ALWAYS PART WAYS WITH PEOPLE you love like you’ll never see them again.
That’s the advice my dad had given me when I was nine, and I’d mulled it over in my head since. I didn’t know why his words made me think of Bane. Maybe because I remembered the last words I told my father so vividly before his death.
I never want to see you, ever again.
We had just found out about his affair, Pam and I. Back then, she used to let me call her Mom. His betrayal cut through every layer of confidence and happiness I’d been wrapped in throughout my life. I halfway blamed him for everything else that happened afterwards. Even Emery. After all, if it weren’t for his affair, Pam wouldn’t have tried to reinvent herself and found Darren. I would still call her Mom. I wouldn’t live in Todos Santos, but in Anaheim. I wouldn’t have a Range Rover, but at least I’d be happy.
I wouldn’t have had to befriend Mrs. Belfort.
I wouldn’t have to hide away in El Dorado.
I would be me. Poor and content and myself.
Stop whining, Jesse. Self-loathing isn’t so bad when you settle into it.
“Hi, Imane! Is this a good time?” I dumped my backpack in Mrs. Belfort’s foyer.
“In the dining room.” Imane, her housekeeper, bowed her head, clearing the way for me.
I walked over to the royal blue dining room, complete with high golden arches, red curtains, and a bronze chandelier. A French provincial dining set that could fit no less than thirty diners graced the center of the room. I saw Mrs. Belfort sitting at the end of the table, all by herself, clad in an emerald satin dress with a gold neckline, bright red lipstick, and a hairdo from the movies. She stared at the empty chair across from her, all the way on the other side of the table, willing it to fill itself with her late husband, Fred. My heart shriveled inside its bony cage, every beat burning against my ribs.
“Mrs. B?” I whispered, not too loud to startle her.
She ignored me. “Fred, do try the oysters. They’re marvelous.”
Fred didn’t respond, because he wasn’t there. For the sake of argument, the oysters weren’t there, either. Mrs. Belfort had had lunch hours ago, I’m sure. Probably in the form of a soup or casserole her cook, Ula, made for her.
Your one and only friend is drifting, a little voice inside my head tsked. I’d like to believe that voice was the old Jesse. That she still lived somewhere inside me, and was a constant companion. Which, of course, was monumentally pathetic.
Roman Protsenko slipped into my mind again.
Snowflake.
I remembered the intensity of his gaze as he’d looked at me. It dripped sex, even if his words were completely innocent. I appreciated his proposition. I even half-believed him about not wanting to get into my pants. But I didn’t do socializing, and I sure as hell wasn’t going to start now. Not with him, and not at all.
“Mrs. B,” I repeated, stepping deeper into the room and pressing a hand over her back. “Let’s go outside and look at the rosebushes. Maybe take a walk in the maze.” She hadn’t agreed to go in there for months now.
Juliette Belfort jerked away from me and looked up. Her face was marred with experience and heartache. The most fatal disease in the world was time, and her tired expression was proof of that. Juliette had two children. Both Ryan and Kacey lived on the East Coast, and she wasn’t hot on joining them in the cold. Not that they ever offered. Mrs. B had brittle bone disease, so she usually wore three layers of clothes whenever she was out and had her thermostat set somewhere between a bonfire and hell. “Jesse, I can’t spend time with you today, sweetheart. I’m having lunch with my husband.”
At least she remembered my name this time. Mrs. Belfort wasn’t always clear. That’s why she had a full-time nurse, a housekeeper, and a cook. That’s why she didn’t understand why I kept declining meeting her sweet nephew, who was around my age, for a blind date.
I stopped telling her the skinny on my situation, because she would ask all over again the next day.
I don’t date.
I don’t do boys.
I’m The Untouchable.
And Mrs. B would always reply—stop being so afraid of love. It can’t kill you!
Only it had.
“Is it okay if I wait until you guys are finished?” I mustered a weak smile, inwardly begging for her company. She shrugged, sipping tea from the fine china next to her. “Suit yourself.”
I returned to the foyer and plopped on an upholstered bench, digging out a book from my backpack and riffling through the free hugs pamphlet some girl handed me on the street last time I visited Mayra. I smiled at the irony as I stared at the words, not really deciphering any of them.
Why did Bane want to hire me? I was about as customer friendly as pneumonia.
Had he heard about my story?
Stupid question. Of course he had. Everyone in town heard a version or two of my story. I was the town’s slut. Jezebel. The whore of Babylon. I’d asked for it, so they’d given it to me.
Emery Wallace was the poor victim. And I was the leg-spreading witch.
Maybe Bane thought I was going to put out easily.
Or perhaps he really did pity me.
It made little to no difference. The only thing I had going for me was that, despite everything I’d been through, I wasn’t the charity case he tried to make me. I didn’t need his mercy, or job, or affection. I didn’t.
Crap, I hope Mrs. B will spend some time with me today.
I read a few pages, willing Bane out of my mind. Sometimes Mrs. B was clear as the August sky. I confided in her, more often than I’d like to admit. It was easier than talking to Mayra, my therapist, because Mayra always took notes and made suggestions. Mrs. Belfort very rarely remembered our conversations.
Twenty minutes after I walked in, Imane stepped out of the dining room with her arms behind her back, her expression downcast.
“I’m sorry, Jesse. Not today. Fred wasn’t…” Her throat bobbed. She gnawed on the inside of her cheek, unable to look me in the eye. “Fred wasn’t feeling well.”
I stood up, heading for the door when Mrs. Belfort came out of the dining room, hugging the doorframe to support herself. She looked like a stranger, her eyes wearing an expression I’d never seen before. Clarity. “You can’t be afraid of love, my dear. It’s like being afraid of death. It is inevitable.”
Love is like death. It’s inevitable.
The words chased my thoughts long after I’d left Mrs. B’s house. It was a good thing I was going for a run, because I needed to declutter my head after the weird day I’d had.
Anything north of the witching hour was my favorite.
Time soaked into your skin like a kiss at three o’clock in the morning, slow and seductive. I was always awake at night—that’s when the nightmares crept in. They were so bad that at some point, I stopped falling asleep. Catnaps during the day kept me going. But sleeping through a whole night? Yeah. No, thanks. That was practically inviting a rerun of The Incident. In loop.
I must have been under some kind of a spell tonight. I felt brave from talking to a stranger—to a male stranger—and the limitations and red lines I’d made for myself faded to the background. I shoved my earbuds into my ears. “Time to Dance” by Panic! At The Disco blasted in my ears as I headed toward El Dorado’s track at 3:00 a.m. I had a finger Taser and a little Swiss Army knife shoved inside my sock. Plus, it was a gated neighborhood, with patrols driving around in carts every hour. I took my Labrador, Shadow, with me because he practically begged when I was at the door. He was probably the only creature alive I still cared about pleasing.
The Untouchable, I thought as my feet hit the concrete trail, Shadow on a leash, lagging behind me like the fourteen-year-old veteran that he was. It had a nice ring to it. Even I had to admit it.
Only it wasn’t a compliment. I’d gotten the nickname because I wouldn’t allow anyone to touch me. Ever. At all. Thwack, thwack, thwack. I ran like my life depended on it. Three years ago, it had. And I’d failed. They’d caught me.
I’d been running ever since, twice a day. Five miles on the edges of the gated neighborhood I’d lived in.
Running to exhaust myself, physically and mentally, so I could sleep.
Running so I wouldn’t have to stand still, and ponder, and think, and crumble.
Running from my problems, and my reality, and the emptiness that nibbled at the edges of my gut, like acid. Burning, eating, destroying.
My routine had somewhat put me in an oxygen-thief status. Even I had to admit that my life was aimless. I slept during the days and lived in the dead of the night. I worked out obsessively in the basement and got out of Pam and Darren’s hair as much as humanly possible. They begged for me to come back to the world, but I never did. Then they took my treadmill, so I started running outside. They threatened to cut my allowance if I didn’t get a job, so I simply stopped spending money. I read books instead, took Shadow on long strolls, and lived off the odd Kit Kat bar, mainly to keep myself alive. Sometimes I paid Mrs. B a visit. I never left El Dorado with the exception of weekly visits to my therapist, Mayra.
I’d been with Mayra ever since I was twelve, and can honestly say she hadn’t contributed in making me feel better or reach a fundamental conclusion even once. The only reason I kept going was because Pam had threatened to kick me out if I stopped, and I actually believed her.
People, as a concept, were starting to feel blurry and unfamiliar. Fuzzy, like black and white static flakes playing on an old-school TV. I’d been caught off guard when Bane started talking to me, because no one ever did.
The soles of my feet burned, and my thighs quivered with the strain I was putting them through. I’d always been athletic, but it was only after what had happened to me senior year that I became obsessed with running, and not in a good way. Pam—she didn’t like it when I called her Mom, claimed she looked too young for the title—said I looked “hot” since The Incident, and I tried not to hate her every time that she did.
Jesse, look at your legs. That’s your silver lining right there. Just open up and try to be less weird, and everything will be fine.
Running at buttcrack o’clock meant it was only Shadow and me on the track. Just as well. Whenever people recognized me, they either looked at me like I was trash, or averted their gaze, making sure I didn’t see the pity in their eyes. Loneliness was an old friend. So much so that, ironically, it became my company.
Shadow was beginning to pant loudly behind me, so I stopped, bending down and stretching my hamstrings, my fingers pressing my toes.
“Take your time, Old Sport.” I patted his head, waiting for the next song on my iPod to start.
“Jesse? Jesse Carter?” a woman chirped behind me. My heart slammed against my ribcage at the sudden noise. I whipped my head around, tearing the earbuds from my ears. Wren, a girl I went to school with, waved at me as she jogged toward my spot. She was wearing clubbing attire consisting of a little red dress that could barely cover a freckle, let alone the two silicone balloons she’d been gifted on her seventeenth birthday. She wore slippers and looked drunk, which made me wonder what idiot had let this twenty-year-old girl party at their bar until the middle of the night. I wheezed out the remainder of the oxygen. Wren lived in El Dorado. She’d probably been stumbling home, saw me, and decided to say hi. Why she decided that was beyond me.
“I knew it was you,” she gasped, aligning her drunken, loose body in front of my tense, anxious one. “Ohmigosh, I told them it was you.”
Them? Who were they? I was about to ask when Wren decided to abuse the nonexistent word ‘ohmigosh’ once again. “Ohmigosh, and I can’t believe your dog is still alive. He must be, like, twenty or something, right?”
The old Jesse would tell her not everyone was as young as her new tits and nose. The new Jesse avoided confrontation at almost any cost. Wren sized me up, raking her eyes over me, head-to-toe. Her gaze was like a bright projector aimed at a hibernating animal. I wanted to coil into myself and die.
She smirked. “You look hot, Jesse. Are you on the Dukan Diet or something?”
I rubbed Shadow behind the ears and resumed my jogging, hoping she’d get the hint and give up on the one-sided conversation. To my disappointment, she sprinted forward, catching my step.
“Don’t be a bitch. Share your secret.”
Get gang raped by your boyfriend and his friends. That would either make you lose your appetite completely or eat your feelings away.
“I’m not on any diet,” I finally gritted out.
“Well, you look great! I mean, you’ve always looked great. Obvs,” she abbreviated the word ‘obviously,’ because it was just too long for her holy mouth. For the first three years of high school, I’d been one of the popular girls. The designated queen bee. Devastating blue eyes and legs for miles. They called me Snow White: dark hair, fair skin, witch-bitch mother. It helped that I was born and raised in Anaheim. My mom was freshly wed to an oil tycoon, and everyone at All Saints High had thought I was ghetto. “Classy, but ghetto,” Emery corrected whenever someone asked me if I’d ever seen someone getting stabbed or shot. After The Incident, my status took a nosedive. In fact, by the end of senior year, I’d been outranked by pretty much everyone, including the toilet seats and peeling cafeteria tables of All Saints High. Wren and her friends were the first to cough the word ‘slut’ in the hallways, the first to whine about STDs when asked to take a seat next to me in chemistry or calc.
“That really means a lot,” I said sarcastically, refraining from asking her about her life. I didn’t want to know.
“I wish I had it in me to put so much effort into my body.” Wren sighed dramatically, barely keeping up with my pace. The sound of her after-party flip-flops slapping against the ground made me want to tear my hair from my skull. “But I’m just so busy with school, and friends, and my new boyfriend. You know I’m dating Justin Finn now, right?”
I didn’t know that. I’d pretty much stopped talking to the entire world after what happened. The only thing I remembered about Justin Finn was the way his brother Henry’s teeth had felt against my thigh when I’d finally come to, dizzy and nauseous, after they’d beaten me senseless. His laughter into my sex as he tasted me, defenseless, against my will. I remembered it so clearly, in fact, I could still feel him on my body, even after two years and countless showers. I bit my lip hard, stifling a scream.
They’re not here.
They can’t hurt you.
“What the hell are you doing here, Wren? It’s three in the morning.”
“Aw. She talks! Exciting.” She golf-clapped on another vicious smile. “So what have you been doing with your life?”
The idea that I could be in real danger trickled into my consciousness slowly. Wren’s house was on the other side of the neighborhood. The track was located by a small park with swings and a slide. Teenagers often came here at night to get tanked during summer vacations. That meant that she wasn’t alone. Already, I had the disadvantage.
“You look a little pale, Jesse. Or maybe it’s just you never leave the house.” She snort-laughed. I picked up my pace, watching from my peripheral as her arms flailed beside her body with exhaustion. Shadow wheezed behind me. I inwardly begged him not to hate me for what I was doing. But I was panicking. I wanted to flee back home, but who the hell knew what waited for me by the playground?
“No one’s seen you in a while. People said you were in a mental institution. I was like, ohmigosh, Jesse? No way. But really, Jesse, where were you?”
Wren tried to catch up, but her body was failing her. Shadow and I had the stamina. We were pro joggers. That’s what we did.
Bits and pieces from high school came back to me, falling clumsily into a wonky picture I tried hard to unsee. Wren and I had been cool before The Incident—frenemies who’d played the school hierarchy game. Then she became one of them. One of the people who stuffed my locker with condoms and sprayed the word ‘whore’ across it, and exchanged horrified looks whenever a teacher paired me up with them in lab or PE. My legs sprinted faster.
Shadow was yelping. My brain finally caught up with my heart. I didn’t want anything to happen to him, so I picked him up, all sixty pounds of him, and veered off the course, jumping between the trees lining the Spencers’ estate.
“Hey! Where are you going?” I heard her whining behind me. I knew I was going to regret it as soon as the branches slapped my ankles and my Keds sank into the mud. I felt the sharp burn of new cuts opening on my legs, but I kept on running.
“Bitch, you won’t be able to hide for long!” Her voice became muffled and weak, but there was one thing I heard good and loud. It bled from my ears into the rest of my body, resting on my soul like a deadweight I was going to carry around with me like a scar for years to come.
“Run all you want. No one will be chasing you anyway, you little whore.”
Another thing I didn’t forget: Wren had always been a vindictive brat.
That’s why I wasn’t surprised to find a car parked by the playground next to the track when Shadow and I limped our way back toward the neighborhood, thoroughly muddy.
I couldn’t recognize them from the distance, but they were leaning against the hood of their vehicle, ankles crossed and arms folded over their chests. The kiddie park by the track was deserted, save for their car. A Camaro SS with a paint job made in car hell, black with yellow flames, the headlights set on high.
I was about to turn around and head back to the track on limping legs, but a loud whistle pierced the silence of the night.
“Well, well. If it isn’t Todos Santos’ favorite slut,” one of the two guys sing-songed. “Good morning, Jesse.”
Oh, God. Oh, no.
Fear had a scent. A pungent, rancid smell of cold sweat, and it surrounded me like fog, crawling into my slacked mouth and sucking my soul out.
I put a face to the voice.
Looked up.
Then recognized the other guy who was beside him.
Henry and Nolan.
They wore their uniform of Polo shirts and smug smirks. What the hell were they doing in El Dorado? In the middle of the freaking night? And even more importantly—was Emery here, too? Wren. Wren had let them in. She probably partied with them, they dropped her off, but then they spotted me and couldn’t resist having some fun.
There was vomit lodged in the back of my throat as I tugged Shadow’s leash toward the main road of the neighborhood, praying a patrol cart would breeze through, but knowing that with my luck, it wouldn’t.
“Come on, Old Sport.” My voice was strangled, begging. Suddenly, I didn’t feel the cuts on my ankles, the heavy mud caking my Keds.
“Man, even her dog is fucking handicapped.” Nolan cackled, throwing an empty can of beer to roll on the concrete with a hollow echo. “How’re them legs, Jesse? Still limping?”
I didn’t, but they’d nearly broken my hipbones when they’d attacked me senior year. A violent shiver licked my spine, my heart palpitating so fast I clapped a hand over my mouth from fear of vomiting it.
“White trash girl with a white trash dog.” Henry laughed, pushing off the hood of the car and sauntering over to me. Fear cemented me to the ground like a statue and a blush crept up my cheeks. I felt my whole body coming alive with red-hot rage. Behind him, Wren was pretending to do her makeup in the back seat of the Camaro, ignoring the scene like she had no part in it.
Shadow growled, exposing his yellow teeth to Henry. I tugged him close to my thigh, sucking in air. Shit, shit, shit.
“Where you headed, Jesse? Night shift at the brothel? Let’s have some fun,” Nolan hollered from the hood, flicking his cell phone flashlight on and aiming it at me.
“Yeah, Jesse. You looking for trouble? We can do a round two for old times’ sake. Just don’t tell Emery. Though, really, I’m sure he wouldn’t mind. He has a nice, respectable girlfriend now. The kind who doesn’t open her legs so often that she can’t even remember who popped her cherry.”
I didn’t know which part felt worse: hearing Emery’s name, or knowing that he’d moved on without any consequences. Or maybe it was the reminder that the night in the Indian alleyway really had happened. Though I had plenty of reasons to remember it, even beyond the physical damage. Weeks after, Pam had taken me to a clinic outside of town to have an abortion. I’d begged her not to, but she was adamant that “it” would ruin our nonexistent image in Todos Santos.
I turned around and started running toward the main road.
“Stop,” Nolan snarled. His hand burned its pattern on my shoulder. He swiveled me around with enough force to remind me he was capable of much more. Shadow growled again, and Nolan kicked his front leg. My dog collapsed to the ground, whimpering.
Staring at Nolan, I tried to cut myself some slack for not realizing how sadistic he was, sooner. He was boyishly good-looking, with soft blond curls and hazel eyes, now with crow’s feet gathering like an elegant fan around them.
Wholesome. Handsome. Fearsome.
I jerked my arm like his touch was cold fire. I was about to swing my fist directly to his nose and pick up Shadow again when dark, violent energy crackled around me like electricity. A metal-hitting-metal thud and screech penetrated the air and everything stopped like someone hit pause. We both twisted our heads back.
Bane. Clouds of playground sand dancing around his army boots.
Bane. His stony jaw set in anger I could feel all the way down to my toes.
Bane. Holding Henry in a headlock, the preppy boy on his knees, staring at Nolan with horror I could decipher even with only the poor lighting of the streetlamp. Wren was in the car, holding her face and screaming. That’s when I noticed he’d smashed into the back of the Camaro with his truck, and not by accident. The car had slid to the concrete sidewalk bordering the playground. A swing swayed from the impact.
Up, down. Up, down.
I finally picked Shadow, hugging him close to my chest.
“Well, this is awkward.” Bane flashed a wolfish, badder-than-bad grin. “A sober dude crashing his truck into a bunch of sorry-ass tanked teenagers. Wonder who is gonna take the blame for that one?”
You could feel the atmosphere shifting in the small things. Nolan’s body going slack. Wren bowing her head down in defeat. A terrified tear rolling down Henry’s cheek. Nolan lifted both his hands in surrender, taking a step back.
“Stay where you are,” Bane ordered.
He did.
“I believe a trade is in order. This dipshit is of no interest to me, and you have no business touching Jesse Carter,” Bane said, tucking a joint between his lips and lighting it up with his free hand. He tilted his chin up, letting the smoke crawl upwards in a curly ribbon.
Jesse Carter. He knew my name, and probably everything else there was to know about me. Stupid me thought I could escape him by withholding information from him.
Wild relief washed over me when Nolan pivoted to face the big, blond surfer, forgetting all about me. I gathered Shadow into my arms again, watching the golden locks of Nolan’s hair from behind, wondering if I had it in me to grip a handful of them and smash his head against the concrete under our feet.
“Bane Protsenko?” Nolan scratched his smooth forehead.
“C’mere.” Bane curled his ringed fingers that held the blunt, beckoning. Henry was still on the ground, choking on a sob. Bane’s jaw was locked so tight I thought his teeth were going to snap out of his mouth. Nolan walked over to them, coiling into himself as his posture caught up with his pulse.
“What’s going on? We were just having fun.” He sounded like the good boy his mother probably thought he was.
“Was it fun for Carter?”
“Yeah!” Henry yelled, gagging around Bane’s arm. “We know her. We went to school together. R…right, Jesse?”
I shook my head. I may not have had the balls to kill them, but I would never protect them. “I went to school with them, yes, but they’re harassing me.”
I wasn’t sure if Bane was trying to blackmail me or simply do the right thing by me, but it didn’t matter. He was helping me, and I needed him there. Nolan stopped a good three feet away from Bane and Henry.
“What’s up, man? Nothing to see here. I’m sure you have better things to do than to bang up our night.” Nolan’s voice was toneless. He was trying to swallow in the anger he’d felt for being interrupted.
“Snowflake, what should we do with them?” Bane said ‘Snowflake’ like we had pet names for each other and ‘we’ like it was a concept I was familiar and comfortable with. Like we did things together all the time. Like we were friends.
I don’t date. My job doesn’t allow it. Long story. Let’s be friends.
A month after The Incident, I got back to school to complete my senior year and graduate. I saw Henry, Nolan, and Emery every day. I saw them in the cafeteria, and in class, and at whatever events Pam and Darren dragged me to in town in their attempt to fit in. Emery, Nolan, and Henry acted as if I didn’t exist, and they did such a thorough job, by the end of the year, even I’d bought into it. Point was, we always pretended we didn’t know each other. I was tired of pretending it didn’t happen.
It did, and it hurt. It still hurt, years after. It would always hurt, for as long as I lived.
I took a step forward. “What are you doing in Todos Santos?”
Nolan turned his head to me. Henry winced. The silence was pregnant with things I didn’t want to hear.
“We’re on a forced vacation.” Henry’s voice broke. He was always so much weaker than Nolan, than Emery. The frail, dangling link that was likely to snap first.
“What’d you do?”
“None of your business,” Nolan snapped.
“What. Did. You. Do?” Bane’s tenor was chilling. A cold knife gliding down your skin, its edge poking your flesh. Roman Protsenko was highly connected in Todos Santos. Even I knew that. He was the kind of person you really didn’t want to mess with.
“Campus incident.” The words sounded like they wanted to be swallowed back into Nolan’s mouth. The three golden boys of All Saints High went to college together. East Coast. That was the deal their parents had made with Darren and Pam.
We want your kids as far away as possible from ours. Much good it had done me.
“Consisting of?”
“A girl…” Henry said through clenched teeth. My heart split into mosaic pieces. They’d assaulted someone else? “We didn’t do anything. That’s why it’s just a week. She was sauced as hell. Anyway, we only messed around with her. Shit was under investigation for like, a second, but we’re good to go back.”
Bane’s eyes sought mine under the sad artificial light. He was no less dangerous than they were. If anything, they were hyenas, and he was a lion, quiet and deadly. “What’re we gonna do with them, Jesse?”
“I don’t want them anywhere near me ever again. No talking, no touching, no breathing in my direction.” My teeth chattered, even though it wasn’t cold. I wasn’t proud of using Bane to make sure the boys were off my case, but the temptation was too much. Henry and Nolan were bullies. If they smelled weakness, they would strike. They’d continue to provoke me until the day I died if they didn’t have an incentive not to.
Bane said, “You heard her. Consider this her official restraining order against you.”
“I’m sorry, but who the hell are you to tell us what to do?” Nolan spat out. Bane released Henry from the chokehold, sauntering over to Nolan. The air was drenched with menace. The world seemed painfully mundane while wrapped up in Roman Protsenko’s exceptional orbit. Like he was bigger than the place he was born in. He captured Nolan’s throat in his palm and squeezed, still reeking of bored stoicism. “If you get anywhere near her again, I will personally make sure it will be the last time you step foot in this town. Your family will be driven out of here. Your college dream will be dead. I will unleash every ounce of power I have in this town to make sure your lives are a continuous, Freddie-Kruger-style nightmare. Fair warning: I’m very good at nightmares. I’ve lived a different life from yours, and know what you rich kids can survive…and what you cannot.”
I’d have paid good money to see Nolan’s face at that moment, but he had his back to me. What I did hear clearly was Henry choking on his own saliva. “Man, let’s get the hell out of here! Let’s go!” simultaneously with Wren, who wept out, “Nolan, don’t be an idiot!”
Nolan stood like the Leaning Tower of Pisa, askew and unsteady, realizing for the first time the lesson he had taught me—that we were all fragile and breakable. Bane unlocked his hand from Nolan’s neck and pushed him toward the car.
“You’re trying my patience,” the blond mammoth growled. “Under any other circumstance, you wouldn’t walk out of this park alive.”
Nolan tossed me a narrowed-eyed look. “Fine. You’re dead to us. Happy?”
Hardly. But I wanted them to finally let go of me, so maybe, one day, someday, I could let go of them.
“You’re a prick,” I hissed, nuzzling my face into Shadow’s fur.
“And you’re a slut. Just remember that when the town’s bully replaces your ass with someone who isn’t crammed with STDs.”
That awarded Nolan a punch to the face from Bane. It happened so fast, he staggered and fell down, his ass hitting the concrete. Bane kicked his face with the tip of his boot, and I heard something crack. I barked out a laugh, mainly from shock. Henry half-ran, half-stumbled to Nolan, picking him up by the collar of his shirt and galloping toward the Camaro. “Dude, we need to bail. Now!”
He shoved Nolan into the Camaro and bolted around to the driver’s seat, attempting to start the car a few times before the engine roared to life. He reversed with a screech, bumping into Bane’s truck slightly before fleeing the scene while peppering small bits of the car’s wrecked hood in his wake. My eyes followed the vehicle, dancing in their sockets. I was so entranced by what happened, I hadn’t even noticed Bane was standing right in front of me. But he was.
There, with his long, muscled body.
Green eyes like winter mint, dark and frighteningly alive.
Under the harsh light, I could see the holes where his past piercings must have been. Lower lip. Nose. Eyebrow. He was tall and smooth and youthful. Regal in his beauty. The only things staining his noble good looks were his tattoos and beard.
My gaze swept down to his knuckles. They were individually inked, carefully hiding every inch of skin.
My eyes halted on the dark stain between them. Nolan’s blood.
I looked up.
I didn’t know if it was the air that smelled of grass and adrenaline, or the allure of the night that promised to swallow what had passed between us into a secret, or the fact that he’d saved me, but I didn’t hate Bane like everyone else in that moment. My mouth opened of its own accord, and the words tumbled out. “Thank you.”
“What would it take for you to have coffee with me?” He breathed hard, picking up where we’d left off. Last time, I told him he’d need to save my life.
I guess he just had.
“For you to tell me why you want to do this.”
“I need to fix you,” he said, his greens on my blues.
To. Fix. You.
Shadow stirred in my arms, trying to sniff Bane from a distance. I was surprised he didn’t try to bite his head off like he normally would. He knew how weird I’d felt about men.
“I don’t mean to sound rude, but who the hell are you to fix me, and who said I’m in need of fixing?” I tilted my chin down, aware of the fact I hadn’t exchanged so many words with another man for years. I was on the verge of shoving him away. How dare he? But I was also on the verge of smashing my body against his, collapsing into a hug. How good was he? No one had ever tried to fix me. Even Darren and Pam merely wanted to get rid of me. Of course, I did neither. The Untouchable never touched anyone.
Bane took a step forward. I didn’t take a step back.
“I heard about your story. I heard about what Emery, Nolan, and Henry did to you. And let’s just say I have someone close to me who experienced something similar, so shit hit pretty close to home.” He pointed to the space where the Camaro was no longer parked. I thought about what I knew about him. About his bad reputation. But then I also remembered that he’d been the one to shut down the Defy game in All Saints High. That all he’d ever been to me was kind and helpful.
“I don’t think you understand, Snowflake. You don’t have any say in this shit. I’m going to help you whether you want my help or not. And I’m willing to punch every face in Todos Santos if it makes you feel safer, my own included. I don’t want to fuck you, Jesse.” He breathed hard, and in my mind, he was cupping my cheeks with his big, callused palms, and I didn’t even flinch.
In my mind, his cinnamon breath skimmed over my face warmly.
In my mind, we didn’t have all that dead space between us, and our voices didn’t echo against the nothingness of the empty night, because I wasn’t so broken and scared. “I want to fucking save you.”
“But—” I started.
He cut me off. “They called you a whore. What they did to you is inexcusable. You’re going to be saved, hear me? You’re going to be saved, because the other girl couldn’t be saved.”
I didn’t question it.
I didn’t doubt it.
I just accepted it, the way you do the sky above your head, knowing he was a stronger force than my resistance ever would be.
Bane had helped me. He’d protected me.
And, sadly, it was more than anyone else had done in my life.
All he wanted was coffee. Somewhere public. Once. I could survive this. I could.
I thought about the wilting Mrs. Belfort, and how loneliness drove me running from my memories and nightmares in the middle of the night, then nodded. He motioned for me to get into his truck, and I shook my head, lowering Shadow to the ground. We were going to walk. Bane threw his cell phone into my hands.
“Five, three, three, seven. Have 911 on speed dial. I’ll drive slowly. Keep the passenger door open just in case. But you’re not walking home with your feet looking like that.” He motioned down, and I followed his gaze, finding my ankles and Keds beaten almost to death, the little pocketknife nearly falling out of my blood-soaked sock. I nodded slowly, tucking it back in. I then dialed 911 and kept my thumb hovering on the green button, and got into his truck.
It was the shock that made me do it.
New Jesse never got into anyone’s vehicle.
“Just one question, Bane,” I said after giving him directions to my house. “What were you doing here tonight? It’s a gated community.”
He cut his engine, sank back into his seat, and rolled his head to look at me. “I have a hookup in El Dorado every Thursday. I have the electronic key.” He flashed the small black device between his fingers.
I swallowed hard as I tumbled out of the passenger’s seat with Shadow in front of my house.
My ankle dragged, leaving a bloodstain on his old leather seat.
And I thought it to be ironic.
How he was the most powerful man I knew, and yet, I was the one to mark him before he marked me.