LIFE IS ABOUT LOOKING AT yourself in the mirror without flinching.
Five minutes.
That’s how long I stared at myself in the mirror just to make sure fucking Snowflake was wrong. And she was. I hardly even blinked.
I wasn’t butthurt over her comments at Café Diem. It just rubbed me all wrong—and not in the right places—that Jesse Carter, of all people in Todos Santos, would label someone as a whore. People were allowed to fuck whomever they wanted, as long as it was legal and consensual. She’d probably cheated on her high school sweetheart and got deflowered by another. Pot and kettle anyone?
Whatever. Fuck that, and fuck her. Also, fuck this.
“’K, Grier, thanks for a wonderful time and a lovely blowjob.” I tossed my Tuesday Girl’s dress on my bed. I lived on a houseboat in the marina. I’d bought it when I was eighteen because I’d wanted to own something—anything, really, other than a bad reputation—and never saw the point in moving anywhere else over the years. I could probably afford more than a shitty mini-yacht at this point. But I liked the houseboat fine. It was nice and cozy, and I fed the fish under it every morning, my way to say thanks for sharing the ocean with me. Plus, my bedroom was big enough for a queen-sized bed, and that’s all I really needed. A place to eat, shit, and sleep. Grier’s blonde mane spilled all over her back as she sat on the mattress, stretching lazily.
“Were you distracted today?” She yawned.
“Huh?” I kicked the door leading to the deck open. I was naked, save for my briefs. Even they were pulled half-down after a piss, my inked ass cheek on full display. Skulls with roses pouring from their eye sockets, monsters in battle, sea creatures crawling up my thigh. I looked like a human canvas, because fucking Snowflake was right. About the eyes. About the mirror. About everything, really.
Hiding made me feel like shit.
“It seemed like your mind was elsewhere.” Grier lit up a cigarette and joined me on the deck, leaning against the banisters, wrapped in nothing but my white sheet. The roar of the ocean rising made her skin blossom into goosebumps. I angled my face toward hers.
“Is this your diplomatic way of saying I sucked?” I flicked her jawline softly, and she shivered in pleasure.
“You can never suck, Bane. That’s why I keep you around.” She winked. I smacked her ass. “Tell Brian I need him to stall the health and safety inspectors. They are pushing to come check out Café Diem, but the faucets are leaking again.” Another hundred grand I spent from Darren’s advance on plumbing before fulfilling my part of the deal.
Brian Diaz was the county’s sheriff. I kept his wife happy, and he, in return, gave me access to police files and turned a blind eye to some stuff that probably didn’t put me high on the Citizen of the Year list of Todos Santos. From the outside, it looked kind of fucked-up, but it wasn’t, trust me. Brian was gay and came from a notoriously Catholic and rich family. The last thing he needed was to be disowned and stripped out of his fat inheritance and badge. No one wanted a closeted sheriff who secretly liked picking up lady boys in radioactive-colored wigs at Redondo Beach. And it wasn’t like he was a bad husband, but Grier had needs. I took care of the Diazes’ problem, and they, in return, took care of mine.
“I will. Anything else?” She nuzzled her nose to my shoulder. She was warm and soft and wrong. Suddenly, I didn’t want another rodeo. I wanted her gone.
“Nope.”
A knock on the door saved me from the prospect of round two. I broke her cigarette in half and threw it in the water. “Say no to cancer.”
“You smoke like a chimney.” She laughed.
“Yeah, but you should know better.” With that, I tilted my head to my bedroom, silently ordering her to make herself invisible. I grabbed some pants and opened the door.
Hale.
I propped my shoulder against the frame, folding my arms.
“Miss me?” The smirk on his face was the main reason they invented sucker punches.
“Like a bad case of crabs, baby.” I tucked the joint I was about to smoke on the deck between my lips. Hale coerced his way into my living room like he owned the place. He wore Hawaiian board shorts and a black wetsuit top. I closed the door behind us, inwardly cursing him for making Grier stay longer. Hale flopped down onto my couch and crossed his ankles on my coffee table, making himself at home.
“You’re treading hot water, Captain Save-a-Ho,” he warned, folding his arms behind his head and staring at my peeling ceiling with a smile.
“Is this the part where I pretend I know what you’re talking about?” I strolled to my fridge, plucking out two beers and throwing one into his hands. I popped my bottle cap off with the edge of my breakfast nook.
“I’m not talking about you.” Hale took a sip from his drink. “I’m talking about Jesse Carter. You’ve been seen with her outside Café Diem, making a scene. A lover’s quarrel?”
I didn’t know how to answer that. Just the fact that he’d called her a whore made me want to smash my fist in his face so hard he would be unrecognizable, even to his own parents.
“Is she your angle?” Hale moved sideways on my sofa to turn his whole body toward mine, tilting his head sideways. “Is Darren Morgansen your investor? I wish you’d tell me more about SurfCity.”
“She’s not an angle,” I gritted out.
“Well, she is not a date, that’s for sure. I mean, you don’t do girlfriends. What is she, then?”
“A toy.” The word slid between my teeth angrily. Fine. I was mad at Jesse. I wanted to hurt her, but not enough to say this kind of shit to her face.
“Couldn’t you find a better toy? One that hasn’t been played with by every guy in Todos Santos?” He snorted.
I discarded my beer in the sink and walked over to him. “Get the fuck out of my house.”
Hale stood up, smirking. “Easy there, tiger. Are you planning on keeping this one?”
“Jesus.” I shook my head. “Why do you give a fuck?”
“I don’t. But this piece of hot gossip has caught me off guard, so I thought I’d check for myself.”
Dude seriously needed a girlfriend. And some life to go with her.
“Get out,” I said.
“You’ve never spoken about any girl the way you do about the Morgansen chick.”
“Her last name is not Morgansen.”
“See!” His eyes widened, his smile gloating. “My point exactly.”
I erased the space between us, standing toe-to-toe with him now. My breath mingled with his, our noses nearly brushing, and my eyes must have been blazing, because for once in his miserable life, Hale looked less than keen to ruffle my feathers. “Bane…”
“One more word about Jesse Carter, Hale. I dare you. I don’t want you anywhere near her. Consider this a warning—not as a business partner, or a friend, but as an enemy. We clear?”
We held each other’s gaze for a long beat before Hale’s jaw ticked. Finally, he dragged his gaze to my bedroom door. “Tell the lady in your bedroom eavesdropping is grossly impolite.” He grinned, sauntering out of my houseboat. The wooden door slapped in its frame.
I turned around to see Grier sloping against the doorframe of my bedroom, her eyes shimmering with something I was too much of an emotional fuck-up to decipher.
“Now I’ll ask again, Bane—were you distracted this evening?”
I growled a sound that wasn’t a yes or a no.
“Is she worth it?”
I thought about the six million bucks and gave her a half-shrug. “Yeah.”
“Does she need you?”
The third question left me unprepared. Did Snowflake need me? Was it fucked-up to think that she did? Because she definitely needed someone. I didn’t think I was the best choice she had, but I sure as hell was the only thing available currently.
“She needs me.” I didn’t just say the words. I felt them. They crushed into my chest. Because I needed her, too.
Not just because of the six million bucks.
The five minutes in front of the mirror felt like a lifetime.
I needed some kind of atonement. Closure. Something to separate me from him.
And that was one truth even a liar like me couldn’t deny.
I waited for Jesse to pull her head out of her ass and make the first move. I gave her two days to show signs of life. A phone call, a text message, a goddamn carrier pigeon. Alas, the girl was quieter than a dead cheerleader in a horror flick. I half-missed our back and forth, but carried on with my life like she’d never happened. She was funny and unaffected, and I really liked that about her. And she used movie titles as verbs. That shit was sexier than an edible thong.
I spoke with Darren on the phone later that week, and he complained that I was slacking off and not doing my part of the deal. I wanted to argue with him, but at this point, I’d already spent four hundred thousand of his advance on Café Diem and the refurbished boutique hotel. It was small, but it was also fucking expensive. I was waist-deep in the quicksand, and I knew it.
That’s how I ended up heading to Mrs. Belfort’s. When I’d called Darren, he’d said Jesse would probably be there. Guess I was hanging out with an eighty-year-old today. I parked outside of her mansion, hanging my helmet on the handle and shaking the desert sand off my combat boots before ringing her doorbell. No one answered. I punched it a few more times. Nada.
The house was framed by rosebushes and nothing else. None of the houses in El Dorado had any additional gates. The neighborhood was walled and hermetically locked by an electronic gate and artificial lake. I walked freely into Mrs. Belfort’s backyard. There was a hedge maze at the center of the garden, and a set of rocking chairs overlooking it on the massive porch, with an elderly woman occupying one of them, sipping lemonade. The other seat was empty and rocking back and forth, telling me the person I was after was probably nearby.
“It’s been a while,” she mumbled to herself, her eyes glued to the maze like it was the most interesting thing in the world. I decided the best course of action was to make myself known. I did the whole awkward hi thing with my hand, even though I was a giant subhuman enveloped in ink and carved by brutality. “Oh, Fred, how I’ve missed you.” She smiled at me with tears in her eyes.
And the plot thickens. Mrs. Belfort wasn’t lucid. That, or I had a strong resemblance to a dude named Fred.
“I’m a friend of Jesse’s. Do you know where she is?”
“Jesse doesn’t have any friends. It’s just Shadow and I.”
“She does now. Where can I find her?”
Mrs. Belfort tilted her chin to the maze.
“She can be there for hours. Sometimes even days.” She paused, sipping her lemonade with shaking hands. “The maze is enormous.”
Mrs. Belfort wasn’t kidding, either. It was the size of the average Target. I knew exactly why Carter liked getting lost there. It was because she didn’t want to be found.
“Remember the maze, Fred? You and I used to go there all the time. It was our secret spot away from the children.”
“Sure, sweetheart. Sure.” I patted her knee distractedly, slowly walking toward the labyrinth. I stood at the edge.
“Jesse?” I took a step in, glancing left and right. All I saw were lush, green shrubberies. They were all a few inches taller than me, which meant that I couldn’t cheat my way to the exit.
No answer, but footfalls thumped on the ground. I tried to remember what shoes Jesse wore, and surprised myself by recalling her dirty white Keds. Then an image of her slender white ankles popped into my head. They were almost as fair as her shoes. The mental image shot a missile of blood straight to my cock, making it swell and twitch.
Now would be a good time to focus, horn dog.
“How well do you know this place?” I made conversation, even though I had no idea if she was anywhere near me. Didn’t matter, as I couldn’t turn back now. I was in too deep, and wasn’t that a perfect fucking analogy for the clusterfuck that was our relationship? I was playing her. Using her. Toying with the frayed leftovers of her trust. If Jesse could hear me, I couldn’t tell. She remained silent. She obviously wasn’t sure about my angle yet, and I loved that I needed to earn her trust, even if I didn’t deserve it.
“So, you like getting lost.” I listened to the silence, drinking it in. I stopped for a minute, thinking I’d already been in that same spot. Was I walking in circles?
I looked around me. “You like the thrill of it. I get it. I have the same thing with ink. It’s the endorphins. Everybody chases their high.”
“Some more than others,” I heard her mutter somewhere in the distance, to my right. My cock swelled in an instant. I needed to keep myself in check when it came to her. It shouldn’t have been difficult. Six million dollars and my beloved SurfCity were on the line. Bonus points: she’d sworn off men, and last I checked, I had a dick between my legs.
“See?” I grinned. “I knew you wouldn’t pass up a chance to talk shit about me.”
“Really, Bane? Mrs. Belfort, too?” Jesse sighed, her voice becoming more distant. She was running. I was chasing. It’d been a fucking while since I’d chased. Sex was readily available, like buying meat at a butcher’s shop. I liked hunting more.
I liked it a lot.
I picked up my pace, realizing her implication, and let out a chuckle.
“I’m not porking your senior friend, Little Miss Sass.”
I turned left, my fingers brushing the carefully cut bush. Her footfalls descended to my right.
“Why are you here?”
“Because of you.” The truth felt like a cotton ball in my mouth.
She turned sharply again, her steps becoming less prominent. Fuck, Jesse, fuck.
“When are you going to get tired of chasing me around?” Her breaths were fast, hard, desperate. I felt them in my own lungs.
“Never sounds like a good time to me.”
“Bullshit. Even my mom gave up on me. So, the town’s bad boy? Yeah. Not holding my breath here.”
“Hold your fucking breath, Jesse. I’m not a stereotype, or a title, or the town’s bully. And I’m going to get you.”
“Get me, then.”
“Give me a clue.”
“The maze is the shape of a snowflake. I’m at the center.”
It was? That was an odd coincidence. Then I remembered her tat.
My Whole Life Has Been Pledged to This Meeting with You
Maybe it wasn’t. Maybe she really was my atonement.
I looked around. I was definitely on some kind of an edge. I knew that, because if I jumped up in place, I could see the rosebushes on the other end. I charged in the opposite direction.
“Are you really looking for me?” Her voice was quiet.
“Nah. I’m taking a lengthy stroll in a stranger’s maze in the middle of the fucking summer because sweating my own body weight is a favorite hobby,” I quipped.
“No one else ever did, and I’ve been coming here for two and a half years now. Sometimes for entire days.”
I sucked in a slow breath, ignoring the fact my blood had migrated from my dick to my head, and now I was angry. Where the hell were her parents?
“I’m getting closer,” I said.
“How do you know?”
“I can smell you.”
“How do I smell?”
Like dessert.
“Green apples and the first rain after a dry spell.”
She laughed, then sniffed. Was she crying? I didn’t ask, because I didn’t want to do something stupid if she was. Already, I sounded like a bad Valentine’s post card. Then she said, “Cedar wood and cinnamon.”
“Huh?”
“That’s what you smell like.” I heard the grin in her voice and imagined her chewing the tip of her raven black hair.
“I didn’t think you were ever close enough to notice.”
“It’s a strong smell.” She sniffed again. Definitely crying.
“Bet it smells delicious,” I said, hating the beat that followed my statement.
“It does.”
Warmth filled my chest. This was not good. My cock was one thing. Anything north of it was something else entirely. We were going to establish a few rules once I got to her. If I ever did. It occurred to me, then, that Jesse sounded sad, but not stressed. She knew her way around this maze, probably better than anyone.
Step. Another step.
My eyes found her back like a light in the dark. Her silky hair. Her sweet, round, small, perky ass. I wanted to sink my teeth into one of the cheeks and dig a finger into that tight hole. Make her moan my name. Then suck on her pussy until I had pussy breath for the next week.
“Boo,” I said dryly.
Jesse turned around, the red of her eyelids against the blue of her pupils sending me crashing back to planet Earth.
“I can’t believe you looked for me.”
“I can.” Mother of all fucks, what was I saying? I took a step forward without meaning to. She didn’t take a step back. Another calamity waiting to arise. “You called me a whore because you wanted me to give up on you like all those other motherfuckers, didn’t you?”
She dropped her gaze to her Keds. “I don’t trust men, Bane, but I guess you haven’t given me a reason not to trust you yet.” A truth. “Whatever your motives are about me, are they one hundred percent pure?”
“Yeah.” A lie.
I liked her. I did. That was good—I needed to like her, I had six months to spend with her—but I didn’t want to like her like her. I liked Jesse in the same way I used to like my ex-girlfriend, Edie. It was a long way from the L word, but it sat comfortably between caring about someone to wanting to fuck them so hard they couldn’t walk straight for three days after.
“So. You’ve met Mrs. B.” Jesse wiped her eyes quickly, breaking whatever spell we’d found ourselves entwined in. I tousled my hair to do something with my hands. “Yeah. I wouldn’t be surprised if she is calling the police right now, reporting the mammoth Viking stamped with tattoos who trudged into her hedge maze.”
Jesse laughed, bringing a lock of dark hair to her lips and chewing on it. “How did you find me?”
Your stepdad tells me where you are twenty-four-fucking-seven.
“You told me about this place right before you decided to take a shit on our newfound friendship. I figured you’d be here, and I was in El Dorado with one of my usual hookups.”
And the lies just keep on piling up like shitty food at an all-you-can-eat buffet.
She narrowed her eyes. “You’re not stalking me, right? Because I’ve had my fair share of crazy for this lifetime.”
I gave her a pitying look. “You barely leave your house and dress like a teenage nun. No offense, but you make a very unattractive stalkee.”
“Stalkee isn’t a word.”
“But you have to admit it’d make a good one.”
She could smile right now if she weren’t so broken. But she was. So she nodded instead. “I came here to gather courage. Shadow hasn’t been eating or drinking, for two days now. I need to take him to the vet.”
I vaguely remembered the furry dirtball from the playground. She’d clutched him into her chest like he was her newborn baby, even though he was kind of big.
“Okay. Let’s go.” I cocked my head to one of the many paths of the maze. She looked up, and there was hope in her eyes.
“You’ll come with me?”
Her gratitude depressed me. What role did her parents play in her life, other than trying to get her to have a job so she could leave their home?
I shrugged. “I’m not meeting my evening piece till nine.”
I didn’t know why I said it. Well, actually, I did. I said it because I needed to remember it. Because Jesse Carter was a project, not a goddamn date. But that still didn’t explain why I scanned her face for emotional clues. And definitely didn’t explain why I fucking hated not finding any.
“Okay, so we better hurry. I know a way out of here that’s not through the entrance.” She quirked her lips up in a lopsided grin. My logic flew out the window around the same second. That was a new expression on her face. A leftover from her former self, was my guess.
“Follow me.” She motioned with her hand.
My eyes clung to her ass, and I was no longer chasing her.
No, I was hunting her.
Waiting on her.
Knowing the pounce would never come.
Knowing no amount of tall stacks was going to make up for the damage I was about to create.