Nickel City Crossfire, Gary Ross [ebook reader for pc and android txt] 📗

I had only myself to live for. The occasional one night stand? What did it matter? Better to break a heart early than succumb to hope. Two or three days without sleep? So what? Soon enough I would sleep forever. You get the idea.” She brought my hand up to her lips and kissed it. “But then I met you, and things were different.”

Having been told to listen, I waited for her to continue.

“Yesterday, after Keisha ran and I found your gun, I almost killed that man,” she said, finally. “I wanted to. Something I never thought I’d want to do. I know you’ve killed in self-defense, and I get that. But when I saw him on the ground, self-defense was the last thing on my mind, even as he tried to fight you. Even after he was still, I wanted to make him pay for what he did to us. If you hadn’t taken the gun, I know I would have pulled the trigger. That’s what I meant by losing me. I don’t want to lose me, but I don’t want to lose you either.”

Still, I said nothing.

She moved her head to my shoulder and reached over to touch my chest. Her fingers moved over the bumps and edges of the various supplies in the pockets of my utility jacket. “Jesus. Who gave you this thing? Bruce Wayne?”

“I’ll take it off,” I said, standing. “It’s kind of warm in here anyway.”

She remained quiet as I slipped off my jacket and lowered it to the floor but she snuggled against me when I sat back down.

“I think I’m afraid,” she said a few seconds later. “Of us. Of having feelings so intense so fast.”

“I’ll understand if you need time. Or space…”

“I don’t want time.” She took hold of my hand and squeezed. “I especially don’t want space. What I want you to understand is how it messes with my head that I was ready to kill for you.”

“I think I do.” I hoped she would take my word for it because I hated talking about the emotional firestorm of combat.

“I don’t like that feeling but I’m ready to feel it again. Does that make any sense?”

“Yes. It’s one thing to feel, another to enjoy what you felt.” I hesitated. “You’re a survivor, Phoenix. That’s why you do so well in court, why you had pre-emptive surgery. You’re determined to live. When circumstances demand it, that part of your nature kicks in, but you don’t find any pleasure in it. You just do what must be done.”

“Like you.” She chuckled. “Maybe it kicks in harder because I finally have a reason to outrun the calendar.”

“Hm.”

We stared at each other for several beats and the air shifted, going from emotion to awareness. She stood and slowly pulled me toward the bed in the corner.

The sex started gradually, then became more feverish than ever—all arms and legs and sweat, all hands and nails and clashing tongues. Desperation, heat, whimpers and finally surrender—through it all she clung to me more intensely than I would have thought possible. Her tears hit my chest when she was astride me, hit my face when she leaned down to kiss me, zigzagged down the sides of my face into my ears. Whispers of something she said for the first time echoed in my dizzy brain long after we had stopped: “I love you. I love you. I love you.”

Afterward, as I drifted toward sleep while lying on my belly, my head resting on a pillow encircled by my forearms, she half stretched herself atop me.

“Too heavy?” she said.

“Never,” I said.

“So now you know.”

“I do.”

“I didn’t intend to tell you like this. I just couldn’t keep it in anymore, not after yesterday.” She was quiet a moment, her head between my shoulder blades, a hand lightly holding my shoulder. “You don’t have to say it back, you know.” Her breath was warm on my back. “If you’re not there yet, I understand.”

“But I am there,” I said. “I love you too. A thousand kisses deep.”

“Quoting Leonard Cohen? You’re full of surprises.”

“I think that’s my last surprise for tonight. You take no prisoners in bed, baby. I’m too beat down to do anything but fall asleep.”

“It was a good beat down, though. Right?”

“Finest kind.”

51

Mid-afternoon on Christmas Day, Phoenix and I kept a promise to stop by the Simpkins home before we went to Mira’s for dinner.

Mona answered the door, wearing a godawful holiday sweater with elves and candy canes, a pair of fuzzy reindeer slippers with red noses, and a pair of felt antlers with little bells attached. As she was still recovering from her chest wound, her breathing was a bit shallow when she invited us inside. But in my brief acquaintance with her, she had never looked happier.

She smiled as I introduced her to Phoenix. “Win told me you were a real nice lady, and Keisha told me what you did for her. I can’t thank you enough.”

“No thanks necessary,” Phoenix said.

“Just the same, God’ll bless you both for being so good to us.”

Then she ushered us into the living room. A crowd of thirty or so, most in sweaters, stretched from the decorated tree by the front window to the back of the dining room. Red plastic cups in hand, they stood or sat on good furniture, folding chairs, and even the floor, engaged in conversation. Many faces I recognized like Winslow, Louisa and Oscar (who was interim minister at the church), Ike Kelly, Carl Williamson, Ileana Tassiopulos, a few Humanitas staffers, and faces from the church. Deeper in the dining room, amid faces I had never seen before, I noticed a tall, dark-skinned man in an army dress uniform. Nearby, Keisha stood laughing with Fatimah and Bianca, as Jen rested her head on Bianca’s shoulder.

Mona shushed them all and introduced us in a loud voice. “Everybody, this is Mr. Rimes and Miss Trinidad, the ones who helped bring our Keisha home.”

Whether standing or seated, they