Man in Black

Chapter 7

Black Knights Inc.

“Snug as a bug in a rug.” Fisher tucked the fluffy blanket tight around Eliza’s arms and legs. Not so much because he thought she’d appreciate the gesture. More because he needed her covered head to toe.

Her pajamas were…well…probably not meant to be overtly seductive. But on Eliza they might as well have been a lace teddy. The bottoms were long and shiny and slunk around her hips and ass when she walked, emphasizing every delicious jiggle. And the top? Oh, the top was pure fantasy.

Spaghetti straps.

Silky purple material.

Thin enough to cling to her nipples and show him their exact size and shape.

H-h-holy shit.

It had taken everything he had to lift the comforter and watch her crawl into bed without joining her there. And then he used what was left of his fraying control to stalk over to the armchair. When he sat, he curled his fingers so tightly around the armrests it was a wonder he didn’t rip the upholstery clean off the batting.

She looked so youthful with her face scrubbed clean of makeup and her usually tidy hair spread across the pillow in disarray. But her eyes were those of a woman when she whispered. “Come lay next to me.”

She pulled an arm from beneath the covers to pat the empty space beside her.

His heart made a flying leap into his throat at the same time his stomach tried to exit his ass.

“Not gonna happen.” He shook his head, although the urge to strip naked and cannonball into bed as quickly as humanly possible was intense.

“Why not? I don’t have cooties. It’s okay if you accidently touch me.”

“It should be obvious by now, Eliza, that when I touch ya, it’s never by accident.”

She frowned. “Guess that explains why you do it so rarely. Especially lately.”

Now his lungs had joined his heart in their attempt to fly out of his mouth. “Are ya sayin’ ya wish I did it more?”

Despite the bruising and swelling, he could see the petulance on her face. “Well not if you don’t want to.”

She crossed her arms and the move made the tops of her breasts swell above the neckline of her pajama top.

He shifted into a more comfortable position in the chair. Then shifted again when that didn’t bring him any relief. Then gave up when he realized the only comfortable position to be found when sporting a giant hard-on would require he get naked.

“Doll face, I’ve wanted to touch you since the moment I saw you.” He watched her swallow convulsively. “Ya made it clear ya weren’t interested.”

“I wasn’t interested in being another notch on your bedpost,” she said with a flick of her wrist.

Hellfire and damnation!

What was she saying? That if he’d tried to court her instead of simply trying to bed her then she might have been interested?

Nah, that can’t be right. Rich girl and boy from the wrong side of the tracks, remember?

He must have misunderstood.

“Right. You didn’t want to be a notch on my bedpost because you are you”—he waved around the room to indicate its sophistication—“and I am me.”

Her eyes narrowed. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means you’re smart and rich and refined. And I’m…not. You’re not into slummin’ it. I get it. No harm, no foul.”

She narrowed her eyes. “We’ve already established that education does not equal intelligence. As for the money, I can assure you it doesn’t buy a person happiness. And refined? Pfft. I sneak your Unscrustables when you’re not looking.”

“Thief!” He pointed to her nose. “I kept blamin’ Ozzie!”

She shrugged and then sighed. “Look, I haven’t been turning you down for four years for any other reason than it’d set me back years in therapy.”

That made his chin jerk back. “How so, doll face?”

“It’d reactivate my abandonment issues,” she answered easily. Before he could question her further, she plowed ahead. “And anyway, we weren’t talking about you coming over here to plow me into a sex coma. We were talking about you coming over here and lying next to me as a friend. You do realize sex isn’t the only way two people can be physical. There’s such a thing as platonic affection.”

He snorted. “What I feel for ya is never goin’ to be platonic. There. Is that better, darlin’?”

Her bedroom eyes looked particularly dark and inviting in the golden lamplight. But her tone was as prickly as a porcupine. “Which part? The part where you’re incapable of having a relationship with a woman that doesn’t involve sex? Or the part where you changed your pet name for me from doll face to darlin’?”

“I’m capable of havin’ relationships with women. I love Becky, Michelle, Penni, Samantha.” He ticked off the wives of the OG Black Knights on his fingers. “And I can guaran-damn-tee ya I’m not havin’ sex with any of them.”

Her expression flattened Kermit the Frog-style. “Only because Boss, Snake, Dan, and Ozzie would beat you to a sticky pulp if you tried.”

“True.” He shrugged and bit the inside of his cheek when her expression showed sheer exasperation. “Look,” he told her, “I’m stayin’ over here because I want to be a good friend. If I came over there.” He hitched his chin in her direction. “My hormones are likely to overcome my good intentions.”

Her voice was low and small, and she picked at a thread on the edge of the comforter. “Maybe that would be okay.”

“Huh?” He leaned forward, placing his elbows on his knees. He couldn’t have heard her correctly.

“I mean, if I’m fending off your advances, I won’t be thinking about…” She swallowed and turned her face away. Even so, there was no mistaking the little sound of misery that escaped her throat.

All the teasing and temptation in him melted away, leaving only empathy. “I wish I’d been there, Liza. Wish I’d seen the things ya saw, shared in your pain. Maybe then the horror of it would be halved.”

She shook her head before turning back to him. “How do you do that? How do you make me want to strangle you one minute and bear-hug the life out of you the next?”

He shrugged and offered her a grin he hoped would lighten the mood. “It’s a gift.”

For long seconds, she searched his eyes. He wasn’t sure what she was looking for. And he wasn’t sure if she found it. But eventually she said, “I like it when you call me Liza.”

He lifted an eyebrow. “I reckoned ya might think I was bein’ too informal.”

The look she gave him was incredulous. “We share a wall, Fish. I know when you take a shower and flush the toilet. I think we left formal behind years ago.”

He chuckled. “Liza it is then.”

A small smile played at the corner of her mouth. He couldn’t help but feel a burst of pride that he’d been the one to put it there.

All he wanted was to see her smile. To ease what pain he could.

That’s all you want? The better angels of his nature challenged.

Fine. That wasn’t all he wanted. But it was enough.

He’d make it be enough.

“It starts with a little grin just like that.” He pointed to her face.

“What does?” A line appeared between her eyebrows.

“Healin’. It starts with a small smile that becomes a little laugh. And then, before ya know it, the hurt no longer feels like it’s killin’ ya from the inside out.”

Folks said the eyes were the windows to the soul. And the expression in Eliza’s told him her soul was battered and bruised. Be he hoped like hell it wasn’t broken.

She patted the space beside her again. “Come lie next to me, Fish. I trust in your ability to restrain yourself. Besides, feeling someone near me is the only way I’ll be able to relax enough to fall asleep.”

“Liza—”

“I won’t beg,” she interrupted. “I respect myself too much for that. Besides, I don’t want your sympathy unless it’s freely offered.”

He understood the basic human need for human contact after suffering trauma. And he couldn’t deny the answering ache in his chest.

This is going to be hell, he silently admitted even as he stood and took the first of three steps that brought him to the side of the bed.

“Thank you,” she whispered and then went and made everything so much worse by throwing the covers back and indicating he should crawl in beside her.

Is she tryin’ to kill me?

Sitting on the edge of the bed, he unlaced his boots and kicked them off. By the time he slid between the cool sheets, blood pounded in his ears.

“Thank you,” she said again as she dropped the covers atop his chest. And then…

Oh, and then he felt her slim, cool fingers slip inside his hand.

For a while, neither of them moved. He struggled just to breathe. And his mind was a mess of swirling thoughts, so he was startled when her voice suddenly cut through his internal chaos.

“What happened to make you stop touching me? Do you regret telling me what happened in South America?”

He’d managed to avoid her question earlier by quoting Robert Frost. There was no way to do so a second time without making his avoidance obvious. And so…he was left with the truth.

“Charles McClean happened.”

She turned her head to look at him. “I don’t understand.”

“It was one thing to flirt and carry on when you were single, but it felt wrong when you were seriously datin’ someone.” He realized how that made him sound and was quick to explain. “Not that I was anglin’ to be more than friends with ya.” He stopped and grinned. “Or at least that wasn’t my sole intent. But it was more like if I’d kept carryin’ on like I had been, I’d have found myself even more jealous of ol’ Charlie than I already was. Keepin’ my grubby mitts to myself was a kind of self-preservation.”

“You were jealous of Charlie? Why?”

“’Cause he had ya when I wanted ya.”

She turned back to stare at the ceiling. For the span of a couple heartbeats, she stayed silent. And when she finally spoke, her voice was whisper-soft. “Wanted me for a night or two, you mean.”

She kept coming back to that. Did that mean she hadn’t been shoving aside his advances because she was a rich debutante and he was the boy from the wrong side of the tracks? That she’d been shoving them aside because she wanted more from him than he could ever give her?

A part of him reveled in the notion that the great Eliza Meadows might actually want him the way he wanted her. But a bigger part of him admitted that her want of him, and particularly her want of something more than he could offer, would make everything worse.

“I wish I were capable of wantin’ more,” he admitted hoarsely. “But wantin’ more for a guy like me is dangerous.”

Now he was staring at the ceiling, but he could feel her turn to him when she asked, “Why?”

“’Cause of who I am.”

“And who are you?”

“Someone who’s only good for a night or two.”

“Why?”

He forced a grin and met her confused gaze. “You’re soundin’ like a broken record.”

She countered immediately. “And you’re being frustratingly obtuse.”

He sighed and turned back to stare at the ceiling. It was impossible to hold her gaze when she was so close. When she was so open and revealing.

“Just take my word for it when I tell ya that if ya were to ever give me a chance, you’d be happy all I can offer is a night or two.”

She snorted. “You’re making it sound like you’re a bad lover. But you forget I’ve seen the satisfied faces of women the morning after you’ve taken them to bed.”

“That’s not what I’m sayin’ at all,” he assured her. “I’m sayin’ I don’t have what it takes to be a good a partner in the long run. And if I tried, I’d just wind up hurtin’ whichever unlucky lady decided to take a chance on me. That’s the last thing I want.”

For a long while after that pronouncement, silence filled the room. He counted his heartbeats. Counted her breaths. Counted the rows of bricks on the wall across the way as he waited for her response.

He could tell she wanted to press him further—Eliza had the curiosity of a cat—but eventually she relented and changed the subject. “Tell me about your mother.”

The request, seemingly coming out of left field, caught him unawares. “Wh-what?” he sputtered. “Why?”

“Because you’ve thrown up a road closed sign on our previous route. But I still need a distraction from the horror movie that flashes across the backs of my eyelids anytime I close my eyes. Besides”—her fingers tightened around his, causing his jaw to tighten in response—“I’ve always been interested in the woman who raised you. I know there’s no love lost between you and your father. But what about your mom? What was she like?”

“No love lost?” He snorted. “That’s one way of sayin’ I hate the bastard from the top of his head to the tips of his toes.”

“Why?” The inquisitiveness in her tone wasn’t the voyeuristic, meddlesome kind. It was the genuine kind. The kind that said she was asking because she truly cared, truly wanted to understand what made him tick.

It was the only reason he answered. Although later he’d want to kick his own ass for the bluntness of his delivery. “Because he killed my mother.”

“What?” She gasped and sat up in bed. The sudden movement made her wobble and he found himself sitting up beside her to steady her with a hand on each shoulder.

Warm. Her skin was so damn warm.

Smooth too.Like a baby’s bottom. Although his mind certainly wasn’t conjuring up images of an infant.

Even though his eyes wanted to track down to what he knew would be her nipples poking against the silky fabric, he managed to keep his attention focused on her lovely—albeit bruised and swollen—face.

“What did I tell ya ’bout movin’ too quickly?”

She ignored him. “That’s why he’s in prison?”

“Doing life without parole in Pollack Penitentiary.” He nodded. “The bastard deserved the death sentence. But because it was considered a crime of passion”—he made derisive air quotes—“he was only found guilty of second-degree murder.”

Thinking of how his old man was still drawing breath when his mother was nearly two decades in the ground made him grind his teeth so hard his molars ached. “If ya ask me, the world would be a better place if he’d had a needle shoved in his arm years ago. But I don’t make the laws. Or the sentencin’ guidelines.”

He watched her throat work over a swallow. The skin there looked as pale and warm as the skin on her shoulders. His fingers itched to touch her again. Which is why he busied them—and himself—with turning toward the lamp on his side of the bed and switching off the knob.

The light in the room was instantly halved.

Good.

He didn’t want her seeing how deeply he could hate. How easily it would’ve been for him to beat and strangle his father the way his father had beaten and strangled his mother.

How much like him I truly am.

Settling back against the pillow, he refused to meet Eliza’s gaze as she stared down at him.

Either she realized he needed the illusion of privacy if he was going to finish telling his tale, or she didn’t like what little she could still see of his expression. Because she switched off her own lamp. To his relief, the room was plunged into darkness.

His eyes were instantly drawn to the large window and the night sky beyond.

In the city, there was no such thing as pitch blackness. Light pollution dulled the brilliance of the moon and diminished the twinkling of the stars. So much so that when he was home in Chicago he forgot what it was like to look up and see the Milky Way spread out above him like a blanket of confetti.

He realized it wasn’t the city’s glow affecting his ability to count the constellations now, though. It was a quickly approaching storm. A large, dark cloud rolled across the moon, obscuring its silver face.

Menacing was the word that drifted through his head as he stared at the stygian sky. That thought was quickly followed up by something else. Something that made the hairs on his arms lift. Portentous.

Dark nights were meant for dark deeds. For the stalking of demons. For…death.

He scolded himself for his foolishness. Having been raised in the backwoods of Louisiana, he’d grown up with tales of haints and the fifolet and skin-walkers bent on mayhem and murder. So it was easy to sometimes forget that all the evil in the world was perpetuated by man and not some shadowy, faceless monster that crawled through the night.

He felt her settle back against her own pillow. Felt her snuggle beneath the covers. And then he had to hold back a sigh of relief when he felt her little fingers once again interlace with his own.

After what he’d revealed, he wouldn’t have been surprised if she never wanted to touch him again.

The sins of the father and all that jazz.

Her voice was as thick as the darkness in the room when she whispered, “I’m so sorry, Fisher. How old were you?”

“It was three weeks before my sixteenth birthday. I spent the last two years of high school bouncin’ from couch to couch. And as soon as I got my diploma, I was out of there. Gone. Adiosed from anyone who knew about the stain on my family name, about what my daddy had done to my momma.”

For a while after that, she was quiet. And when he heard her breaths go from shallow to deep, from thready to steady, he thought maybe she’d fallen asleep. But her voice didn’t hold even a hint of sleepiness when she finally asked, “Why’d he do it? Kill her, I mean. Did you ever find out?”

Of all the questions she could ask, that was the easiest to answer. “Because Nash Wakefield never should’ve fallen in his version of love. Because all he was truly capable of was obsession. Because he was possessive and controlling and jealous. Because he could.”

He heard her long, windy exhalation and expected a follow-up question.

It never came.

Into the silence he said, “He got off work early one day and saw her talkin’ to a man outside the Quickie Stop. Not flirtin’ or touchin’ or anything like that. Just talkin’.” His stomach roiled as he relived what he knew of the events. He’d heard all the witness testimony at trial, had seen all the gas station security footage that’d been played for the jury. “He didn’t even give them time to react or explain that they were strangers who were talkin’ ’bout how hot the weather had turned. He just reached beneath the seat of his truck for his pistol, shot that nice man in the head, and then dragged Momma home where he beat her and raped her and finally strangled her to death.”

He didn’t mention the part where he’d come home from school to find his mother on the floor, her face bloody and bruised, her sundress bunched up around her waist, all while his father rutted away between her thighs. He didn’t tell her how he’d jumped onto his father’s back, screaming for the bastard to stop. And he didn’t say how his father had flung him off with such fury that his temple had smacked the side of the coffee table and he’d gone out like a light.

Well, not exactly like a light.

It’d taken a few seconds for the darkness to completely suck him under. And the last thing his dimming eyes had witnessed was the degradation and resignation on his mother’s bruised and bloodied face.

When he’d come to, it was to find her dead and his father on the run. Luckily, it’d only taken the authorities thirty-six hours to catch up with Nash Wakefield. And after that, life had become more about surviving for Fisher than actual living.

He’d been surviving ever since.

“Fish.” Her throat sounded full, like she was holding back tears. “I don’t have any words. I don’t know if there are any words for something like that. I’m so sorry for you, for your mother. I?—”

“I’m sorry too,” he cut in. “You’ve been through hell tonight and here I am pilin’ on with my sad-sack tale and?—”

“No.” He couldn’t see her, but he felt her shaking her head. Heard the raspy sound her hair made as it rubbed against the cotton pillowcase. “I asked and you answered. And honestly—and this probably sounds awful—but seeing how you’ve come back from such a tragedy gives me hope I’ll bounce back too. Maybe someday I’ll be able to feel like what happened is a chapter in my life instead of the whole damn book.”

He desperately wanted to pull her into his arms. Just roll onto his side and curl himself around her until every bit of him was holding every bit of her.

Instead, he satisfied himself with a gentle squeeze of her hand. “It’s a sad day when ya realize the person you need the most has just taught ya that ya really don’t need anyone at all. I thought I wouldn’t make it without Mom. But I did. And you’ll make it without Charlie too. I’m not sayin’ it’ll be easy. I’m just sayin’ it’ll get done.”

Her swallow was sticky-sounding. But she didn’t continue with that line of conversation. Instead she whispered again, “Tell me about your mother. Not the awful way she ended, but how she lived. Who was she?”

If it’d been anyone but Eliza asking, he would have waved away the question and changed the subject. Talking about his mother wasn’t something he did. Not because she’d been ugly and awful to him. But because she hadn’t been.

She’d been fun and loving and supportive and so, so…

Broken.

He hadn’t known it back then. He’d been too young and ignorant to the ways of the world and to wholesome, healthy relationships. But he knew it now.

What he’d suspected in theory before he’d joined Black Knights Inc., he’d since come to understand as fact. Having watched the original Knights with their partners, he could see how completely toxic his parents’ love had been.

Love. He snorted silently. More like a noxious blend of delusion, narcissism, and codependence.

“She was beautiful and smart.” He started quietly, but his voice grew stronger as he went on. “She had this big smile and an even bigger voice. The kind of voice that raised the roof of the church when she sang in the choir. She loved yellow, wore it all the time. Loved feedin’ bread to the ducks at the pond. And she always acted like she accidentally let the bananas get overripe. But I knew she did it on purpose. ’Cause I loved banana bread.”

He closed his eyes and the image of his mother sitting on the park bench, a bag of stale Wonder Bread in hand, flashed through his head.

“She’s the one who taught me to play harmonica. She’d been taught by her daddy who’d been taught by his daddy before him. She was small-town royalty. Her father was the local plastics manufacturer, and she grew up with the silver spoon and all the Southern charm you could ever want. I’m sure her old man did about a hundred somersaults in his grave when she took up with my old man.”

“Your grandfather died when she was young?” She unconsciously ran her thumb along the side of his. Alternatively, he was very conscious of the way her soft touch made his stomach muscles tighten.

Platonic my ass,he thought before answering.

“Her senior year in high school. I think maybe that’s how my father got his hooks in her. ’Cause she was hurtin’ and vulnerable. Anyhow, her older brother took over the plastics business and after she married my dad, she kinda lost touch with her family. Or, more like, my father isolated her and kept her all to himself. But she named me after them. Her family, I mean. Their surname was Fisher. And so even though I’ve never known any of them more than in passin’, I still carry around a piece of them.”

“How does a smart, beautiful, wealthy woman find herself tying the knot with an abusive, murderous man?” If he’d been able to see Eliza, he knew he’d find her sleek, dark eyebrows pulled together over her nose.

“It wasn’t like Dad started out that way.” He blinked contemplatively into the darkness. “Momma said he was the cock of walk, all good looks and charm and pockets full of money from the tips he got dealing cards on the riverboat. He seduced her with little gifts and honeyed words. In fact, he could sweet-talk her like nothin’ you’ve ever seen. Even when he”d go out of his mind with jealousy because she’d opened the door to the mailman instead of letting the letters be dropped in the box or waved at the neighbor man mowing his yard, he”d always tell her it was because he loved her so much. Because he knew she was too good for him and so he lived in constant fear she’d leave him.”

“She believed him?”

“For years.” He nodded. “She had stars in her eyes when it came to Dad. Thought he hung the moon even when he slapped a bruise on her face or grabbed her wrist so hard he broke her bones.” He sighed heavily. “She mistook his jealousy for love, made excuses for him by sayin’ it wasn’t his fault he’d been raised rough. And I think she honestly believed she could change him if she just loved him hard enough for long enough.”

“How awful,” she murmured. “And how sad.”

He hummed his agreement. “It only got worse once he got caught skimmin’ money on the riverboat and lost his job. He’d been usin’ his position there to draw in tourists and locals alike to illegal, backroom poker tournaments. So when he lost his position on the boat, he lost his side-hustle too. And that was the beginnin’ of the end. He got angrier and angrier about life. And that made him meaner and meaner to me, but especially to Momma. She was just beginnin’ to see through all his bullshit, just beginnin’ to realize his good looks and charm covered up a heart as cold and as hard as stone when he killed her. That was probably why he killed her, actually. Because, for the first time, she truly might have gotten around to leavin’ him.”

Her inhalation sounded shaky. “Why do the most horrible things happen to the best people?”

“Because the universe is a sadist. It likes to see us suffer.”

Her voice was so quiet he barely heard her. “I hope that’s not true.”

Guilt whispered in his ear. What was he doing being all doom and gloom when he was supposed to be making her feel better?

“Want me to play ya a song?” It was trite and trivial, but it was the only thing he could think of to change the subject. Even though she liked to tease him about his “countrified” choice of musical instruments, he knew she enjoyed hearing him play. “Unless it’ll hurt your head,” he was quick to add.

“My head hurts regardless,” she assured him. “So go on. Play something. But not the blues. I’m blue enough already. Play me something sweet. Play me something to remind me that things aren’t all bad all the time.”

He pondered his options for a few moments and then pulled his harmonica from his pocket. The metal was warm from his body heat when he placed the instrument against his lips. And he’d barely played the first handful of notes when he heard her chuckle.

It was sweeter music than what was coming out of his mouth harp.

“Invisible String,” she whispered into the dark. “That’s a good one.”

Pleased she’d accurately picked out the Taylor Swift tune, he continued to play, careful to keep the volume low in deference to her aching head. By the time he finished, he thought again she might’ve fallen asleep. Her breaths were deep and steady.

Shoving his harmonica back inside his pocket, he went to slink out of the bed and leave her to her rest. But she stopped him with a hand on his arm.

“Do you think there really are invisible strings tying people together? Like, fate or kismet or whatever?”

“I think when it comes to love and fate, people have it all wrong.”

“What do you mean?” He could hear the frown in her voice.

“I mean, lots of folks put stock in that whole fated lovers thing as if it’s the most romantic notion ever. But I think it’s just about the least romantic idea there is.”

For a while, she said nothing. Then, “I hate to sound like a broken record, but what do you mean?”

“I mean, if we have no choice over what happens to us, if the universe is pullin’ all the strings, then that means if ya fall in love with someone, it was preordained. You had nothin’ to do with it. And I just can’t reckon how anyone could think that’s the ideal.” He cocked his head as he considered his next words. “What is romantic is the idea that out of four million men, you would choose one.”

He could almost hear the wheels turning inside her head. “So then what happens when the one you choose doesn’t choose you back? What happens when the one you choose?—”

He knew what she was driving at. And he made sure to stop her in her tracks. “You’ve loved once. You’ll love again. You’ve got too much of the stuff inside ya not to share it with someone.”

The catching of her breath told him he’d hit the nail on the head. And despite his best intentions, he’d gone and made her cry. Again.

Not knowing what else to do, he went against his better judgment and every ounce of self-preservation he had and folded his body around hers, big spoon and little spoon. Like lovers.

Except…all they’d ever be is friends. Especially now that he knew she might have once considered the idea of letting them be more.