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She takes in the space he hasn't yet encroached, eyes trailing down and snapping up quickly when she realizes he is fixing an inquisitive stare on her, her hands curling up. She can scarcely predict what he's going to do these days, only that it's going to be in his best interest specifically, and that he will be single-minded about it.
"Tell me," Rio drawls, something mocking in the curl of his lips, in the way his voice lingers purposely, "did he make you come, at least?"
Her pulse throbs in her throat—at the bluntness of his question or the memories his low voice brings back, she's not exactly sure—and she scoffs, disbelieving and unimpressed. She is mortified too, can feel her cheeks heat up underneath her makeup, but she won't let him see he got a rise out of her.
He must have seen them. She doesn't know how, but he must have gotten close to her house without her noticing. She hadn't been paying attention. She had been sure he was gone at least for the time being, that he would pop back into her life a few days later, after he got over the worst of his anger. She refuses to feels like she's done anything wrong. She put her mind to get the most out of this business, as she should. She is the one who is risking more anyway, and she's done being pushed around.
She bites the inside of her cheek. She's gotten too comfortable around him.
"I wasn't aware you were still stalking me."
She levels a glare at him, face unreadable as his, glare steely like she trained it to harden when talking to him because if there's something Rio doesn't respect, it's meekness. "I thought we were past that."
That doesn't mean much because she thought they were past many things, many times, and she's been wrong each time.
He ignores her, tilts his head, watches her from a relatively small distance that seems bigger than it is, probably because he hasn't invaded it yet and will before he leaves.
A shivering silence settles between them, heavy and awkward. A dog barks in the distance, a gust of wind hits the branches of a tree and makes them hiss softly, one of the neighbors comes home and steps on a toy that screeches shrilly before a door closes with a quiet thud, behind the curtains of a house nearby the light in the kitchen is still on and Beth knows it must Ms.Thomson who's busy baking for the pie contest next Sunday. Ten blocks down little Melissa Harper will have a fairy-themed birthday party two weeks from now.
Everything is quiet. Everything is perfect. At least in appearance, and that's what really matters, at the end of the day. Appearances count more than truth. This is all she ever wanted, the white picket fences and the big house and the nice neighborhood.
The man in front of her isn't something she ever considered wanting.
He looks out of place in the middle of the proper surroundings, all dressed in black with his tattoos peeking out from under his jacket, his bruised and blood-crusted knuckles brown and raw with split skin. He wears it well, that inkling of danger, subtle, an indication of the violence always lurking under his skin. If she'd seen him before, strolling to her car or walking her dog, she would have headed the other way. She'd have called the cops, too, maybe.
Beth tells herself that's all there is to it—the otherness of him, the novelty, the thrill of his presence in her life, adrenaline pulsing and rushing inside her after she felt like she'd been dormant for so long. The middle-class, aging woman having a middle-life crisis, the good girl drawn to the allure of a bad boy, to a fantasy, like the ones she gets off to when she's using her vibrator, acceptable in a place removed from her everyday life but not in it.
There's security in fantasies, in unthinkingly indulging in her desires without ever having to stop and feel the inevitable consequences coming for her. She could never do that in real life, where there are people who rely on her.
She thinks of little Annie and looking after her, staying home on Saturday nights and waking up early to make breakfast and getting her dressed for school. She thinks she's always been a mother even when she was a child. Maybe that's why she lost it and robbed Fine & Frugal when she should have sat down to think it through instead of dashing into that supermarket with her sister and best friend and fake guns, unprepared and senselessly, uncharacteristically impulsive.
They'd been capitalizing on Annie's knowledge of her dead-end job with questionable success and started planning the heist in a ridiculously short time and gotten it all wrong despite the preparation. They were moms and wives, not criminals.
They should have known better.
Looking back, she doesn't know how she couldn't have seen the underlying consequences of an heist coming even if they did manage to pull it off. She couldn't have anticipated Rio and his gang but someone was bound to look into it eventually and they'd been sloppy and undisciplined. Of course, it did not go over well.
She inhales sharply, the air damp and infused with the unrefined scent of the potted plants she's stowed on a wooden shelf Dean crafted for her, looking at her with round, hopeful eyes when she thanked him. Gardening has been her latest hobby, a last-ditch attempt at a distraction from the problems that just seemed to creep up on her. She'd tried it before when a friend from college had visited for Beth's birthday and gifted her gardening courses, only because it'd have been rude not to, but she'd liked it just fine.
"What do you want, Rio?"
She feels more tired than she's been all night long and not in the mood to play one of his games, but she can't leave the table until everyone has finished playing and Rio is the kind of man who will stubbornly use every trick he knows before he accepts to lose.
She has no doubt he's after something, if he doesn't want to negotiate the deal Beth is still surprised she's gotten away with then it might be something else—she blushes a little at the mental image that comes, vivid and unbidden—and she's not going to let him use sex so that he can convince himself he has more control over her than she's taken from him.
If she's honest, she doesn't think they have a shred of it. She sees no point in lying to herself, so she doesn't. His life has become so tightly tangled with hers that neither can pull away without spilling blood in the process.
That is how she knows it's only a question of time before one of them will try to.
"Just checking on a friend."
He shrugs with a marked disinterest his smirk contradicts. He moves closer, and her feet are moving too—away. He puts weight into that single step, peers down at her. It's not the first time he's looked at her like that, all seductive and inviting, like he's slowly peeling her clothes off her in his head and memorizing everything he finds and feels underneath.
She remembers that other woman she's seen him with at that parking lot, both drenched in the soft, pale sunlight, who touched him with too much familiarity he'd seemed perfectly content to accept and encourage. Beth wonders if that's what he said to her, too.
"We are not friends," she says. She wanted to sound flippant, blasé, but she's afraid the distaste in her voice gave her away. "We are not anything."
She sees something flickers in his eyes, cold and temporary because it dries out quickly.
He's angry, it's not hard to figure out with his jaw clenching tight like it did when she'd given him that ultimatum and bend the rules he thought he could just make and that she'd follow blindly, using brute force, smashing things, threatening her, pulling a gun at her with her daughter just a few feet away inside. He's not a good person. She has never actually questioned that, but Beth thought—
She's fucking stupid.
She is all but an exception to him. In every sense of the word.
She still won't admit she felt it in her guts when she saw him with that woman, the surge of possessiveness that twisted in her chest and made her want to climb off the car and demand answers in a way she had no right to and didn't consider when it was her husband fucking his secretary behind her back and spending all their money on her.
"I thought you were past that."
That throws her for a loop, what he said, what he could mean. She wonders if that's him accusing her. Maybe he knows she's been watching him with his lady friend for longer than she'd have looked at any other couple hugging on a parking lot and gotten ridiculously riled up about the PDA she had no reason to bother noticing at all. He never hinted at wanting more than a no-strings-attached hookup. Knowing her embarrassment would amuse him is enough to set her teeth grinding.
"What do you mean?"
"Carman," he says, deadpan. "Figured you were smarter than that, darlin'."
She straightens, back rigid, and prepares herself for whatever he's going to say because it won't be nice.
"You don't know what you're talking about," she says, lips pursed tightly.
"I know about that girl—Amber, yeah? See, I'm curious. You get two thousand grands outta your bag like that? I wanna know how you got it. If it's anything illegal then that shit could be tracked down to you, and then to me, and the next thing I know it's the feds shoving their badges up my ass. So I asked around a little, tried to figure out where all those cars came from. Your husband is fucking hopeless, by the way. Turns out he couldn't get past his ex putting him on her waiting list. I went to the auto auction to see who was selling you those cars, how much she knew—don't look at me like that, can't ever be sure with you and you girlfriends sharing my business with a bunch of bored housewives—"
"Our secret shoppers didn't know anything about your business, I already told you that."
Her protest rings out shakily. It's not entirely true and she is surprised he doesn't point it out even as anger seeps into her tone.
It brings back the memories of that time he broke into the house and dragged the cold, cold metal of his gun against her pulse, following the curved line of her necklace, ready to press the trigger, fiddling with her life like it was disposable. She'd been scared. Not like the first time, when she was shaking with fear that made her unsteady and made begging easy, almost sobbing as she pleaded with him to let her and her friends live, as she discussed about the unwanted attention their murders would draw up, but still afraid, aware her life was hanging by a thread at the soft touch of the barrel of a gun, debating how to go about that last problem.
"And Amber doesn't know, either. She's not involved," she remembers to say, because she knows what he would have done to Mary Pat and what he'd surely do to Amber if he suspected she could tip off the feds.
She'd rather not think about it now, though, how protecting Mary Pat had so completely backfired on them. So far there's been no new development and if Turner discovered Boomer then she's sure she'd been in jail with Annie and Ruby and awaiting her trial.
Still, that prolonged inaction is making her feel aggravated and useless and—reckless. She barely stopped herself from asking Ruby to send Stan fishing for information or—cues. Or something. Anything that would help them check on what Turner is up to. But she knew Ruby wouldn't jeopardize her family's wellbeing or expose Stan to sanctions just to assuage Beth's worries. And Beth wasn't about to antagonize Ruby by proposing it.
"I know now," Rio says.
He rolls his eyes and leans against the door and Beth is glad she's remembered to close it. She notices just now he inversed their positions. She was standing in front of her door, arms crossed and shoulders up. With a few purposeful steps she'd matched with distance, he has a clear path to the house. She peers at the used wood, then at him, lips pressed snugly. He steps away, farther from the house—a false act of kindness from him, a false victory to placate her, and a reminder that he's been doing this for a long time, and she won't see it coming if he decides she is no longer useful to him.
She can't get distracted.
She exhales a breath she kept locked in her lungs too long.
"I couldn't trust you just like that, though, ya know?"
I did, Beth thinks, and this time her disappointment isn't the white-hot, knife-sharp anger she's used to, it's ice drizzling down her back, reminding her of his answer to the confession that easily passed for a complaint.
"I trusted you," she said. Her accusation almost completely hid out her quavering voice.
"That's your fault," he said, unconcerned and indifferent, not even surprised. It's been a given to him that she'd start to grow more trusting as they grew closer and he used that, and he used her, and that was her fault, indeed. But that wasn't a mistake she'd make again.
"No, I guess you couldn't," Beth admits.
He taught her a lot, like he'd promised he would.
She was jittery the first few times they meet, her wounds wet and aching so soon after he shot Dean—
(—after that night she will never forget for the blood staining her home, floors, carpet, walls, she couldn't remove the stains, the proof of a shattered illusion of fullness, for the flashing, blinding, gunfire that had made her jump back and scream, hands flying to her mouth, and then scramble down to scoop up her husband's body after Rio left, for all the questions she'd gotten from her teary-eyed children and how little comfort she managed to provide—)
—and she'd been on her guard, slow and reluctant but Beth was a quick study and she soaked in every instruction he gave, determined how to aim with precision, what sound a firing chamber made when it clacked open, how many injuries could be inflicted to someone without them dying immediately.
All those ugly things that made her want to balk and run and hide, but there was no exit anymore. She'd given it up the night she left those pearls for Rio to find. She didn't know if she regretted it and was sure she should. This is the worst thing about what happened that night. She still doesn't know.
This is another lesson, one he didn't mean to give but that she learned from anyway. She doesn't trust him anymore and she never will again. And he knows. It's the only way they can be comfortable together once again, just for a while.
And—
It's two in the morning and they're meeting at a deserted construction site on the outskirts of the city. She wraps her coat tighter around her shoulder, the air is chiller that late in the night and her fingertips are numb. She walks slowly, makes sure she won't trip over the uneven, split asphalt that is still sticky underfoot. He's already waiting for her when she gets to the spot he'd told her to go to.
I own you, she thinks, thinking of her house, her kids, the mortgage, the news shoes on her feet. Thinking working for him sometimes feels more like charity than actual work. Anyone could do her job. Anyone else with a respectable background and comfortable anonymity and desperate enough to take him up on his offer.
I own you, he seems to think, knowing what she knows, his eyes lingering on her, all along her body, possessive like he doesn't have the right to be and she feels tied, a delicate anxiety seizing her as though he did.
Her gaze burrows into his for longer than it should, the mangled honesty grazing her like a silent wind, then she's handing him the bag he is here for, heavy with the money she washed, arm extended and waiting for him to take it. When he does, he doesn't touch her. He grabs the handle and nods briskly at her. Your cut, he says. She suspects he just remembered he still had to give it to her. His fingers sweep through the wads in a soft flurry of fluttering green, checking that it's all there before tossing the money over to her. She catches it reflexively.
I own you.
He seems in a hurry now, already turning around.
The next time they see each other, they don't talk about that because there is nothing to talk about, and Ruby is right here with her, chattering with Annie, their voices overlapping with the blood rippling in her ears for a moment as she spots him pushing the dinner's doors open, and then it's over.
And—
The memory snaps close like an old videotape and they're back in front of her house and she ponders about what will comes next. They will be making conversation as they skin each other raw, surely. Honesty is a rare, prized thing, she understands that now, and they're sinking into that unbearable liability now. It will not do either of them any good.
You don't know the last thing about me, she wants to tell him, like it will prove something. even after all this time. but that is not true.
"So. Amber," she prompts with an impatient shake of her head.
"Yeah, Amber," he nods, almost dismissive as the name rolls off his tongue. "She's a piece of work, huh?"
"Please, tell me you didn't tell her you're my business partner."
Rio laughs at that, shaking his head no, and it feels too much like an inside joke when he looks back up, something fond softening his cheeks.
"Didn't even tell her I knew you, don't sweat it. Chatted her up at some bar she was at with her girlfriends. She really wanted to talk. I bought her drinks, asked her about her last serious relationship and the lady spilled her fucking guts, told me all about that older guy she dated. You see, uh, that guy, he promised to leave his wife," he goes on.
How she tenses definitely doesn't go unnoticed by him yet she can't help but bristles at the disrespect, regardless of whether Dean planned to go through with it or not.
"Promised a lot of stuff. They'd move to California, and they'd have babies. He'd pay for her acting classes and designer clothes, that kinda shit you know. For her publicist, too. Later. Once his kids would be older. She actually believed that. When I finally got a word in edgewise, I asked her what her pig-suited ex-boyfriend's name is and she told me Dean Boland. So," he pauses, drawing it out. "It makes no sense why you're you still with him. Or why you're still fucking him."
She flinches away and purses her lips, forces her eyes not to water.
She wants to tell him it's none of his business but she's sure he won't listen, quite the opposite. He likes toying with her.
He's looking back unflinchingly, unapologetically, but strangely not satisfied in the least. He's managed to wrench her weakness out of her—past the bones, where she hides everything, past the bones, where only the most efficient killers can slither—and use it as a weapon and now is the moment when he should taunt her except he doesn't. He's waiting, too, just like her. Something has to give, but that thing isn't going to his determination or her resentment. So they wait. Time stretches, minutes pulled like hard wires.
"Look," she begins with deliberate slowness, aiming for nonchalance, for dislike, dry-mouthed and dry-eyed, "I'm sorry, I didn't—I mean. I didn't know you were in so deep. It didn't mean anything but it obviously did for you."
She's bluffing, and that is usually enough to get her way out of trouble but Rio knows her too well and he sees right through her bravado, walks up until she stumbles past the scuffed rocking chair she was swaying on when he showed up earlier.
She was looking vacantly at the red bricks, silently rehearsing what she'd tell Turner the next time she'd see him, the lies she'd made up to stall him and would have to keep up with, one half-drained glass of bourbon in her hand when one year earlier it would have been sweetened tea or coffee, her eyes already sightly glazed, and then he was right there, climbing the steps up her front porch like he owned the place and asking questions and now—now they're here and she still doesn't know what he wants. It'd been the first thing Beth asked, getting up on bare feet, toes curled against the freezing wood, scurrying to lock the front door and whispering urgently about the neighbors and the kids and, What the hell are you doing here, Rio?
Whatever it is he sees across her face makes him bite back an undoubtedly harsh comeback, and, instead, his voice lowers as his breath fans her cheek, her earlobe.
She expects some kind of contact, a brush of his lips or his fingers tucking her hair back or his hand squeezing her forearm but he doesn't reach for her even though he's so close there's no semblance of professionalism left to hide behind and yet—
"You think you're foolin' me, Elizabeth? Like all you gotta do is stand there lying to my face and Imma fall for that bullshit. So tell me, darlin', why?"
Her ankle is aching and she has to crane her neck a little to look at him. She feels small. And he's leaning over her—towering, imposing. She's glad he's obstructing her peripheral vision now because she doesn't think she could have this conversation while peering at the deserted street and wondering if someone is watching them behind their curtains.
She's not even sure she'd care if they weren't out in the open, and if he slid his hand past the waistband of her pajama pants she might only encourage him, and suddenly the need to look at him as they talk scatters in her.
His labored breath mirrors hers, his chest heaving, brushing against hers.
A surge of impulsively almost made her tilt, almost let her angle her head just so to trace the tip of her tongue against his upper lip.
She remembers liking it, in that dimly-lit bathroom—with him moving between her thighs, inside her, and her muffling his name into his neck, arm slung around his shoulders for support, stopping to kiss him, to demand, please please please, more, harder please, words and moans slurring together after a while, but he understood and for once he did as he was told—and tasting the tang of his skin.
There's a determined glimmer in his eyes and she knows he's not going to make it easy for her, not going to give her a passing relief from the tension coiled around the muscles of her body.
Sex with Dean was terrible, the sort of awkward she'd know would make it impossible for her to meet his eyes in the morning. She hadn't managed to, after, when he'd slipped out of her, his cock limp and moist and his seed running down her thigh. He'd cleaned himself with some tissue, balled it up and threw it into the garbage can near the kitchen sink and Beth pulled down her dress, said something about grabbing a shower and stayed under the spray until the water ran cold, scrubbed herself and stopped only when her skin was pink and raw, pondering over the mess she'd made.
Now she's thrumming with her need for contact, her high at having overpowered Rio earlier not completely down. She could lead him to her backyard where no one would look and let him take her. She wants him to grip her and fling her to the door face first and fuck her from behind, fill her and make her moan until she is hoarse and her knees buckle, sweat-dewed hair slick, sticking to her temples.
With his left hand, he ran his hands all over her breasts, hips, legs, that night, his other hand holding her thigh up, wrapped around his waist, her bare ankle digging into the back of his bended knee. He pulled away and looked at her, his hand clasped around her calve, a tremor to his open mouth, wet with her saliva, skimming over her lips, and she stared right back, forced her eyes open as he pounded into her and she felt her orgasm just then, lips stretching open soundlessly.
She wants that push of adrenaline into her system now and to feel sore after and ashamed and guilty because this is all hers, the sex and mistakes, and the irresistible, ugly selfishness. But she can't. Not like that, not after what happened tonight. He tried to manipulate her and she won't let herself become a pawn that can be tossed between Rio and Dean and Turner, too.
Beth puts her hands flat hands against Rio's chest. She presses firmly, once. He gets the hint, and backs off.
He surveys her—her curled fingers, her red face, flustered and breathless but resolute—like he doesn't know what to do with her.
She braces herself up on her elbows and pulls herself off the wall, her mind reeling. She wants to dismiss what just happened as a fluke but he is too close for comfort and the proximity is spurning memories she feels brimming with. She hums with faux-nonchalance all the same. She hopes it's convincing.
"Because it was convenient," she says finally, gritting her teeth at having to compromise with him again. But it is the fastest way to get him the hell away from her tonight so overall a small price to pay. She fixes her gaze on him, refuses to back down. "I was turned on and he was here, and that's it."
He already knows the rest, anyway. Why do you stay with an unfaithful, disrespectful spouse? Because of the kids, because divorce isn't cheap, because fighting for custody is a goddamn nightmare, because it means that for the first time in decades she would be alone, because marriage is an investment and after having spent so many years with someone it has to matter, or else everything was wasted.
"I offered to take care of that," he points out.
"You wanted to screw me for screwing you over," Beth snarls, hand resting on her jutted hip.
Did he think she wouldn't understand? His persisting presence brings her annoyance up to the point where she'd gladly force him back into his car herself.
There's a silent challenge written across the lines of his features, in the sharpness of his smirk. Yet she remembers all too well the consequences after she lashed out, hit him with the keys he gave her, almost shrank back when he slowly turned around to look at her, his cold rage curdling underneath his deceptive calm, how Rio told her it was over—their deal, the money, everything. Things are different now and she's not working for him but with him, but there are still lines she knows not to cross—anymore.
His eyes are unnervingly intent. It's getting under her skin.
She sighs.
"Please," she says, "leave."
He picks up on the burst of exhaustion blending in her voice, in her cracking composure, and for once he doesn't push, or smirk, just looks at her. She swears she can feel it, like his glance is leaving marks on her skin where it lingers and, later, when she will touch herself she will remember his eyes, heartbeat speeding up.
"Until next time," he says, and he's already turning away.
"God, I hope not," she can't help but mumbles and she hears him chuckle.
She waits until she sees him ducks into his car, eyes trailing as he drives off.
She goes back inside and locks the door.