LAUREN
I had a tough time sleeping that night. I couldn’t stop thinking about how I’d ended up here. All my life I’d wanted to live near the ocean, but now I couldn’t help wondering whether I was chasing my dreams, or if I was really just running from my past.
I’d sort of stumbled into the webcam thing, and even though I’d never planned to do it long term or anything, I also hadn’t meant for it to end so abruptly. Or under such tragic circumstances.
But maybe that’s the way it was meant to be.
Sudden. And final.
Maybe it was all for the best.
I’d always just gone along with what was expected of me, doing what everyone else thought I should do, letting my parents make most of my major decisions. Even being a business major had been their doing. The stripcam was the only thing I’d ever really done on my own, and I’d kept that on the down low.
But I’d never given much thought to what would come next.
Maybe this was what I needed to jump-start my life. To push me in this new direction. Here. In California. Not because of the sand and surf, but because of these kids at the rec center who needed someone to teach them to navigate the world of computers and online technology.
So I could help someone other than myself. Give them the advantages they deserved.
So I could start living for me.
That’s where my head was as I sat in the computer lab late the next afternoon, when Tess came bursting in like a tornado. She bounced up and down as her bright eyes sparkled and her blonde-streaked hair whipped wildly behind her. “Lauren! I did it! We did it!”
She didn’t even have to explain, her enthusiasm said it all. “A job? You got a job already?” I shot up from my chair.
She was nodding when she reached me, and I threw my arms around her. “Yay!” I squeezed her hard and then drew back. “So? Which crap-ass food cart will I be getting my stale donuts from?”
Her eyes went wide and she bit her bottom lip excitedly. “No food cart—it’s the pro shop! Big Chuck hired me, and I’ll be selling Sex Wax and boards and wetsuits. It’s right up my alley! Plus, he totally gets that I need surf time.”
I had no idea who Big Chuck was, but I giggled, because how could I not? “I assume Sex Wax is a surf thing . . .”
Tess rolled her eyes at me. “You totally aren’t from around here, are you?”
“Nope.”
She lifted her eyebrows, like she’d just come up with the most brilliant plan ever. “You should let me teach you to surf. You know, to repay you for your help!”
I’d spent plenty of time watching the surfers off the shore, and tried to imagine myself on a surfboard. Me, someone who could barely manage to stay afloat in the motionless water of the kiddie pool. “I think I’ll take a hard pass. Let’s chalk that up to it’s the thought that counts and call us even.”
Tess flashed me her winning smile, and something shifted inside me. This was definitely right. Being here. Doing this. “Okay, fine,” she conceded. “Maybe not surfing, but I’ll figure out a way to repay you.”
Even though it was still light out when I was leaving the rec center that evening, most of the parking lots in the area had cleared out. It made it easier to hear the argument spilling out from the narrow alleyway between the large community center building and the warehouse next door. Whatever the disagreement was about, it was heated.
My skin prickled involuntarily and I glanced around, making sure the coast was clear before beelining toward my car.
Even before that night at my apartment with Jefferson Brandt, my knee-jerk reaction had always been to mind my own business. If I’d had earbuds, I would have plugged those in my ears in an effort not to get involved.
Except today . . .
Today something that made me slow down. Something familiar about the raised voices. Or at least one of them.
I cursed myself for even noticing. And that’s when I realized it was Tess’s voice I was hearing.
I couldn’t see her . . . couldn’t see either of them, for that matter since they were in the alley, but Tess was arguing with a man, and he definitely wasn’t Will. And Tess, I reminded myself, was only fifteen.
Taking a deep breath, and reaching into my purse for the can of pepper spray I kept there. I eased closer, telling myself I only wanted to make sure Tess wasn’t in any trouble. I hated shit like this. I wasn’t a badass, but I also couldn’t let some asshole—dangerous or not—push a teenage girl around.
When I heard the quiver in Tess’s voice, my fingers tightened around the pepper spray. “I promise it won’t be long. I got a job, I’ll get you some money as soon as I can.” As much as I wanted to peek around the corner, I stayed where I was. My back was pressed against the wall so I could listen to what was happening.
“Look, Tessie,” a gravelly voice said back to her, much quieter than it had been just seconds ago. His greasy tone made me cringe. “You know I don’t wanna be like this. I love you and your brother, but he’s not cooperating.” He paused to take a breath and the sound was so audible it made me think the mere act of speaking was an effort for this guy. I wondered what kind of trouble Will had gotten them into, and why this guy thought Tess would have whatever money he was after. “I just don’t think you have it in you to get me the kinda dough I need, and I don’t have time to wait for you to fill your piggy bank.”
Tess was quiet, and I started to think the guy might be doing something more than just talking. I took a breath and clutched the small canister of pepper spray, ready to pounce, when I heard her again. “We both know this wasn’t how Mom wanted things, Uncle Cam.”
Uncle? I let my head fall back, but only because Tess didn’t sound scared of the piece of shit. In fact, she sounded furious. “She would have wanted me to live with Will, and more than that, she would’ve hated that you’re blackmailing us like this.”
A slight pause. “Your mom was too weak, and too sick, to know what she wanted.”
There was a smacking sound—a hard slap. But I’d seen Tess deck her brother at the Sand and Slam, and I didn’t, for a second, think her uncle had just hit her. If I had, I’d have come out guns—or rather, pepper spray—blazing.
A slow smile found my lips, even as I stayed ready to jump to Tess’s rescue.
It wasn’t necessary though, because the next thing I heard were footsteps running in the opposite direction, followed by Tess’s Uncle Cam shouting, “You ungrateful brat! I shoulda had Social Services pick you up when I had the chance! In fact, maybe it’s time I placed that call!” Even when the footsteps had vanished, and he was probably just talking to himself, he kept on ranting, “Maybe they’d be interested in the fact that your no-good brother’s trying to keep you from your rightful guardian! If you and your brother can’t come up with the cash I need, I think I should call that social worker of yours and let the state find a proper home for you!”
I wasn’t sure if Tess had heard that last part or not, but I sure had, and I felt sick. So that’s why Will worked so much. Why he’d sold his surfboard and who knew what else. Why Tess needed a résumé. Their uncle was blackmailing them, threatening to call Social Services and have her taken away from Will if they didn’t pay him off.
What a sleazeball.
If he was half as disgusting as he sounded, I doubted the state would even take him seriously, but that wasn’t the point. The very fact he was willing to make the threat turned my stomach, and I understood why Tess had run off so suddenly. Why would anyone want to be around someone as vile as him?
I thought about bolting for my car then, but for reasons I couldn’t explain, I stayed right where I was.
When he came around the corner, he practically knocked me over. He was far less intimidating than he’d sounded. He was older than I’d imagined, although no less greasy, and tired in a way that said he’d lived a really rough life. The word junkie popped into my head and I doubted I was that far off.
“’Scuse me,” he grumbled, barely glancing up, and not seeming to care that I’d probably heard at least part of his conversation with his niece.
He brushed past me, and I was hit by the wall of his sour breath. Wincing, I opened my mouth, not sure what I planned to say, but I couldn’t just ignore the heavy feeling in the pit of my stomach. My heart was hammering way too hard.
“Hey! I need to talk to you,” I managed, which probably wasn’t the smoothest thing I could’ve said, but at least it got him to stop.
“Yeah? What do you want?” He narrowed his eyes like he was trying to decide if I was worth his time. Like he had better and more important places to be, which we both knew couldn’t possibly be true.
“I need you to answer a couple of questions for me.”
“What’s in it for me?”
I rolled my eyes. “Depends,” I told him, realizing I had the upper hand with a guy like him—someone who was so desperate for money he’d stoop low enough to blackmail his own family, “on how honest your answers are.”
He licked the front of his gross, decayed teeth, and the heaviness in my stomach turned to nausea. He bobbed his head to the side, which I took to be a go ahead shrug.
“Okay, first, why would Social Services care if you called them on Will and Tess?” I raised my brows as I crossed my arms over my chest to let him know I expected the full answer. “And what I mean is, what leverage do you have over them?”
His narrowed eyes became mere slits at the mention of Will and Tess, but he recovered quickly, giving me another shrug-nod, as if it made no difference to him whether he answered truthfully or not. He was obviously practiced at trivializations and duplicity. “I’m the girl’s guardian. It’s all legal and whatnot. My sister signed papers before she died that said I would be in charge of Tess.” He gave me a smug look at the end of his explanation.
The look I returned was pointed. “And the money? The cash you’re trying to extort from them? What’s that all about?”
“What can I say? I need cash, and they can get it for me. I don’t care how, long as they do.” He scowled at me then. “I answered your questions, and I ain’t got nothin’ in return. We’re done here.” He pivoted on his heel and started to walk away.
“Wait!” I called after him, holding up a crisp hundred-dollar bill I’d pulled from my purse. “Just one more question.”
He eyeballed the bill, and then gave me that narrow-eyed gaze again, but he wasn’t about to turn down the money, and he came sniffing back. Before he could snatch it from my hand, I withdrew it, just out of his reach.
“One more,” he insisted, never taking his eyes off the bill.
“If they give you the money you’ve been asking for, then what are you offering them in return?”
His small decayed teeth made a slow appearance as his lips parted in a sickly smile. He reached up and tugged the hundred from my fingers. “Then, when I decide it’s enough, I’ll sign the papers giving Billy guardianship.”
I closed my eyes. This wasn’t the kind of guy who’d ever be finished with them. He’d continue extorting them until Tess reached her eighteenth birthday and they didn’t need his signature any more, and hopefully he wouldn’t have bankrupted them in the process.
He turned to leave again, and this time when I stopped him, it wasn’t with a hundred-dollar bill. “What would you say if I made you a deal?”