell you how grateful I am, bro,” he whispers, his voice shaking with emotion.
“It’s okay, Gavin,” I wave it off, pulling a stretch bandage tight around his chest.
He yelps. Good.
“Listen,” I say, reaching for a cooling ointment and a sterile dressing pad in my first aid kit. “I’ll say this only once.”
Gavin opens his mouth, but when he sees my dark expression he closes it again, and nods.
“Lesson learned, buddy. Next time the boss’s lady from a criminal biker gang wants her $100,000 bike fixed, you politely but firmly decline. You say, ‘Thanks, but no thanks.’ I don’t know if you really made that scratch on the rims, as she claims, or not—and frankly, I don’t give a damn.” Gavin has solemnly sworn that it was all in her imagination, but it doesn’t matter. “We’re both fucking lucky they didn’t decide to make us permanent residents.”
Alone against the overpowering force of battle-hardened bikers, I wouldn’t have stood a chance. Not even with Colt, Jorge, Cal, or anyone else by our side.
“You owe me a hundred thousand,” I tell him.
Gavin gasps as I apply the compress to his eye. Through the pain, he mumbles something that sounds like, “I owe you my life.”
“I want you to do the following,” I continue, ignoring his expressions of gratitude.
He’d have done the same for me, I know that, but on the way back from the She-Devil’s Lair, I hatched a pretty genius idea on how he could repay me.
“You quit your job,” I say. “I know you have stashed away a bit”—nowhere near a hundred thousand, but it isn’t necessary—“and kickstart your own business within the next six months.”
Casually, I pick an eye patch from the first aid kit. Gavin stays silent.
“If you don’t make one and a half million in annual profit within the next three years,” I continue, “forget about repaying me the 100,000. But if you do, it’ll be a piece of cake for you to settle the score.”
Gavin’s healthy eye seems to be swimming in tears.
Quickly, I hand him the eye patch and instruct him to wear it for at least two days until the swelling subsides. “You have it in you, man. You’re solid at your job. Make something out of it,” I say, heading over to the coffee machine. “This time next year, you’ll thank me for pushing you into this. And if not…” I smirk to myself. “Well, at least you’ve held onto your balls.”