Jessie Ch. 08

April

###

The Sig roared in my hand, bucked, my finger working the trigger so fast the two booms seemed almost to be one. My eyes processed the holes appear in the paper silhouette downrange, and I sprinted to the next stage, fought to keep my hammering heart rate from jerking my aim all over.

Boomboom boomboom boomboom

Three more targets perforated, and I sprinted off to the next station.

I got my scores upon returning to the spectator area. As I suspected, just a little bit better than the middle of the pack. I don't endeavor to be the fastest gun in the west, but I do like knowing that among the competitive shooters in the city, I'm better than average for my class. By the end of the day, I'd probably have dropped a hair, but I placed what to my mind was well.

Well enough to accurately dispatch Morgan Skolnich if it came to that.

I grabbed a bottle of water from the refreshment table, gave it to Jessie, and she chugged it while waiting for the course to be reset. The competition was coed, organized alphabetically, but Don let Jessie shoot immediately me despite having a completely different last name. She handed the bottle back to be and did jumping jacks, wrung out her hands. "Wish me luck."

"You don't need it."

She grinned, and someone from the firing line called "Next up" and she pressed her lips to mine for a brief kiss, then sprinted away.

I turned to Sienna. "Seriously, this is what you wanted for your birthday?"

It was a warm day in April, unseasonably warm actually, with just the barest hint of a cool breeze chilling exposed skin. I'd been overjoyed at the chance to get out and run and gun this early in the year, and Jessie had suggested checking with Don to see if he was running any competitions this month.

He was, and the two of us had signed up. Unlike the other shooters here, we weren't dressed in Under Armor cold-weather gear, weren't carrying several thousand dollars in race guns. We wore street clothes and competed with what we carried. Because to my mind, there wasn't any other point.

Sienna had a birthday this month, and when Jessie has asked her what she wanted - a trip to a spa perhaps, or gift certificates to clothing stores or restaurants - the blonde had thought for only a moment before saying she wanted to spend the day with us.

Well, ok then.

So here she stood at the back of the range, Jane alternately balanced on her hip or holding her hand at her side, the little girl looking comically undersized with a giant set of ear protection on her head.

"Absolutely." The blonde's voice was distorted by the electronic speaker in the earphones - magnifying quiet noises, dampening loud - but the smile on her face was unmistakable. She'd been in a bit of a funk ever since Trey, and it was nice to see her out and enjoying life. "It's nice to get out and do something besides work."

I knelt down by her daughter. "And where do you want to go for lunch when this is all over?"

The little girl chewed on her lower lip and thought for a moment.

"Someplace really grown up where you have to sit really still and quiet as you eat your Brussel sprouts?"

She wrinkled her nose and giggled, shook her head. "Nuh-uh."

"Somewhere with really gross food like dog kibble?"

"No! Silly!"

"McDonald's?"

Jane nodded so vigorously I had to reposition her ear protection and then buried her face against the leg of her mom's jeans. I straightened. "Gotta manage expectations."

Booms started echoing from downrange, and I stood on tiptoes to try and get a look at Jessie over the crowd in the way.

"I'm still surprised you wanted to come HERE," I told Sienna."Have you shot since the cabin?"

She blushed, thought back. "Once or twice with Morgan? I just wanted to do something else, something grown-up, with some adults."

"You wanna try it out? At the end, they've got a beginner's run."

That earned me a chuckle. "Maybe next time. I'd need some, any practice before I'd wanna give that a shot. Literally."

When Jessie came trotting back a few minutes later, she was breathing hard, and she gave me a look of wild joy and jumped up into my arms, wrapping herself around me like a spider. "Better time than yours!"

I laughed and squeezed her. "That's my girl."

###

After lunch - McDonald's for Jane - I cleaned our guns and equipment, changed into workout clothes, and started lifting. Jessie joined to spot me, and I spent almost as much time ogling her in athletic shorts and a sports bra as I did actually lifting. Once I was done with the bench, we traded off, the smaller woman tackling her own reps.

I don't think she was eyeing me as much as I had her - her headphones were in and there was a look of concentration on her face as she muscled the bar up and down in a controlled, methodical manner.

Next was flat flies, and we took turns on the bench, arms out to the sides, pulling the dumbbells vertical and then lowering them again as the ache built in our muscles. I looked up at a soft knock on the door, and Sienna stuck her head around the jam. "Can I join you?"

Jessie sat up and removed an earbud, smiled. "C'mon in."

The blonde moved hesitantly into the room, looking around. "I'm never in here except for cleaning," she told us. "You've got a really nice setup here."

"Possibly the single safest room in the house," I boasted. "When we built this place I had the floor under this room reinforced for all of the extra weight it'd be carrying."

"Nice. So... What are you guys all doing?"

I split off from the girls do to my own lifting, working up the ascending weights of my squats, abandoning the rack a few reps before my max so Jessie and Sienna could do some low intensity squatting. My gothic lover giggled when I gave her a disapproving grimace at being forced to abandon my workout early.

I moved on to the deadlift, and in the time it took me to work up to my sweating, straining maximum, the girls had moved on from squats to the pull-up bar across the room. I eye-fucked Jessie as she worked out - admiring the way the muscles under her back and arms flexed and stretched, the sheen of sweat on her skin, the swing of her short, black ponytail against her pale neck. Dammit, she was a pretty girl.

I retrieved a set of heavy dumbbells and began working on my clean and press station, preferring the individual weights to a bar for anything I hosted over my head. More isolation, more difficult. Sienna was holding the heavy bag for Jessie by the time my arms were a feeling like jello, and I watched as the gothic-looking woman worked the canvas over with punches, elbows, knees, and low kicks, dancing backward and then exploding forward to unload a combo of meticulous fundamentals.

Good girl.

Considering the wobbling state of my arms for a minute, I grabbed my MMA gloves, pulled them on, and headed over to the bag. "Can I rotate in?"

Jessie looked over at me, a sweaty flush on her skin, the ferocity in her eyes dissipating as her attack was interrupted. "I'm almost done, then sure."

"Please, finish. I'm just gonna wait and suck down all the oxygen in the room." My water bottle was against the wall, and I crossed to it, guzzled, felt like I was drowning, quite possibly because I preferred breathing to hydrating.

The bag shook all the way up to the ceiling as Jessie closed with it in a flurry of punches, hammered it with elbows and knees before retreating with a kick that would've broken an assailants knee. She stood, breathing hard, and gave me her trademark feral grin "Now I'm done."

I stepped over and pulled her into a quick, smelly hug. "That looked great. Good job."

She watched from the sidelines and sucked down water as I put in a similar workout. I concentrated on quick jabs and powerful elbows. If I was going to close the distance with someone for a physical attack, I wanted to overwhelm them. The bag rocked and my fists burned and Sienna struggled to hold it steady for me.

Jessie walked over and put a hand on my shoulder. I'm gonna go downstairs and get more water, try to cool down. See, I'm assuming Jane is playing in the living room?"

Sienna stepped away and checked her phone. McKenna had loaded the same software onto her phone as ours, and as long as there was a tablet or laptop front-facing camera facing the little girl, we'd get an alert when she left its field of view. A smile crept across the blonde's face. "Yeah, she's still down there."

"Awesome. I'll check in with her."

My lover gave me a peck on the cheek and headed out, and as soon as Sienna resumed holding the bag steady, I picked up my thunderous assault.

I quit when I felt like I could not physically throw another punch. The workout had stressed my limbs, and the literally dozens of hits I'd landed on the bag made my arms feel like spaghetti. "You want to go?" I asked Sienna.

She shrugged, chuckled. "I don't know how to hit anything, but sure."

"Let me show you?" I got her to imitate my stance, showed her how to throw basic hooks and jabs, and then stepped to the side to steady the bag. She punched it experimentally as if testing to see if it was solid, if it would hurt her hands through a borrowed pair of Jessie's gloves.

It apparently didn't hurt at all, because she started wailing on the canvas, arms working like a sewing machine, abandoning the beginner's techniques I'd shown her in favor of just straight up beating the shit out of the equipment. Her fists hammered the bag with a machine-gun rhythm, rocking it slightly in my grip.

Sienna stepped back, breathing hard, full breasts heaving under her t-shirt, skin flushed with exertion. She swallowed hard and ground her teeth, and something tightened in her face, some angry, unhappy emotion that she was fighting to master. "This feels good."

"I'm...glad," I said cautiously.

She stepped forward again to start bashing on the bag, slamming it over and over and over, short blonde hair swinging around her pretty, determined face.

Another step back and she wiped her forearm over her eyes to clear the sweat. She avoided my gaze when I tried to make eye contact.

"See, are you ok?"

"Yeah, I'm fine. This is good, this is a WORKOUT."

"Not what I meant."

"Why wouldn't I be?" She returned to firing shots into the heavy bag, low hooks that rocked it in my grip, high jabs that barely moved it.

"Cuz you've abandoned all pretense of actual boxing and are just burning up energy."

"Fuckin' feels good," she snarled. She changed her footing slightly, started rotating her fists as I'd shown her. "This fuckin' better?"

I let go of the bag, stepped between it and her, caught her right jab by the wrist and held it, firmly but gently. "See, what's wrong?"

She still wouldn't meet my gaze, head up eyes averted to the floor. "You're in my way."

"Look at me." It was a command, and she knew it. The effort to raise her eyes to mine was greater than the energy she'd expended on the heavybag. Her chin trembled and her fine-boned cheeks tightened as she ground her teeth again.

"What?" her voice was angry, gritted out.

"What's wrong?" I asked again.

Sienna took a shuddering breath and seemed to deflate. "I don't want to do this anymore."

"Do what?"

"I'm so sick, so fuckin' sick of being me."

"What are you talking about? What do you mean?"

"I like the work I do. It's easy, it's fun. Making drinks, working the cash register, cleaning here, and I'm so grateful for everything you and Jessie give me. You guys saved me, but... I'm looking over my shoulder every moment of every day just waiting for Morgan to show up. I go to work and Jane is there. I come back here, and Jane is here. I've got zero time for ME, and every moment that I have for someone else I'm terrified of my ex."

"You know you're safe here, right? This place is a fortress."

Sienna tilted her head and gave me a sad grin. "That's not even it."

"Ok."

"You know what scared me the most about Valentine's Day? I mean aside from later, the thought that Trey might get violent with Jane?"

"What?"

"Before, when I was getting dinner ready, when I was waiting for him to get here... All I could think of was, if this goes anywhere, what's he gonna think of my scar? What do I tell him about it? That my ex, who's a fucking TERRORIST, punished me by making my body UGLY?"

"You're not ugly, See. Not by a long shot."

"I want someone to think I'm beautiful. Fuck, I'd settle for somebody thinking I'm just a hot piece of ass. I want someone to want me. I want to be a girlfriend, or at least a...a friend with benefits...to someone. I want someone to WANT ME. I want time for me. To be an adult. To be with someone who's not my kid or a customer. That's all I am anymore. A mom and an employee."

Her voice was faltering, face flushing as she fought the anger and sadness inside. Sienna directed those big catlike eyes to a corner of the room so she wouldn't have to meet mine. "You know why I wanted to hang out with you guys today? It's not because I still fucking love you. I don't, that ship sailed a long time ago. Its because I wanted to go out and be someone's friend. Do something different with people that at least like me. It's not what I need, but it's the best I can get."

It was like I was seeing her for the first time, all over again. The new Sienna after seeing so many different Siennas. Broken, damaged, but still holding on, just barely. I was amazed at the distance she'd come since that first day she'd flashed me in my office in a college in north Minneapolis. I was horrified by the pain she'd suffered. More fallout, more ripples across time from the death of Nina, Mike, and James. If they didn't die, I didn't send her away. She didn't meet Morgan. Didn't get pregnant. Didn't get addicted. Didn't end up scarred and on the run.

My eyes bored into hers, and she fought to stick her chin out, hold my gaze.

Amazing how one event could change so many lives. Nearly two dozen people were dead because of that one moment, and dozens of more lives were permanently, tragically altered.

I was hyper-aware of my actions.

The sweat sticking my shirt to my back.

The air, cooled by insignificant motion, on my arm as I raised my hand.

The pounding of my heart.

The ringing in my ears.

The knowledge that I simply should not be doing this.

I seized the back of Sienna's head, fingers not protected by gloves sliding through her fine blonde hair, and pulled her into a kiss. She gave a little mewl of surprise and then her lips were soft against mine. We explored each other's lips with slow, tentative motions, and she opened her mouth with a gasp when I opened mine. Her tongue surrendered, made no reciprocating movements when mine encountered it, and I could taste her, sweat on her lips and a hint of mayo from lunch.

Her head tilted to the side and she pressed against me, full breasts excitingly soft and firm against my chest. My other hand found her hip and I held her against me as we kissed, bodies pressed together from pelvis to nose.

Jessie was downstairs.

The bed we slept in together was less than thirty feet behind me.

I shouldn't be doing this.

Why shouldn't I be doing this? We routinely shared our bed with others.

I shouldn't be doing this because it was Sienna.

I kissed her anyway.

The room ran out of air and we both tried to violently inhale more when we parted. I felt like I was drowning. The panicked look on Sienna's face told me she felt the same.

"See, I..." I didn't have words for the rest.

She wiped her arm across her mouth again, as if trying to wipe the taste of me from her lips, then very slowly un-velcroed her gloves and tossed them on the floor. "I'm gonna go get some dinner with Jane. I'll be back in a few hours."

"Sienna, wait."

When she looked up at me, she looked even more conflicted than she had before. "Don't try to tell me what to do, Gary. Don't use that tone of voice. We're...not anything anymore."

I watched her walk through the doorway, open the door to the stairway, and disappear.

What the fuck had I done?

It wasn't even an impulse, it was a need. I turned back and slammed my fist into the heavybag like I was trying to drive it through Morgan Skolnich's face and through the brick wall beyond.

DAMMIT!

###

I made tacos for dinner and it was weird. Jessie could tell there was something wrong, given that Sienna had left with Jane, but she didn't ask me anything. We chatted over Mexican food about the competition that morning, about dumb stuff my colleagues had done yesterday, and about her college courses.

I couldn't tell if we were avoiding talking about anything or not. I had to tell her, had to hash this out.

I just couldn't.

After dinner, we washed dishes and then Jessie set out her medical textbooks and flashcards and homework and laptop in an arc on the living room floor, folded herself into a precise lotus in the center, and began chewing on the end of a Bic pen as she tried to puzzle through Fridays assignments.

I watched TV, sinking into the comfy leather sofa and trying to let my muscles relax. Between the running and shooting this morning, the exercise this afternoon, the incident with Sienna, and the news, I felt on-edge.

The news was showing the aftermath of a Brotherhood bombing in Baltimore. Someone had parked a panel van loaded with explosives on the side of the highway, then staged a breakdown a couple of hundred yards ahead during rush hour traffic. Nobody gave the van in the shoulder with the orange towing sticker a second look, and once the highway turned into a parking lot behind the smoking car up ahead...boom.

The mayor of Baltimore was calling it the work of a civilian group formed a few weeks ago to combat The Brotherhood. The police chief speaking about the bombing was dutifully toeing the line given to him from an imbecile up on high, but he didn't seem convinced, particularly because the opposition group was formed halfway across the country.

Someone was playing defense for these assholes.

I knew they were all on the same side ideologically, but defending killers just because they embrace your fiscal policy or whatever seemed like a bridge too far.

It felt like the country was tearing itself apart, and all I could do was sit back and watch. I'd been the victim of a terrorist attack not that many years ago back in Minneapolis. I'd gotten caught in The Brotherhood's first riot, and then nearly got beat to death in another a few weeks later in Denver.

And then Morgan had shot me in the head.

They kept racking up bodies every week or two, bombs and beatings and stabbings at political rallies. Shit, last week a mayoral candidate they didn't like opened his front door at eleven on a Sunday morning after church, got a face full of twelve gauge buckshot. Wasn't a big city either, or anyone particularly radical.

They were engaging in partisan terrorism, using their training at quick striking and causing confusion to avoid detection.

I remembered that little town we'd stayed in out in Colorado last summer, remembered wondering if they'd needed a banker, what it would feel like to get back to hunting again, walking through wilderness with no one around for miles instead of living in a big city.

I should ask Jessie how she felt about moving somewhere with fewer people. The middle of fucking nowhere was sounding pretty good right now.

Jessie...

Worrying over the state of the fuckin' world was more comforting than thinking about Sienna.

I looked down and watched my gothic lover doing her homework. Surrounded by papers, her fingers danced over the keyboard of her laptop, the harsh white light of the screen making her already pale skin glow like an electronic billboard, highlighting the bone structure, casting sharp relief of shadows on marble. Her ponytail draped over the back of her baggy black HIM shirt, fine, soft hair the color of oil dragging against the wrinkled cotton as she leaned over this stack of papers or that textbook.