Page 86 of Fury

Jasmine and coriander wafted by me for a moment. Her latest perfume. I closed my eyes and held it in.

Gone.

An ache stabbed at my insides. Too brief, too quick.

I had to deny myself. Again. Denied like I’d been as a kid. Thatkid. What should have been mine was taken away over and over again. And now that I had something, someone wonderful, in order to preserve it I had to deny it. Reject it.

My stomach twisted, my jaw clenching against the ugly tide of emotion and anger. I wasn’t sure when I’d be able to get back out here to see her. Reich was on my ass and obviously more suspicious of me than usual since Med’s accusations. I had to be even more careful. I wouldn’t put Serena in a vulnerable position.

If Reich ever found out, if he ever found her, he’d deliver her back to Med with a smile on his face and come up with a great way to punish me. I’d probably be applauded for my balls, but at the end of the day, it’d be deemed a crazy bad move.

Fuck, none of that mattered now. All that mattered was that she was gone. It took all the strength I had not to look after her as she walked past.

Skid let out a low whistle. “Fuuuuuck. I’ve seen more hot women around today. Shit.”

My muscles tightened. “Huh?”

He gestured to two blondes on the other side of us who both grinned at his blatant attention. Attention they liked. I released the breath I’d been holding.

Skid shook his head. “So fucking hot. Come on, man, let’s go. I suddenly need to get laid. You’re gonna need me to put in a good word for you with the girls, ‘cause that face of yours...” Another raw, loud laugh.

I pulled tight on the goddamn ponytail again, and the cold wind raced over my exposed neck and slid inside me. The world slowed down around me, and I was at its center, stuck, standing still.

I jammed my hands in my pockets and forced my legs to move. “I could use a drink.”

We left the hotel behind us. I left my woman behind us, my heart and soul. Everything inside me shuttered down like a house under a sudden hurricane warning.

Windows taped and boarded.

Evacuate.

Abandon.

When the hell would I see her again?

22

Finger and I managed tocontinue seeing each other—irregularly, very irregularly—but we managed it. Three years had passed, and I’d moved out of Tania’s apartment and gotten my own place in the same neighborhood. A teeny tiny studio, but it was all mine. I set up a second-hand sewing machine I’d bought on a long table in the center of the space. At any time of day or night I’d sketch and pin patterns and cut and make a mess while Etta James sang for me on my portable CD player, and I loved it.

I decorated with Tania’s help and made pretty things out of the simple, sometimes broken objects around me, just like my grandmother had done for me. I missed Grandma.

My own mother never had the time or the inclination for such creativity. She’d glance at me and Grandma, our heads bent over a piece of embroidery, as she’d be getting dressed to head back to the bar. “That’s nice for some,” she’d mutter, slipping on her high heels, that eternally pissed-off look etched on her face, a cigarette hanging from her lips. “But the rest of us have to live in the real world.” My grandmother would ignore those swipes, only taking in a tiny tight breath as she continued showing me her needlework. On her way out the door, Mom would always mumble a “Later” to us, as if it were some kind of promise of better things, but it was a later that would never come.

Once things got busy for me with school, I wasn’t able to hang out with Ciara as much as before, which was just as well as far as Finger was concerned. At school I met photographers and models through my various internships, and I volunteered to style their shoots which eventually turned into paying jobs. I kept my job at the store and was now the weekend manager. There, I learned about the business of running a business, about marketing and the art of designing a great storefront window, cultivating clients and keeping them.

Plenty of attractive guys buzzed around at school, at work, at the parties I went to, but none of them were My Man. Every sexy come on smile, every gym-trained body, clever twist of phrase, and suggestive look had a certain appeal, but none had any power over me. Only he did. Only Finger could unwind me with a look, destroy me with a touch, tangle me with a hoarse whisper against my skin.

Being true to him wasn’t a hardship. It was the way it was.

Finger got me a cell phone when he got himself one, and he either called me a lot or not at all for stretches of time. I would offer to meet him somewhere halfway between wherever he was and Chicago, but he’d always refuse to let me take the chance to travel alone. He was traveling a lot, rising the ranks of his club, proving his dependability, his resourcefulness. And ruthlessness, I had no doubt.

We’d had a close call that one time when he’d used his signal to tell me to stay away, that our rendezvous was cancelled and to not contact him until he did. He’d put his long hair up in a ponytail, something he rarely did. That spooked me. A reminder that neither of us could ignore. Being happy was dangerous for us. Happy together meant letting our guard down. It meant fucked up consequences for us. We would never ever be safe to live freely. We couldn’t ever get comfortable, we had to stay vigilant.

I would never forget that afternoon. I’d walked past Finger and the biker he was with in front of that hotel and tracked down Tania and Neil at a restaurant. I spent the night club hopping with them, forcing myself to appear to be having fun, not a care in the fucking world. I got drunk on purpose and crashed at Tania’s apartment for the whole weekend. It took me days to get over the anxiety and the disappointment of having been so close to him, of seeing him again, and yet having to walk away as if he were invisible. I felt invisible. My heart hollow.

Up until that aborted meeting, I’d been feeling almost normal, content even. Afterwards, I’d eventually managed to settle into a routine again. Three years had gone by since then, the best three years of my life, and I’d almost forgotten to keep looking over my shoulder.

Almost.

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