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He throws her to the side so he can put both his hands on the gun, even though the door shuts loudly and they’re alone again, almost as quickly as they weren’t. Still, his eyes don’t move away from the door, staring at nothing but the ghost of whoever just left.
It’s only then that she realises the blood is running cold in her veins – this isn’t the first time a gun has been drawn in her room, or the first time that she’s been forced to still and keep her breath as level as she humanly can. This is business, after all.
She wonders if she has the right to ask. But she can’t help it.
“Who was that?” her voice wavers only slightly.
“My little brother,” he says, pain strung into it as he enunciates the words. He readjusts his fingers around the weapon and she swears his eyes falter for a second. Just a second.
The sheets scrambled towards her, hiding her, are warm against her fingers. She shifts, looking at him. It slowly seeps into her – not warmth – the realisation that she has no idea who she’s in bed with. Business. He’d brought – bought – her on for business, like every other fucker that swings by. They’d known each other for just hours.
But coupled with that, is the strange feeling that she knows him. So much so that she might not want to. Or, that she might want to. Either way, she doesn’t reach for him. This much she knows; he can’t read, he is the preacher’s brother, and he needs her. What pieces fell that way in the universe to concoct this fate for her, for him.
Soon enough, after what feels like forever, he lowers his gun. His eyes close shut, and he takes no sigh of relief as he rests his head back on the pillow.
Bessie gets up and starts to get dressed.
“What’re you doing?” he says suddenly. She hears the bed moan as he props himself up on his elbows, but she doesn’t look at him. It’s not fear. Or that’s what she tells herself. Perhaps it’s anger, but, that, she tells herself it’s not.
“We weren’t finished,” the bed creaks again.
She turns around then, half-dressed. The gun glints at her – he’s still holding it, sitting up with his brows furrowed. Her lips draw into a thin line and she lets go of the clothes she was holding.
“Business is business,” she tells him. “But I don’t need someone’s brains plastered across these walls. And not my own, neither.”
“Is this your way of saying the mood’s gone?” he laughs at her. And she realises that there’s money in this exchange, and suppresses the feeling deeper that she might actually want to help him. She could back out now, because she knows he’s not going to aim that gun at her.
But she’s not laughing. He picks up on her eyes rolling as she turns her back to him firmly, picking up the clothes she dropped. Putting the gun down on the bedside table, the bed whines again underneath him as he sits up to reach out for her arm. Ice to the touch, but he feels so warm against her that it almost burns.
“Hey,” he turns her to him and he is all serious now. Not serious enough to actually tell her anything more than what she heard, but serious enough for the blood to start moving underneath her skin again. “I’m not gonna let you get hurt,” he says it and she doesn’t believe it. Still, the sentiment is nice. Pulling her closer to the edge of the bed, his hand moves down to her waist and she doesn’t resist.
They find themselves the same way they were before the preacher interrupted them, but there is something different here. Creeley is level with her, his hands softer on her thighs, the small of her back. And Bessie knows that she’s in trouble. Creeley’s known it for himself for a long time, now.
He kisses her. It’s so soft that she doesn’t recognise it. To him, even, it feels foreign, but he does it anyway. This doesn’t taste like business, and that hurts for both of them.
Her thighs tighten as she adjusts herself in the soft hold, and business is indifferent, she’s known that for a while. A sickly feeling curls in her stomach and that, that is not indifference. He mutters something against her and distantly she notes that if they live long enough, she’s going to make him tell her everything. By right. And maybe one day he’ll ask her for the same thing. Fantasy stuff, but she thinks on it for a moment.
No, god, this isn’t indifference.
This much she knows; a preacher says he’s going to hell, and Creeley’s going with him. And she might just let him take her along.