A life of joy and peace…
I drove around like an indecisive nutcase for hours, aimless, pointless, mindless.
As the sun hunkered down behind the small hills and lush, tall trees of the green yet affluent town, I braked up outside Alpine Inn, spinning the LFA to a dusty, hazardous stabilization in an unpaved dirt lot.
The place was a cozy, wooden square of a box, off-white, with neon lights, advertising Coors, blinking through low, glass windows. Six Harley motorcycles lined off the front of the building, staking claim, like a snapshot straight out of Sons of Anarchy.
Stretching across the console, I opened the glove compartment. It was empty. But I knew a gun was in there somewhere. I felt around with my fingers until they discovered a tiny latch on the upside. I used my fingernail to prize it open and, bingo: a black and chrome semi-auto handgun fell into my palm.
The handgun, however, was bigger than I expected and my tight outfit provided no flaps or holes to hide it, so I settled for the Browning in my boot that I’d stolen from the giant dumb-dumb who’d shot at us earlier, then unfolded out of the flashy sports car.
I pushed through the doors of the rustic old matchbox and was instantly harassed with the pungency of greasy fries and juicy burgers. Due to the neon flashing signs out on the windows, I’d gotten the impression that the place was a bar, but it was more of a buy-yourself-a-heartburn joint. Quirky and a bit antiquated, it had a whole retaining-the-past thing going on with its paint-stripped red ceilings with vintage beer posters pasted on them. Long, worn-out benches, creepy deer heads, real ancient beer signs, stickers everywhere, and a shit-ton of bric-a-brac. With all that, the place should have felt clustered and stuffy, but instead it was the opposite, easy on the mind.
There weren’t many customers inside, possibly because it was sundown. A cohort of bikers claimed a whole bench to themselves, even though it could easily seat about fifteen. A klatch of tatted, voluptuous chicks sat at the opposite bench, stuffing their faces with oily, salty French fries. And an old couple was up by the order counter.
The bikers all swung their heads to me when I entered, and I wasn’t sure if it was my get-up—skinny black jeans, black tank top, black biker jacket and black crush-your-intestines combat boots—or the grim look on my face, but they all exchanged glances with each other, and, as if coming to a unified agreement that I was not to be fucked with, went back to their boisterous conversation.
I strode up to the bar side of the order counter and waited behind the old couple, tapping my boot against the linoleum-tiled floor. When the senior couple moved off, I stepped up and ordered a Coors.
The cashier, a corpulent, round woman, African-American, protruded her lips in a moue as she studied me. “You ridin’ with ‘em boys?” she asked in a brawling twang, jutting her chin in the direction of the bikers.
“Why?” I returned, my voice a dull, empty thing.
“‘Cause you looks like a lesbian biker chick.” She gave me that “mhmm-hmm” purse of the lips. “You a lesbian biker chick?”
This world. Why can’t people ever learn to mind their own goddamn business?
“Are you a gospel singer?” I asked her.
Baffled, she answered, “No. Why?”
“Because you’re fat, and you’re black.”
The woman’s lips twitched at the corners, fighting back a smile, which was counter-productive of what I’d been aiming for. I was expecting a whole lot of lipping about me being a skinny white bitch, racist and prejudiced, a couple of neck rolls and finger snaps. But instead, the damn woman found it funny. “I deserved that. But no. No fat, black singer here. Last time I tried singin’ at a karaoke, I let out a pants-ripping fart tryna hold a Whitney Houston note.”
I blinked at her. “Can I get my beer now, please?”
Folding her lips, she eyed me up and down then nodded as if approving me, before she finally turned and wrung up my order, then passed me my change and the beer.
Popping the cover with the bottle opener attached to the counter, I took a sip, then went to plop down on the last bar stool at the end next to the front door, raising my eyes up to the flat-screen television that was airing a basketball game.
No plans. I had no fucking plans of where to go from here. I’d stabbed the man I loved and run off. The villain who’d promised me my freedom was hunting me down to kill me. I’d ruined an already tattered relationship with the only family I had left by maliciously trying to kill his unborn.
I sipped my beer. Oh, my life was fucking joyous.
Someone big and imposing sat down on the stool next to me, but I kept my eyes on the television and pretended not to notice, while keeping my senses on high alert, drawing my shoulders up in defense, tensing, preparing for an attack.
“Where’s your cocky protector?” the gruff voice said from beside me.
Noting some familiarity in the person’s voice, I tipped my head in his direction, relaxing upon the sight of Sambo, the over-muscled tank of a man assigned by Org to protect me.
Another swig of my beer. “I thought you were my protector?”
As if this answer pleased him, like being my protector was an honor, he dropped me a lopsided grin. “I am. But earlier today you were ready to put a bullet in my partner’s head for him.”
“I protect who protects me,” I said, shrugging. “Earlier today he was protecting me when you weren’t. Now, you are when he isn’t.”
“You’re saying, if someone tries to attack me right now, you’ll put a bullet in ‘em for me?”
Swig. “Yep.”
Another grin, his eyes burning with something licentiously fierce. This Sambo person viewed me a lot more than just a job.
His hand disappeared into his jacket pocket, then came back out with a mint. “You got any idea whatsoever how grippingly stunning you are, Jhay?” He unwrapped the mint and popped it in his mouth.
Mowing down the uncouth urge to roll my eyes, I raised my eyes back to the basketball game.
Sambo cleared his throat to steal my attention back. “You’re probably saying I sound cliché, but sweetie, clichés are clichés for a reason. Really, you should be walking beauty pageants or runways, not…this.”
“Do you hit on all your assignments?”
“Not all my assignments look like you.”
Downing the last of my beer, I swiveled my bar stool around to face him, then leaned forward and rubbed my palm up his thick hunk of a thigh, deciding to fuck with him. “So, you think I’m pretty, huh?”
Sambo’s Adam’s apple bobbed as his hot, blue gaze dipped to my cleavage. “You fucking with me?”
Leaning closer so my breasts were pressing against his bicep, I smoothed my hand further up to his crotch where I found him predictably hard and straining against his jeans. “Well, don’t you want to be fucked with?”
I rubbed my palm over his erection in a teasing circle, and his eyes hooded as he made a subtle thrust of his hips upward. “You still his? Like you proclaimed today? ‘Cause I want you, Jhay Byrd. I’ve wanted you since I saw your pictures and I—”
His sentence went unfinished, as his big, heavy body was yanked backwards off the bar stool. Before I could register what was going down, Chad had Sambo on the floor, flat on his back, his right foot fixed under Sambo’s chin, pressing down on the man’s thick neck.
“Was I speaking fucking Lebanese today when I told you not to touch what’s mine?”
Sambo struggled, choking. “I didn’t. She touched me.”
“Do your damn job from a distance,” Chad warned, “or next time I won’t be asking permission to kill you.”
Kicking the man under his chin, Chad left his prone body on the floor, and in two stomps he was grabbing my arm and dragging me off the bar stool.
“I thought you said you’d defend me if I got attacked,” Sambo grunted from the ground with a slight lift of his lips in a teasing smile, his teeth coated in blood.
I hadn’t the chance to respond, because Chad was hauling me through the front door.
“Let go of me, Chad.” The words were spoken half-heartedly, though. Plus I wasn’t even struggling. Because, should I be honest with myself, I not only knew he would find me, I wanted him to. Not like I was hiding. This shit I was trained at. So if I’d wanted to run from Chad, I would’ve ditched his car, hot-wire and steal another, and would’ve been miles at yonder by now. Not drive round and round the same vicinity he was in for hours.
I knew this. He knew this. Which explained his manhandling me right now like a possessive, over-jealous, apoplectic boyfriend. He knew I loved him, knew I’d been waiting for him to find me, and he knew, no matter what, I didn’t really want him to let me go.
He didn’t let me go.
The stab wound I’d inflicted seemed to have been treated and covered with a gauze, because there was a noticeable square raise on his shoulder under that tight black T-shirt, at the same spot I’d stabbed him.
No doubt his precious little Clementine nursed it.
Chad all but drove me like a car down the unlit dirt lot, stopping at the Lexus. “Keys.”
“What?” I asked, stalling, just so I could stare at him some more while he was too busy being mad at me to realize how madly in love with him I was. “How did you get here?”
“Your brother.”
“Oh.”
“Keys, Jhay,” he gritted out.
I tipped my head back to look more squarely up at his angry face, his eyes and the blackness of the night being one and the same. “They’re…in my front pocket.”
When he jacked up a brow at me, I took his free hand and slowly eased it down in my front pocket.
I felt his fingers curl around the keys, and then his hips suddenly drove forward and pinned me back against the car.
Releasing his hold, he reached up and around to grab my ponytail, painfully tugging my head back so our noses aligned. “What the fuck was that in there, Jhay?”
Tilting my pelvis upward, I braced my mound against his hard-on, wishing he would just forget the world and everyone in it, and fuck me right there on his sleek LFA. “It was nothing. He was hitting on me with clichéd, frat boy lines so I decided to mess with him, that’s all.”
“Did you not understand when I said I hate you?”
“I understood,” I breathed, my hips rocking now.
“Then stop trying so hard to make me love you!” he barked in my face. “I hate you. I hate you so insanely bad, Jhay, and I crave the way hating you makes me feel. Please don’t let me love you. Please.”
“Okay,” I whispered, “I’ll behave.”
“Will you?” He snorted, like he knew better than to believe that crockshit.
I shrugged.
He shook his head, not knowing what to do with me, and having no other options left but to fuse his lips with mine. I would be the death of him, or him the death of me. We were each other’s disgustingly dark and deadly destiny, and there was no dancing around that.
Hips rolling, he dug his erection into me, making deep, primal noises in his throat. I drifted my hands down to the bottom of his T-shirt and slipped them underneath it, gliding my palms up over his defined abs, then up to his firm chest, smoothing over his pectorals, circling the center of my palms over his nipples.
Chad broke off as though things were getting too heated, releasing my ponytail and stepping back so my hands fell from under his shirt. He did the steady inhale, exhale thing, then, “You need to apologize to your brother and his wife.”
I sagged against the car. “I know.”
Eyebrows shooting to the heavens, Chad seemed stunned by my easy acquiescence. He’d decidedly been expecting a fight from me on this.
“I’m not a monster, Chad,” I snapped, feeling the need to defend my person. “Trying to kill an unborn is a monstrous thing to do, but I’m not a monster…I was just…pissed off that he had nothing at all to say to me after twelve fucking years. How could he be so selfish?”
Chad took both my hands in his and kissed my knuckles. “He’s not as tough as you, Jhay. He’s not a fighter. Half the time he’s scared and paranoid more than anything. He wants normalcy, not all this—the killing, the running. And learning his little sister is an assassin, seeing you, I think he’s just having a hard time processing it all.”
I wrenched my hands away from him. “Hold up, he thinks I wanted this life? He thinks I like killing people and being on the run?”
Chad combed his fingers back through his hair. “He doesn’t know your whole story, babe. Hell, I just found out forty-eight hours ago. You two need to sit down and talk.”
I sighed, nodding. “Do you think Clementine’s going to forgive me?”
Broad, masculine shoulders jerked up in a shrug. “I don’t know. She’s pretty shaken up. I think we should give them a little time to recover. Let them sleep it off.”
“We’re going back home, then?”
A face-splitting, white grin broke through the darkness.
“What?” I asked, smacking his chest, grinning too, even though I hadn’t a clue what he was grinning about. That’s how infectious his grin was.
“I like how you just referred to my place as home,” he said. “I like that. I like that very much.”
“If we survive Rafail, I would love for it to be my permanent home,” I said soberly. “Would that be okay?”
Hands circling my waist, he whispered, “If we survive my father, everything I own will also be yours, Jhay. Because I hate you more than I’ve ever hated anyone or anything. You’ve suffered because of me, so I want to give you the best of everything life has to offer. I want to wipe those memories clean and supplant them with fresh ones. I want to bring you to a point where the bright green in your eyes never dims, your smile never fades, and you never stop dancing and singing. I want you to know happiness like I never will.”
“I’ll not be enough to make you happy?”
He squeezed me closer to him. “You are more than enough, Jhay. But I’m half-dead, half-alive. My soul is sold and I’m far beyond redeemable. I’m only half a man, so how can I ever know complete happiness?”
I pressed my face to his chest, the sound of my heart ripping, echoing through the night. “That can’t possibly be true. Because you complete me, Chad. You fill the soul-suctioning hole within me. You make me hope, you make me trust. You make me want to live, and love. It is not possible for a half-assed man to have that kind of impact on another human being. Only one who is complete, knows himself, knows who he is and what he is worth, the bad that he’s capable of, and also the unfailingly good. Only a man who is balanced, controlled, larger than life, smarter and stronger than the Devil, and cannot—and will not allow himself to— be defeated.”
Long silence.
“I have a house in Los Altos Hills,” Chad said, pointedly changing the subject. “JK and his wife are staying there for the weekend—that’s what the keys were for earlier. He def won’t approve of us showing up there, what with all the shit chasing us right now, but…I don’t feel like driving back home tonight.” He raised a mischievous brow at me. “Do you?”
I was a little bummed that he’d outright change the subject to elude talking about himself, but at the name JK…That asshole? Oh, pissing him off would be my damn delight tonight. “Nope.”
Eyes lighting up, Chad grinned, wide, because he knew I knew he played me right into that one.
I’d envied Ricardo’s house—thought it was the most beautiful home I’d ever seen. But Ricardo’s house was like a box from the projects comparing to Chad’s place in Los Altos Hills.
More of a one-man villa and less of a ‘house’, it was a pompous, stunningly grotesque, stone-faced meet between Mediterranean and futuristic. Like something a drug lord would own. I half-expected to see tigers prowling about the undulating acres of hilly lands accompanying the place.
“Wow. This place is…wow…” I said as Chad drove carefully up a steep hill and through the gates, the car almost skidding backward. These hills were no place for sports cars.
“Yeah?” He finally had the car on a leveled pathway leading toward the front of the house/villa.
“Of course, yeah.” My head turned to him. “You don’t acknowledge this?”
With a non-committal sound, he shrugged. “I bought it on a whim a couple years ago. But I’m rarely up this side. JK and his wife are in love with it. They want to buy it. But”—another shrug—”I can’t seem to find peace with selling it.”
“Don’t sell it. I love it!” I knew I sounded like a girl here, but I didn’t care. I liked being a girl with Chad. “And I haven’t even seen the inside yet.”
Chad gave me a weird look. “I’m surprised you have such a material eye. I’d read you as the indifferent type, but I guess there’s an excited little girl in there, huh?”
Little girl??? Okay, so maybe I was acting too much like a girl, after all. Dropping my shoulders and leaning back in the car seat, I shrugged, feigning nonchalance. Anything that’ll deter Chad from seeing me as Tweety Byrd anymore. I was Jhay now. Gun-busting, bad biatch, straight-for-Chad Jhay. “Nope. I’m just learning to appreciate the finer things in life, with the odds that I might not live to see twenty-three.”
Sliding me a side glance, he opted to keep quiet, easing the sports car between a black Phantom and a red sports bike.
Keeping my lower lip clamped between my teeth, I silently ooohed and ahhhed—lest I be deemed an excited “little girl”. We got out of the car and headed up a couple of steps to the entrance. I bet this place looked like paradise in the daylight.
Just as we mounted the last step up, the front door swung open. JK and his wife stepped across the threshold, shocked at the sight of us. Well, the wife was shocked. JK was downright pissed.
However, while I’d planned to revel in ruining his night, that enjoyment went on pause as my mouth dropped open. “You’re married to Saskia Day?”
Saskia Day looked exactly how you’d expect someone sitting famously on top of the world would: glimmy, glammy, glowing, in a rebellious, all-black kind of way. This girl—remarkably beautiful, with envious curves, striking cat-gray eyes and wild blonde curls—I never really had the leisure of following her career to know who she was fucking, where she bought her panties, or where she had lunch on a normal Monday afternoon, but I did own a few of her albums because she sang some seriously kick-ass songs. Some were a bunch of sappy, lovey-dovey shit that I didn’t care for, but her best works were her bass-pumping rock songs.
Ignoring me altogether, JK narrowed his gaze on Chad, while his wife narrowed hers on me.
“We need somewhere to crash for the night,” Chad said without apology.
“Is there a reason why you’re staring at me like you want to throttle me?” I asked the famous superstar, lost on me how she could immediately dislike me without even knowing me… “Oh, I get it, this is about me grabbing JK’s dick, isn’t it? Just so you know, I didn’t—”
“Whut?” the superstar snapped out, full-on glaring now, her British accent lathery thick. She turned to her man with a scowl. “Whut’s she talking about, love?”
Oops.
Slowly shaking his head, JK transferred his glare from Chad to me, and held up an open palm. “Five.”
“Five?” What the hell did that even mean?
“Yeah,” he said, voice low and unkind. “I liked you as a ten before, but now you’re a five.”
“Huh,” I hummed, turning my mouth down at the corners. “That’s comforting, considering I don’t like you at all. On any scale or on any level.” Forming a circle with my thumb and forefinger, I gave him a saccharine smile before I mouthed, “Zero.”
Glare vanishing, JK’s golden eyes smiled at me, and as one corner of his lip began pulling up, he quickly bit down on it.
The superstar folded her arms and glowered at her loathsome husband. “Is there something going on that I need to know about, Jahleel?”
“Breathe easy, Sassy. We’ll talk on the way,” he returned in reply. “Why don’t you go wait in the car. I’ll be there in a min, okay?”
“No,” she said, intractable. “I want to know whut’s—”
JK hooked her around the waist and she fluidly drew up to him like he was magnet and she was steel. Then he kissed her deep. And hard. And long.
Chad and I exchanged side glances, shifting uncomfortably, waiting for the inappropriate tongue-locking to wrap up.
Chad folded his lips. I looked at my boots.
After a millennium and two centuries, the couple s-l-o-w-l-y eased apart. JK stroked his thumb over his wife’s lower lip and whispered, “Breathe easy.”
And just like that, she was all liquid eyes and dreamy sighs, her irritation and curiosity gone. Without another distrustful “but”, she did as her husband asked and left to wait in the car.
Smooth. Real smooth.
To Chad, JK gritted out, “It’s your place, so I can’t tell you no, but I can tell you I fuckin’ hate this.”
“We knew you would,” Chad offered.
JK gazed jiggled between Chad and me. “Ahh, so this was a unified attempt to piss me off.”
I rubbed my palms together and grinned like an evil villain. This made Chad laugh.
Jahleel seemed more irritated now than angry. “Know what, fuck both of you.”
“Yeah, we’ll definitely be fucking each other,” I shot back. “Over and over.”
Eyes resizing to tiny slits, he held up three fingers at me. “Three.”
“Still zero for me, buddy.”
Eschewing me, he looked to Chad. “Can I trust that when I come back from dinner with my innocent wife I won’t find the house on fire, the windows shattered, bullet holes in the walls, or marrows splattered on the ceilings?”
Chad twisted his lips to the side, as if pondering on it, then he eyed at me. “You feel like killing me tonight?”
I drifted my eyes heavenward, thought about it for a single second, then answered with an exaggerated shake of my head, “Nope. Just horny.”
Chad sucked in a hissing breath. “Same here.” Then to JK, “There. You have our word.”
JK glanced between both of us again like he wanted to punch us each squarely in the face. But then he just wagged his head, got out of our way and went to catch up with his wife.
“What does a woman like her see in that repulsive shithead?”
Chad responded with nothing as he ushered me into the house, closed the door behind us, and turned the lock with a snap. When he spun to face me, his expression was sober, thoughtful. “What do you see in me?”
Suddenly swaddled in nervousness, with a splash of shyness, I stuffed my hands into my back pockets and glanced down at my scuffed combat boots, then back at him. Straight into his searching eyes so he’d know this was no bullshitting. “Hope. And…my future.”