Poppy #2
"You're distracting me," he said.
"You were doing fine," I said.
"The pasta's going to be terrible."
"I'll survive."
He kissed me again anyway—shorter this time, decisive–then both his hands were on my waist and he was lifting me up. He placed me on the counter top beside the stove, putting me at eye level with him.
“You stay right there,” he said. “Gotta focus.”
Yeah, of course. Understood.
But I didn’t really care about dinner. I wanted him to fuck me. Very, very badly.
I watched him salt the water, watched his hands—big hands, the rings he always wore, the edge of the tattoo barely visible. I'd been looking at those hands across my desk for two years and now they were eight inches away and I was having a lot of feelings about it.
"What's the tattoo?" I asked.
He glanced down at his forearm. Then back at the stove.
"Old," he said.
"I can see that."
He waited a moment…then he reached over and pushed his sleeve up without making a thing of it, just—showed me. A skull, faded with time, gothic lettering wrapped around it.
Born to Burn.
I frowned. “That’s…kind of sad.”
“The tattoo?” he shrugged. “Yeah, it’s shitty. Got it when I was eighteen and running with the Burned Saints. It’s faded as hell, but that’s the next best thing after getting it removed completely.”
I furrowed my brow to look at it more closely, leaning in. “I was talking about the words, actually.” I reached out to run my fingers over the old ink. “A little nihilistic.”
“That was the whole culture,” he said. “Living fast, not giving a damn about the future because it wasn’t something you planned for.
” He stirred the pasta casually, like he was talking about someone else’s life.
“The Saints were a Detroit MC—not the worst of them, not the best. We rode together, got into trouble together. It felt like family when you were in it.”
“What happened?”
He glanced at me. “That’s not in my file?”
I shook my head.
“Well…” He paused. “I was twenty-three and already starting to pull back, promised my friend Harlan I’d help him out with one last job.
Armed robbery…check cashing place on the east side.
I helped him plan it, but I backed out at the last minute, and he got caught as a result.
” He turned the heat down under the sauce.
“But he had a wife and two little boys, newborn twins, so I told the cops it was all my idea, that I was there, that I supplied the guns and the intel. Because…well, it was my fault, in a way. My plan.”
I exhaled. “Johnny—”
“Ten years,” he said. “I got out at thirty-three, drove straight to Harlan’s place, and found out he skipped town right after I went in.
Left Elle and her kids all by themselves.
I’m sure she’s better off for it, sure they all are…
but it never felt like anything but a personal fuck you from the guy I thought was my best friend. ”
I was quiet for a moment, watching him stir the pasta with the same steady hands that had been on my waist ten minutes ago.
"How long before you stopped being angry about it?" I asked.
He considered that seriously. "Few years.
Maybe more." A pause. "Elle helped. She didn't have to let me in that first day—she could've looked at me through the peephole and told me to go to hell.
I wouldn't have blamed her. But she made me coffee and she listened and somewhere in that kitchen she decided I was going to be part of their lives.
" He shook his head slightly. "Hard to stay angry when someone does that. "
"She sounds remarkable."
"She is," he said simply. "Her and Kim both."
I turned that over. The whole picture of it—the plan, the robbery, ten years, driving to a door that might not have opened. Building a distillery on the other side of all of it. Teaching carpentry on Tuesday mornings at the facility where he'd done his time.
That was in his file. I'd read it and thought it was admirable and moved on to the next line item. Sitting on his counter in his kitchen while he made me pasta it hit completely differently.
"And you still go back every week,” I murmured.
He glanced at me. "Yeah."
"Why?"
"Because I remember what it felt like when nobody came." He said it without drama, matter of fact, like it was the only possible answer. "Somebody has to."
I looked at him for a long moment. This burned and bruised man with a faded gang tattoo and a cast iron pan and a case of natural wine delivered every few months because some things were worth spending money on.
"John," I said.
"Yeah?”
“How soon will dinner be ready?”
He frowned, giving me a wry look. “Mm…about five minutes, give or take? You getting hungry?”
I chewed on my lip, letting my eyes wander down his torso to his waist. “In a manner of speaking.”
He laughed low in his throat, put his hands on my waist, then stepped between my legs. I wrapped my arms around his shoulders loosely, trying not to betray how tense I was, how much I wanted this.
I wanted to be cool. I wanted to be composed.
I didn’t want to beg, but I would if I had to.
“My sob story make you horny, baby?” he purred.
Every nerve in my body lit up like a Christmas tree. “That—that makes it sound bad—”
“I don’t mind you bad.” He leaned in and kissed me deep, our mouths open, tongues tangled together. The food smelled delicious. I didn’t want it until I’d had him.
His hands slid under the hem of my sweater, warm against my waist, and I made a sound against his mouth that I was not proud of.
Then he pulled back.
Not far—just enough to look at me, his hands still on my skin, his thumbs tracing slow circles just above my hips. His eyes were dark and very certain.
"Not tonight," he said.
I stared at him. "What?"
"Not tonight," he said again.
"Johnny—"
"I invited you to dinner," he said. "I'm making you dinner.
" His thumbs kept moving, which was deeply unfair given what he was saying.
"And when I take you to bed for the first time it's not going to be because I got you a little drunk on good wine and told you my sad story and you felt sorry for me. "
"I don't feel sorry for you," I said. "I feel—"
"I know what you feel," he said. "I can feel it."
He stepped back, turned to the stove, checked the pasta like nothing had happened. I sat on his counter with my heart hammering and my sweater rucked up slightly and absolutely no idea what to do with myself.
"That's incredibly annoying," I said.
"Yeah," he agreed, not looking up. "Probably."
"You're doing this on purpose."
"I'm making you pasta on purpose," he said. "The rest of it is just—" he glanced back at me, that almost-smile, "—self control."
I looked at the ceiling.
"Plates are in the cabinet to your left," he said. "Make yourself useful."