Chapter 9

JL let out a breath, pulled her knees up to her chest, and rested her chin on them as she looked out onto the ocean. She knew she came with a lot of baggage, but she had always tried to keep that baggage hidden, not letting it drag her down. She lived by the motto “Fake it till you make it.” She hoped Enzo wouldn’t hold her ugly past against her. “I’ll tell you because I don’t like secrets and I don’t want you to think I’m keeping a big one. Secrets and lies.” She shook her head. “I don’t like either.”

“I get that. I don’t particularly like being lied to either. Marianna was a liar.”

“Glad we’re on the same page, Pretty Boy,” she said with a smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes. “I never knew my father. My mother raised us—she got a two-for-one deal with Travis and me. Twins. Double the pleasure, right?” She gave a self-deprecating laugh. “My mother was not cut out for motherhood, but she got knocked up and decided to have us anyway. I guess I should thank her for that, right? Well, she was expecting to have a little boy, then delivery day happened and I came out a minute after Travis. It was a complete surprise, and from the beginning she wasn’t happy.

“I don’t remember a time in my life when she wasn’t drinking or bringing home men, but the drugs weren’t always a thing. I’m not sure when she started the drugs. Anyway, life was miserable. We lived in a small trailer in Dallas a few blocks from my grandparents, who were great. Thank God I had them growing up. Money was always an issue. Travis and I have been working since we were old enough to walk, be it babysitting, handing out flyers, cleaning houses, or whatever. Then during our freshman year of high school she met Harry, who was visiting some friends in town.”

“Harry? The hot dog vendor?” Enzo interrupted.

“Yep. And not a week into their relationship she uprooted us to Amarillo to follow Harry. Honestly, it wasn’t too bad. For one thing she was busy with her new relationship to be too hard on us. Well, me, really. She wasn’t too bad with Travis, but everything I ever did was wrong. Nothing was good enough. She put me down constantly.”

Enzo’s mother and father might have been absentee parents, but they had never been cruel to him. Hearing how horrible her life had been made him angry and sad for her. He palmed her neck and caressed her cheekbone, knowing that she loved it when he did that. He didn’t interrupt her, since she seemed so introspective.

“Harry was a great buffer, plus, he was a really nice guy,” she continued. “Great guy, actually. He quickly became like the father we never had—at least for the few years it lasted. And when I moved to Amarillo, I met Violet, which was a godsend. I’d never really had a friend like her before. She didn’t judge me or look down at me for where I lived or who my mom was; she just accepted me. So things weren’t so bad for most of high school, except that when Harry would show me loving fatherly affection, it would make Mama furious.”

“She was jealous? Of her own daughter?”

“Don’t know, I guess. She hated it when Harry was nice to me. Anyway, their relationship lasted until a few months after I graduated from high school and Harry moved away to be closer to his parents here in Tarpon Springs. I came to visit him one day, loved it, and moved down. Travis followed, and about two years ago, so did Mama.”

“And she’s been harassing you since.”

“Well, that’s not really true. When she moved down here she was completely sober. I hadn’t seen her like that in years. Travis is right, she can be very toxic, so at first I was wary. But what Travis refuses to see is that when she’s not doped up, she’s different. He’s hard on her. Won’t give her any second chances. He won’t speak with her and hasn’t done so in a long time. I, on the other hand, started to bond with her when she came down because the change was so noticeable. She was great. I should’ve seen it coming, though—the impending relapse. She kept asking me for money here and there and couldn’t manage to keep a job. When I was finally ready to say she was, for a lack of a better word, cured and let all my defenses down, she relapsed. It was bad, Enzo. She almost died. The cops found her in an abandoned building, unconscious, with a needle still in her arm. She emptied out my small bank account and used my money to buy drugs. Anyway, I had been keeping the relationship mostly secret because Travis was so against it. When he found out about her relapse and the money he was furious. That happened about a year ago, and he even got a job at EE’s Diner for a few weeks to help me get my rent paid. She is a liar and a manipulator, and I’m an idiot for allowing her to hurt me and to steal from me.”

Enzo lifted her into his lap. “No, you’re not. You’re a good person with a big heart who wanted to see the best in her mother.” He put an arm around her and kissed the top of her head. She opened her mouth to continue her story, but was interrupted by a shadow above them.

“Who do we have here?”

Shielding their eyes from the sun with their hands, both Enzo and Jamie Lynn looked up at the gruff voice.

A muscular man who’d been jogging by had stopped and stood swiping his brow with the back of his arm. “Heard you were too big a pussy to fight me,” the man said with a chuckle, and JL noticed Enzo immediately tense up. Enzo shifted JL aside and stood, dusting the sand off his hands.

“Raymundo,” Enzo said as he crossed his arms over his chest.

Why does that name sound so familiar? Then JL saw the tattoo on his shaved head that said CRAZY, and she remembered Enzo telling her about him. He was the guy Enzo was supposed to fight soon, and damn, he was one big scary-looking ape. The man was shorter and stockier than Enzo, but his neck and arms looked like tree trunks. He had deranged-looking blue eyes and scars everywhere. It made her nervous as hell for Enzo. The man didn’t look like the kind of guy who cared whether he lived or died.

“I am fighting you. Signed up yesterday.”

“Can’t wait to have my hands wrapped around your neck,” the man said with a sinister laugh that exposed his gold grill, sending shivers down JL’s spine. “This your woman?” the guy said, those wild eyes roaming her body. Enzo stepped forward, his hands flexing by his sides, tension radiating off his body.

“You have no business looking at her. I’ll see you in a few months,” Enzo said in a tone that conveyed clearly that the conversation was over. Even with his nerdy glasses and side part, when Enzo’s tone shifted to serious and his back went straight and his arms crossed that way, he was a force to be reckoned with. Hernandez must’ve noticed too, because he put his earbuds back in and lifted his chin. But before he left, he made one more crack. “Maybe after I win we can swap women. Whaddaya say, girl?” He winked over Enzo’s shoulder to JL, the gesture making the tiny hairs on her arms stand up. Without waiting for an answer, he took off on his jog with another nefarious laugh.

Enzo was noticeably riled up and looked like he wanted to maim his opponent. “It’s okay, darlin’,” she said soothingly. “He’s just trying to provoke you. Don’t pay him any mind.”

Enzo’s fists opened and closed at his sides. “I have to go train at least an hour later today,” was all he said as he took her hand gently in preparation for leaving the beach.

“No. I won’t let that weirdo ruin our day,” she said, plopping back down on the sand. “Come on, it’s a beautiful day. Sit with me a little longer.”

He relented and sat down next to her.

“Thinking about it, it is a good idea that you train. A lot. As much as possible, actually. Not that you can’t handle him. But I don’t think you’ll want to swap women, so you really can’t lose. His girlfriend is probably Swamp Thing. Ew.” She smiled in an attempt to lighten the mood.

“So you’d be okay dating him, and you’re just worried about me?” he asked coyly.

“What’s not to like? His crazy unfocused eyes or that crooked gold grill? Oh, wait! It was the tattoo in Old English font on his head that really did it for me. I mean, any man that’ll take the time to carefully chose such an elegant font for a tattoo on his head that says he’s crazy is my kind of guy, bless his heart. Class all the way, don’t you think?”

He looked at her and doubled over in laughter. “You really know how to make me smile.” He brought her closer for a hug. “The things that come out of your mouth…you are kind of amazing, Jamie Lynn Calhoun.”

“You’re kind of amazing yourself, Lorenzo Silva.”

It had been an eventful afternoon. Enzo had never been so enraged as he’d been when Hernandez’s beady eyes roamed Jamie Lynn’s body. That and the details about her mother had left him feeling unnerved. And while he had a feeling that there was more to the story, he didn’t want to push her too much. Thankfully, Jamie Lynn had set him at ease with her joking comment, and now, as he held her while she talked all sorts of nonsense about everything and nothing, the tension started melting away.

“Such a nice day, isn’t it?” she said.

“Yes, it is.”

“The ocean’s so—Oh my God! A bug. I have a bug on me!” She stood up and began to jiggle and dance around the sand.

“You’re not afraid of bugs, are you?” he said in amusement as he watched her jump around and cover her ears.

“They breed in your ears, Enzo!” She kept hopping up and down. “Get it off me!”

“You’re so damn cute.”

“Enzo!”

He put his hands on her shoulders to calm her down enough for him to get a look. Finding a small beetle on her shoulder, he removed the offending insect and then showed it to her, causing her to yell and back away from him. He discarded the beetle and then chased her around the beach for a few minutes until they were both laughing and rolling around the sand like loons.

“We always end up on the ground somehow,” she pointed out.

“Yeah, but this time there are children around. Can’t exactly defile you right now, sweetheart.”

“Defile. Good word,” she said. “Is that what you’d like to do? Defile me?”

“Baby, you’ve got no idea.” He stood and helped her up.

“Then we’d better get going,” she said as she hopped up onto his back. “Let the defiling begin!”

“I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I think I’m sexed out.” Jamie Lynn said. “Why are we even here?” she asked from the floor of one of his spare rooms.

At some point, while he’d been taking a shower because he’d complained he had sand in places one shouldn’t have sand, she’d gone to explore the rest of the rooms. When he’d found her, one thing had led to another, and he’d taken her on the floor of the spare room.

“This is where I defiled you, remember?”

“How can I forget?” She pulled up her shorts, which had never made it all the way off.

Enzo stood and helped her up. “I’m going to go to the Academy for a few hours. Want to come?”

“Nah. Mind if I stay and keep your movie theater company?”

“My movie theater would appreciate that,” he answered her. “I was worried you’d want me to take you home.”

“What would you have said if I told you I wanted to go home?”

“I would’ve tied you to my bed.”

She laughed. “Looks like I’ve brought out your kinky side, Pretty Boy.”

“Yes, I think you actually have, Ms. Calhoun.”

“I feel like our summer romance is coming to an end, like in The Notebook, and you know how that ended. Except instead of a summer romance it’s a really long first date and you’re not enlisting to go off to war.”

“I have no clue what you’re talking about, sweetheart.”

She rolled her eyes. “What I’m saying is that at some point I’ll have to go home and reality will set in.”

He brought her close and rested his chin on her head as they hugged. “Yeah, I know,” he said somberly. Neither spoke about the inevitable end of the date for the rest of the day and night.

It was Sunday morning and her ringing phone woke her. Blindly Jamie Lynn reached for it and flung it across the room. Enzo chuckled. “Baby, we’ve been hermits for three days. Maybe it’s important.”

In response, she grunted something unintelligible and snuggled even closer to him. The phone vibrated against the floor. Enzo stood, found her phone, and handed it to her.

She opened one sleepy eye and then the other. “Oh. Oh!” She sat up. “It’s Jonah. I have to take this,” she said, looking at Enzo expectantly.

If she expected him to leave the room or grant her privacy to talk to another man, she had another thing coming, especially after all they’d done in the last few days. The phone rang again in her hands. She hesitated before picking it up. “Hello?” She reached around for her T-shirt, which had made its way under the bed. While pressing the phone against one ear, she slipped on the shirt and walked out of the room.

What the hell?

Enzo’s chest tightened. He didn’t like to feel jealous. Hell, this was probably a first for him. Even when he found out Marianna had cheated on him, he hadn’t felt jealousy. He’d felt angry that she had lied to him. Bitter that he had wasted so much of his life with her. Even relieved because it was an out from the loveless marriage. But jealousy? No, not jealousy.

On one hand, he wanted to follow Jamie Lynn and eavesdrop on her call, but at the same time he wanted to trust her enough to tell him who this Jonah was. She was all about honesty, after all. A few minutes later she walked back to the room. He wished he knew her better so that he could read her expression, because this was a new one—it was happy and sad at the same time.

She stood by the door. “I…uh, I have to go.”

He sat back on the bed and crossed his arms over his chest.

“I…it was Jonah. He’s a friend.” He still didn’t say anything. She looked around as she gathered up the rest of her clothes. They were the only things on the floor, since he kept everything either in the hamper or away in the drawers or closet where they belonged.

She had all her clothes in her hands. “I’m sorry to cut this short. I had a real good time.”

“Is that…do you have a boyfriend?”

“What?” She shook her head in disbelief. “No! No way.”

“So where are you going, Jamie Lynn?”

“I can’t say.”

“You can’t or you won’t?”

“Does it matter?”

“Not really.” He stood up and stomped past her to the bathroom. “So all your talk about having no secrets was bullshit.” He slammed the door shut behind him.

JL sat on the bed with the pile of clothes in her hands contemplating what to do. When Enzo came out of the bathroom he had a blank expression on his face underneath his glasses. He’d dressed in jeans and a baby blue polo and his hair was neatly parted to the side.

She spoke first. “Okay, listen. It’s not what you think.”

“You don’t know what I’m thinking.”

“Bless your silly man heart, of course I do.” She patted the space next to the bed. “You think I’m going to leave you to go off and meet some other guy.” He didn’t say anything and didn’t sit down, so she continued. “I don’t want you to think that.”

“So tell me what it is, then.” When he realized it wasn’t a situation involving another romantic relationship, his demeanor relaxed.

“How about I take you with me?” She began to put on her clothes. “But you can’t judge me, okay?”

“Is it illegal?” He chuckled, but when she didn’t answer, his eyes widened. “Damn, Jamie Lynn. I’ve lived the dullest life. I never even cheated on a test. On Thursday we almost got arrested, and now what?”

“You don’t have to come with me.” She sighed. “I won’t lie—it’s not exactly legal. But it’s for the best. It’s like civil disobedience kind of stuff. Don’t worry, Pretty Boy. I’ll protect you.” She winked before leaving the room.