Earning Her Keep (Price of Love)

Still, it feeds me to watch her explore and find what she loves.

Every day now, she’s blossoming before my eyes, blooming like a fucking lily in mid-summer.

Even her curves are in bloom. Fuck, those curves. What I wouldn’t give to touch those curves.

But I won’t. Because I have rules and I live by them.

The paperwork from the doctor also confirmed what I’d always suspected—she’s a fucking virgin. Of course she is.

So it’s just as well that I’ve got a rule in place against meeting her. That’s always been my rule with the girls who come to work here. Hands off, no contact. But I never gave a single fuck about any of them until her.

She presses my collar meticulously. Then she picks up the can of starch, mouthing words to whatever she’s listening to through her earphones. God, she’s such a fucking free spirit. So much the opposite of me. So much the light to my dark. So much the yes to my no.

But no has kept me on a good path. No bullshit, no distractions, no annoyances. I lead a life of rules and order. But her?

She twirls around, kicking off her sandals, leaving her in her socks as she grabs a Swiffer out of the closet for her dance partner. I check my phone. She’s listening to “The Girl from Ipanema.” She does a little cha-cha step, spins again, steps on her left sock with her right foot, trips...and almost falls flat on her face. But she catches herself on the laundry sink and instead of swearing, she does this victory move, like an Olympic gymnast nailing her last flip off the parallel bars.

I almost forget myself. I almost laugh. I almost cheer.

Fuck, she’s so lovely.

She’s the opposite of my order and rules. She’s free and pure and…true. Everything I want.

Everything I don’t deserve.

But not being able to touch her or talk to her has made me into… honestly? A fucking psycho stalker. I jack off to photos I’ve taken of her five times a night. I watch her in the shower, groaning as she soaps up her pussy and ass. And one night, one fucking crazy night, I even stayed underneath her bed, listening to her breathing.

Having her in the house is pushing me places I never thought I’d go. And I don’t give a fuck.

So how did I turn into this hyper-controlling motherfucker who needs to know her precise height and weight, who obsesses over her protein intake? Who wakes up every day at 4:55a.m, works out, showers, and drinks a fucking kale-whey smoothie even though it legitimately makes me want to puke? Who works from 7:20 to 11:40, no matter what? Who thinks spreadsheets are a religion? I grew up in the Panhandle of Florida. Dad sold insurance; mom took care of Dad. Things were fine enough. But, I always felt on the outside like I didn’t fit and I slipped into a different sort of life.

How did my life become all about control?

Simple. The lack of it. Because crime brings chaos. And chaos will fuck everything up.

When it all started, I was in the import/export business, which is just a fancy way of saying I moved illegal shit. And I was good at it, damned good at it. Guns, drugs, stolen cars, laundered money. You name it; I didn’t give a fuck.

That’s not completely true. I drew the line at importing and exporting people. Women, to be more precise, not that it wasn’t possible. Not that it wasn’t lucrative, either, but even I had a line I wouldn’t cross and that was it for me.

Other than that, what product got moved wasn’t my business. I was about logistics. About getting whatever it was from point A to point B.

And logistics, after all, depends on a schedule. Exacting. Precise.

So controlling the chaos became about timing the chaos. And as long as the timing was right, I stayed out of jail. Kept my clients safe.

But controlling the timing didn’t control the danger. I’ve got four bullet holes in me to prove it. My hip, my chest, my shoulder and my inner thigh, this fucking close to my balls.

To say I was part of a mafia family is too kind to the mafia and too unkind to families. I was part of an organization. A business. Pure and simple.

I was in Miami back then, when the feds weren’t paying attention and the coke was coming in hot. But soon enough, business turned into Scarface. I landed in the hospital when a delivery went bad. And that was when I decided I was out.

I relocated myself and my dad to Chicago. We lost mom ten years before that to cancer so it was just us. Witness protection, without government help. I made new lives for us, new identities. New bank accounts, new histories. New habits and pasts, with clean rap sheets and ordinary backgrounds. I helped us fade into middle America like we had never existed at all.