Taut: The Ford Book (Rook and Ronin Spinoff 2)

I can’t say anything.

I have so much to say, but I cannot say anything. Because if I talk to her, if I utter her name, I will break and I will take her, right here in her boyfriend’s parking garage. I’ll pick her up, slide my hands up her thighs as I lift her skirts, crash her against the cinder block wall, and f**k the shit out of her.

“Ford, please. Talk to me. Please.”

I push in the clutch and ease it into first.

“Please, Ford. Just tell me where you’re going, OK? Just don’t leave me like this.”

I ease up off the clutch and roll forward. She walks alongside, still holding the door open.

“Goddammit! Talk to me, please!”

I grab the door and try to close it but she reaches in and tries to take my keys. “No,” she says in a huff. I press on the brakes and grab her wrist, squeezing it until she squeals. “You won’t hurt me, I know you won’t hurt me.”

I squeeze tighter and she whimpers.

“I will hurt you, Rook,” I say evenly as I stare into her soul. “I’m hurting you right now. And it feels good. Because you’ve been hurting me since the day we met. You’re selfish. You take. That’s all you do—take. You’re a Taker, Rook. And I’ve got nothing left to give you. You took it all.”

Her jaw drops as she processes my words.

I told her. I warned her.

She yanks her wrist free and steps back, shaking her head. “You’re saying that on purpose. To make me go away. And fine. Leave, then. You Runner. You’re a Runner, Ford. Who’s running away now? Huh?”

I slam the door closed and she pounds on the window. I roll forward, looking out my window to make sure not to run over her feet. I tune out her pleas and press down on the accelerator, shift into second, and then blow past the parking attendants standing guard at the exit. I turn left onto Blake Street until I hit 19th, then take that all the way down to Broadway. I fully intend to go home, but when my building appears a few blocks later, I just keep driving past.

The streets have been cleared of yesterday’s snow but another storm has already arrived. The flakes are small and scattered now, but soon they will blanket the entire Front Range in white. I have a flight out to LA tomorrow afternoon but suddenly the thought of going home to my high-rise condo, with the massive four-bedroom, three-thousand-square-foot floor plan—empty save for me and all the impersonal things that came with it when the Biker Channel people rented it—it just… I just…

Can’t.

I can’t do it. I can’t live like this for another second. I can’t pretend like this is working for me. I’m…

My phone buzzes in my pants. I turn right on Colfax and check the incoming call. Ronin.

“Yes.”

“Ford, what the hell is going on? Rook is hysterical. She said you’re leaving or something.”

“Oh, I’m sorry. I should’ve explained better, I suppose. I have a flight to LA, a new show. That series I told you about a few months ago. I got the call, so I’m going.”

Silence. He knows I’m lying—not about the show, I did get that show. And it’s an HBO candidate, so I’d be a fool to pass it up. But I think everyone knows that what Rook and I have, our friendship, is not all that’s going on. And really, what’s Ronin going to say? ‘My girlfriend sorta loves you, but she never wants to be with you, so she knows this is your way of leaving her behind and moving on and I think you should come back and continue this… thing you two have to make her happy?’

No, of course he’s not. Because then he’d have to admit Rook is not completely his. She is half mine.

She has always been half mine.

And maybe Ronin is content with the arrangement. I huff a little air at this. Why wouldn’t he be? He gets to sleep with her every night. He gets to share dinners with her and take her on vacation. He gets to watch her brush her hair in the morning, and mope about their apartment in her sweats, perfectly comfortable and sighing with contentment as they watch TV, or plan their f**king grocery list. Because even if a part of her belongs to me, he knows. He knows I’d never steal her. I would never do that.

“That’s all that’s going on here, Ford?”

“Of course,” I say. “Listen, it’s starting to snow pretty hard now, I’ll give you guys a call the next time I’m in town.” I end the call, turn the phone off and throw it on the seat next to me as I cross over I-25, pass the stadium and leave downtown. And I just drive.

I have no idea what I’m doing.

I just drive.

I could go home. Not my condo, but my mother’s house in Park Hill. She’s having a party like she does every year. I never go, but I could. I should. I should just go home and pass the night with her in all those familiar rooms, with all those familiar faces.

But then I’d just be reminded of the other person I lost. And I can’t do that tonight. Not tonight.

I’ll turn around at the next light, I tell myself. And then the next one.

But I keep going and the next thing I know, I’m getting on the I-70 in Golden, heading up towards Lookout Mountain.

But I blow past that exit too, the Bronco straining with the steep ascent that will take me up into the Rocky Mountains. It’s a long climb. Denver might be a mile up, but the altitude in these mountains is a whole other level of high.

The transmission whines at me, reminding me that it’s old and vulnerable.