EVEN THOUGH THE OLD JESSE had died the night of The Incident, the leftovers of her were still in my system. Mainly, her carnal need to feel. That was one of the reasons I wasn’t suicidal, I guess. I was never numb or anything. I was angry, and sad, and desperate, but I felt. Most of all, I was needy.
I’d always been needy for affection—wasn’t that the entire point of hanging out with Emery’s stupid crew, even though I’d known they hadn’t cared about me? I just made sure I kept it to myself.
My needs were mine. No one was supposed to know about them. Least of all him.
“She was about to get pounded like the pavement? Like. The. Pavement?” Bane light-jogged behind me, the chuckle in his voice vibrating inside my chest for some reason. My ears were on fire. What was I thinking, reading smut in public? I was thinking no one was going to notice, since the book I was reading was tucked inside a perfectly respectable classic. I wasn’t counting on Bane to reappear five minutes after he’d entered the shop. Hadn’t he said ten? How good was he at extortion?
Pretty freaking amazing. You’re here, aren’t you?
“Shut up!” I covered my face with my palms. “God, this is so humiliating. Just let me go home, please.”
He sprinted ahead, swiveled to face me, and walked backward with his arms open, his smile so cocky, I wanted it to tear it off his brutally handsome face.
“What about the smoothie I promised you?”
“That was before you made fun of my literary preferences.”
“Stop talking like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like an eighty-year-old. What do you like in your smoothie?”
My knee-jerk reaction was to tell him I liked solitude in my smoothie, turn around and walk away. Immature, I know, but I was so rusty when it came to socializing. Especially with boys. Especially with boys who looked like Bane— inked savages with quick wit and foreign beauty.
“Strawberries.”
“What else?”
“Cantaloupe.”
“And?”
“Banana?”
“Hmm. Banana.” But it wasn’t suggestive or disgusting, the way Nolan or Henry would say it.
“So subtle. Humor at its finest.” I rolled my eyes, throwing my wallet at him. It was the only thing I had handy. He caught the wallet, unplastering it from his chest and opening it nonchalantly as he continued marching backward.
“You don’t carry a lot of cash on you.”
“Why should I?”
“You never know who you need to bribe not to tell about your literary preferences.” His grin widened, making his face gleam with delight.
“I think you forget my reputation can’t get any worse unless I start murdering puppies. The Untouchable whom everyone has already touched,” I muttered, shoulders slumped. It was the naked truth, and the cold chill of it was already slithering down my spine when I thought about the looks I’d get if I walked into the coffee shop with him. We stopped in front of Café Diem. He tossed my wallet back to me, and I caught it mid-air.
“Hmm. Pity party. Thanks for the invite, Jesse, but I’m busy tonight.”
“You’re an asshole.” I sighed.
“Tell me something I don’t know.”
“Sean Connery wore a toupee in all his James Bond movies,” I said.
Bane laughed. “The fuck?”
“You told me to tell you something you don’t know. I bet you didn’t know that.”
He shook his head, his shoulders shaking with laughter now, his whole body radiating happiness like the sun. He motioned for me with his hand. “Come on. I’ll buy you that smoothie.”
“You own the place.” That was my second eye roll in a minute. I was starting to sound like old Jesse again, sassing like there was no tomorrow.
Bane threw the glass door to Café Diem open and stepped in without even checking if I followed. His jerk tactic worked, because after a brief pause, I did. I didn’t know what it was about Bane that made talking to him so easy. I knew what he wanted to do. He wanted to throw me back into the cruel arms of the world. A world I resented, but at the same time, so terribly missed. And, for some reason, despite the paralyzing fear of it, I was letting him.
Everybody was watching.
It wasn’t a figure of speech. Literally, every single person stared.
It’s like the residents of Todos Santos had waited for me to step out of hiding so they could see if I really was a monster. If I’d gained fifty pounds, or become anorexic. If I was on suicide watch, or just plain old crazy. If I’d shaved my head, torn off my skin, and lost my striking all-American girl features.
The rumors were endless, and they wanted at least some of them to be true.
Bane slowed his pace, walking in line with me. His expression was pissed yet bored, a combination that dared anyone to say something about us. About me. I had a feeling that he wanted to make an example out of someone, but no one took the bait. I felt my face so hot with embarrassment I thought I would ignite, but at the same time, I didn’t not want to be there. I needed to face the world at some point, and today was as good a day as any, especially when I had the protection of Bane Protsenko at my side.
Bane sauntered over behind the counter, and I leaned against the champagne-hued wooden counter, watching him. He washed his hands quietly, then dropped a banana, strawberries, and cantaloupe into a blender while I hopped onto a stool, burying my face inside my hoodie. People stared at him as if he were the Messiah, blazing into town on his donkey wearing a glittery thong. He lifted his head up from the tall glass he’d poured my smoothie into and barked, “Next person to gawk gets fired. Customers included. How ’bout them apples?”
I nearly laughed. Nearly. But it felt like betraying the new Jesse.
The new Jesse didn’t make friends, and she sure as hell wasn’t going to break bread with Roman ‘Bane’ Protsenko, the most infamous bad boy in Todos Santos, just because he was showing mild interest in her. Bane jerked his head to a corner table, nestled between the glass walls overlooking the ocean.
“Go ahead. I’ll be there in a sec.”
There was nothing I wanted less than making the journey there on my own, but I couldn’t chicken out of it. I followed his instructions, assuming he was making himself a smoothie, too. When he arrived at our table, he slid the smoothie toward me and set a glass on the table for himself, plopping down on the chair opposite to mine. The stench was unmistakable. Vodka.
“To good friends and bad decisions,” he saluted with his drink, tipping his chin down.
“Vodka in the middle of the day?” I arched an eyebrow, my brain skipping down memory lane as I remembered it was Dad’s favorite drink.
“Who are you, the fun police?” He mimicked my curved brow. “If so, you’d probably get suspended for reading smut.”
“I wish I could Men in Black you and erase your memory of that paragraph.” I stabbed my smoothie with the straw. It was lumpy as hell.
“Men in Black ain’t a verb.”
“Who are you, the grammar police? If so, you’d probably get jail time for saying ain’t.”
Bane chuckled, giving me his glorious profile. I bet he was used to getting what he wanted when he flaunted that cut-stone jaw and ungodly tall figure. I also bet the old Jesse would have given him her heart and her panties, had she been single. Hell, the new one was half-tempted to do it, too.
“I’m Russian, too, you know,” I said out of nowhere, bringing the pink straw to my lips and tasting the smoothie. Bane raised one questioning eyebrow, but didn’t say anything.
“Yeah.” I cleared my throat, dropping my gaze to the vodka. “My dad came here with his family after the Soviet Union fell. Most of them are in Chicago, though. I don’t speak Russian or anything. Pam said it would be useless since I’d never go there.”
“Pam is an idiot,” Bane said flatly. I couldn’t argue with that, so I just shrugged.
“I know some words, though.” I dipped the straw inside my milkshake and brought it to my lips for another taste. I never usually ate anything other than my stash of Kit Kats, so I considered it sort of a progress. A pathetic one, but still.
“Let’s hear them.”
“Suka blyat. Horosho. Kak dela. Pizdets. Privet.”
“Those were all curses and pleasantries. Your Russian family must be really fucking passive-aggressive.”
I didn’t know why it made me laugh so hard. Maybe the realization that we were just so normal together. Normal. God. I hadn’t realized how much I’d missed that feeling.
“So, tell me about Beavis and Butthead.” He slumped forward on the table.
Poof! And the normal feeling is gone.
“You mean Henry and Nolan?” I stabbed a piece of strawberry with the straw and popped it between my lips. The way his eyes lingered on them made an electric shock shoot through my body, head-to-toe. I looked away, focusing on something safe: a piece of art on the stark, white wall behind him, of Marilyn Monroe, made out of coffee beans.
“The little fuckers with the Camaro.” He cleared his throat. I took a deep breath. I’d only ever been honest and candid with Mrs. Belfort, and that didn’t really count, because she didn’t remember most things. With Mayra, I cherry-picked my words. But with Bane…who knew how I was supposed to act around him? I still hadn’t figured out whether he was an enemy or a friend.
“Well, I guess you know about the sex tape…and the orgy.” I swallowed hard. Bane’s jaw ticked under his thick beard, and he took a big gulp of his drink.
“I never agreed to what they did to me.”
“It was rape,” he said matter-of-factly, but his eyes weren’t so hard anymore.
My back stiffened. No one had called it that in…maybe ever.
Attack. Abuse. Violation. Sexual harassment. People sugarcoated the situation like I wasn’t there, like it wasn’t real. Rape. I’d been raped. I plucked a lock of hair from my ponytail and chewed it.
Bane shook his head, flattening his palm over the table. “I don’t know many people who have an orgy in an alleyway, then treat themselves to a spontaneous trip to the ER afterwards.”
I ducked my chin down. “Nolan’s dad works at the hospital. He was able to sweep my admittance under the carpet,” I confessed, wondering why the hell I was telling Bane this—why the hell was I talking to him at all?—and hating myself for every spoken word and peeled layer. “I nursed myself back to health at home. By the time I’d gotten back to school, all that was left from The Incident was the limp.” And the scars on my stomach. I still had them. A shudder rolled over my skin. New Jesse begged me: Don’t tell him. Don’t open up to him. But old Jesse pointed out: He called it rape. No one else ever did. Take a chance. I wondered since when was she talking to me?
“By the time I got back to school, people were hungry for the drama. The hushed whispers, the pitiful looks. Everyone already thought I was a slut because of that sex tape in which Emery found out I wasn’t a…” I wasn’t going to say the word ‘virgin.’ Because I had been. I’d never slept with anyone before him. But no one believed me. I hung my head down. “Anyway, that’s how I became The Untouchable. Every time people tried to touch me, I ran away, or worse. It’s like there’s the old Jesse, the girl who used to be so fun and confident and friendly, and the new Jesse, the girl who sits in front of you right now. This girl is still waiting to see when you’re going to pounce on her and rip her clothes off, just because you physically can.”
Silence fell between us like a thick blanket. He didn’t offer any condolences.
“That why you never leave your house?”
“I leave my house,” I said defensively. The place was crowded, and a trickle of sweat crawled from the nape of my neck down to my spine. The noise. The laughter. People crammed together. It bothered me, but I tried to block it.
Bane leaned even closer to me. His scent drifted into my nostrils. I leaned backward.
“Yeah? Where to?” he asked.
“My therapist.”
“That’s once a week, two at most. What else?”
I curled my knuckles, tapping them against the table, looking anywhere but him. “The maze.”
“The maze?”
I nodded triumphantly. “My neighbor has a hedge maze. It’s where I go when I don’t want to deal with Darren and Pam’s constant nagging about my getting a job and finding friends.” Like those are so easy to find.
“How old are you, Jesse?”
“I’ll be twenty in September.”
“Do you like your life?”
“What kind of question is that?”
“One that I’d like an answer to. Life is about meeting your eyes in the mirror without flinching.”
“Is that why you’re extorting money from innocent people and whoring yourself out?” I lifted a defiant chin. I hated that he was patronizing me. Hated that I’d opened up to him, just because he was the only one who seemed to remotely care. Hated that he was right. I wasn’t living. Not really.
None of my reasons for being crude mattered, though, the minute I saw his face. His eyes narrowed, his nostrils flared, and his short nails bit into the trendy, white wood of the table. There is ice in those veins. The thought trickled into my conscience. Bane was normally laid-back, but now, I saw him for who he was. He put that mask of bored-and-pissed on his face again, and I wished I could tear it off and see how he really felt about what I’d said, just so I could hurt for hurting him.
“It’s true.” I raised my quivering voice, straightening my spine. “That’s what you are. A criminal and a whore.”
Kick me out. Let me go. I’m no good, I inwardly begged. You will ruin me, and there’s not much left to ruin. Please let me keep whatever I have left.
“You don’t believe that,” he said, his baritone voice taciturn and relaxed.
“That you’re a whore? I do.”
“Well, then, get the fuck out of here.” He gestured for the door, still wearing the bored mask. “Now.”
I stared at his face, debating my next move. It was his eyes that managed to scare me more than his words. To penetrate my soul. I grabbed my backpack from under my chair and stood up. Something stirred inside me. Something unsettling. I felt…heated. Suddenly intense. I wasn’t used to this feeling. Was I anxious? Sure. Scared? More times than I wanted to admit. But rage was different. It was passionate.
It didn’t even make any sense. I’d insulted him—so he’d kicked me out of his place. It was natural. Understandable, even. So why did I want to throw the smoothie in his face and defy every word that came out of his mouth? Anything to create more friction, and taunt, and drink up his attention and face and secrets.
Why do I want to fight this guy? Maybe because I knew, after today, without a shadow of a doubt, that he wouldn’t use his physical advantage over me to try to win.
“Thanks for the smoothie.” I turned around and stormed out, my relief of leaving the crowded place caked with irritation and a weird sense of loss. I clutched the handle of my Range Rover’s door and jerked it open. His voice boomed behind me.
“Anyone ever tell you that you’re a huge pain in the ass?”
I turned around, pointing at him with a trembling finger.
“You said life is about meeting your eyes in the mirror. I just wondered if you’re at peace with sleeping with random people for favors.”
He flashed me a look-at-this-little-naïve-girl smirk. “Need I remind you that I’m young, healthy, and this town is the home of a high percentage of very dickable people?”
“So now dick is a verb, but Men in Black isn’t?”
His face transformed from patronizing to surprised, then from surprised to bemused. He shook his head, taking another step toward me.
“You should know better than anyone that words have an impact.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I turned to him fully, yelling now. My palms itched to slap him across the face. Seagulls floated above us, eavesdropping.
“It means that you’re impossible.” He finally sighed, shaking his head.
“Maybe I am. So don’t try to make me possible.” I turned back to my vehicle, yanking my door open.
“Fine. Go ahead. Hide from the world.”
“I’m not hiding.”
“Whatever helps you sleep at night, Snowflake.”
I don’t sleep at night. Haven’t for a long time now.
“Stop calling me that.”
“Why not? It’s a perfect fit, considering you’re having a fucking meltdown.”
I was waiting for him to say something more. I swiveled to him again, not exactly sure why it was so hard to just leave. We stood in front of each other on the busy promenade, panting hard, shooting daggers at each other. We made a scene, one that attracted the eyes and ears of beachgoers. I clutched the roots of my hair, realizing that sometime during that hour, I’d removed my ball cap and hood. People could see me. My face. My vulnerability. All of me.
I turned around, jumped into the car, and took off like the devil was at my heels.
When I got to the first red light, I punched my steering wheel and let out a scream.
It felt good.
I felt alive.
I let the delicious pain and anger swirl in me like a storm, knowing I was going to regret every single word I’d told Bane that afternoon.
Knowing what he probably knew, too.
I hadn’t looked at myself in the mirror for months, maybe even years.
So much so that sometimes, I even forgot the color of my own eyes.