The Funeral of a Good Girl

By – TempestRaces

Chapter Forty Seven – Of Secrets and Motorola Mix-ups

Vince drove toward a motel that he knew was clean and safe. He made her wait in the car while he secured a room and when he came back to get her she was asleep in her seat. Not feeling half as put out as he should have about the necessity of it, he picked her up, carried her across the parking lot and into the room he'd been given. He set her on the bed and stood looking down at her. He never knew what to do with her while she was asleep when she shouldn't be. Did he wake her so she could change and get under the blankets, or just leave her the way she was and let her sleep straight through? Rather than decide right away, he left her for a moment and headed for the bathroom. He ran the shower as hot as he could take and got under, showering quickly and walking out of the bathroom with a towel wrapped around his hips. He leaned over her. She had rolled over toward the center of the bed and he wanted to get a look at her face to see if she was still asleep.

All he could figure was his wet hair must have dripped on her. She woke up, blinking sleepily and rubbing at her cheek. When she looked up at him, he watched the look of shock fill her eyes before the few hours previous came back to her. "Hey," she murmured sleepily once she realized she had authorized his presence in her room. Or in this room, as it were. She rolled onto her back and stretched lazily. "You took a shower already? How long was I asleep?"

"Do you want me to count the time you slept in the car, or just the amount of time we've been in this room?"

She didn't answer. She stuck her tongue out at him in irritation. "I'm too tired to take a shower. I'm just gonna go to sleep."

"Ok." He stood looking down at her.

"You gonna stand there all night, or are you coming to bed?"

"You sure you want me to stay?"

"Well duh! I said I'd let you stay if we didn't go back to Dom's didn't I?"

"Yeah," he answered. He walked around to the side of the double bed she wasn't on and lifted the covers before sliding in. He wasn't going to question staying put. Not if it meant he didn't have to find a ride home and stay up another hour before he could finally go to sleep. "So, you gonna sleep on top of the blankets in your clothes all night, or are you going to actually get in the bed?"

With a groan she kicked the blankets toward the foot of the bed and sat up to take her boots off. She figured given that she hadn't been awake to tell Vince to bring her things in, she was sleeping in her clothes. "I don't suppose you thought to bring my bags in with you?"

"What'd you mean, your bags?"

"The bags of my stuff in the back seat of the car."

"You packed up all your stuff? You took all your stuff and left the house? You didn't think you were ever going back?" Vince started to get visibly agitated.

"It had crossed my mind I wasn't, yes," Tempest answered primly. "And now I have nothing to wear to bed because someone ruined yet another article of my favourite clothing and didn't think to bring my bags in."

"I just finished having hot naked sex with you in a supply closet. I hardly think it's a huge concern if you sleep without clothes or not. It's not even like it'll be the first time."

With a shrug, she decided he was right. She turned the light off before she started to wiggle out of her pants and shirt. When she was done she tossed them on the floor before pulling the blankets up. She settled on her side facing away from Vince and relaxed onto the pillow with a weary sigh.

He gave her a few moments to be comfortable with the situation before he rolled up on his side behind her and tucked her back against his chest. After everything, he had to fight an urge to count her fingers and toes to prove to himself she was alright. He wasn't prepared to be so far away from her just yet. Stupid little idiot.

"I really can take care of myself. I've been doing it a long time," she whispered into the dark. Maybe because she was a girl, and maybe because she was always in tune the people around her, she knew what had brought on this bout of caring.

"Not in a place like this you haven't. Things happen in L.A. that the devil himself wouldn't touch Temp, and you tried to get involved in a little of that tonight. Don't ever do it again. Now go to sleep." Discomfort with the intense protective feelings he was having toward her made him gruffer and bossier than he had intended. He let it stand that way because he hoped it gave him a small measure of distance from the situation.

"Yes sire." She knew he couldn't see her face, even if there was enough light in the room, because her head was under his chin. She rolled her eyes anyway before yawning sleepily. She had reached the stage after drinking where sleep was the only thing that made sense. It claimed her swiftly, leaving no hint of consciousness. Just a simple slide from awake to not, unperceivable. Just there one moment and not the next, breathing evened out and deep, one hand folded under her cheek and the other lying casually over his own, where it rested curled around her waist.

The stress of his day made sure Vince followed her almost as quickly. Even the thoughts chasing around his head about what it meant he was back in bed with the bane of his existence couldn't keep him awake after the night he'd had worrying about that same person getting herself killed.

The shrill ring of a cell phone woke him up an undetermined amount of time later. He checked the red numbers of the clock beside the bed blearily. It's already twelve? he asked himself as he grabbed the ringing phone off the night stand and flipped it open on instinct, wanting to answer it before it woke up the girl still asleep against his chest. "Hello?" he asked gruffly. His voice was obviously rusty from not being used all night.

"Hello?" Dom's puzzled voice came back across the line. "Vince?"

"Yeah," Vince realized he was holding Tempest's Motorola Startac, not his own Nokia. Ah fuck!

"I thought I called Tempest. I'm sure I dialled some fucked up long distance number Jesse gave me."

Dom sounded genuinely confused, Vince noted. "You didn't dial the wrong number, I answered the wrong phone. Just a second." He handed the phone over to the now conscious, though not very, Tempest. Dom, he mouthed to her as he handed her the open phone.

She wrinkled her nose at him in irritation. Didn't he know she had no desire to speak to Dominic? "Hello?" she said, instead of going with her instinct, which was telling him to go fuck himself and hanging up.

Dom really didn't know what to say. After he'd spent the night worrying about the arrogant woman, she'd found Vince at some point and spent the night with him. After everything. "Um," he tried to begin.

"Did you need something Dominic?" she asked, her tone haughty.

"Um," Dom tried again. He couldn't get anything out around his confusion over how Vince had come to be answering her phone. "I'm sorry. Why is Vince with you?"

"Why is that your business?" Tempest asked quickly.

"It's just that you left here yesterday and left Jesse and Leon partially in a panic because you were all alone in L.A. but you weren't even alone at all. You were with Vince. How is that fair to do to Jesse?"

"I was alone when I left and I met up with Vince by accident a lot later. I fail to see how you have any right to question me about this after yesterday. Did you not figure out how well it goes over with me when you try to dictate to me?"

Dom growled on his end of the connection. It was clear she was ok. He moved to hang up.

Vince got sick of being left out of the loop, and of seeing Tempest getting so upset. He lowered his head to the crook of her neck and softly bit her under her ear. She shuddered against his chest. Taking that as a good sign he started to nibble down the slope of her shoulder as he slid a hand over her stomach.

She sighed breathily before she remembered she was still on the line with Dom. She moved the phone away from her mouth. "Vince, knock it off," she hissed, glaring up at him. Her glare lacked most of its trademark ire. Vince grinned.

"Or what?" he murmured against her neck before nipping at the part of her earlobe not covered by her small cell phone.

Tempest sighed, but couldn't keep the smile off her face. "Dom I have to go. Tell Jess I'll see him later." She snapped the phone closed decisively. "I should seriously get up out of this bed and leave you here alone for that stunt."

"Just shut your smart mouth and get over here."

For once, she listened.

Dom looked at the dead receiver in his hand in shock. She'd hung up on him. And Vince had been there making out with her while she was talking to him. He shook his head. Some things were too fucked up to even contemplate. He looked up from the top of the kitchen table and found the eyes of Jesse, Leon, and Letty on his face. "She's fine. Apparently met Vince on the town last night and they found some other place to stay together." Dom shook his head and missed the look on Leon's face.

Unfortunately for Letty, she did not. She watched Dom get up and cross to the back door of the house.

"It's still a work day people. Lunch is over. Back to the garage. We got work to do if we're gonna get all those cars home by the end of the day."

Letty got up quickly and caught Leon's wrist before he could leave the table. "What's wrong with you?"

"What'd you mean what's wrong with me? Nothing's wrong with me."

"Really? So why'd you look like someone kicked your puppy after Dom told us that she spent the night with Vince last night?"

Leon sighed heartily. It was none of his business, and it wasn't like they'd made any kind of commitment to each other. It wasn't like he hadn't always been aware she was still in love with his hard headed friend. But that didn't stop him from wishing she wasn't out looking to get her heart broken again. Not after he'd put her back together once, and at some cost to himself. He could love her. Love her the way she deserved to be loved. But she couldn't love him back. She loved a man who wasn't capable of returning her feelings and treating her the way she deserved to be treated. And instead of seeing that about him and protecting herself, even if she couldn't see that and pick the man who would be good for her, no, even if she couldn't do that, it seemed she couldn't even just chose to be alone. She kept on letting the man who had broken her pull her back down into the blackness that would be their world. A world of breaking each other, hurting each other, roaring and screaming and bruising each other only to have wild sex later and consider everything fixed. Couldn't they see it didn't ultimately fix anything? That it only confused things even worse? Letty wouldn't drop it without an answer, and god knew she knew what it was like to be hurt by the one you loved.

"They had a big fight on Sunday night and she was just," he sighed, "shattered. And disillusioned and broken. And…" he trailed off, unable to tell Letty, even though he wanted to. Even though he knew he could. While she certainly would judge him if she felt the need, she would never tell on him. The story would never make the rounds. He and Vince had held her while she sobbed after catching Dom cheating on her one too many times to think she would turn around and reveal a secret of his. He knew she wouldn't. But he still didn't want to tell her what he'd done. He felt too much like he'd taken advantage of Tempest's weak emotional state that night. He felt like he'd used her because he'd wanted her so badly and he didn't feel like painting himself in that unflattering light to Letty.

"And?" Letty prodded.

"And she was going to fight Vince."

"So what?" Letty broke in. "I've fought with Vince. We all have. Vince is always doing some bonehead thing that makes sure people are fighting with him."

"No, not like this. She's schooled and a half decent fighter. But she wasn't going to yell at him and let him yell back. Not this time. She was going to try and kick his ass. She might have done ok. But she had him so mad, and vice versa, that there wouldn't have been an end that didn't have her beaten until she didn't get back up Let."

"Vince would never, ever hit her," Letty growled back vehemently. "No matter what, he would never hit her and I can't believe you would think that of him."

"I know he wouldn't mean to Let, I know that. But you weren't there. You didn't see how hard she was pushing him for just that result. She wanted him to hit her so she could hit him back. She doesn't think of herself as a female." A small, quirky smile lifted the corners of his mouth. "She's even worse than you in that regard in some respects. She doesn't do the girly dressing thing, she doesn't do the girly attitudes and as far as she's concerned she fights like a boy too. She wouldn't hit him first, so he had to start the fight. And she knew all the right buttons to push that it was a very likely possibility."

"Leon, we know each other pretty good around here. But we don't know everything about everyone. You get that right?"

"Yeah, I get that."

"Well, unless she had Vince so upset he didn't know who he was, where he was or who she was, he would never hit her. Ever. Trust me. But besides that, what was the point? Obviously, you saw this fight. So then what?"

"I broke it up. I took her out of the room, took her downstairs." He let his eyes meet Letty's. He let his silence be the rest of his story.

Letty's left brow rose skyward instantly. "You took her downstairs, downstairs?"

He nodded tersely in answer. "I didn't really mean to. But he had her so convinced she wasn't…That she was the problem, not him. And she was just so…" He ran a hand through his hair. "And it was a mistake, though not one either of us regret. But now, after everything and after how close a call it was last time he was with her only to see Mia after the fact and drop her hard enough to crack her inside, now she's given him yet another chance to do it again." He could tell from the look on Letty's face that she saw. She knew that Tempest was in love with Vince, and that he could be half in love with Tempest, if he'd let himself.

"But you say you knew she was still in love with Vince all along, right?"

"Yeah."

"So you really can't be all that upset that she got back with him right? She's in love with him and people in love don't always do what's smart. What's right. You know that. You have to, living around here."

"I do know that. But it doesn't make it any easier to see her doing this to herself all over again. There's no future for her with him."

"Considering she's not from any place even remotely close to here, there's no future for her with anyone here."

"You know what I meant."

It was Letty's turn to sigh. "I know what you meant. But it's not going to help you any more than it'll help her to pretend like reality isn't going to intrude in about four days when she leaves, Leon. She's going to leave. She's going to leave you, and Vince, and all the shit, and a few months after she goes home, she'll be a fond memory for you, and for Vince, and this whole place will be the same for her. What happens on a two week vacation from reality isn't the kind of thing that a life can be built on."

"I just can't help but think that if she wanted one of us badly enough, you'd be wrong."

"Have you seen the way she looks at Vince when he's not watching? If wanting someone badly enough was enough, she'd be making plans to haul her shit over three thousand miles."

"If she wants him so bad, why is she so prepared to go without him?"

"Because a woman, no matter how tough she is, can only put herself out there, hanging and vulnerable, so many times before she just can't do it anymore."

Letty looked up into his eyes, and he saw that for her at least, that statement was nothing but God's honest truth. But to not be willing to make the attempt? For someone like Jesse's cousin to simply say 'it's been great' and let it go at that? For someone like her to not just show up, get in his face and make him see what he was missing until he cracked or told her he had no interest at all? It didn't jive. "I'm not sure I can totally buy that."

"You guys! We have work to do. What's the big deal?" Dom growled from the door.

"Nothing, we were just leaving." Leon moved toward the door after giving Letty a look warning her to let it drop. She followed him out of the house with a shake of her head.