Running Feral (Possum Hollow #3)

1. Chapter One

Chapter One

I don’t have a drinking problem. Seriously.

I never get drunk. Or at least I never used to. I may only be about 40% Asian—my dad is Polish, while my mom’s family is from the Philippines with a little Colombian thrown in for flavor—but I was unlucky enough to catch the gene that makes my face fucking burn whenever I have more than a couple of drinks. It’s not debilitating, but it is embarrassing, which is one of the many reasons I normally avoid alcohol.

Another reason is that my deadbeat sperm donor definitely did have a drinking problem. Not that he was around for me to witness it, but I’ve heard stories. And so did his dad, according to my lola, who’s carried a flaming torch of hatred for both of them since her daughter got knocked up and abandoned over two decades ago.

The last reason is that alcohol slows your reflexes. I’ve made my peace with the fact that I’m a prey animal in this life. It sucks, but it’s my destiny. Still… It means I need my reflexes to always be sharp if I want to survive.

You never know when the predators are going to show up.

Today I threw all my reasoning out of the window. My lack of practice keeps my tolerance low, so once I committed to the concept, it didn’t take long for me to get shit-faced.

It’s not like I have anything to be sober for. Most of the time, I need to be at least functional enough to help Lola around the house and make sure she takes her insulin on time. I moved back here to take care of her as her diabetes got worse, because my mom couldn’t. And because my mom had enough mouths to feed without me loitering and taking up space. But Lola has been in and out of the hospital so much lately, it feels like the trailer is empty more often than not. Being there fills me with a deep sense of dread.

Work only happens when they call me, and there’s no way to know when that’ll be. Inevitably, at the worst possible time. Until then, I’d rather be here than alone.

The Feral Possum is kind of an anomaly around here. It’s cute and clean and makes a big deal about being inclusive. And while a lot of the bars in this area have a certain libertarian give-a-fuck attitude, it’s not quite the same as actively billing yourself as a safe space.

No space is really safe, of course. I know that. It’s nice to pretend, though.

“Are you planning on propping up the bar all night?”

Gunnar doesn’t look at me when he speaks. For a friendly bartender, he almost never looks directly at me. He rarely looks me in the eye, and he’s always careful to keep the bar between me and him. Those are the two main things I’ve noticed. I don’t mind, though. I’m assuming he knows enough about the crowd I run with to keep his distance.

It doesn’t help that Eamon likes to bring me here and parade me around like a prize. As soon as I moved back here and figured out petty gang crime was my only real option in life, Eamon claimed me as his. I think he likes to show me off to make people see how untouchable he is. Not only does he get to take whatever he wants from the younger guys in the Banna organization, but he’s so hardcore, he manages to openly fuck men in a notoriously homophobic world of gangsters and mafiosos.

At least, that’s what he thinks. I think he’ll push someone’s buttons too hard one day and finally get what’s coming to him. Until then, he’s got me on a short leash. And I can’t get rid of Eamon without leaving the Banna, which is my only source of income.

Illegal or not, I need the money. Insulin’s expensive.

“Give me somewhere else to go, and I’ll go,” I reply to Gunnar when my brain catches up. “Unless you have a better idea, this is what I’ve got.”

At that, his eyes do flick up to meet my gaze for a second. I can see the same expression he almost always wears; like he wants to say something, but he’s biting his tongue.

He doesn’t need to say it. I know it all already. Crime is bad. Being a walking punching bag for a lowlife criminal is bad. There are other options.

Except there aren’t. Not for me.

“At least drink some water.” He slides a glass in front of me, next to my beer, then gestures to his own face in a way that lets me know my cheeks are probably flaming right now, because I didn’t have the foresight to take an antihistamine before I started my mini bender. Except my face is permanently stuck in late teenage-hood, making people always think I’m younger than I am, while Gunnar has a well-manicured salt-and-pepper beard and the kind of sharp cheekbones which scream not old, but mature . I’m sure everyone in his life treats him like an adult. I’m sure it helps that he dresses like a fucking GQ model, even out here in buttfuck nowhere.

“Whatever,” I grumble, making a point of reaching for the beer instead.

I sound like a petulant child, but I don’t care. I don’t need another person in my life deciding to boss me around.

Gunnar already watches me like a hawk. I’ve been coming here for nearly a year, because they haven’t been open much longer, and ever since day one, he’s watched me.

I should find it more irritating than I do. Probably. But part of me finds it nice to know if I wind up being disappeared one day, at least someone I’m not blood related to will notice. There’s a comfort in that, even if it’s meaningless. It’s not going to stop me from eventually being aggressively disappeared. It’s becoming more obvious every day that’s what the future holds for me.

At least someone will care, though. And until it happens, I don’t have to think about it. I wall the idea off behind the fortress in my mind that holds all of my unthinkable thoughts. It’s been steadily getting bigger and bigger, the walls weaker and weaker, and it feels like every day I spend around Eamon chips away at them a little more. But they’re still holding for now.

As long as I can keep Lola alive, I can keep my other shit at bay.

“Can I get you some food?” he asks in that eternally patient voice of his. The one that always rubs me the wrong way when I’m too far down the self-pity trap to listen to reason.

“I don’t understand why you even give a shit,” I say, giving him a hard look and forcing him to hold eye contact with me as I gesture to myself. The fading bruises that I know he knows how I got. The snake tattoo on my neck that tells everyone the Banna has me for life. “What part of all this says anything other than ‘lost fucking cause’?”

There’s a disproportionate amount of vitriol to my words, but I can’t stop myself. I’m thrumming with misplaced adrenaline, and I have been for days. I haven’t heard from Eamon in too long. It’s suspicious. I feel like he’s going to pop up from around a corner any second now, and my heart has been keeping a steady staccato the entire time, holding me in suspense. I wish he would get it over with, so I can take a full breath and stop feeling like the edges of my world are on the verge of graying out with my anticipatory panic.

None of this is Gunnar’s fault. But I’ve been on high-alert so long my logic-brain can’t scream loud enough to get through to the rest of me anymore.

Gunnar sighs, but more like he’s being patient than pissed. When he puts both hands on the bar and orients himself toward me, the movement makes him seem larger than usual and I can’t stop myself flinching away just a bit.

He notices—like always—but doesn’t say anything.

“I can almost guarantee that more people care about you than you think.”

His expression is so earnest as he says it, I almost melt right on the spot. But I can’t afford to get soft and mushy in public. Especially not when there’s no one around to scrape me up afterward. So, I focus on hardening myself instead.

“Sorry. That was rude,” I say to Gunnar, because I’m in emotional freefall all the time, but I’m not trying to be a total asshole.

Gunnar shrugs, leaning back a bit.

“Do you have a ride home?”

Now it’s my turn to shrug.

Another sigh before Gunnar bites his lip and narrows his eyes at me.

“If you stay until it gets late, I can drive you home while Kasia closes. Just don’t drive, okay? I’ve seen that ragged little motorcycle you ride, and it’s a death trap even when you’re sober.”

Honestly, the offer makes me flinch more than it did when he loomed over me before. Gunnar’s always been kind, but he’s also noticeably careful to keep his distance. This feels like some kind of line that can’t be uncrossed.

Not that I’m going to cross it. It’s not safe to let him do me favors. If word got out, it would put him straight in Eamon’s crosshairs, and then who knows what the fuck would happen.

I’m not that selfish.

“Sure,” I lie. It seems like enough to satisfy him, so he only nods and doesn’t press the issue before turning away to help another customer.

I resolutely do not let myself stare at his ass once his back is turned to me. It’s the same game I play every time I’m in here. Sometimes I just can’t help myself.

The man may be a little older than me, but he’s one of those guys that seems to ripen like fruit on the vine as he gets older. He has olive skin, darker than mine, even though I think he’s 100% white, and it’s still smooth. His beard and hair are thick in the way that makes your fingers ache to touch them, and his body also has a thickness to it—a solidity—that I’m constantly stopping myself from reaching out to touch. Or lean into. He’s so tall and firm I feel like I could collapse into him and he’d just… absorb me. Wrap me up in those strong arms and long-fingered, capable hands.

These are the mental tangents I’m not supposed to go on, though. Because if Eamon would be pissed that Gunnar gave my drunk ass a ride home, hell knows what he would do if he knew how often I’d sat here drooling over him like a schoolboy with a crush. So, I consciously snap myself out of it and tear my eyes away from an ass that looks round and fucking impeccable in the fancy suit pants he’s always wearing for no real reason.

Of course, as soon as I look elsewhere, I meet Kasia’s eyes. Kasia is the opposite of her boss in a lot of ways. For one, she embraced the nineties grunge aesthetic as a child and never let go. Right now, she’s wearing Doc Martens; fishnets under ripped stonewashed jeans; some kind of shirt that’s really a corset; and a bunch of dark makeup that’s gorgeous, but clearly meant to scare off men more than entice them. Another way she and Gunnar differ is that she also watches me, but it’s with a constant level of distrust. Or distaste. Dis-something.

She fucking hates me, basically. And I get it. I fucking hate myself half the time. But I’ve never known what specifically turned her down this road, and she’s always careful to be polite enough to my face not to cause waves.

“What?”

I’m too over it to play games today.

“Nothing. You looked like maybe you were thirsty or something.” The smirk on her face gives the sentence all the subtext it needs to, though.

Busted.

Well, fuck her. I can look, can’t I? It’s not like I’m going to do anything about it.

“Can I get the check?” It’s time for me to abandon ship before this day gets any worse.

She nods, starting to reach for the computer, but then she hesitates, and I see the smirk fall off her face with a hard twist.

My heart rate seems to triple in an instant and the rest of my body locks up. In the question of fight or flight , it seems to go for freeze more and more these days. Like it’s all too much and I’ve turned into the human equivalent of a record scratch.

Thankfully, the panic is already dulling my reactions and letting my mind sink into the heavy, drowsy place, which lets me stay numb to most things. So, when a hand lands roughly on my shoulder, I don’t react. More flinching would not help my case here.

I’m not normally this bad. This thing between me and Eamon has highs and lows. But ever since the last time… I can’t seem to snap out of panic-mode.

“I thought I might find you here, pet.”

His voice is too close to my ear, his breath hot and moist on my skin, but I don’t let it penetrate my awareness. Instead, I focus on putting a smile on my face that isn’t too wooden.

“Hey,” I say as I turn to look at him. Blue eyes. Blond hair. Nice features. It’s all a very pretty package covering up how terrifying he can be underneath. He’s young enough that he still looks a little boyish, like me—or at least he would without all the gang tattoos—and it’s completely incongruent with everything I know about his personality. “You should have called if you needed me. I wasn’t doing anything important.”

Eamon must smell the alcohol on my breath, because his eyebrows climb a fraction. Then his eyes scan the rest of my face, taking in what must be flushed cheeks and possibly a throbbing pulse in my throat.

“I wasn’t expecting you to be day drinking by yourself. What if something happened to you? How were you going to get home? What if work needed us? You know I don’t like you being out in the world unprotected. Especially in a place like this. You could end up getting molested in the bathroom.”

The comment leaves a sour taste in my mouth, but I’m careful not to show it. Never mind that he’s more queer than most of the people in this bar; and also loves to hang out here. And if anyone’s going to “molest” me…

No. Don’t think negatively. Just make peace. Before anything has the chance to escalate.

“I’m sorry,” I say with a pout that I know is adorable. “I knew you were working, and I didn’t want to bother you. But I missed you. Thank you for coming to find me.”

I glance around to make sure we’re not the focus of anyone’s attention, then I quickly peck him on the lips. He’s not big on public displays of affection. Or private ones, for that matter. He prefers displays of ownership. But anything I can do to mollify him is worth the risk.

It must do the trick, because his face softens a little. I hop off the bench, swaying slightly as the alcohol hits me in a wave and parlaying that into an excuse to lean on him. Instead of waiting for Kasia and getting more of her dirty looks, I throw too much cash on the bar and turn Eamon toward the door.

We’re almost out of there unscathed. It’s only at the last possible second that I turn without thinking and catch a glimpse of Gunnar in my peripheral vision.

He’s watching me. Watching us. With a face more furious than I’ve ever seen.

He’s almost always placid, like the surface of a lake, but I think I’m getting an unexpected glimpse into the churning water underneath. It’s only for a second before he slips his mask back into place, but it’s enough. I saw the real him, watching me like I’m someone worth watching.

Maybe I’m not the only person who hates Eamon. For whatever reason, just like the idea that Gunnar might miss me when I die, that thought buoys me enough to keep myself together as Eamon grabs my hand, dragging me out the door and toward his car.

I’ll remember that face through whatever else happens tonight. It’s not a lot, but it’s something to think about other than whatever this is I’ve let my life become.

Thanks, Gunnar.