Merritt pressed the arches of her feet down a little bit harder against the edge of the step below her. She took a long, hard pull of her coffee. She let the swamp heat wash over her, teasing her and testing her in equal measure. But what she didn’t do was get up and go back into the house. Much less start gathering up her stuff.
Maybe later she’d feel a little less fragile. Or more awake. Maybe then she’d be able to look at this for what, deep down, she knew it was: a quiet little moment of not deciding anything that was a huge decision all its own.
And when she heard a car racing down the driveway a few moments later, she only shifted her glare toward the corner of the house, waiting without otherwise moving to see what Lagrange calamity would befall her next.
It wouldn’t be Greeley. She knew he drove things other than his beloved motorcycle every now and again, but given his lovely parting comments last night she assumed he’d want to make a point the next time he came at her. Which she was quite sure he would. And that meant using his bike to agitate her well in advance of his actually showing up at her door, the way he had when he’d come roaring up her driveway last night, so she could get nice and jittery before she even laid eyes on him again.
Whoever was coming down her driveway now, it couldn’t be him. And it was only when a bright red convertible careened around the corner of the house, fishtailing to a stop with some overbright and peppy pop song blaring, that it occurred to her that she had other things to worry about besides her local biker problem—namely Antony.
But it wasn’t him, either.
The pop song clued her in a beat later, even if the slick, new convertible didn’t exactly match her memories. And it was one more sucker punch she should have expected, yet hadn’t, somehow.
She sat a little straighter as the music cut off. The driver’s door flew open and the woman behind the wheel took her sweet ass time getting out, unfolding her long, perfectly shaped legs from the car as if she, personally, was still hearing her own soundtrack. She was wearing very, very little, even by steamy springtime bayou standards. Tiny little white short shorts that cupped a perfect ass and a cropped, barely-there sheer tank top that showed off miles of tanned, sculpted abs, a pierced navel with a gleaming jewel in its center, and a delicate dragon tattoo that peeked up from the waistband of her shorts and invited the eye to imagine exactly how low it went. She wore a pair of heels that laced all around her legs, calling more attention to how long and well-formed they were. There were so many necklaces wrapped around her neck it should have covered up her gravity-defying cleavage, but somehow called attention to it instead, and her honey-blond hair was obnoxiously smooth and straight as it flowed around her in sheer, sleek defiance of the weather.
She’d dressed pretty much exactly like this in junior high school, too.
“You better have more coffee, bitch,” Merritt’s oldest and best friend, Lanie Latour, declared sunnily as she sauntered across the yard toward the porch as if she didn’t know it had been years since they’d laid eyes on one another. As if she thought it might have been yesterday afternoon. “Because you have a lot of excuses to start making. Like why you didn’t tell me you were back in town and I had to hear it from that skank Odette Prejean, for one thing. Or why you’re back at all, since you ran out of here like you were being chased. Or why you think a few smiley faces on Facebook are a good way to communicate with me, your favorite person in the entire world, for five fucking years.”
Lanie didn’t wait for an invitation. Lanie never waited for an invitation. She sank down on the step below Merritt and helped herself to Merritt’s coffee, stretching her impossibly long legs out before her as she did. The way she had no less than nine million times since they’d started drinking coffee sometime in high school, she took a swig from Merritt’s mug and then instantly made a face.
“Still disgusting,” she said, making a gagging sound. “What’s the point of coffee at all if it’s that sweet? Why not have a few beignets and call it a day?”
Merritt didn’t respond to the same old question. She took her mug back and sighed, shoving her frizzy, cavewoman hair out of her way as she studied Lanie beside her. Lanie, who looked a whole lot better and more glamorous than the women stuck in Lagrange normally did, as Merritt recalled. Almost as if she wasn’t stuck.
“When did you get fake boobs?” It wasn’t a mean question. She knew Lanie’s body almost as well as her own and the change was obvious, especially because it was clear Lanie wasn’t wearing any kind of bra beneath that almost-tank top.
“Three years ago.” Lanie ran her hands over her breasts as if she’d just discovered them there, the way Merritt remembered her doing when they’d both started wearing bras in the seventh grade. “Aren’t they cute? I love them. I was getting so sick of gravity.”
“Your breasts defied gravity. You bragged about it all the time.”
Lanie looked smug. “Now that’s not just me bragging, it’s fact.” She leaned back, propping an elbow on the step behind her. “I would’ve thought all that fancy lawyering would lead you to make the same decision. With high-class New York boobs, you’d be unstoppable.”
Merritt looked down at her meager chest, the bane of her existence throughout her adolescence. “Oddly, not something I considered along with the bar exam.”
“Are you in trouble?” Lanie shifted to study her, her hazel eyes bright with amusement. “You don’t look pregnant and ashamed, as Odette assured me everybody knew you were, though your poor daddy might turn in his grave at the very idea of the Broussard name being dragged through all that mud.”
There was no point sighing about that, or mustering up any outrage. Of course that was already the rumor, likely stampeding through town and lighting up the phones all over St. Germain Parish even now. Because people around here loved a good scandal. Doc Broussard’s high and mighty daughter slinking home from the big city with a pregnant belly would have been better than one of the hundreds of Cajun festivals folks celebrated around these parts.
“I’m not pregnant.” Merritt pressed her feet down on the step and rolled the coffee mug between her palms. “Not strung out on anything. Not awash in regret for my past choices and looking for redemption. Not dying of something and yearning to do it in my childhood home.”
“Well, that’s no fun,” Lanie said with a sniff. “What will they talk about?” She leaned closer to Merritt, bumping her shoulder against the side of Merritt’s legs. “A man, then? It’s always a man, in the end.”
“He’s not my man,” Merritt muttered.
Lanie’s shoulder pressed against the outside of Merritt’s knee, a bit harder this time. And it was a kind of swamp magic, Merritt thought, that she should feel that like a hug, and that the sensation should make her eyes feel seared through with a kind of brightness she had to blink to clear. She’d forgotten this, too, during her five years courting amnesia through New York City. The simple comfort of being known, deep and long, by a friend so old she was family and had been since before either one of them could walk.
“I’m mad at you, of course,” Lanie said, that same laughter in her eyes, “but we’ll circle back to that. Tell me about this man. And does your favorite biker know about him?”
“Greeley isn’t mine, either. You know that.”
She should have thought it through before she opened her mouth like that, revealing way too much. Particularly since she sounded rough. Ruined. But Lanie didn’t jump on her. She only leaned back against the step again, fixing her eyes on the overgrown grass that rolled toward the oak trees and the moss that dripped down from the branches up above as if they were stretching toward a kiss. She looked like she could gaze at it forever while Merritt set about collecting herself. And maybe because of that, it was easier to do than it might have been otherwise.
“We have much better things to talk about than this shit.” It was Merritt’s turn to nudge Lanie back. “How’s your life?”
“I can’t complain. Though I usually do any
way. You know.”
“Men? Babies?” Because that was what most people did around here. They hooked up young, had babies fast, and then claimed they’d thought better of that behavior while repeating it with the next one who happened along.
“Does this belly look like there have ever been babies in it? Come on now.” Lanie shook her head, running a hand over her concave, toned abdomen, a true work of art, particularly given the average calorie counts of Cajun cooking. “And men, well. There are always men. But if you keep them around for any length of time they become projects and who has time for that?”
Merritt laughed. “Why are you still here?”
Lanie only shrugged at that. “Where am I going to go?”
“There’s a whole world out there. Places where it’s not dripping wet with humidity all the time, for example.”
“This isn’t humid. This is a chilly spring day. I almost wore a coat.”
“Places where you could do something besides strip, for example.”
Lanie’s laugh was big, making the backyard seem smaller to fit her. “But I’m so good at stripping. Mr. Delacroix told me in sixth grade that I was headed straight for the pole and he should know, the amount of time he spends in Petit Joe’s. Pervert.”
“You could have been anything you wanted. You still could. When have you not done exactly what you wanted to do? Instead you decided to stay here and sink into the swamp.”
Lanie reached up and gathered her hair into a big pile and held it up off her neck, looking wholly unbothered. As if she hadn’t heard Merritt’s unfiltered, too-solemn, definitely judgy tone.
“Are you talking to me or to yourself?” Her tone was mild. “Because I was never all that worried about the swamp. I like the swamp.”
“You.” Merritt sniffed. “Obviously, I’m talking to you.”
“I know it’s hard for you to believe, but some people like it here. Swamp. Town. Parish.” She let her hair fall back down and waved her hand. “Louisiana.”
Merritt grinned at that. Against her will. “Impossible.”
“I like knowing I’m walking where my nannan walked. I don’t particularly like streets filled with strangers. I like knowing who I am, down into my bones and on through all the generations who were here before me. And yes,” Lanie said when Merritt shifted. “I like the club. We have a whole lot less crime here than other towns in the parish. I like that, too.”
The club. Always the club. Everything in Lagrange came back around to the Devil’s Keepers, sooner or later.
That was what Merritt had run away from. But she’d forgotten—or she’d made herself forget—what else she’d left behind when she’d gone. Like a best friend who didn’t yell at her after a five year absence, but simply sat out on the back step smelling of coconut and jasmine and laughing like no time had passed at all.
All that self-willed amnesia had left her so lonely. She’d only made a handful of friends in college. Fewer than that in law school. She’d isolated herself because she’d cut off so many parts of herself and left them here, sunk deep in the roots of the old oaks. How had she failed to realize that?
“Greeley already knows I’m back,” Merritt said in a rush. She hadn’t confided in anyone in so long she would have said she’d lost the taste for it altogether. She’d grown so rusty with intimacy that her tongue felt thick in her mouth. But she kept going. “He came over last night to express his feelings on that.”
Lanie blinked. Then again, for effect. “Greeley has feelings? Are you sure?”
“Angry and vengeful biker feelings. You know.”
“I think you mean penis feelings.”
“And those, sure.” Merritt put down her empty coffee cup and folded her arms on her knees. “Not that…Well. He got a call, so the penis feelings were more inferred than experienced.”
“Club business, I take it. Your favorite thing.”
“When someone has no intention of telling you any of his business anyway, does it matter?” Merritt concentrated a little too fiercely on the chipped red polish on her big toe. “Maybe it was club business. Though it could have been anyone or anything and I’d never know either way. It was a good reminder that nothing changes around here, not that I needed one.”
“Listen.” Lanie turned to look at her straight on then, her pretty face soft and somehow knowing, too. “The club is good to me. Not just to me, to all the girls at Petit Joe’s. I danced for them for years when I was too young to know how bad that could go, the way it does in a lot of other places. But here in Lagrange it was fine. I made a lot of money and the brothers made sure I never got into any situations I couldn’t handle.”
Merritt didn’t want to hear nice stories about criminal organizations. Not even the one that ruled this town and kept it safe for strippers. She’d tried to see things in shades of gray in New York. And in the end, it had been the same shit. Her firm was a little too involved with some decidedly shady clients. Antony was a little too invested in how okay that was, and how much he wanted Merritt to go along with it as a junior associate. But there was a limit to how much gray a person could take. Too much and it was just smog and regret.
“Of course you like them. I get it. Stay here long enough and you’ll like anything, apparently.” Merritt waved a hand. “The swamp. The heat. The palmetto bugs. The assholes in black leather roaming the streets and calling everything theirs. Whatever. I’m glad they’re good bosses, though.”
“I appreciate the club as my boss,” Lanie said, her tone even. “I really do. But I also genuinely like the brothers, Merritt. They’re good men. Believe me, I work in a strip club. I know the difference.”
On some level, Merritt realized she should have expected this. If not from Lanie, from someone. This was a company town. Company towns tended to be pretty gung ho about the company in question. There was absolutely no reason she should feel that strange, hot curl of something like betrayal deep inside her, as if Lanie’s allegiance to and defense of the Devil’s Keepers was something she was doing to Merritt when it was actually just her life.
Lanie wasn’t choosing Greeley over Merritt. That was a ridiculous thing to feel on any level. Merritt knew that. Intellectually.
But there was still that curling thing within. “They’re outlaws,” she pointed out, her voice just as even as Lanie’s had been. Well. She tried. “I think that means they can’t actually be good men, by definition.”
“I barely graduated from Lagrange High and I was dancing in Petit Joe’s on my eighteenth birthday. Now I manage the bar more than I dance, but it doesn’t matter. No one forgets they’ve seen me as good as naked.” Lanie laughed, sounding as carefree as she always had. “Somewhere other than Lagrange, that would be a problem. Here? No one disrespects me to my face. I have the club behind me and everyone knows it.”
It would be a lot easier, Merritt thought then, if Lagrange could simply be as evil as she’d convinced herself it was these last few years. Then this would be simple. Although, she supposed that if she really believed it was evil, she wouldn’t be here.
It was the gray that was getting to her. The gray that might suck her down and kill her if she wasn’t careful.
“Maybe it’s not the club,” Merritt said after a moment, shaking her head. “Maybe it’s the bayou gets inside me and makes me crazy. I’ve been here all of fourteen hours and it’s already happening.”
“The bayou doesn’t make you crazy and you know it,” Lanie scoffed gently. “It just encourages the crazy to come on out and play. That’s hardly the town’s fault.” Her mouth curved as she looked at Merritt. “The way you lit out of here, I never thought we’d see you again.”
“I had no plans to come back, believe me.”
“Yet here you are.” Lanie sounded smug. “Us swamp rats always come on home eventually, Merritt. Deep down, you know it’s true.”
Something rang in her at that, low and heavy, but she didn’t want to accept it. She didn’t want to touch it. In the distance she heard a
splash from the bayou and shivered, imagining an alligator sliding into the water to stalk its prey. She remembered that all kinds of creatures had sharp and terrible teeth. Some just hid them better than others.
“I seem to have a thing for very bad men,” she heard herself say. “I thought it was just because I grew up here, surrounded by them, and didn’t know any better. But apparently not, because I picked a much worse one up north.”
And she realized as she said it that she’d never admitted that out loud before. Not quite like that. She’d tried so hard to pretend that Antony didn’t get to her. That she hadn’t even entirely noticed what he was doing to her, for that matter. She told herself that she had to be imagining it, because of course her outlaw biker ex was much worse than a wealthy New York criminal defense attorney who’d won awards for his work in prisons. She’d lectured herself extensively about the fact she should be flattered by his interest and attention, the way Antony and some of her colleagues told her she should…
Over a thousand miles away from her office, Merritt felt stricken. Her breath seemed to catch in her throat, then stay there, like a threat.
“There’s a lot of ways a man can be bad.” There was a matter-of-fact sort of knowledge in Lanie’s eyes then. A kind of steely, experienced wariness that made Merritt want to succumb to that thing that couldn’t possibly be a sob that she could feel expanding inside of her. Bearing down on her like thunder. But she didn’t. “Did he beat on you?”
“No.” Merritt shook her head. A beating was an obvious thing. Bruises, blood. Something to take to the hospital or the police. But a doctor couldn’t bandage a mind fuck. Police couldn’t apprehend someone for a shove or two she couldn’t prove had happened in the first place and Antony had claimed were accidents. Or that night in the Hudson Valley, when she’d been able to shower off the wine—but not that sick feeling deep inside of her. “Not really.”
“Not really isn’t no.” But there was something about the easy way that Lanie was sitting there on the step beside her, as if she could sit there all day and it didn’t matter if Merritt ever told her a thing. It made it feel silly not to tell her. Even if Merritt hadn’t dared tell anyone any part of this. She hadn’t known who she could tell. Not after working so hard to keep everyone in her new life at arm’s length, always using the excuse of work. Law school, then law practice. Always a thousand reasons to keep to herself. And besides, she’d hardly dared think about what was going on with Antony, because that would make it real. And maybe it was better if it was in her head.