It was three thirty in the fucking morning. If Snowflake had a death wish, she worked hard on fulfilling it. I’d arrived just in time. In a classic, deus ex machina, more-luck-than-brains scenario, there were two douchebags, one jaded girl, and Jesse and her dog in the middle of the shitshow.

She’d been so disoriented and horrified that she’d accepted the excuse for my sudden arrival and hadn’t even doubted me. She’d tripped on her ass bolting out of my truck when I dropped her off, and I’d pretended not to notice because I didn’t want to embarrass her. It was a lie I didn’t usually offer, but she had special circumstances.

Thin trails of her blood smeared on my passenger seat reminded me just how broken she was, and how careful I needed to be with that one.

I fucked plenty of women for money. Unfucking them, though? That wasn’t my expertise.

The flip side was I’d finally milked a coffee date out of her. Only, between surfing and taking care of business, I had very little time for coffee, so today, she was going to tag along for a business meeting.

And by a business meeting, I meant extortion. Same shit, really.

I met Jesse at Café Diem the next day at four o’clock. The fact that she showed up at all was a miracle. She glided between the busy tables and hectic bar, wearing her usual, creeper-from-the-nineties attire of black ball cap, baggy jeans, and that damn black hoodie. The blandest outfit in the world to hide who she really was.

My Whole Life Has Been Pledged to This Meeting with You

A poet. An explorer. A romantic. A culture-loving, dragon-slaying princess.

Bonus points—she apparently had the ability to make me sound hella emo. So there was that, too.

Darren Morgansen gave me the gist of what had happened to her. Jesse had dated Emery Wallace, heir to Wallace, Walmart’s main competition on the West Coast, all throughout high school. Emery was your typical spoiled fucktard with too much money and zero grasp of what real life was about. The one with the right clothes, the right car, and the wrong friends. He loved the idea of dating the prettiest girl in school. A virgin, no less. On the night his jackpot of a girlfriend had supposedly lost her virginity to him, Emery installed a camera behind the PlayStation in his room to record the whole thing.

Only he never deflowered her.

There had been no blood.

There had been no signs of virginity being taken.

Jesse Carter had been about as virginal as a used condom.

If anything, Darren had said (or rather, sniffed) that according to the rumors, the live camera showed that she’d been bored, on the verge of yawning at his thrusts.

Emery chose a questionable method to show her how he’d felt. A few weeks later, he’d snatched her from a junction where she’d been standing, waiting for the light to turn green, driven her to a deserted alley with his best friends, and marked her forever. Jesse knew the kids at her school would have a fucking field day if the truth came out, so the families struck a deal: the boys were to stay away from Jesse and leave town to attend an out-of-state college, and she was never to speak about The Incident. Ever. The idea that someone on Jesse’s side had agreed to that deal made me want to strangle the life out of both of them.

That was her story. Sex tape. Gang rape. Stupid-ass parents.

Coming face-to-face with Nolan and Henry, knowing I couldn’t smash their faces into a rock until their airways were clogged with blood, killed a piece of me I really cherished. The piece where my morals were safely locked away.

The worst part about our situation was that Jesse might not have wanted people to touch her, but deep inside she was a carnal little pixie. The stunning siren with powder blue eyes I’d seen swimming to shore all those years ago still lived somewhere inside of her. I couldn’t overlook that fact, even with that hoodie and ball cap. She made her way to me, marching like a captured soldier—proud but defeated—her eyes fixed on an invisible spot behind my head. I was perched on a barstool, rolling myself a fat one. She stopped before we could smell each other. Before the ink at the nape of her neck reminded her that I, too, was a sin.

“I don’t like coffee,” she said flatly. No hi. No how are you. Social codes be damned.

“Me neither.”

She fought a timid smirk, shooting her gaze down to her Keds. Seeing her teeth sinking into her lower lip made my dick jam its way against my surf shorts. I didn’t even bother to hate myself for it. There were more chances of my making a move on a dead vampire bat than ever tapping her ass. Nonetheless—damn.

“You’ll get a smoothie if you behave. I have some stuff to do first. Let’s hit the road.” I started making my way outside, tipping my head down as a farewell to Gail and Beck behind the counter.

Snowflake followed. “Where are we going?”

“I have business to transact.”

“Sounds shady.”

Couldn’t argue with that one. “Some of us don’t have rich parents to buy our way through life. C’mon, it’ll be fun.”

Or not. It’s not like she had plenty of social calls to choose from, and I did have a job to do. Jesse matched my steps, light-jogging toward me. I was much taller and much faster, but she had good stamina on her. She didn’t get an ass worthy of a thousand poems and a world war sitting on those fine cheeks all day. I slid a joint between my lips, mainly because I didn’t know what to say to her.

“You smoke an awful lot of pot.” She plucked a piece of her hair and brought it to her mouth, chewing on the tips.

“Legal in California,” I said around my hippy stick, lighting it.

“Not if you do it in public. Are you begging to get arrested?”

“Begging—no. Trying, maybe.” Brian Diaz, the local sheriff, was in my pocket. I fucked his wife every Tuesday as a favor for turning a blind eye to my shenanigans. I could do anything I wanted short of decapitating the mayor in the middle of Liberty Park and get away with it with little to no repercussions. Plus, Grier was kind of hot, so it wasn’t exactly a torture.

We walked along the promenade, two very unlikely allies. I was the guy everyone knew, and she was a ghost desperate to be forgotten. A bunch of girls in bikini tops and Daisy Dukes passed us by, fist-bumping me with seductive grins while checking her out. At first, she didn’t say anything. But then when Samantha the lawyer winked at me and laughed when our shoulders brushed while she hurried in her cream suit to a meeting or whatever, Jesse crumpled her forehead.

“Is there one woman in this town you haven’t slept with?”

“Yeah. You.”

“Is that why I’m here?”

“As I said, my job doesn’t allow for a girlfriend, and you’re not exactly giving me the one-night stand vibes.”

We were passing by a fast food joint, a tattoo parlor, and a Sicilian ice cream place. The sun was dazzling, the sky liquid blue, and the smiles around us big and genuine. Life was a giant, fat sunray, but Jesse was shivering in a dark slice of shadow, refusing to join the fun.

“And why is that?”

In my periphery, I could see her fiddling with the straps of her backpack, just to do something with her hands. This was difficult for her. Going out. Being seen. I slowed down, giving her time to collect herself.

“Why is what?” I took a final hit of my joint before flicking it to the sand. Conversation went fine now. I didn’t need it.

“Why does your job not allow you to date?”

“Because I fuck women I shouldn’t be fucking to get away with fucked-up shit I shouldn’t be doing.”

There was no point hiding the truth from her. She was going to hear it from someone else sooner or later. When we stopped in front of a new shop that had opened just days ago by an interloper from out of town, I knew I’d done the right thing being upfront. Her face transformed from annoyed to…what was it exactly? Fascination. Mischief. I might have even seen a little attraction thrown in. Jury’s still out on that one.

My Whole Life Has Been Pledged to This Meeting with You

A sudden need—to break these walls and see who she was before what happened to her—slammed into me. This quote couldn’t be about us, could it? I wasn’t that person. I was the bastard who used her to get his surf park.

“You’re an escort?” Her already large eyes widened further. I reached for one strap of her backpack and snapped it against her shoulder, careful not to touch her, then smirked.

“I prefer the term sexual plumber.”

She snorted. “Oh, God.”

“Yeah. They sometimes call me that, too. Point is, you’re definitely not getting for free what people pay good money and services for. So you don’t need to worry. Look, you need a friend, and I need a barista and someone to hang out with who doesn’t see me as God. We make sense, ya know?”

She actually smiled a real smile for the first time, and holy fucking shit, Jesse Carter needed to smile for a goddamn living. She could very possibly bring about world peace, and I wasn’t even entirely exaggerating. It was those dimples. They dented that smooth, pale face of hers like a patch of dirt in the snow.

“Wait here. I’ll be back in ten minutes. Then I’ll buy you a complimentary smoothie for allowing me to save your ass.” I jerked my head to the store behind me.

“I’ll come with you,” she said, and I wasn’t surprised. She wasn’t a flickering candle. She was a blaze, but someone had put her flame out. Three someones. I was about to ignite her right the fuck back up, even if it was the last thing I did. I flattened my palm against an imaginary wall between us. “No way, Jose.”

“Why not?”

“Because then you’ll technically be an accessory to a crime, and no smoothie in the world is worth a criminal record. Trust me on that one.”

Instead of asking me more questions, she nodded, turned around and parked her ass on the first step leading to the shop. I watched the crown of her head for a few seconds before snapping out of it and pushing the glass door open.

I slammed the door behind me, feeling myself smile against my will.