“He didn’t take care of you, I will. You need out from under him, I’ll make that happen. You marry me; I pay you fifty thousand dollars. At the end, I deal with the divorce. Once it’s done, you’re clear. I’ll see to it we’re untied, all you’ll have to do is sign the papers, you’ll never see me again and I’ll also see to it that wherever you decide to go, Shift doesn’t follow.”
“The end of what?” I asked.
“My business.”
“What business?”
“That’s need to know and when you need to know I’ll tell you what you need to know.”
In other words, I’d likely never know all of it just what I needed to know.
“The gun… the money?” I asked.
“I just got let outta prison. I wasn’t in there while the Pope considered my sainthood. I got enemies.”
“Oh God,” I whispered.
“You’re covered,” he told me.
I’d heard that before and now the person who promised me that was dead and the person he promised to cover me from was the reason I was standing right where I was.
I shook my head. “I don’t think –”
“I got no time and I got shit to do. You’re gonna bail, you can walk out that door. I got nothin’ to offer you but cash and my word. I can see you pickin’ me up from prison, my word don’t mean dick to you but I’m tellin’ you right now, and it’s up to you to believe it or not, my word is solid. No harm will come to you and nothin’ from my business will blow back on you. You’ll be my wife, you’ll act like my wife and you’ll do it until this is done. That’s it. Then we go our separate ways.”
“I’ll act like your wife?” I asked quietly.
He shook his head once. “You wanna let me into that pu**y, I’ll take it. No increase in money, I don’t pay for pu**y. That you give if you got a mind to give it. You don’t, I’ll find what I need elsewhere and that won’t blow back on you either.”
This was not exactly the romantic, tender marriage proposal every girl dreamed of.
“Ty,” I started, lifting up a hand, palm out then dropping it. “I’ve been…” I hesitated. “I’ve managed to…” I stopped again.
“Jesus, spit out,” he rumbled.
I nodded and spit it out. “That world has been at the edge of mine a long time, pushing in and I’ve managed to steer clear. I don’t know what this business of yours is and I don’t know you and I already have the leftover bullshit that comes from broken promises. I don’t need more.”
“I told you none of my shit would blow back on you,” he reminded me.
“And I told you I’ve heard that before and here I stand,” I reminded him.
He stared at me, still unreadable but something about him made me think that he wasn’t blank, he was alert and assessing and he gave no indication of it but it felt like he was reading me down to my bones.
Then he said quietly, “Shift has f**ked you.”
“I know,” I said quietly back and he had. Shift knew this, he knew Walker wanted this, he sent me anyway, he blew right through my boundaries, lying to me and putting me in the clutches of a huge, terrifying, taciturn, freshly-released ex-con with enemies and a gun.
“This time, you walk out that door, nothin’ bites you,” Walker told me. “You go back to him, he’ll find a way to f**k you worse and how he does it, you might not be walkin’ out the door.”
I pressed my lips together then unpressed them and whispered, “I know.”
“I can get you clear of that.”
I had to admit, that was definitely something to consider.
He kept talking. “Fifty G’s will set you up anywhere you wanna go. I’ll take care of Shift.”
He held my eyes. I noted his were unwavering. He was hiding from me, I knew it. Though I figured you learned a pokerface in prison, probably not healthy to wear your heart on your sleeve. But he held my eyes, he didn’t look away, whatever he was hiding was his to hide from the world, not something he was specifically hiding from me.