Page 6 of Liar & Champion
Chapter Two
LIAR
I’m a liar.
My best friend, only friend if you count people you don’t always lie to, says I’m a pathological liar, because I’m so convincing, but I’ve studied the topic extensively, and I’m more of an extremely talented compulsive liar. I can’t believe my lies, because every day reality stabs me in the leg. Literally, two inch long needle right there in my thigh that says, ‘you’re going to die.’ Ever since the twenty-first anniversary of my mother’s death from the hereditary diseases she passed to me, that jab has been extra intense. ‘You’re going to die, just like she did.’ Or ‘You stole six months of life. Take your pills and steal one more.’ I have a lot of fun talking with my needles.
Sorry. I should introduce myself properly. I’m Sunshine Ray Wilson, twenty-two and excited to start fall semester in Alabama’s finest private university. My dad worked in the research labs here, where he met my mom. You could say I was a test tube baby, only because they conceived me on some table full of iffy chemicals, not because I was planned. Nope. I was my mother’s death sentence, but like the lunatic she was, she decided that love was fate and I was the greatest gift her life hadever given her. Just as an aside, she was an even bigger liar than I am. I got my talents from her, but at least I don’t lie to myself.
I messed it up at the end there. That was too pessimistic and world-weary. I’m not jaded. Life’s too short for that kind of negativity.
I was standing on the front porch of the cute little yellow bungalow I lived in with my Aunt. She’s a doctor who specializes in pain medication, developing the very best, so I can operate with excellent motor function in spite of the drugs. I am the heaviest user I know, but I still don’t take as much as I could. There’s not enough to completely cut the pain, and like I said, life’s too short to pass it in a drooling haze.
While I was standing there, taking in the crisp beautiful fall morning, bright sunshine lighting up my yellow Camaro, the world was so beautiful that I wanted to dance. Well, life’s too short not to dance when you feel like it.
The song in my head was ‘Twistin’ the Night Away’, a song I used to dance to with my dad. He died seven years ago. He was a surgeon when he wasn’t a researcher of rare genetic diseases, but first of all, he was my dad, the best dad in the world, and I’m not even lying.
I was getting groovy on my porch when I saw him. The guy down by the road was blond, blue-eyed, and sculpted like the Greeks did it. His eyes met mine and then he smiled and I tripped on my own feet and fell over sideways. When I popped back up, he wasn’t looking at me, just carrying the stack of boxes up the walk towards the house two doors down that had been empty for a few months.
I should say hi. I should bake him cookies. I should ask him to stab my needle into my leg in the morning after an all-night hayride. Were they called hayrides? I didn’t really have conversations about sex. Why wouldn’t I be jumping on every sexy beast to ride through town? Because I’d have to findsomeone who thought that bruising and dislocations were sexy. I was what you called, ‘delicate’. Also, ew. Life’s too short to add STI’s to my long list of medical issues. Also, as old-fashioned as it was, I really wanted an afterlife in heaven with my dad and my mom. It’s old-fashioned as in ageless because people need hope when life is a bowl of hopeless. Sometimes I really feel that hope, but other times, it’s harder to think things will ever be better, but then the sun shines and a beautiful boy walks down the road and everything seems possible.
Maybe I would bake him cookies and invite him to church. We could have a sweet romance with a church wedding followed quickly by a nice church funeral. My heart skipped a beat at the thought. No, that was just my faulty valves seizing up. But the sun was shining and someone somewhere was falling in love. Just not me.
Chapter Three
CHAMPION
Idropped the last box on the floor of the extra room and surveyed my domain. The place was small but clean, and it was close enough that I could walk to the school if I didn’t want to take my motorbike. The highlight of this entire trip had been watching the adorable little blond dancing like no one was watching on her front porch. I shouldn’t have let her catch me looking, but I wasn’t used to easily spooked kittens like her. She was cute, the kind of cute that had probably had a steady boyfriend since second grade and was waiting to graduate from college for the happily-ever-after wedding.
The thought of marriage made me run a hand through my well-tousled locks. Fine, they were a mess, but no one looked good after driving a U-Haul from Vegas to Alabama without some kind of filter. A shower was what I needed. I grabbed my phone and went into the kitchen to sit at the bar on the stool that came with the place. I should probably get some furniture, but who had time for that when they were trying not to gnaw off their foot to get it out of a trap? I checked the odds on the next race Trix was in, down in Bolivia. Girl didn’t know how to take a vacation. Maybe that was her vacation, getting as far away from Horse as possible.
Someone rapped on the front door. Maybe it was the kitten bringing over a hospitable plate of cookies. I would make time for any hospitability she had in mind, although I only had a mattress on the floor in the bedroom. Did I remember sheets? I’d have to stop at a department store after my first day at school. No, I didn’t have time for fun, even if it had been months since I’d been with a woman, ever since I’d been busy fighting red tape in a battle I couldn’t win.
I opened the door to stare at the younger version of me. Daniel had arranged the housing for me, or for the Crocodile, but she was more ostentatious than this. “Not up to my usual standards,” I said without preamble, taking the iPad out of his hand and opening it. The file was up with pictures and basic statistics on each lucky debutante who my mother considered appropriate dating material for the heir to her House of Beasts. It was beyond ridiculous that she’d backed me into this kind of corner, but a champion had to know when he was defeated, and my mother, behind every inch of red tape, had let me struggle for months before she let me know the price of my freedom. Like a fool I’d taken it, gnawing off my own leg to be free of her jaws.
Daniel followed me into the kitchen, carrying a few bags of groceries. “It’s close to the school. It’s my personal rental, so don’t trash it. No brawls.”
I snorted and opened the yogurt. Daniel was more likely to lose his temper and get in a fight than I was. I didn’t fight unless I was paid for it. He had gone to school here, come to think of it. He was probably graduating with something respectable like a law degree.
I took a spoonful of pink creamy yogurt that reminded me of the girl next door. What song had she been singing so loudly? Something about burning the night away. She was a morning after kind of treat, breakfast and brunch, sunshine on white sheets, leisurely love-making that lasted for days and nights.I hadn’t been so inspired to get sheets in ages. Maybe it was my perverse nature since I was not here for fun and games, so that’s where my impulses directed me. Happily, I hadn’t been a prisoner to my impulses for years. Age and wisdom came eventually however misguided you began.
Daniel popped open a blueberry yogurt and took a bite with his white plastic spoon, the foil lid catching the morning sunshine. “What’s your timeline?”
“The season starts in October, so I have four weeks before I have to find someone who will agree to the conditions of the contract.”
“You can’t sleep with anyone else,” he said, licking the spoon. “You have to be monogamous for an entire six months, or the crocodile will rip you apart.”
I smiled at him, nice and easy, the kind of smile I gave an opponent before I ripped them apart. Daniel knew that smile and returned it just as pleasantly. My cousin shared my killer instinct and then some. “I am aware of each meticulous detail of my mother’s generous offer. But six months with one respectable woman, and she’s taking her hands off for good. It’s a sacrifice I can make.”
“It’s not a bad deal.”
I shrugged. I was thirty. Dating one woman for six months wouldn’t kill me. If my mother thought that would somehow change me and turn me into a one-woman-fool she was insane and delusional. She wanted a grandchild. It wasn’t because she had maternal instincts, but because of the super serum she didn’t want to see die with me. I would have refused her, but she had a hand in every major agency in the US government and had shown me just a taste of her more benevolent control over my business, the one I made with my two fists in fighting ring after fighting ring. I knew what she could do to my world if she wanted to be malicious, but I hadn’t expected plain old-fashioned obstruction and then the final straw, her showing up to my fight on my birth father’s arm, like they were at the opera.
I wasn’t unaware that without her ‘organization,’ things would have gone much worse after that last Three-Hundred. I didn’t want her help, didn’t need it, but if she joined them against me, my team would be knocked off one by one, unless I took Horse’s offer of alliance, but then it would be war. War with the House of Beasts meant serious casualties. No one on my team would come out unscathed. It wasn’t an option.
If I chose one deb to spend six months with, then my mother would guarantee not interfering in my affairs for the rest of my life. I needed that with more and more people relying on me for their bread. Also, it felt like a challenge. Could I stay with one woman for six entire months? Of course I could, I’d just never wanted to before. Why settle down when life is so short?
Because your mother said so.
