Page 44 of Brandishing Betrayals
Nico
I was lost in thought later that night while I sat in the living room of Marcos’s small apartment, still thinking about my conversation with Slade.How much did we not know? What really happened that drove Maya away ten years ago?
“Earth to Nic,” Marcos said, snapping his fingers in front of my face.
I blinked out of my thoughts and looked up at my buddy who standing in front of me. “What?”
“Dude, where’s your head? We’ve been talking about the realtor finding us a bunch of places to look at this week,” Marcos said, stepping back and sitting down on the couch.
I ran a hand through my hair and sighed. Jason walked over with a plate of food and handed it to me. I nodded in appreciation. “You guys wonder if there was more to Maya leaving?” We’ve had this conversation before, but I couldn’t help but bring it up again.
Jason huffed, but Marcos sighed. “We’ve talked about this before.” Marcos ran a hand over his buzzed head.
I shook my head. “I saw Slade today. Something wasn’t sitting right with me after what Luke said last night.”
“About what?” Marcos asked slowly.
“About Maya seeing a therapist.” I looked at my brother, really looked at Marcos. The man was sitting across the living from me, sprawled out in the only recliner in the small living room that consisted of a couch and one recliner situated before the TV.
Jason and I were sitting at the small two-person dining table, set up behind the couch, in the very small one-bedroom apartment.
Marcos didn’t look comfortable with us in his place. He’d been bouncing his leg all evening, antsy, agitated. His leg stopped bouncing long enough for him to digest the words that I spoke, then he picked up his rhythm with abandon, bouncing his leg faster if possible.
“Slade alluded to more going on with Maya. Her entire cubical is decked out in photos of all the ink she’s done on Maya’s body. She’s still one of her best friends, even after all these years. Slade wouldn’t say what was going on, she just told me to dig deeper, because it’s not like Maya to seek out a total stranger to spill her guts to, when its already so hard for her to let anyone in.”
“She say why Maya left back then?” Marcos asked.
I shook my head and picked at the plate of food before me.
“We know why she left,” Jason said. “She said she was done with us.”
“I don’t believe that at all,” I said.
“What do you believe?” Marcos asked, cutting off any snark from Jason.
I ran my hand through my long blond hair. “I think something more is going on. Something spooked her back then. That fight with Tish—what was it that Bear said—Hillcrest sent Tish into the clubhouse that night to instigate that fight?”
“Yeah,” Marcos murmured the word slowly. His hand rubbed over his scalp, while his eyes stared off into the distance, like he was lost in thought.
“What if she was threatened? What if Tish got in her head? Think about it—” I started.
“Then she would have come to us. She knew we would have protected her,” Jason cut him off.
I shook my head. “Just hear me out. What if she was threatened and she was spooked? What else happened that week? You two were both shot, I was arrested—framed by Hillcrest—and Tish started that cat fight. Is it really too far of a stretch to think maybe they got to her, too? Maybe that’s why she left, she was scared?”
“And Luke?” Marcos asked.
“Maybe she thought she was saving her child by running? Keeping him away from the dangerous lives that we live,” I reasoned.
“That’s a bullshit excuse,” Jason shot off.
I rolled my eyes; my brother’s hard black and white thinking was getting old. Jason refused to give Maya any leeway. “You need to see things from her point of view,brother.” I stressed the endearment.
“That whole day doesn’t add up,” Marcos said softly. “She wasn’t right after our scene together. Why was there a saline bag on the counter? Do you remember that? She was dehydrated after everything we did.”
“I think about that night all the time.” I sighed. “I should have used my safe word that night. We took things too far.”
Marcos nodded slowly. “I think we did—I did. I took things too far that night.”
