His to Own: 50 Loving States, Arkansas Page 13

  The kid’s thin shoulders stiffen, but then he shrugs casually. “Yeah, I know,” he says. “Otherwise, I would have stole your wallet a long time ago.”

  Mason nods, taking a small sip of the very hot coffee. After all, he’s been in this kid’s shoes before. He understands the desperate planning that goes on in the head of a child who has found himself in a very shitty situation with someone he loves but can’t protect. If Mason’s mother hadn’t been a meth addict and his father’s punching bag, he might have considered taking similar action, too. But even back then, Mason knew he couldn’t save her from his father…or herself.

  “Here you go,” Jordan says, setting a paper plate of perfectly cooked bacon in front of him. “You want some eggs, too?”

  “Yeah, but let me make ‘em,” he offers.

  Jordan looks surprised, but doesn’t hesitate to take the seat Mason abandons as the older man heads to the stove.

  That should have signaled the end of the discussion. But Mason feels oddly compelled to continue, even as he cracks two eggs into the frying pan, liberally sprinkling them with salt and pepper. “You know, I been where you’re at, kid. Watched my mom get beat for years. It’s a goddamn mind fuck.”

  Jordan is quiet for so long, Mason isn’t sure he’s ever going to respond. But eventually, he asks, “So you wasn’t always big? You couldn’t protect your mom?”

  “Nope. My size comes from growing up, staying fit, and keeping the promise I made to myself that I’d never let anyone give me a beat down again.” And that’s where he really ought to end their little chat. But Mason adds, “Ain’t no such thing as a kid big enough to stop the adults in his life from doing what they gonna do. That shit shouldn’t be up to a kid to handle, anyway.”

  Another long stretch of silence. The eggs are done, but Mason takes his time sliding them out of the pan and onto the plate. He wants to give the kid a chance to chew on Mason’s words, along with the bacon.

  Jordan eventually says, “Last time Razo hit June…it was real bad. I thought she was going to die. She said she wanted to a couple times. Told me to let her go. But I begged her to stay. That’s probably the only reason she still alive...”

  The kid trails off. Then adds, “I should have gotten her out of there. I should have figured a way for us to leave.”

  Mason grips the wooden spatula hard, wishing it was his bowie knife. Wishing that slimy fucker Razo was here so he could hurt him worse than he hurt June.

  But he holds it together. For the kid. Mason gently puts the spatula down on the counter. Then he brings the plate of eggs to the boy. Keeps his voice calm as he says, “Sounds like you kept her out of some dark places, kid. That’s worth something. Giving someone a reason to live counts for a lot more than you might think.”

  “I guess…” the boy says, sounding unconvinced. But the room feels lighter now, like a shift has taken place, a weight has been removed. For them both.

  He and the kid eat the rest of breakfast in companionable silence. After a bit, Mason says, “Tell you what, I’ll drive you to school so you don’t have to bother with the bus. Just let me get dressed…”

  “Thanks!” Jordan says. Then he grins. “While you in there, take a look at your tattoo… it’s all the way healed now.”

  Wings and titanium. Mason adjusts the angle of the hand mirror so he can get a better look at the tattoo on his back. June covered the whole of back torso with a pair of thick, black wings…shaded so realistically, he can see the detailing on every single feather, the artistry in every stroke. And down the center of his back is a spinal cord. No, he realizes with narrowed eyes, not a spine, but a motorcycle drive chain made to look like a spine. Again, so finely detailed, she must have spent hours and hours looking at pictures and mocking it up on her sketch pad.

  June gave him wings. And a mechanized spine to power them. Well, fuck me…

  “She said you told her she could do what she wanted,” Jordan reminds him when Mason returns to the kitchen, stone-faced.

  Yes, that’s true. Which means June chose to see him like that. Not as a dangerous white supremacist biker, but as a man capable of flight. A man capable of rising above his past…of leaving it way the fuck behind him…

  Mason has shared a lot with Jordan today. So he’s not about to tell the kid the real reason for his expression. He knows he looks pissed off. But he’s not. This is just what his face does when he’s trying to keep his emotions in check. Because he grew up in a place, in a situation where men don’t emote. Period. No matter what.

  With a grind of his jaw Mason asks, “Who takes care of you when June needs to go out at night?”

  Jordan sucks on his teeth. “I ain’t never had a babysitter in my life.”

  “That’s not what I’m asking you, kid.”

  “I’m ten!” Jordan says in the same tone a forty-year-old might use to get out of being carded.

  “And…?”

  “And I’m too old to have a babysitter.”

  “Alright, whatever,” Mason says testily. “So can you disappear tonight? Maybe go back to your friend’s house?”

  “I’m good at making friends,” Jordan says. “I got a lot of places I can go.”

  Though Mason suspects the kid’s talent for finding places to go in a crisis was born out of need rather than natural inclination, it sure does sound like a brag. “So that means you can find someplace else to stay tonight?” Mason asks again, tone flat.

  “Yeah…” the kid answers. But then he asks, “You trying to get rid of me?”

  Jordan’s tone is light and joking, but his eyes have gone old again. Mason can tell the boy is sitting on some fear. Wondering, like June wondered last night, if he can truly trust Mason.

  Lucky for him, the answer to that question is yes.

  “No, I ain’t trying to get rid of you,” Mason replies. “I’m trying to do something nice for your sister. To thank her for the tattoo.”

  “She’s not—” Jordan begins, more or less confirming what Mason already suspects. But then the kid grins, as if just now processing the rest of Mason’s sentence. “Well, in that case, if you trying to be nice to June, the new FIFA game just came out. If you get it for me, I’ll go over to my friend Danny’s house and play it on his system.”

  It’s blackmail, pure and simple. But Mason doesn’t care. Because June is worth it. “Alright, kid, it’s a deal.”

  Chapter 19

  June

  Thank goodness I’m working a later shift this morning, June thinks as she rushes around her bitterly cold bedroom, trying to get ready for work. Not only did she not get Jordan ready for school, she has little more than an hour until she’s supposed to clock in at Cal-Mart. And thanks to last night’s…activities, Mason never did get around to fixing her bike.

  “You got work today, huh?”

  Speak of the devil. June looks up to see the man responsible for her late rise walk into the bedroom.

  She nods, watching as he begins his strange ritual of sliding open the patio door, along with all the bedroom windows—the ones she’d only closed a few minutes ago after waking up in a freezing room.

  “You don’t have to rush,” he says when he’s done. “I’ll drive you to work this morning since your bike’s out of commission. Actually, scratch that. I’m going to drive you to and from work from now on. No, June. No…don’t shake your head at me. It ain’t up for discussion. Me taking a shower with you—that we can discuss. You biking to work by yourself anymore—that topic’s closed.”

  Before she can protest again, he says, “Oh, and grab something to wear after work. We’re going out tonight.”

  Which is how June ends up discovering the joys of shower sex…and then later that night, finding herself sitting across from him at a little French restaurant called Chez something or other.

  Who knew she’d feel even more awkward around Mason now than she did night before, when he spent hours fucking her so thoroughly, she could barely stand at work. Or stop thinking abo
ut all the things they’d done together, all the things he’d taught her with just a few rough words.

  Chez Whatever is a very romantic place, with small tables covered in crisp white linens, and twinkling fairy lights strung across the room’s brick walls. June and Mason are surrounded by couples who look nothing like them. Those other folks seem relaxed and refined in their tailored shirts and chic dresses, their overly white teeth shining brightly as they laugh at anecdotes and smile knowingly at one another. In contrast, Mason wears what looks like his nicest black t-shirt under a black motorcycle jacket he bought after the weather turned cold while June wears a blue maxi dress she found on the sales rack in the women’s section at Cal-Mart.

  And if that didn’t make her feel uncomfortable enough, the elegantly printed menu—on which she recognizes nothing but the prices—does the trick.

  Mason orders a beer, she orders a water.

  “Sparkling or still,” the waiter asks.

  “Still,” she answers, hoping that means tap.

  The waiter returns with their drinks. June is surprised to see her water comes in a very fancy looking sealed glass bottle that the waiter opens and ceremoniously pours for her. She wonders how much that’s going to cost. But June interrupts her worries to focus on what the waiter is saying. He’s running through an elaborate list of the daily specials—she thinks the dish descriptions would be mouth-watering, if only she recognized any of the food.

  Mason appears to be having the same challenge. “How about steak?” he blurts out, interrupting the waiter. “I want steak. Can you do that? Rare?”

  “Of course,” the waiter responds in a gracious tone. He turns to June. “And for you, madam?”

  Her confused look must be answer enough. “I’ll give you a few more minutes with the menu,” he offers, turning to leave.

  But a few more minutes doesn’t really do a thing.

  June finally decides to order a steak, too. But when she raises her head from the menu to tell Mason, she can see he looks even more uncomfortable than she is. He’s tugging at his t-shirt collar, casting forlorn looks at the tables next to the restaurant’s huge front window. He’d asked for one of those spots as soon as they walked in, even offered to wait as long as it took for one to free up. But the hostess told him they were booked solid for the evening.

  Mason tears his eyes away from the window. He takes a long swig from the glass of Chimay the waiter brought him, grimaces…then looks toward the window again.

  “Mason…?” June asks.

  “Yeah?” he answers, still staring towards the front of the room.

  “If I pay for the drinks we ordered, can we go somewhere else?”

  “Fuck yes,” he immediately replies, whipping out his wallet like he’s been waiting all this time for her to say the word. He throws down a couple of bills, as if he didn’t hear her offer to pay for the drinks. “Where do you want to go?”

  She thinks about it. “You prefer the outdoors, right?”

  “Yeah,” he admits with a sheepish half grin.

  “Then let’s go outside.”

  “This was a great idea,” Mason says less than an hour later as they walk through Calson Botanical Gardens.

  June can’t take full credit for the idea. For two weeks straight, she’d spent her fifteen minute breaks in the Cal-Mart employee break room, seated across from a flyer advertising the annual “Drink the Garden” event at the botanical gardens, hosted by none other than Holt Calson himself. So, as that father from the other lifetime might have punned, it had been all but planted in her head.

  But in any case, Mason seems fully at peace among the wildly mixed crowd of hipsters, business people, and senior citizens.

  June had spent most of the day feeling nervous about their upcoming date. She worried Mason would expect her to talk with him again after all they’d shared the night before. But he seems perfectly at ease. Content to take a quiet walk with her around the garden while she nurses a bottle of water, and he takes deep swigs from a bottle of good old American pale ale (courtesy of the Ozark Brewing Company, one of the event’s sponsors).

  June is feeling content, too.

  “What do you mean?” a harsh male voice cracks through the quiet evening, surprising them both. “What are you trying to say?”

  She and Mason stop, listen. June doesn’t want to eavesdrop…but the intensity of the tone sets alarm bells off in her head.

  “Holt, I don’t want to hurt you,” a softer voice says. “I—”

  “You thought you could keep this from me,” the man interrupts before the woman can finish. “How long? How long did you plan to hide this?”

  There’s no response.

  The man’s voice comes again, sounding low and mean. “I will destroy you for this.”

  “Holt! Please, please try to understand—” the woman sounds desperate, and June’s palms are beginning to sweat in anxious sympathy.

  “Don’t tell me to try and understand! There’s no understanding what you’ve done.”

  Holt. June’s eyes widen. Surely it can’t be Holt Calson, the new Cal-Mart CEO. Then again, Holt isn’t a very common name…and he is hosting the event.

  “Holt, please calm down. Please listen to me…listen! I need you to—”

  “Do you really think I give a good goddamn what you need? After what you’ve done? Save it. Anything else you have to say to me can go through my lawyers.”

  “Holt, please! Holt!” The woman sounds desperate, but her pleas seem to fall on deaf ears.

  June hears heavy footsteps, and a figure storms around the corner. She feels a jolt of shock when she realizes that yes, that’s definitely Holt Calson. He looks exactly like he does in all the photos she’s seen of him in company brochures and newsletters. Clean-cut. Classic. Tall and lean. The Little Prince, all grown up and with a good fitness plan. The only thing that doesn’t match the photos is the current expression on his face, darker than the raven she inked on Mason’s chest.

  She stares at him, but he pushes past them both without so much as an “excuse me.”

  “That was…dramatic,” Mason notes in the brief silence that follows the incident. “But, c’mon, we don’t have to let his drama ruin our good time.”

  He holds out a hand to her and she takes it, moving forward with him through the Japanese garden. Only to encounter the sound of weeping as they come upon the little red bridge arched over the garden’s koi pond. On it is a woman, hunched over the railing, shoulders shaking as she cries into her hands.

  She must hear them approach because she abruptly stops. And like a rabbit, she dashes off in the opposite direction, disappearing down the path before June can get a good look at her. She has no idea who she is. Or why the Cal-Mart CEO was yelling at her.

  “Huh,” Mason pauses, looking as perplexed as June feels with his deeply furrowed brow. “Any ideas what that was all about?”

  She shakes her head and they start walking again.

  “That was Holt Calson, right?”

  June nods. That’s the only part of the mystery she can definitively clear up for him.

  They come to a stop on the small bridge freshly abandoned by Holt and the woman. She and Mason slip back into a companionable silence, the soothing sound of crickets filling the cool night air. June wishes it was still light enough to see the beautiful fish in the pond below. She has always loved the shimmering golds and whites and oranges of koi.

  After a few minutes of silent contemplation, June says, “You don’t just like being outside. Being indoors upsets you.”

  It’s more of an observation than a question, but Mason answers like it’s the latter. “Upset ain’t the right word. It’s…weird for me. But that ain’t the right word either. I guess you could say I feel trapped. Being in closed up rooms makes me feel like I did that time in the bath.”

  A beat passes, and he starts speaking again, this time in a much quieter tone. “You know what Razo did to you…burning you with the cigarette? My dad used
to do that to me all the time. Hit me, too. Especially after my mother died.”

  Mason chuckles, but there’s no mirth in it. It’s more like something he’s doing to release or dismiss pain.

  “His brother—my cousin D’s dad—was just as mean. But he was also a survivalist. He could have been on that survival show Jordan watches, easy. My uncle even taught me and D to hunt. But my dad, well he had a cushy position on the SFK board. Never spent any real time outdoors unless it was to settle a score with another gang. I guess somewhere along the way, I decided if my dad was always inside, then I was always going to be outside. Where he couldn’t get me.”

  June thinks about his story. About his past. “Mason?”

  “Yeah?”

  “What does the D stand for in your cousin’s name?”

  Long pause. Then even more quietly, “Dixon. Me and him were born in the same week. I guess our dads thought it’d be funny...naming us like that.”

  Old history lessons from that other lifetime come back to her, and June puts the names together. Wow. The silence between them becomes less companionable, more loaded.

  “Mason?” she says again.

  “Yeah?”

  “Why did you buy me from Razo?”

  June can barely see him in the darkened garden, but from the way he shifts and turns his head away, she can tell he’s uncomfortable. Still, he eventually answers. “I can’t say for sure. I kind of surprised myself when I did it.”

  June thinks about what Razo said during her confrontation with him at Cal-Mart. She has to ask, “Do you have slave fantasies? I mean, is this—”

  “No! It ain’t nothing like that,” Mason cuts her off with a sharp shake of his head. “I really don’t know what this is. Can’t explain it. But it ain’t anything to do with slaves. I just…I wanted you, is all. From the moment you stepped in front of me and my gun. And I knew the only way I could convince Razo to give you up was talking to him in a language he would understand: money.”