THE NEXT MORNING, I PULLED a pillow over my face and ignored the alarm clock yelling at me that I had a shift at Book-ish in an hour. Gail breezed into my room. Well, her room, really. We were sharing her queen-sized bed without any trouble, other than that first night where she’d told me she found it gross to sleep next to a person who’d been in bed with Bane Protsenko.
“It’s like secondhand smoking, but with prostitution.” She’d pretended to gag. Secretly, I was happy I could still laugh about it and still remember how to breathe.
I knew that I needed to remove myself from Gail’s apartment at some point, because Gail was too nice to kick me out, but decided to deal with the situation only after I’d dealt with Emery and his friends. One thing at a time. That was perhaps the only motto Mayra had taught me that had actually stuck.
“Good morning, sleepyhead.” Gail splashed down on the bed, lacing her black tattered Chucks. I peeked at her from under the pillows, my eyebrows pinched.
“Hi.”
“Have fun spreading STDs on my front door yesterday?”
“I think we missed a spot or two. Might revisit it tonight,” I grumbled.
“Yeah. I don’t care. I didn’t come here to hear about Bane’s dick. That shit should have its own Wikipedia by now. I’m here to tell you that your mom’s downstairs.”
That made me jump out of the bed and fling away the blanket. I charged for my Keds, tightening the laces like they’d wronged me somehow. My hair was a mess, and my breath still had that after-make-out aroma—a little dry, a lot horny. I shot Gail a look from behind her shoulder.
“How does she know I’m here? Did you have another slip of the tongue, like with Bane?” I immediately regretted the uncalled-for comment. Gail owed me nothing, and it really had been an honest mistake on her part. “Sorry,” I muttered, untangling my hair with my fingers and taking a sip of water from a bottle discarded on the floor. Gail fell onto her bed and flicked chipped black nail polish from her nails.
“I didn’t talk to her. I came back from the grocery store, and she was there, hanging out and asking questions. You really know how to channel people’s inner creepers, know that, Carter?”
I didn’t put it past my mom to have hired a PI to find where I was. I grabbed an apple from the fruit bowl in Gail’s kitchen and jogged downstairs to face The Wicked Witch of the West. She was wearing sunglasses the size of Cyprus and enough Prada to open a store. Her hair was newly bleached, and she looked about as mournful as I looked like a Hula girl. I dug one hand into the pocket of my black hoodie and took a juicy bite of the apple, leaning against the entrance of Gail’s building. Last I’d directly spoken with Pam, she’d been flailing in the pool, spitting water. I doubted this was a social call.
“Lost your way to the plastic surgeon?” I arched an eyebrow.
“Save me the hilarious commentary, Jesse. I’m here because we need to go to the lawyer ASAP. Do you think this is some sort of a game?” She was trying hard not to bark, dangling over the edge of a breakdown.
I tilted my head, silently producing Darren’s letter from the back pocket of my jeans and handing it to her. “Is this why you’re here? Because your pedophile rapist of a husband left me all of his shit, and you’re freaking out?”
She held the letter between her manicured fingers, not unlike it was a ticking bomb, and flipped her sunglasses to the top of her head. Her eyes skimmed the paragraphs, running in their sockets and widening with every passing second. I saw all the white around her blues. All the lies behind her fake-truths.
“Jesse…”
“Remember when I was twelve and had my first period? The one that didn’t come back until eight months later? I was puking in the bathroom and there was blood on my thighs, and you saw it, because you asked Hannah to clean it afterwards?” My voice was calm. Dry. The words slid from my mouth effortlessly, and even though I wasn’t in a state of hysteria, I still felt them. They hurt, but they no longer burned.
I was healing.
“I didn’t know. I mean, I wasn’t sure,” she stammered, taking a step in my direction. I took a step back, ripping another bite of the apple. It was shiny. Red. Beautiful, really. I understood why Snow White had fallen for the trap. But I was standing right in front of my very personal witch, refusing to make the same mistake.
“Yeah, you were.” I sniffed, kicking a little rock between us. “So, you found me. Mazal Tov. Now it’s time for us to go to the lawyer. You’re acting like you should be looking forward to this meeting. Spoiler alert: you shouldn’t.”
“Jesse, baby, honey.” She laughed, going for the hug—going for the freaking hug—and I sidestepped, avoiding what could have made me throw up the apple right on her glossy neon stilettos. I stuck up a hand between us, shaking my head.
“Get away from me, Pam. You want us to go to Darren’s lawyer? No problem. Send me a text message with a time and a place. I’ll be there.”
“What are you planning to do with the money?”
I shrugged. “Burn it, maybe.”
“Jesse, you’re being ridiculous! This is real money we’re talking about. Your father would be—”
I pushed her away before she could finish the sentence, smoke nearly shooting out of my nostrils. “Don’t. Whatever you do, don’t tarnish his name. He’s not to be blamed for any of the bullshit that happened.”
“Oh. That’s rich. The drunk philanderer was a saint, huh?” She threw her arms in the air. I laughed. She didn’t get it, and it occurred to me that she might never.
“Far from it. He was a cheater and an alcoholic. A savior and his own worst victim. He wanted to help people, but was doing a spectacular job at ruining his own life. But all is forgiven, Pam, because he tried. He tried to be good. You?” I stepped toward the door, shaking my head. “You don’t want to be good. You want to win. Maybe that’s why you keep on losing.”
“You need to leave me with something!” she called out.
“I am,” I said, yanking the door open. “I’m leaving you with the consequences of your actions.”
My father had once told me that Alexander Pushkin was born into Russian nobility and died in a duel with his brother-in-law, a French aristocrat, who’d tried to seduce his wife. I remembered thinking people had really crazy lives back then, but I didn’t think that anymore. As I sat inside my Rover, outside the Todos Santos Police Station, strangling the steering wheel with my hands, I realized that his life had been no odder than mine.
Because we all had crazy stories.
I’d been raped twice.
Born to a mother who’d never really loved me.
Taunted and ridiculed in high school, manipulated by my own therapist.
All those things were true, but while they had happened, so had other things. Great things. I was blessed in so many ways:
Finding Gail.
Finding a job.
Finding literature, and words, and sentences that inspired me to be better, both to other people and to myself.
Finding Bane.
I threw the door to my vehicle open and walked into the station on autopilot, slinging my backpack across my shoulder. I couldn’t believe I was doing it. It hadn’t changed one bit since the time I provided a statement more than two years ago.
A sleepy receptionist with big dark curls and kind eyes looked over from the reception counter, scanning me. “How can I help you, sweetheart?”
“I need to amend a statement I gave two and a half years ago.”
I told her my name.
She gave me a second glance, this time thorough and curious, and told me to wait. I watched her turn around and hurry over to her shoulder bag hanging from her office chair, taking out her personal phone and dialing up a number. My palms began to sweat, and I regretted showing up here. What if Emery, Nolan, and Henry’s parents had paid someone to keep me silent? What if I’d just walked into a lawsuit waiting to happen? Did I even have enough evidence?
Maybe she was calling Mr. Wallace right now. I couldn’t face him. He was one of the most formidable men I’d ever met.
Two minutes later, the woman in the uniform was beside me again. “Coffee?” She smiled breezily.
I wiped my palms over my pants. My jaw was hurting because I was trying to keep myself from screaming.
“I’m fine,” I clipped. “What’s going on?”
The lady looked down, her gaze resting on the ample chest covered by her khaki dress shirt. “I called Detective Madison Villegas. She said she was expecting you.”
“She was?”
“Yes. Two years ago.”
Villegas. The woman who’d cried when I gave my statement.
The woman who’d desperately tried to get a word with me, alone, but Darren, Pam, and the two lawyers they’d brought along with them had never allowed her to. They’d said my reputation would be tarnished, and therefore, so would my life. That I wouldn’t be able to recover. That Emery’s dad was going to destroy our family. They’d said that no one was going to believe me, because it was their word against mine, and they were the golden rich kids, and I was some girl from Anaheim who’d made a stupid mistake and regretted it.
They’d said so many things that broke my heart that day.
I swallowed. “She knew I’d be back?”
The woman nodded, resting her hand on top of mine. “You’re doing the right thing, Miss Carter.”
A few minutes later, I was sitting in Detective Villegas’ office. She was a petite woman with delicate bone structure and a fresh, short, chocolate bob. Her movements were quick and efficient, but her eyes and mouth were full of crinkles and soul.
“Tell me everything from the start,” she said. I did. I circled back to what had happened when I was twelve and continued until the moment I’d heard the ambulance picking me up after the guys raped me. I told her about the way Mayra covered up for Darren, and about Pam turning a blind eye to all of this. And Darren’s letter, I told her about it, too. Then I produced the plastic bag and slid it across her desk.
Her eyes bulged. “The evidence.”
“Where did you think it was?”
Detective Villegas shook her head. “They said it disappeared somewhere in the hospital when you were admitted. It was my first clue something was fishy.”
I gave her the original copy of his letter to me—I had a few more stacked in my backpack and saved in my cloud—along with all the evidence from school. All the pictures I’d taken when I’d visited All Saints High.
Villegas looked attentive, sympathetic, but most of all, focused. “And you said they’re now in college, studying on the East Coast.” She scribbled something in her notepad, not looking up at me. I shook my head.
“They are here on vacation. There’s a party tonight.”
She looked up. Smiled. I smiled back. We shared something that was much more than words. I’d like to believe it was the realization that something bigger than us, justice, was about to take over the lives of those who’d ruined mine. I asked her what I should expect, and she said that I needed someone to lean on, because the ride was about to get bumpy. I could only think of one man I wanted there, and I hoped that he wanted to be there with me.
Before I left Villegas’ office, I asked her how she knew I was going to come back and tell her the truth.
She shrugged and took a sip of her Starbucks. “I knew you weren’t telling the truth. Your parents were covering for them.”
“But how?”
She grimaced, pulling at her collar. Great. She was hiding a secret, too?
I shook my head. “Please, just tell me.”
“Well, this is hardly confidential. Your housekeeper, Hannah, came forward and said that your parents were not exactly what you’d call hands-on, and that the boys hung out at your house often and she had a strong reason to believe that they were capable of doing such thing. She even hinted that one of them came over when you weren’t around, for your mother.”
I thought about Emery’s cockiness, about Nolan’s sordid affair with Pam, but my stomach wasn’t churning anymore. I ran my fingers through my hair. Hannah. The silent, blueberry pancake-making, birthday card-leaving housekeeper. Villegas took my file out of the cabinet and dropped it onto her desk, leaning back in her chair on a sigh.
“Then there was Juliette Belfort. She showed up at the station a couple of days after you were discharged from the hospital.”
My eyebrows crinkled. Mrs. Belfort and I weren’t even close before The Incident. It was after what happened to me that I’d started hanging out with her. Before, I’d been the half-assed girl who visited her once a month or so, bringing whatever pie Hannah had made that day and sharing a piece with her, along with lemonade, in front of the maze, just to take some of her loneliness away.
“Mrs. Belfort had a lot to say about Darren and Pamela Morgansen. Especially the latter. Mrs. Belfort blamed her for not being around for you. Said that you’d kind of raised yourself since you’d moved into El Dorado, spending excessive time in her maze and by your window. Things added up, but you and your parents were cagey. Over the years, I thought about you a lot. I wanted to check in on you many, many times. But I knew it wouldn’t be constructive for you. Knew that your parents were always going to guard you with their common yet mistaken belief that what had happened that night could ruin their business, stain their reputations, and affect your status forever.”
We hugged after that, long and tight, like old friends that had missed each other. She wasn’t a friend, but I had missed her. Before I walked away, I asked her, “What do you make of Darren? He raped me, but he also unleashed the plastic bag after his death.”
“I think…” Villegas said carefully, rubbing her chin. “I think Darren was unbalanced. The writing was on the wall, but your mother didn’t want to read it. There was too much at stake. Keep your phone turned on.”
“You got it.”
When I walked out of the police station, I could feel Emery, Nolan, and Henry’s presence in the air. It sounded crazy, but I could. It smelled of danger and the sour copper of my blood the night they’d tried to kill the old Jesse. For a while there, I thought they’d succeeded. The universe felt limitless all of a sudden. Big and wide in an unthreatening, the-world-is-my-oyster way.
I missed Bane like a limb, but also wanted to punch him in the nuts. He’d betrayed me, before and after he knew me. Slept with me with the knowledge he was being paid. And yet, I knew he wasn’t the villain in my screwed-up story.
Artem, Dad, had given us each other, in the most unexpected way, and now I’d let Roman go. Only it seemed unfair that I’d have to give up someone who’d made me so happy, just because of one mistake. I thought about the piled-up stack of mistakes and wrongdoings Artem had collected over the years, some of them behind our backs.
Bane wasn’t perfect.
But he wasn’t evil.
He deserved a chance.
I drove up to El Dorado. I promised myself I wasn’t going to walk into the party and make a scene, but I wanted to know if my gut feeling was right. I parked a street away from Wren’s house, pulled my hoodie up to cover the majority of my face, and walked down her street toward her house. I wasn’t looking for Emery’s Volvo SUV or Nolan’s Ferrari. I was looking for an old beatdown red truck or a Harley.
When I found the red ugly thing sitting right in front of the huge floor-to-ceiling window overlooking the street, from which partygoers drank and laughed, I grinned to myself. Flippantly, I circled his truck from behind, unlocked the passenger door, and slipped in. He turned around from watching the party and almost punched my face on an instinct, before realizing who it was.
I tapped my chin thoughtfully, dragging my eyes over his beautiful face. “Hmm. Aggressive much?”
“Excuse me, Miss, did you lose your way to Hot Topic?” His eyes swept over my attire, and it occurred to me that Bane had never done this before. Teased me for my weird clothing. His corded muscles relaxed. I gulped. Roman ‘Bane’ Protsenko was beautiful like a Pushkin paragraph. You could read his face a thousand times, and each time, you’d find something new to admire.
“What are you doing here?” I squeezed his bicep. I already knew the answer, but wanted to hear it anyway.
He looked away, cracking his gum loudly. “Figured you were gonna show up here. I respect that you wanna do this alone, but I can’t justify these two gloriously big balls if I’m not man enough at least to give you backup.” He cupped his groin, a dark zing igniting in his eyes. “Know what? Fuck it. It’s not about you. I know you don’t need backup. I came here because I was worried, and I wanted to put my mind at ease. Are you mad?”
I shook my head, fighting a smile.
“Thank fuck. Gail says you’re bringing out the creeper in me, and I can’t afford a restraining order with my rich criminal record.”
“I actually think that I’m done with creepers for this lifetime, if you don’t mind. Can I get the cocky bastard version instead?”
Roman pretended to sift through an imaginary catalog in front of him, plucked a nonexistent page from it, and handed it to me. “Well, whaddaya know? It’s the only version of me that’s still in stock.”
He pulled me into a kiss that made oxygen seem overrated. Our tongues lashed at each other, swirling together, at war over who was more in lust with the other. He jerked me into him, and I straddled his narrow thighs in seconds, fumbling with the buttons of his cargo pants while he unzipped my hoodie and pulled down the collar of my shirt, bringing one of my nipples into his mouth and biting it. He sucked his way up to my neck so hungrily I was sure he was going to leave purple marks all over me. His cock sprang free, and it was scorching hot in my hand as he pushed my jeans off and tugged my underwear to the side. I gave his PA a quick tug before I sank down onto his dick and closed my eyes, shuddering from the ripples of pleasure moving through me. He flipped us over, and suddenly, I was beneath him, writhing. I pulled his jeans down and scraped his lower back. We were moving in sync, like we always did. Like the waves he liked to ride. Knowing where to peak, where to soar, and where to break. “Where have you been?” he asked, sinking into me, his weight on me. I should have been frightened to get caught. Especially with a reputation like mine. Like ours. But with Bane, I felt fearless.
The outliers. The rejects. We’re free.
“Gail’s,” I answered. “Pam’s. Mrs. B’s. Just…around.”
“No, Snowflake. Where have you been before? When I was lost. When I was a monster. When nothing made sense. Where have you been all my life?”
I pulled back to look at him. Some of his pain had melted away, but most of it was there, in his eyes, waiting for me to tell him that I didn’t care that his family had stolen mine. That I wasn’t too broken to love him how he so obviously and heartbreakingly deserved to be loved. “Iris” by the Goo Goo Dolls started drifting from the radio like a lullaby, and it was perfect, and we were perfect. Even though life was far, far from perfect.
“I was right here. Waiting for you.” I pressed my palm against his heart, smiling.
My Whole Life Has Been Pledged to This Meeting with You
Bane. Roman. My sort-of stepbrother.
A con, a liar, and a thief. He was there for me at the end, when no one else was.
He was there for me when I needed him, and when I didn’t.
And he was there for me, even though I constantly pushed him away.
He thrust into me in long, punishing strokes, and I arched my back, forgetting where we were, who we were surrounded by. His ass was bare and visible for everyone outside to see, but all I felt was pleasure and triumph as he snaked one hand between us, pushing two fingers into me, making me feel so full I could hardly breathe. Our sweat cemented us together, and his cock was so hard and thick inside me, I felt him everywhere. He kept sucking, biting, and nibbling at my skin. My breasts were exposed and pushed out of my bra, bouncing against his steel chest, the collar of my shirt stretched and ruined, and again, I found myself craving to be taken mercilessly but willingly. He circled his cock inside me, teasing every nerve-end, then hoisted one of my legs over his shoulder for better access, plunging into me harder than before.
I gasped his name over and over again. Then two knocks rattled the window above my head.
“Go the fuck away,” Roman snarled, his face still buried in my chest, covering and licking me.
“Holy shit, dude, they’re legit fucking!” I saw two guys I used to go to school with laughing and pushing each other excitedly.
“Go away!” It was my turn to yell. But my heart wasn’t in it. I was so focused on the intense pleasure, on my pussy dripping and the wetness pooling between us, on the orgasm I was reaching just as they started hooting loudly.
“Shit, it’s Jesse Parker!”
“Carter, dickhead, not Parker.”
“Whatever, man. Orgy Girl strikes again. Call Emery. Now.”
“What?”
One of them punched the other in the shoulder. “Now!”
“Finish for me, baby, so we can get out of here. It’s fucking Losertown. No wonder you moved out,” Bane hissed, biting my shoulder. Just as he said that, I fell apart in his arms, feeling wave after wave of electricity slamming into my body. After I came, Bane raised himself on his forearms, picked me up, put me in the passenger seat, and revved up his engine. His dick was still hard, a pearl of white pre-cum welling along his cock ring. He didn’t come. He rolled his window down.
“Hi.” He smiled casually at the two guys.
“H…hi?” one of them said, confused. The other one was in the process of releasing a slow, recognizing shit when Bane sent his fist to both their faces in rapid succession, and the crack of their noses breaking filled the air.
Bane backed out of his parking space. The guys were standing at the curb, crouching down and screaming, holding their noses. I was zipping my hoodie up and covering as much as I could of myself when Bane stuck his head out from my window again, tucking his cock back into his pants.
“Warn Emery not to ask his daddy to bail him out. Because if I hear he’s out and about tonight, I won’t show him the same mercy my girlfriend did.”
We took off just when the police cars started pouring in through the gate. There was a row of three of them. I saw Detective Villegas sitting in the passenger seat of the first one, looking serious and talking on her phone. Neighbors poured out of their doors, opened the curtains of their big mansions, watching intently as the line of vehicles crawled up to Wren’s house.
It reminded me of the opening scene of Blue Velvet, when the seemingly perfect neighborhood is actually crawling with rustling beetles and hissing cockroaches. The perfect guys from the perfect families of All Saints High weren’t so perfect anymore.
I felt Bane’s hand wrapping around mine and looked up, watching the leaves shaking on the trees. And I thought that, if this was a fairytale, this is how I’d end the chapter:
The princess’ sword was bloody.
But she refused to tuck it back in.
She wanted to leave a trail of their misery behind her, so they could always find her.