Page 8 of Havoc

“You’re taking the bed.”

“Havoc.” She twisted the hem of the shirt in both hands. “On Tuesday you couldn’t get out of my shop fast enough. You’ve hardly said ten words to me in years. Now I’m in your house, wearing your clothes. I don’t understand you.”

I stood up.

It put me about a foot away from her. She had to tip her head back to look at me. There was still water on her collarbone, and I could see her breathing under that shirt. Her eyes dropped to my mouth.

“You’re safe here,” I said. “That’s all you need to understand tonight.”

My voice came out rough. I hooked my thumbs in my belt, because my hands wanted to be in her hair, on her face and resting on her hips.

She stayed where she was and so did I. Another droplet of water ran down her neck, and I watched it all the way to the collar of my shirt.

“Go to bed, Bolton.”

She went. The bedroom door had never latched right. It swung back open an inch, and through the gap I heard her get into my bed.

I lay down on the couch, hard as hell, and stared out the window.

I’d wanted Ava-Rose for nine years.

It started the summer I was twenty-four, and at twenty-four I was a dumb shit. I’d spent a month sleeping with my sister’s friend Kelsey, got bored and stopped calling her. Kelsey stopped speaking to Brynn because of it and moved to Albuquerque. Brynn cried for a week and she never forgave me.

That Fourth of July there was a cookout in somebody’s backyard. Ava-Rose came out of the house in cutoffs and a bikini top, laughing about something with my sister. She was nineteen. I’d known her since she was a kid with scabs on her knees, and that day I saw a woman, and I stood there with a beer going warm in my hand and stared.

Brynn caught me. She marched me around the side of the garage and stuck her finger in my chest.

“No,” she said. “Anybody else in this state, but not Ava-Rose. I’m not losing another friend. Swear to me.”

I swore to her that I wouldn’t touch Ava-Rose. I’ve broken laws and bones, and a couple of promises to a judge. I’ve never broken my word to my sister.

So I called her “Bolton” to her face, because her first name in my mouth felt like the start of everything I’d sworn off. I stayed on my side of her counter. I sewed on my own patches with fishing line. Then on Tuesday that line snapped. I had a whole spool of it in my saddlebag, and I rode to her shop anyway.

On the other side of the door, she turned over in my bed.

I watched the sun come up and was still thinking about how much I’d wanted to be in that bed with her.

Preacher called church first thing in the morning.

I took Ava-Rose to open her shop and left two prospects out front. Then I rode to the clubhouse, emptied my saddlebag onto the table and told my brothers all of it.

The table was quiet when I finished. Deacon pulled the money over and ran his thumb down the edge of a bundle.

“Four grand in used twenties.” He picked up the pink ticket. “Cordero.”

“Inés Cordero. She says she’s got a company in Deming.”

“It’s smart,” Deacon said. “A laundromat’s all cash and coin. And she’s on her own. No husband, no brothers, mother’s moved away. If I were cartel, she’s the one I’d pick.”

I stared at him.

“I said if I was cartel,” Deacon said. “You have to admit it’s smart, Havoc.”

“You sure this Inés is connected to the cartel and one of Rivas’s crew?” Gage asked.

“The car had a Desert Star plate frame,” I said. “This woman seemed to know a lot about Ava-Rose’s money.”

“Then she’s definitely on cartel payroll,” Deacon said. “Everybody in this town banks in Deming. The cartel has owned a teller at that branch for a year.”