Page 22 of When Sinners Fall
My fingers drum the tabletop, silver rings glistening under the low lights, as these men around me throw down some cards. I should be investing some free time in them like I usually do on a Friday night. Don’t mind a gamble here and there, and it doesn’t matter how much I lose anyway ‘cause no one asks me for my debt. But I'm not invested in any of this. My head's out there in back alleys and fucking.
Tonight I’ve won a tonne of money and a custom-green Mustang from someone who had nothing left to offer me. He’s lucky he’s still got his life because that’s the reason I invited him here. He's on the list. Seems I’m not in the mood for killing, though.
Another night.
I look around at them in this low-end casino we own, thinking about what I am in the mood for. I should probably be moving on from the thought of Wren. At least giving her some time to get over the fact that she just let one of the most malicious men in this state get up inside her. Don’t much feel like giving her that room to breathe, though. I could have done. I could have just left her and moved away, but she said she didn’t know who I was. Something about that crept inside my bones and annoyed the hell out of me. So I got that paper bird out and gave it to her, letting her know exactly who I was. Don't even know why I was carrying it around with me, but I was. Maybe the me in this time of my life doesn’t make paper birds for his friend, but the me twenty-something years ago did.
Friends.
A drink gets tipped down my throat, and I try thinking back on that time to see a young girl rather than the woman she’s become. Guess I’m hoping it might help me stop thinking about the one thing I’m craving again. It doesn't. Seems like I’m now a friend who fucks his friend in a back alley like she’s a common whore.
She isn’t. Never was.
“Dragon?” one of these guys says.
I shake my head, trying to get back in the moment, and look at my cards rather than stare through them. Chips get tossed from my hand to land in the centre of the table. Don’t know how much, but these types of men need to think I’m here with them. Last thing I need is this sort of evil knowing my head’s anywhere near a woman of significance.
I stand, having not won that hand, and make a move to the front of the old place to order more booze. Maybe I can drink her out of me now I’ve had her. Stupid fucking bird. Shouldn’t have given it to her. She knows now. And she’ll know everything that these streets say I am the second she starts asking around. The thought suddenly enters my brain that maybe she won’t bother.
Couldn’t be more infuriated by that if I tried.
The table’s worth of other guys are around me by the time I get my drink, all of them servile in case I’m about to get rowdy with someone because I lost a hand. I sit and take it in, and then we all start talking about something going on between some gangs out in Mexico trying their hand at trafficking. They won’t last long, not when our guys let them know that’s our territory.
The door opens as we’re talking, and the face looking into the room surprises the hell out of me. I scowl at her, shaking my head subtly the second she finds my eyes. My chin tips up and sideways slightly as I keep talking, telling her to get out of here. The fact that we have history shows her exactly what she needs to know. She’s gone in the blink of an eye, leaving no one any wiser to her meaning anything to me at all.
Checking my watch after the drink’s done, I grab the Mustang keys from the guy and get myself out of the situation I’m in to go find her. She’s sitting on top of a wall around the corner as I drive round it. I pull up slowly, watching her jean-covered legs dangling. No smile on her face, no sense of pleasure to have found me either.
I rev the engine to get her attention, then look as she glares at me. Only takes a few seconds before she's staring down at the ground again, swinging her legs back and forth.
“You could have stopped when you knew it was me,” she says, quietly.
I light a smoke and stare at those lips wavering. “I knew exactly who I was doing before it started, Wren Bird.”
Her face comes back to me, a slice of embarrassment on it, and then she widens her eyes. “It’s been you all along? Following me? Saving me?”
I frown at that, for some reason still feeling more sleazy about that than I was when I was fucking her. “You wanna come get a drink, or are we gonna do this on the sidewalk?”
“Well, I mean, why not? We’ve already done what comes after it,” she snarks as she jumps down from the wall and makes her way around the car. Damn well mutters to herself about something I can’t hear until she slides in. “Don’t know why I should, though. You were out of order.”
Not in my head, I wasn’t.
Still, my brow arches as I drive towards somewhere that’s not around here and turn the stereo up. Guess she’s only just found that information out, and she never was one for being behind the curve. “Stay low,” I say, scanning around.
She sits up taller. “Why?”
“Because. I don’t want people seeing you with me.”
“Excuse me?”
That came out wrong. “For your sake.”
“Really? You didn’t seem to care while you were fucking me in an alley.”
I spin my face to her. Those sultry greens stare straight at mine, all attitude firing. “I’m not who I was, Wren. Just keep it down low until we’re out of here.”
Part of me wants to go back there, to a time when she’d jump on my back between classes, and we’d sit and eat lunch together. But we’re not those people anymore. I’m certainly not. I’m a mean son of a bitch. One who's all kinds of screwed where women are concerned. So I stay quiet until I get outside the area and we're eventually inside a quiet bar on a back street.
The owner instantly looks like he’s on guard the second we step through the door. Not surprising, but I raise my hand to calm him down. I’m not looking for trouble tonight in any way, certainly not with her in tow.
