We all watched him as he tore down the lane, gravel spitting out from his tires of his rental car, then the policeman turned back to us.
He stuck a hand out to Tate and said, “Marty Fink.”
Tate took his hand, they shook and Tate muttered, “Marty.”
They dropped hands and the cop glanced around us all. “Sorry about that, had to follow up.”
“Your job. Not a problem,” Tate said.
“Is it really cool Dad meets you for a beer at The Station?” Marty asked hopefully as Mack handed Tate a Coke and they both popped the tabs.
“Yeah, man, but we ain’t hangin’ out. We gotta get back to the hospital,” Tate answered then took a pull on his Coke.
“When you goin’?” Marty asked.
“Leavin’ in fifteen, twenty,” Mack answered.
“All call Dad,” Marty muttered and then his eyes went to Tate. “You’ll make his year.”
Tate didn’t reply; he just lifted his chin.
Marty raised his hand in a half wave. “Again, sorry folks.” He looked at me. “Hope he burns out and realizes he’s actin’ like an ass and you can just keep on…” he paused and glanced at Tate before finishing, “keepin’ on.”
“Thanks,” I smiled at him.
Marty’s eyes got serious and he stated, “Jackson was a cop, now a bounty hunter, I think he gets this but if you don’t… that guy gets in your face again, you go to the police.”
“It won’t be an issue,” Tate put in.
Marty nodded to Tate but repeated, “He gets in her face again, you get her to go to the police.”
“Right,” Tate replied, Marty nodded again, looked at us all, gave another half wave, turned and walked away.
“Tatum fuckin’ Jackson,” Mack said and everyone turned to look at Tate who was studying Mack.
“What was that all about?” Caroline asked, getting close.
“First round draft pick, Philadelphia Eagles, do I remember right?” Mack asked Tate and I felt my eyes get wide as I stared at Tate.
“Yeah,” Tate answered.
“Star at Penn State, Eagles traded picks to get you, the whole fuckin’ state adopted you as a native son,” Mack went on.
Tate sighed then said, “Yeah.”
“Holy cow,” Carrie breathed.
Mack seemed not to hear Carrie, put a big hand on Tate’s shoulder and gave him a squeeze. “Bad shit, man. Remember it. Saw the game. Sucked.”
“Long time ago,” Tate muttered as Mack’s hand dropped.
“What sucked?” I asked and Tate’s eyes came to me but Mack spoke.
“End of his second game, pro ball, he got crushed after recovering a fumble he forced and ran back for a TD, got nailed in the endzone, late hit. Guy blew out his knee.”
“Pro ball?” I whispered.
“Long time ago,” Tate repeated.
“Pro ball?” I repeated back.
Tate turned to me. “Ace –”
I interrupted him. “You played professional football?”
“For two games,” Tate replied.
I was unable to process this therefore kept repeating myself. “You played professional football?”
Tate’s hand came to my waist and slid around to my back, guiding me closer to him as he did. “For two games a long time ago,” he repeated quietly.
I was thinking I really did not know Tatum Jackson when I focused on his face and it hit my fogged brain I knew one thing about him. That one thing was how to read his face and his face said he didn’t want to talk about this.
Then again, you’re a first round draft pick professional football player and your career is cut way short when some guy blows out your knee, you end up back in a nowhere town like Carnal working in a bar part-time, as a bounty hunter the rest of it, that wasn’t a particular glory day you wished to spend a great deal of time reflecting upon.
I got closer and pressed my front to the side to Tate’s long body.
Then I looked at Caroline and Mack and declared on a total lie, “I’m starved.”
* * * * *
I was sitting cross-legged on the bed in our hotel room wearing one of my new pairs of pajamas. Little peach, knit short shorts and a matching, tight, shelf-bra cami. The neckline of the cami had the same color lace threaded through with a thin, darker peach satin ribbon that tied in a tiny, little bow at my cleavage.
I was also staring at my cell phone that Tate had given me before going into the bathroom. I’d totally forgotten about it. He’d had it all this time, turning it off to get on the plane and I’d just turned it back on for the first time since yesterday.
It was after we had lunch at The Station where Carrie and Mack spent some of the time happily reliving Tate getting in Brad’s face yesterday, some of it interrogating us about the incident that morning and then the rest of it regaling Tate with all the reasons Brad was an asshole. It was after Tate (and the rest of us) shared a beer with John Fink, Officer Marty Fink’s father and a man who seriously liked his Nittany Lions football but seemed to like Tate even better. It was after we went back to the hospital and got second ten minute visits while Dad was awake and could talk a bit but was still scary weak. It was after we went out to dinner with Mom and Norma where this time Mom and Norma got in a fight with each other as to who would pay and, as they did, Mack excused himself on the fake errand of going to the bathroom and paid while they weren’t paying attention which meant, when they found out, both Mom and Norma busted his balls while Caroline and I rolled our eyes at each other and Tate grinned. It was after Norma went home and after we got to the hotel. It was after Mom went to her room to hit the hay and catch up on sleep seeing as they told her they were moving Dad out of ICU tomorrow and it was all looking good. Not to mention, she was consistently tussling with the men in her daughters’ lives about who was going to pay for what and she unrepentantly pulled the guilt card by explaining to both Tate and Mack it was flat tuckering her out. And it was after Mack, Carrie, Tate and I had a couple of drinks in the hotel bar.
We’d come up to our room, I’d changed in the bathroom, washed my face, brushed my teeth and moisturized and, when I walked out, Tate was heading in and he handed me my phone.
“Forgot, babe,” he muttered then went into the bathroom and closed the door.
I sat on the bed and turned on my phone. Then I scrolled through missed calls. Then I froze and stared at my phone.
Tate came out of the bathroom with two buttons of his jeans undone, his belt hanging loose. Before I went into the bathroom, he’d taken off his boots and socks. Now he stood by the built-in luggage rack and lifted his arms, putting his hands between his shoulder blades, and tugged off his shirt.
I stared at the eagle. He dropped his shirt on the bag and turned.
“I got a bunch of calls,” I informed him as he walked to me.
He stopped at the foot of the bed and leaned down, placing one fist on either side of my hips and also his face within two inches of mine.
“Yeah?” he asked quietly.
I ignored his face being that close, his lips being that close and his chest being bare (and that close).
“Two from Wendy, two from Betty, one from Sunny, one from Krys and…” my voice dropped to a whisper and I swallowed before finishing, “five from Wood.”
Instantly Tate straightened and slid the phone from my fingers. Surprised at his quick movements, mutely I watched as his thumb slid across the screen then he put the phone to his ear. Still silent I watched as he stood there with a fist to his hip and waited.
Then he said, “No. Jackson.” Pause then, “Yeah, I’m on her phone. I’m also in a hotel room in Indy with her sittin’ on the bed and I’m callin’ you on her phone. You get why that is?” I blinked and started to come unstuck, mainly because Tate’s aggressive tone was penetrating the exhausted, confused at life, freaked out haze that had enshrouded me. “No,” I heard Tate say, “you can’t talk to her but you can listen to me. That shit you pulled while I wa
s away, not… fuckin’… cool. We got a problem. We had a worse problem yesterday but lucky for you, since then, I’ve had her, she’s moaned sweet for me three times so I’m feelin’ in a better mood.”
At these words, the haze disintegrated, I came fully alert and I launched myself from the bed at him, exclaiming, “Tate!”
He caught me on the fly with an arm around my waist and held my front tight against his side, leaning his torso and head back to escape me reaching out to the phone, something he could do with his height which ticked me right off.
“Oh yeah, Wood, when I get back, we’re havin’ words and you better fuckin’ believe it’s gonna be face-to-face,” Tate growled, pulled the phone from his ear, hit a button with his thumb and tossed it on the bed.
I watched it land then yanked free of his arm and squared off.
“I cannot believe you just did that,” I snapped.
Tate’s eyes stayed locked to mine. “Believe it, Ace.”
“I was seeing him!” I retorted. “You think maybe I should have been the one to talk to him?”
“No, I fuckin’ don’t.”
“Well I do!” My voice was rising. “You just told him –”
“I fucked you,” Tate cut me off. “Yeah, I did. I wasn’t so pissed, I’d have gone into detail at how you lit up for me, how hungry you get, how slick and tight your pussy is and how fuckin’ hot you sound when you come. He ain’t ever gonna have that but I know he has a good imagination, I’d be sure to give him enough to see him through.”
I stared at him, mouth agape.
Then I breathed, “You didn’t just say that.”
“I did and I wasn’t lyin’,” Tate returned.
I leaned toward him and snapped, “What’s your problem?”
“I was on the hunt and back home a man moved on what was mine. That’s my problem,” Tate declared.
“I wasn’t yours!” I shot back.
Tate’s eyes narrowed on me and he looked like he was getting even more pissed. “You were, babe, I told you, I got home, you were on the back of my bike.”
There it was, Carrie was right, that back of his bike business obviously meant more than a date.
“I don’t speak biker, Tate!” I snapped. “I had no idea what you were talking about.”
He took a step toward me and whispered, “Bullshit, Ace, after that kiss you knew exactly what I was talkin’ about and Wood knew exactly where I was at which brings us to why the fuck I come home and you two are tight.”
“I didn’t know what you were talking about,” I asserted. “What I did know is that you left, you didn’t tell me you were going and you didn’t call me once while you were gone.”
“Call you?” he asked as if the concept of telephones was foreign to him.
“Yes, Tate,” I replied then went on sarcastically, “ring ring, hello, I’m alive!”
I could tell right away that Tate wasn’t a big fan of sarcasm.
“Tone it down, babe,” he advised softly but dangerously. “You aren’t the injured party in this scenario.”
“I’m afraid I disagree seeing as you took off without a word, stayed gone for a month, again without a word and thought you could come back and I’d be waiting for you even with all that.”
“I remember that night pretty clearly, Lauren, and I remember I told you I had to focus,” Tate reminded me.
“I remember that too but I still don’t know what it means,” I shot back.
“I got shit goin’ down in my life,” he bit out. “I needed to be in my truck, on the trail of a murderer at the same time not seein’ to that shit and hemorrhaging more money seein’ as I was workin’ that on my own time and my own fuckin’ dime like I needed a fuckin’ hole in my head. You,” he jerked a finger in my face, “were a distraction.”
“A distraction?” I whispered, not feeling happy about that word and really not feeling happy about his finger in my face.
“Life is choices, Ace. I went with the choice I wanted, I wouldn’t have been on the road tryin’ to hunt down a killer. I’d have been home explorin’ shit with you. I call you, I lose focus, I forget what’s the right thing to do and do what I wanna do,” he told me and I felt a shiver slide through me and it was contradictory to the not feeling happy feeling I had moments before. “I told you I needed to focus. I told you I got back, you were on my bike. I made myself clear. In the end, it was all a fuckin’ waste of time, I get home after a month of findin’ a lot of nothin’ that cost a lot of cake to find and you’re mouthin’ off to me about what fuckin’ Wood told you.”
“Maybe we should talk about that,” I whispered but I did it hesitantly because he was making sense (though in my defense, I really didn’t speak biker, so he actually didn’t make himself clear but neither of us knew that at the time). I was realizing I might have made a big mistake and I wasn’t eager to discover I’d made more mistakes but I felt perhaps the air should be cleared. That said, it should be noted that I didn’t relish the idea of clearing that air because I had the distinct feeling I’d made more mistakes and it was more than a feeling that Tate was angry.
“Neeta,” he growled and I knew the way he did it Tate wasn’t getting any happy shivers.
“Yes,” I was still whispering.
“Neeta and I are history,” he stated.
“That’s what Bubba said,” I told him quietly.
“Yeah? So why did you listen to Wood and you didn’t listen to Bub?”
“Um…” I bit my lip and took a step back. “I was swimming. I saw you… with her… at the hotel.”
“Yeah?”
“Tate…” I said softly and didn’t carry on.
Tate stared at me and then asked bitingly, “Am I supposed to read your mind?”
“You were kissing her… you went into a hotel room.”
“So?”
“Tate,” I whispered. “That wasn’t two weeks before we…”
“No, you’re right, it wasn’t,” Tate confirmed. “Your point?”
“How can you be history if you were with her not even two months ago?” I asked. “That isn’t exactly history.”
“An hour after I walked into that hotel room, Lauren, we were history.”
“You were… you both were… you seemed…” I stammered.
“We were then an hour later we were not,” Tate clipped.
“How can that be?” I asked, my voice pitching higher.
“The same way it can be that not two months ago you were talkin’ about how you loved that jackass of an ex of yours, how you stepped aside so you wouldn’t prolong your sorrow at losin’ him and yesterday and this mornin’ you could barely stomach lookin’ at him.”
“That isn’t the same,” I whispered.
“Yeah, Wood tell you all about Neeta and me? You an expert now?” Tate asked scornfully.
“He told me about Bethany,” I shared and took another step back as Tate’s expression turned stormy.
“Good call, Ace, but you might wanna take another step back,” Tate warned.
“Tate –”
“He tell you he had Bethany before me?” Tate bit out and my body jerked at discovering this news, news Wood had not shared.
“No,” I whispered.
“He tell you she was nuts?” Tate asked.
I shook my head. “Nuts?”
“Fuckin’ ‘round the bend. Christ almighty, the bitch made Neeta look adjusted,” his eyes swept me and he finished, “seems I got a fuckin’ type.”
That made me take another step back but this time I did it like he landed a blow.
“Tate,” I whispered.
“She was whacked, pure and simple. Didn’t know it until I started it with her. Her Dad knew it, lazy fuck, didn’t do shit about it. Coulda got her help. Didn’t. Didn’t listen to Wood when he talked to him. Didn’t listen to me talkin’ to him after Wood. Total denial. She was high-strung, he said, but he knew better. She wasn’t high-strung. She was fuckin’ cracked.”
 
; I swallowed and stayed silent as Tate kept talking.
“I had Neeta jackin’ up most of my life and then I had Bethany jackin’ up the rest of it. I couldn’t handle her, I didn’t have the tools and I didn’t have any help from her family. I couldn’t do it so I had to scrape her off. She slit her wrists and almost bought it. Ten minutes later, Arnie showed ten minutes later, she’d be gone,” Tate informed me. “She’s in C Springs now, a live-in unit. Last time I visited her she was doin’ a lot better. Half zombie on all the shit they gotta feed her but it’s better than the strung out way she used to be.”
That was sad.
It was also not exactly how Wood described it. He’d given me the bones of the story but he left out all of the meat.
I took in a breath and asked, “Is Neeta married?”
Tate answered immediately, “Yeah.”
I closed my eyes and turned my face away, licking my lips.
“Look at me, Lauren,” Tate demanded and I shook my head. “Babe, fuckin’ look at me.”
I looked at him.
“You hear other shit about Neeta?” he asked astutely and I nodded.
“Nothing much,” I whispered. “People mention her name and yours. They sound… funny.”
“Yeah,” he agreed. “Fuckin’ hilarious.”
“Not funny like that,” I told him softly.
“I know Lauren,” he replied.
“Betty said she’s the reason you’re not a cop,” I said.
“That ain’t true though I bet she believes it like gospel. Neeta’s bigger than life, likes it that way, works hard for that reputation. You ask about Neeta, people’ll talk and you can believe about five percent of what they say and she likes it like that, it’s exactly how she wants it. They mention me with her, you can believe about point five percent of what they say.”
“Tate –”
He cut me off. “It’s shit.”
“But –”
“It’s shit, Lauren,” he clipped. “I quit The Force because Arnie is a lazy fuck. Most of his officers were lazy fucks too. Shit happenin’ in that town, you wouldn’t believe. Still does ‘cause he’s still Chief. Whacked. I didn’t like the way he ran his station, I didn’t like the way he played favorites with his boys, I didn’t like the way he turned a blind eye when shit went down and I knew he did it because he’d had his palm greased and I didn’t like the way he didn’t have the spine to admit his daughter was sick and get her help. I made detective because I worked fuckin’ hard for it and I did it despite him because he never fuckin’ liked me mostly because I didn’t like him. That shit went down with Bethany, it was his gig. I knew I couldn’t come to work and see his fuckin’ face every day. So I quit and started huntin’. Make triple what I made then and don’t have to deal with any fuckin’ shit.”