Chapter Fourteen
Selene
Isat on the porch outside the clubhouse, alone except for a half-empty bottle of Four Roses and the low croak of the neighbor’s swamp cooler.
The old wooden steps creaked with memory; the kind of memory that bled into the soles of your boots and stayed there, stinking like gunpowder and sweat.
My left leg throbbed with the dull, sullen ache of a wound that would not heal, but I liked the pain.
It kept the world clear, and kept my mind from wandering to places I’d never see again.
There was no traffic at this hour, not even a cat slipping down the alley.
Vegas was asleep or dead or both. I leaned back, let the chair tip onto two legs, and smoked a cheap cigarette.
Every drag filled my lungs with bitterness.
Every exhale painted the dark with little ghosts.
I thought of all the girls who’d come and gone through these doors, some dead, some worse, and wondered if I’d made any of them better off. If they remembered me at all.
The sound came sudden—a single Harley engine, somewhere in the distance, climbing the gear and then coasting.
I froze, ears sharp, heart stuttering. I didn’t need to see the lights to know who it was.
I’d tuned my body to that pitch, Zeke’s pitch, and when he finally appeared at the end of the road, engine growling through the desert hush, I almost laughed.
Instead, I flicked the cigarette and let it die in the sand.
He parked at the foot of the porch, not bothering with the kickstand, just letting the bike list against the steps.
His jeans were black, bloodstained, and his shirt was open at the neck and splattered.
He walked up slow, every third step hitching from where the bullets had chewed through his ribs, but he didn’t show pain.
Only the dead learned how to hide it that well.
He looked up, met my eyes, and for a second the world was static, a freeze-frame, just two animals caught in the same trap. I was a fool for falling for a man so quickly, but he’d shown his true colors, colors I wanted to wear.
“You alive?” I said, voice rough.
He grinned, but it was more of a skull than a smile. “Barely. You look worse.”
I gestured with the bottle. “Sit,” I said. “Drink.”
He collapsed onto the steps, wincing. “You ready for all the shit coming your way?”
“Buck’s dead. You’re here. That means we’re fucked?”
He took the whiskey, drank deep, then stared at the horizon, letting the silence fill in all the things we’d never say out loud. His hair was slicked with sweat, flecked with dried blood at the temples. Up close, his wounds were bad, bleeding through the bandages.
“You see Simone?” I asked, voice soft.
He nodded, not looking at me. “Once she has the death certificates, she’s going to sell every last Jack Smalls item. There’ll be nothing left.”
I watched his hands. The knuckles were raw. I remembered the way they’d felt on my back, on my hips. I wanted them there again, wanted to be marked, but tonight the need was different. Deeper.
I leaned forward, caught his gaze. “What now?”
He set the bottle down and wiped his mouth. “Now I wait, but I had to see you again before they came.”
“The police?”
He nodded. “And everyone else. I left a mess. Even by Vegas standards, it’s a mess.”
I stared at the empty night, the way the sodium lights around the compound painted everything with a sickly yellow. “You want this to work?”
He looked at me, really looked. For a second, I saw the kid he must’ve been, before the scars, before the city hollowed him out. Then it was gone.
“You sure?” he said. “No second thoughts?”
I shook my head. “At least we know what we’re in for. No surprises.”
He breathed out, the kind of breath that hurt on the way up. “I killed him, Selene. I killed my father.” There was no apology in it. Just the truth, heavy as a cinder block.
I reached over, took his hand, and squeezed until the pain flashed in his eyes. “You had to,” I said. “Some things, you just have to do.”
We sat like that, hands knotted, the smell of old whiskey and new blood thick between us. I felt the cut on my leg start to ooze again, warm against the denim.
Zeke looked up, chin set. “We got maybe half an hour before the cops swarm this place. More if Simone worked her magic.”
“We should go inside,” I said.
He nodded, then pulled me to my feet. Our bodies touched, heat and salt and nothing else. We stood close, not kissing, not talking, just breathing the same air.
He smelled like leather, iron, and the inside of a hospital. I pressed my face into his neck, tasted the sweat, the blood. He flinched, then pulled me closer.
“You ever wish you’d been someone else?” he whispered.
“No,” I said. “But I wish I’d met you sooner.”
He kissed me then, hard and wet, the kind of kiss that says we may not get another chance. I bit his lip, drew blood, and he growled, gripped the back of my head, and kissed harder. When we broke, I was shaking.
“Inside,” he said again.
We left the bottle, and the ghosts, and went inside.
The hallway was empty, a graveyard of bad lighting and dried blood smears nobody had bothered to clean.
Every step echoed off the walls, bouncing back at us like we were ghosts haunting our own afterparty.
Zeke didn’t let go of my hand, not even when we passed the front room where the TV glowed with silent news, the ticker running names of men we’d outlived.
I felt his blood warm and slippery between our fingers, mixing with mine until there was no telling where one of us ended.
We moved fast, past the old poker room, through the kitchen, and up the back stairs. I unlocked my door and slammed it behind us, the noise shaking the cracked drywall. Zeke dropped his jacket, slumped against the dresser, and grinned at me through split lips.
“Sit,” I said. “Let me see.”
He kicked off his boots and peeled his shirt, slow at first, then all at once, like it burned him to have it touch his skin.
The wounds were bad. Two round holes, one through the meaty part of his pec, the other higher, torn and purple with angry bruising.
They’d patched him up, but the blood still oozed, soaking through butterfly bandages and matte-black ink.
I wanted to touch, to clean, to make it better, but that wasn’t what he wanted. Wasn’t what I wanted, either.
He reached for me, dragging me into his lap, hands digging into my ass like he could fuse us together. I straddled him, legs shaking from the run and the pain and something that felt like grief but wasn’t. Maybe it was hope. Maybe it was just fear.
I kissed him hard, tasted the copper in his mouth, and let it cut my tongue.
He gripped my thigh, grinding his palm into the place where the bullet had caught me, and I hissed, half with pain, half with the way it made my whole body light up.
I bit his jaw, licking the line where sweat met stubble, and he shuddered, lifting me higher on his lap.
We tore at each other, ripping buttons, popping seams, nothing elegant, nothing slow. He yanked my jeans down, fingers rough on my skin, and I gasped when the denim scraped the wound. I wanted to hurt, wanted to feel everything. I wanted to burn this into my head for the next ten years.
When I was naked, I turned to the mirror above the dresser, watched the reflection of two broken animals, smeared with blood, too stubborn to quit.
My hair stuck to my cheek, matted with sweat and spit.
Zeke’s hands left red fingerprints on my thighs, and when he slid them between my legs, I flinched and then didn’t.
He didn’t ask if I wanted it. I didn’t ask if he could.
He lifted me, lined up, and pushed inside, slow just long enough to make me ache for more.
I rode him, grinding down, feeling the heat and the slide, the sting of his hips on my bruises.
Every thrust ground my clit against him, and I clenched hard, digging my nails into his back, leaving crescents in the muscle.
His mouth went to my shoulder, biting down, not soft but vicious, and I bucked, feeling the pain spike through my chest and into my cunt.
He came up for air, lips trailing down to the place where my breast met the curve of my ribs, biting there, too.
I moaned, not caring who heard, maybe wanting the whole place to know we were still alive.
I felt the edge coming, that hot white tunnel vision that every woman desired, and I raked my hands up his chest, clawing for purchase.
My thumb caught the edge of his wound, the higher one, and the patch tore with a wet sound.
Blood gushed, black in the dim light, and for a split second, I almost pulled away.
But he just growled, grabbed my ass, and slammed me down harder, like he wanted to bleed on every inch of me.
I came, hard and ugly, crying out as the blood slicked down his chest and pooled in the groove of his abs.
He kept going, kept fucking, face twisted with something between agony and bliss.
When he came, it was violent, every muscle locked, eyes screwed shut, teeth bared.
He slammed his head back, the thump of his skull against the wall loud as a gunshot.
We stayed like that, panting, clinging, the scent of sweat and blood heavy as a storm.
I looked down, watched the blood trickle between us, mixing with spit and the rest, running in lazy streaks to the edge of the chair.
My thighs were painted with it, my hands, my chest. It didn’t scare me.
It made me hungry, made me feel more real than I ever had.
Zeke caught my face in his hands, smearing blood on my cheeks, and kissed me. Not soft, not gentle. However, this time, there was no violence involved. Just the understanding that this was the only way we knew how to love.
He pulled me tight, hands shaking, breath ragged. “If this is it,” he whispered, “I’m glad it’s you.”