9. Crash
NINE
CRASH
Danger. Trouble, capital T.
T for trouble, T for Trina.
I can hear her. I know what she wants. I know what all her little questions are getting at.
I don’t say shit. Not a single word. She settles back down into the blankets, but I can hear her breathing at the same pace as before, and see the tiny half moons of light that means her eyes are still open, looking over at me.
I wonder what she thinks of my confession.
“Crash, I’ve never done anything…with a man. But if…If…if you…”
Women, I swear.
I don’t say anything. Maybe she’ll think I’m still asleep and then reconsider finishing that sentence.
Don’t finish it for her. Bury those thoughts of her legs on my shoulders. Bury them deep.
“I know you’re still awake,” she says.
“And how do you know that?”
“You just started breathing all fast.”
“How about you go to bed.”
“I was thinking…”
I know what she was thinking. I sit up. Back to the floor it is.
“Wait!”
I evade her grabbing hand, laying out on the crusty carpet. The pain stabbing up my lower vertebrae isn’t that bad. I’ve slept on worse. And in more pain than this. It’s still better than the night in that cave in Syria. Pretty much anything is better than that.
So I man up and let my mind slide back to the hole it crawled out of when Sarah Jane’s call woke me up.
Ruby. When I try to picture my stepdaughter’s face, nothing comes to mind. Sometimes I forget what she looks like. She just never reminded me of Zacky, or of her mother. She was just a perfect, small thing in a life so full of ugly things. Blameless.
I love that little girl, but the situation with her Ma is a weight on my neck. I want Jess out of Ruby’s life and mine. I want some real time with Ruby because at the end of the day I’m the only daddy she has.
All I need is a lawyer.
Money.
Half a million dollars would be a damned good start.
This was supposed to be a guaranteed job.
Get the gold.
Get McCall.
Alive? Sure. Across state lines? No problem.
I asked Roman what made him so sure I wouldn’t just take the prize for myself when I got McCall.
“You know as well as I do that there’s no hiding when someone wants to find you,” he said. Then he paused, his dark slanted eyes reminding me of a man I had killed once. “And because you’re a man who does the right thing.”
I didn’t like that. Being read .
And was that my reputation? Lately, doing the right thing seemed like a sure way to pile more burdens on the damned precarious stack I was juggling. Once people knew you’d do the right thing they had you by the nuts.
I ought to do the wrong thing sometimes.
I would love to break this halo I was given for no reason but a uniform, to take everyone’s expectations and light them up like a bomb in the night.
Breathing too hard.
Slow, slow.
Deeper.
To the house I built for Pa when I came home, the smell of wood still fresh as the day I cut it. To the days of bright sunlight where every flower and hummingbird made a beauty so fierce it hurt, but it did make me stop thinking about the thick rope in the garage slinging over a heavy beam.
When I came back from my last tour, I swear I didn’t sleep one night for two years. The only time I got any shut-eye were those summer afternoons, in the heat and the bugs, watching the birds pass in the garden like nothing I had ever done or would ever do mattered at all.
The garden always smelled of roses.
Like Trina.
I slam a foot on that trapdoor again, but this time she slides through the cracks like a vapor, surrounding me in a sweet musk as I lay there on the floor.
Her sweet, innocent kiss. The way she trusts me—
My fists clench.
The way she trusts me.
Better she stay a virgin all the way to California.
But what if I was selfish? What if I didn’t do the right thing. If I got up and trapped her in that bed. Maybe she’d run from the very thing she was just begging me for. I could wear her down. I could hold her down, if it came to that.
But I’m not that man; never was. And Trina’s made it plain that if I climbed up there and started kissing and petting on her, she’d open like a comb of wild honey. I don’t think she’d stop me at all.
That’s exactly why I can’t move off this floor.
“Crash?”
No. No, don’t ask me again. Don’t make me say no again.
I’m so close to climbing in that bed and taking my rights with her. Pulling off those damned ugly things I forced her to wear. Lifting her knees up on my shoulders…
“Crash, is the heat on?”
“The whole unit’s broken.”
“It’s so cold. Aren’t you cold?”
“Get another blanket.”
“I have all the blankets already.”
I get up and pass her my rumpled corduroy jacket. It’s heavy and lined. “Put it over your feet,” I tell her.
She throws the jacket aside. “I don’t want that.”
“You don’t know what you want.”
“I want you!”
She drags me into the bed.
“Trina— you’re bare…Oh, Jesus…”
She kisses me again.
And I can’t hold it. I’m pushing my thumb through, where it’s wet and juicy, and she cries out against my mouth in a sudden sharp release of tension.
“Crash! Crash!”
“Shhh…lay your hot ass down. You don’t know what the hell you want!”
Her lips find mine in the dark again and I roll into the bed, keeping her tucked under me as I taste those lips in every way possible. Time passes and we do nothing but kiss.
“Mmm, mmm,” she moans, moving against me and wrapping her arms around my neck in wanton abandon.
“Show me what it’s supposed to be,” she whispers in my ear.
I pull her hair free of the thing she’s wrapped around it. Her curls spill loose in a wide soft carpet that smells better than any flower or honeycomb.
I take her hand and press it lower. “Feel that?”
She inhales. “What do you want me to do?”
I take her hand off my stiff and twine my fingers with it. Trina’s not some local tail I’m paying by the hour. “Don’t do nothing.”
I lower myself, kissing down her stomach, which is soft and dimpled like the rest of her. She’s holding her breath, maybe taking my command too literally.
I lower my head and she melts like ice cream on my tongue before jerking back.
“Oh! There ?”
Back up.
I sit up and pull her close, stroking the small of her back where her waist nips in and her ass fans out. “There’s no rules. It’s like a dance. Stop if it goes too fast but trust my lead.”
“I don’t want to get pregnant,” she says, voice catching.
Is that where she draws the line here? Does she think what I just did can get her pregnant? I grip my dick and pull back. Think, jackass. You fuck her and then what?
She catches feelings. I break her heart.
I must be tin-headed. There are a million reasons to back off right now from this chick and only one reason not to.
“Turn on the light,” I tell her. The darkness is letting in bad notions. Not to mention heightening all my other senses— the scent and feel of Trina. A light of shame would cool me down— cool us both down.
She leans over and turns it on the nightlight.
Mistake.
A soft, red light floods over her curves. Her doll-like face turns to me and she smiles, shyly.
In two seconds I’m tussling her down to the bed, her enthusiastic kissing driving me headfirst off the cliff. She opens her mouth for my tongue, she bites my lip and sucks it like she’s been waiting all her life. And I fall.
Everything I do to her spurs her on for more. I suck her neck; she claws at my back. I grip her waist between my hands, holding her still, just to feel the difference in our sizes and how my two hands sink into her thickness. She moans and rubs my chest. “Crash, you’re so— you’re so handsome.”
She’s telling me? I twine some of her endless hair in my fist and twist it round and round. “Don’t talk to me about pretty,” I say into her neck. Her cunny is rubbing on me. Rubbing on me through my jeans. Losing my head I utter, “It’s like somebody built you out of my dreams, Trin.”
Her thick body. Her sweet face. That hair.
She goes all-fired crazy when I touch her down there. She’s soaked through the panties. Lifelong sexual frustration building to this moment.
And I’m her first.
My dick throbs like a drumbeat. There’s something primal here; something that makes my balls heavy with urgency to mate. To be the first to be inside Trina; to deflower her, make her a woman.
To squeeze through to her womb. The first. To work my dick through that slick, tight channel to the untouched center. The first. To plunder it and make her crazy, to show her that sex isn’t just about my sick needs but hers too. And when I show her everything, when she’s opened up to me, when I have her bubbling like hot peach juice all over my face and my wood, I’d do it. I’d turn her over to face me, her copper nipples thrusting up on their big, soft peaks. I’d put her legs on my shoulders and fold her as I fucked, watching her squirt cream on my cock, her body jiggling under my swift and firm attentions. I’d watch her meltdown to the last of many storms I’ve laid upon her, and when she wrung tight around me, her cunt finally adjusted to me large size, my nuts would pump a full man’s load inside her, a wad of thick jism that would plug her womanhood so deep she’d quicken with my son on her very first time.
Fuck.
I catch her itchy fingers on the button of my jeans. I firmly remove them, clinging to my last splinter of control. The only reason I’m not thrusting myself as deep as I can go inside her is that thick layer of denim I’m wearing. As long as that stays on we didn’t do anything wrong. But the temptation is nuts. My head is fucking spinning. I’m panting like a wolf in rut. Now’s the time. The fantasy is in my reach. I could make it happen.
“Crash?” She takes my hand and puts it back on her waist. I squeeze her ass, now free from them revival tent sweatpants I made her wear so my thoughts would behave. So much for that.
She’s flown those pants off somewhere I know not, and her panties are barely holding on.
I fixate on her tits, which is safer territory. I reach up and take stock. Her skin is dark and smooth. My hands are wrecked, the fingers broad and blunt and the skin rough. Fingernails torn on some fingers. They’re large hands because I’m a large man, but Trina’s tits overflow them. The girl is thick as jam preserves and from earlier I know she tastes as sweet.
She looks up at me. Her shy moments turn me on nearly as much as when she’s boldly humping my thigh.
“Don’t hide nothing from me,” I tell her, taking her hands away to admire her turned-out nipples.
I squeeze. Groan at the chocolate spilling now between my fingers. There’s one thing I can do that definitely won’t get her pregnant, though it for damn sure isn’t the wisest course of action, which would be abstinence. To hell with that. Do the wrong thing. I take a seat and pull her in my lap. “Put your hands in my hair,” I growl. “Hard.”
Her nails graze my scalp and I take one sweet chocolatey breast in my mouth and suck. Trina cries out as her nipple shrinks and thrusts on my tongue.
“I like that,” she shudders.
“We can just do this,” I tell her thickly. “Just this…”
She rides my leg as I suckle her through a blind delirium, where there’s nothing but the smell of Trina, the taste of Trina, to guide me through the haze. Since we opened the windows, the sounds of the night come in easy. Birds and crickets and lightning bugs. I do everything to those big soft natural tits I can think of.
Time crawls.
Long minutes, maybe hours.
“You know,” she whispers eventually, ruffling her hands through my locks as I tongue down her sore nipples, “This is the best night of my life.”
“This ain’t even all.”
“Show me?”
I lay her flat and slide the panties down her incredible legs. Dipping low, I pick up right where I left off.
“Oh,” she cries, threading her fingers through my hair again. I take a sip of her, just to introduce it, and when she guides me forward I take an even longer one.
Hell yes.
Trina’s moans rock through the room, and make the bed frame jolting on the wall seem almost quiet. She’s all in a puddle, her soft woman’s flesh like the tender buds of a flower unfurling as I get the nectar out. Her thighs lock around my ears and I catch her motions with mine easy, knowing what’s coming before she does. When I slide a finger up inside her she goes buck wild. The explosion all over my face is everything I need. Nut swells out of my dick. I wish it was going inside her. Inside her clenches and sucks on my invading digit.
“B-baby,” she chokes.
“I know darlin, I know.”
She sucks a deep breath in and then in one cry squirts everywhere; all over my tongue and my nose and my whole fucking face. I roar and lick the sugar off her thighs and cunny one last time.
My dick is fixing to blow. I didn’t bust my whole nut; barely half. My balls are tight and aching. There’s the dark urge to take control of her, to get her mouth sucking on it, but she’s no whore. I don’t see a world where I put Trina on her hands and knees for me.
I rise up and stare down at her dazed face, her legs still parted. I pull up her panties with a shaking hand.
“Crash, did I just...”
“Hush,” I tell her, pulling her into my arms.
Trina’s hand goes under my shirt and feels the muscles of my chest.
Better we stop it here, on the high note.
Better I don’t let these fantasies drag me like wild horses any further. There’s no future with her. This is just a necessary release… Leave it at that.
Around midnight the pace of my thoughts drives me away from Trina. I extract myself from our tender embrace and dress quickly. Boots, jacket, keys, phone. On second thought I take off the jacket. She might get cold again, unless that was all was a ruse to get me into bed. I smile wryly and lay the jacket on the dresser where she can see it.
Well played anyhow, princess.
I have one foot out the door when Trina moans and turns over in her sleep. “Crash,” she mumbles.
“Yeah,” I answer, but her reply is a snore.
I wonder if she’s dreaming of what we just did. If I should wake her and tell her I’ll be gone.
The moonlight’s making a slow curve on her cheek. I double back.
“Hey,” I say.
She mumbles something again and turns over.
I stare at her a long time before I slowly take out my knife. She feels nothing when I cut a small curl from her head.
The GPS in McCall’s car is still blinking back in Tippalonga right where I left it.
There’s a chance McCall could replace the tires on the Crown Vic instead of getting a new ride. I doubt he will. If he truly recognized me back there while I was dealing with Trina, it’s unlikely he’d stick around with the same vehicle when he has unlimited money to do so.
So, very likely, I’m headed back for nothing.
Roman told me that McCall is a creature of habit. He seeks familiarity. McCall’s owned that Crown Vic since he got out of jail and he spent good money restoring it. He loves that fucking car– says Roman. Refused many offers of a better one.
That’s fair and all, but creatures of habit don’t suddenly rob their boss and flee from their home in the middle of the night across state lines.
Hell, if Roman was such a great judge of character he wouldn’t have let McCall within a mile of his gold in the first place. At least he had the sense to put a trace on him.
I’d lay odds that McCall has flown the coop and left the Crown Vic crippled. That would be the smart thing to do.
But I still need to make sure. Right now the tracker is the only lead I have. My last chance to get my money.
I know that Trina’s hometown is still hot for me. There’s liable to be a stack of charges waiting over what happened with Wilson. If it’s true about that freak knowing the judge— which I have no reason to doubt—then I can’t get be caught off my square.
A few hours later I’m back in Tippalonga, circling the Serenity Motel where I left McCall and whupped the Reverend’s ass. I turn off my headlights and spin the block a few times. Everywhere is closed and not a living soul is out. Jada never did call with a tip. Figures.
As I pull into the motel lot, a solution to the Trina problem pops into my mind. It’s so simple I wonder how the hell I didn’t think of it first.
I have a cousin who lives in Colorado– cousin Betty. More like a second cousin. She’s old, with no children and about sixteen cats, as I recall, according to Sarah Jane.
I never told Sarah Jane about Trina. That’s a phonecall I am not eager for. But it will go a lot better if I’m not taking Trina back with me to Virginia.
So Trina can stay with Aunt Betty until she makes contact with this grandmother Mamie lady. If she can bear to be parted from those jewels she’ll have some money.
Problem solved.
And I’ll never see her again.
Fuck that.
McCall’s car is right where I left it. The back tires are still done in just as I expected. I check the mileage on the dash and confirm the obvious, that he hasn’t moved it since I left.
So now what?
I run through options. Really there’s just one: suss out if the target is still in that motel at all.
If yes, drag him out.
If no, go back to Trina. We could go get breakfast. Go back to the motel, to that soft bed…
I don’t want McCall to be in there. The promise of riches suddenly seems hollow; the risk too steep. But I’m a soldier. Soldiers don’t back out of an assignment.
I think of Ruby, that sweet little girl who doesn’t have anybody to take care of her.
I took this mission to set us up for life without her Ma.
But if I get killed? If I go in guns blazing and McCall shoots me dead?
And then there’s Trina.
Trina waiting for me, wondering where I’ve gone. Her tender trust in me breaking apart as she thinks I abandoned her to the road. Who will tell her I’m dead? Eventually she’ll give up waiting, and take herself out to that highway, hell bent on California. Some devil or pimp will pick her up, girl pretty as that, and hurt her.
Maybe she’ll come back here to that sniveling bastard.
I promised Ruby I would take care of her.
I promised Roman I’d find his gold.
What did I promise Trina? Nothing. I want Trina. I want Trina like air and water.
But my wants are not a priority. The mission is.
Man up, soldier.
I take my gun from the holster and move towards the motel doors. Failure’s not an option— it never was.
I reframe it in my head— a useful skill when fear threatens to overpower will. If I succeed in this mission, I set up my daughter. If I succeed, I can get stable. Give Jess what she wants and get that divorce.
I can ask Trina to be with me.
I’m halfway to the motel when pain explodes across my skull. I stumble; the ground rushes towards me like a fist. My last thought is Trina’s arms around me, ushering me to a bed of dark, soft roses.