THERE’S AN EVOLUTION TO BIRTHDAYS. The older you got, the less eager you were to celebrate them. In my case, The Incident had aged me a dozen decades. For the past couple years, I’d tried to act like it didn’t exist. Like I didn’t exist. It was easier to pretend nothing was happening, because if life happened, I had to take control of it, and I didn’t have it in me to do it.
Not until now.
Three years ago, Pam had gotten me a bow bracelet from Tiffany’s for my seventeenth birthday and Darren had shelled out the big bucks for a weekend on a yacht for my friends and me. I invited fifty kids to the party, and some of their parents attended as chaperones, too. “For mingling and networking purposes, although making sure no one gets pregnant is also a priority”—Pam had giggled plastically, feeling blue-blooded like the people of Todos Santos for a hot minute. I was dating Emery back then, and I remember how triumphant she’d felt. She even went back to letting me calling her Mom.
It was the year when, for the first time, I skipped visiting my dad’s grave and placing the Kit Kat we used to share every morning on his tombstone.
It was the first and last year I truly felt normal, accepted, and popular.
Now, for my twentieth birthday, I decided to go back to the basics and celebrate by munching on a Kit Kat bar in my room, reading a book that Mrs. B had loaned me.
I opted for not leaving my room, since I didn’t have a shift at Café Diem today. Pam and Darren texted me their banal happy birthday wishes. Their messages remained unanswered.
Hannah slid her annual birthday card under my door, and Mayra called. I answered, but only because she monitored my moves so closely, I was afraid she was going to tell Darren and Pam I wasn’t making progress and they would insist on upping my sessions with her.
Bane hadn’t called, and I tried not to let it affect me. I tried, but I failed.
At 9:00 p.m., I was already in my bed, my face buried in Whitney, My Love by Judith McNaught. I thought I heard something—a soft thud. I looked up from the page. I’d been stuck on the same paragraph for half an hour, because my mind kept on drifting toward Roman. How I’d let him drag me back into the world too quickly, too recklessly, and he hadn’t even bothered to wish me a happy birthday. I listened closely to the silence. Nothing. My eyes dropped back to the page.
Click.
I glanced at the window. The usual oak tree stood there, staring back at me. I flipped a page, knowing I should pay more attention, and that the juicy part was unfolding in front of my eyes, when…
Click.
This time I stood up.
Click. Click.
I paced to the window, climbed on the window seat on my knees, and yanked my window up, slanting my gaze to the back of our garden, which was overlooking Mrs. Belfort’s maze. I saw a shadow of a man standing under the tree. His face was turned down, and he was wearing a ball cap. But the stance, height, and attire seemed familiar: Cargo pants and a faded black surfer shirt with holes in it.
“Roman?” My eyebrows collapsed into a frown.
“You asleep?”
His voice in my ears felt like a sweet promise, and that’s when I realized how much I’d missed him. How much I’d needed him to acknowledge my existence today, of all days, even though most time, I didn’t want to remember I was still alive.
“Reading.” I cleared my throat, trying to sound indifferent.
“On your birthday? Very rock ’n roll.”
My heart began to drum faster. He’d remembered.
I noticed he was swinging a bag in his hand, but didn’t want to be presumptuous.
“Why don’t you go back to bed? All this rebelling must be exhausting.” He was bouncing on the balls of his feet, looking less than his pissed-off, take-no-prisoners self. I wanted him to look up and drink me in with his green eyes no less than I wanted my next breath.
“What?” I snorted.
“Go back to what you were doing, Jesse, and pretend I’m not here. I just wanted to make sure you were in your room and that your window was not closed. Giving you a heart attack for your birthday is memorable, but kind of crappy, even by my very low standards.” His face was still down, and that damn ball cap denied me my current favorite view.
I knew I needed to keep my emotions in check with him, but it was easy to slip into infatuation with Bane. All the ingredients were there: funny, charming, confident, and hot as sin.
“You’re weird,” I grumbled, walking backward, my butt hitting my bed.
I heard him hop onto the metal barbecue grill outside, his boots producing a thump Pam and Darren would never hear, because their room was on the other side of the house. I bit back my smile and settled in bed, picking up my book despite knowing I’d never be able to concentrate.
A boot slid against the glass of the kitchen window. I realized that he was climbing up to my room, and my heart was doing an insane dance in my chest, completely drunk, and I wanted to yell at it to stop before we were both going to be sorry.
“Oh, shit.” He chuckled breathlessly, and the exclamation was followed by the sound of scrabbling hands against the side of the house.
My smile crumbled. I set the book down. “Are you okay?”
Another puff and scrape. “Fine. My pants are slipping down, though, and my ass is making a grand appearance. Hopefully Mrs. Belfort is not in the mood for some maze-watching.”
I giggled. “Classy.”
“Hey, you haven’t seen my ass, lady. Don’t slam it before you try it.”
“Was trying your ass ever an option?” My heart somersaulted a thousand times a minute. Maybe I was having a heart attack after all. What was happening in my chest didn’t seem natural or familiar.
“Close your eyes,” he commanded, his voice booming all over my room, so I knew that he was close. I did as I was told. This year, I’d told Pam and Darren not to get me anything. They hadn’t. I couldn’t fault them for following my request. Besides, last year Darren had tried to give me something—a new flat screen TV for my room—and I’d respectfully declined. I’d called Hannah’s son and had him pick it up, since I knew she’d never accept the gift. But whatever Roman wanted to give me—I eagerly wanted to own it.
My eyes were squeezed shut when I heard his boots land on my carpeted floor. My pulse skyrocketed, thudding against every inch of my skin. There was a special thrill in knowing he could be doing anything to me. And that he wouldn’t. Because he was decent and fair. Because no matter what he thought about himself, he was good.
“Open.” His breath fanned across my face.
I blinked, adjusting to what I was seeing, and not entirely believing it was truth. The ball cap was gone.
So was his beard.
And his man-bun.
Bane. All of Bane. His entire, beautiful, silky, boyish face in front of me. Clean-shaven and mesmerizing, like Leonardo DiCaprio as Romeo, the very first time you see him through the aquarium, and it feels like someone is pinching your heart from within, twisting it evilly on a taunting smirk.
I knew Roman was attractive, but this was different. It was more. His jaw was square and strong, but everything about him was utterly youthful. His bee-stung lips and Grecian nose. It was like he was invented to destroy me.
Then it dawned on me.
He’d shaved for me.
Last week, I was standing here, in my room, telling him to shave.
So he had. He’d stopped hiding. For me. Gifting me the most important thing in the world on my birthday—his acceptance of who he was and from whom he came.
Realizing it had been at least a full minute and I still hadn’t said anything, I opened my mouth. He stared at me expectantly, like I was holding the sky in my hands.
“Is that…a new shirt?”
He raised one eyebrow. “Now who’s being an asshole here?”
I fell into my bed, laughing. Roman pretended to punch my shoulder, mounting my body and pinning me to the mattress, while I desperately clung to the waistband of his pants, yanking them back up.
“You said your ass was showing. I didn’t think you meant the one that was on your neck.” I giggled breathlessly.
“Don’t do that.” He straddled me fully now, his erection grinding against my stomach, and not by accident. The air swelled between us, full of heavy breaths and hormones and need. I glanced at my door. Locked. Boy, I wanted to do a lot more things that involved gasping.
“Why?”
“Because I have an erection from hell and you almost sliced my balls into pastrami.”
I snorted, rolling my groin once, my navel hitting the crown of his cock through our clothes. He flinched and quickly moved away from me, standing up and walking over to the window, pushing it shut. He turned back to me, and we stared at each other.
We’d helped each other tear down the walls, and I hoped, with every fiber of my body, that what we’d find underneath them wasn’t rotten.
“I’ll ask again—what do you think?” He gestured to his face before grabbing the mysterious bag he’d come with from my window seat.
I scrunched my nose. “I liked you better with the beard and the man-bun.”
“Well, too bad, because you’re going to see this nasty-ass face for a very long time, every day.” He plopped down on my bed and handed me the bag. “Happy Birthday, Snowflake.”
“How do you know that it’s my birthday?” I held the bag, wondering if it felt so heavy because it held so many of my hopes and dreams.
“You told me.”
“Once. In passing. I didn’t mention the date.” My gaze clung to the bag like it was going to dissolve into thin air. It was a simple, purple, plastic bag. No name or brand on it. I knew Bane, and he wasn’t the type to buy a girl jewelry, even if he could afford it. I’d never really liked that Tiffany’s bracelet, anyway. Best thing I ever got was the Kit Kat my dad and I shared every morning on the bus on our way to my school.
“Fine. I looked at your paperwork after I hired you, because you’d mentioned it was in September.” He rolled his eyes, his head hitting my pillow. Now that he was clean-shaven, he didn’t look a day over twenty. I wondered if he knew that, and if it bothered him. I ran a hand over his jaw. Velvet and honey.
“I do like it,” I whispered. He covered his face with his inked hands, as if the whole situation was mortifying for him, and nudged my knee with his foot.
“Just open your present.”
When I shoved my hand in the bag, my fingers found wrapping paper, something round and hard swathed inside of it. I tore it apart and stared, awestruck.
A snow globe with a Labrador puppy inside, one that looked just like young Shadow. Flakes raining down on him, fat and lazy and fake and mine. This gift was all mine, and it meant something. Tears filled my eyes.
“Wow. It’s…”
“There’s more.” He cut me off, sitting up straight. His foot bounced on the bed. He cleared his throat, rubbing the tip of his chin and jerking it in my direction. “Look again. There’s more than just a snow globe.”
I pulled the second present out of the bag. A…wetsuit? I examined it with a frown. The room was dark, but I could still see the little details. The waves that adorned the cuffs, the setting sun printed across the chest. It was a full piece one that was going to cover me head-to-toe.
He grabbed my wrist and pulled me into his chest, his eyes hard on mine.
“You will never not do something because of the scars they left. Never. You will surf. You will live. Why didn’t you report them? Why the fuck are they not in jail right now? They were eighteen when it happened.”
My eyes widened. This had taken a wrong turn, fast. I didn’t want to get into the story. I didn’t even want to know how Bane knew they weren’t minors, and how deep he’d dug into my case.
“The case is closed, Officer Villegas. Nothing to talk about anymore. Let’s go, Jesse.”
Pam’s words came back to haunt me. I shook my head, trying to swallow the bitter lump in my throat.
“Can we not talk about it?”
“No. We kind of have to.”
“Really, Bane? On my birthday?”
“It’s Roman. And will you talk about it tomorrow?”
No. “Maybe.”
“You let them get away with it.”
“I didn’t have a choice,” I growled. The way I said that, with my eyes burning holes through his newly-shaven skin, must have told him he was in no position to talk to me about it. He narrowed his eyes, the fire in them promising the retaliation I was reluctant to seek for myself, then wiped the anger from his face completely and smiled.
“So, how did I do?”
I looked back to the wetsuit and the snow globe.
“Great,” I bit out, still angry about the sudden change of topic. “Thank you.”
“Anything else you want for your birthday?”
I smoothed a hand over the wetsuit, smiling at it absentmindedly. “It’s more than enough, really. You made my day.” My year.
He leaned forward, and we were close. Too close. Close enough for me to fantasize about what might happen. Close enough for me to get the wrong idea. I leaned back, afraid I’d kiss him and make a fool of myself.
“What?” I swallowed. His eyes were heavy in the same way they’d been in the storage room, but also different. The agony was deeper, more profound.
We’re just a helium balloon waiting to pop, every breath bringing us a step closer.
“You could ask for anything,” he enunciated, and I knew what he was shooting for. A kiss. But I was done begging. My father had once said that affection shouldn’t be asked for. It is not a reward, but a necessity.
“Anything?” I batted my eyelashes. He leaned closer still, the heat of his body seeping into mine. My chest was tight, my limbs jelly. Everything was backward and weird. Illogical, yet made perfect sense.
“Anything.” His voice was a soft snarl, his lips inches from mine. And it was tempting, but I had to do it. For my self-esteem. For the way the power was distributed between us in our relationship.
“Then I want you to show me your ass. Seems unfair that the maze got to see it, but I didn’t.”
It took him a few seconds to recover, jerk away, and stand up, but to Roman’s credit, he did it without as much as a grumble.
He lifted a warning finger in my direction before twisting to show me his back. “Is this going to turn into a case where you’ll fall so deeply in love with my ass, I will have to file a restraining order against you?”
I braced myself on my forearms, a cocky smile on my face. “I can’t commit to an answer, but I’ll try my best not to become a stalker.”
He shrugged. “Worst-case scenario—it’d be nice to have someone tell me a day before I run out of beer.”
He turned around and pulled his cargo pants down, not bothering to twist his head and see my reaction. I gulped. His tight, muscular ass had a skull dripping blood down to his thigh, three skeletons holdings surfboards and smiling, and another, third tattoo, that said “Cool Story, Bro.”
“Tell me the story,” I said. He tugged his pants up and rounded my bed, sliding in again, fitting perfectly next to me like that’s where he belonged. We were tucked next to each other.
“I lost a bet.”
“You’re kidding me.” My jaw dropped, but he just pulled one shoulder in an I-fucking-wish shrug.
I blinked, giving him a soft shove. “Who inks something like that on their ass because their friends told them to?”
“Someone who doesn’t give two shits and never misses an opportunity to do something stupid,” he quipped, tucking a lock of hair behind my ear. I grabbed his hand, dragged it to my mouth and kissed his open palm. He nearly flinched, and it saddened me. He’d slept with so many women, but I wondered when the last time he’d been kissed on the knuckles, hugged in the rain, or had been loved the way everyone deserved to be loved.
“You need to respect your body more, Roman. The tattoos. The women. You can say no. You’re so screwed up over this.” This was his father. This was like The Incident. Mental scars are like Lord Voldemort. They shall not be spoken.
He pretended to flatten the collar of my oversized shirt with his hand, looking down at it when he said, “Tell you what. I’ll stop treating my body like it’s a frat house, if you promise to stop treating yours like it’s made of marshmallow and sin. Come surf with me tomorrow.”
I laughed. “And if I do?”
“Then I won’t get any more stupid-ass tattoos. Pun intended.”
“Not fair. You don’t have any more space for them, anyway.”
He stroked his chin then pointed at his smooth, shaven face. “I do now.”
I swatted his chest. “I’ll kill you.”
“Trust me, baby. You’re already halfway there.”
“What does that mean?” I purred.
He looked serious as hell. “It means I can’t stay away from you, and at this point, I know I fucking should.”
I swallowed, but didn’t reply.
I was walking the tightrope of not wanting to beg and not wanting him to leave.
Roman asked me to get back to reading, and I did. We were tucked together like sardines while I read the book aloud, finishing the chapter, then I turned off the light, twisted to my corner of the bed, and closed my eyes.
He wrapped his arm around me, and I grinned into the darkness when his cock met my ass again, grinding very slowly, torturing the both of us. My skin tingled and my sex felt achingly empty as his hard six-pack brushed along my back. He was rubbing all against me, and my mouth watered with need.
“Roman…”
He snaked his inked palm around me and muffled my voice by dipping his middle finger between my lips. I sucked hard, hungry for the sweet taste of his last hashish joint and salty manhood. His lips trailed the shell of my ear from behind. “Shhh.”
My whole body quivered as his hard length dug deeper and deeper between the clothed slit of my ass, and my knees knocked against one another. I was on the brink of the most frustrating orgasm to ever be experienced on earth.
“Fuck me,” my voice shook around his finger, the words falling from my mouth before I could stop them. It wasn’t me. Not the old Jesse, and definitely not the new one. It was a girl who seemed to have been born especially for Bane. Reckless and needy. Desperate and deprived. “Please, just…I feel so empty.” Even that wasn’t true anymore. Alone, I was empty. With Roman, I burst at the seams.
His callused palm left my mouth, tugging at my nipple through my PJ’s, and he was touching me, and I was burning like a witch, alive in the fire, my body screaming as I bit my lip to suppress a hard moan.
I reached for the waistband of my PJ’s, the need for friction tingling between my legs. Bane captured my wrist in his palm and brought it to his lips. I could feel his smile. He whispered, “Bet I can make you come without even touching you.”
I snorted. “Cocky much?”
“Evidently.” He thrust into my clothed ass.
My eyelids dropped on a heavy sigh as he traced his lips along my ear.
“Can you feel me fucking you with my words?”
I rubbed my thighs together, begging for any kind of roughness between them. It was the sweetest torture, and a part of me was enjoying his cruelty.
“I’d rather you fuck me with something else.” Was I really saying those things? I couldn’t tell if my heated face was due to embarrassment or because I was simply sweltering under his touch.
“Everybody got the something-else. You’re getting the never-seen-before version. The one where I actually try to do the right thing. Can you feel me sucking on your swollen pink clit?”
He swirled his cock between my butt cheeks, and I rocked into him, every muscle in my body spasming involuntarily. He was still rubbing against me persistently, in a rhythm I wanted to tattoo into my brain and write into a melody.
Little pants of pleasure began to escape me involuntarily.
“Don’t patronize me, Roman. I know what’s good for me.”
“I’m pinching your clit.”
Groan. “Roman.”
“Your pussy juice is all over my chin.”
Why was he doing this?
The orgasm started at my curling toes, shooting upwards like a bullet and exploding between my legs. I tried to loosen my trapped hands from his grip, but to no avail. I came on nothing, barely touched, just from his words. It took me a few minutes to calm down, my pulse floating down slowly like a feather, before I noticed the warm, damp cum sticking my top to my lower back.
He’d come, too. From rubbing off against me.
“I hate you,” I muttered, my voice shaking. I’d never realized how empty my sex was until I met Roman and realized that I wanted him there. All the time.
“Good night, birthday girl.” He planted a soft kiss on the back of my head, dropping his heavy arm on my waist.
For the first time in years, I didn’t want to put on my Keds and run from the demons that lurked under my bed at night.
For the first time in my life, I let them sleep with us, inside my bed, in my room, knowing that they were just ghosts of my past.
That they couldn’t touch me.