Three, Two, One (321)

I shut that down so I can appear rational, even though I feel anything but rational. “Yup,” I say, cutting it short.

He glances over at my monitor and then stands back up, placing his cereal on the desk so he can lean in and get a better look. “She’s perfect, man.”

“Not for Ray, though.”

JD does a snort-laugh. “No shit, asshole. I wasn’t thinking about hiring her.”

“You wanted to hire her this morning.”

He grabs his cereal and sits on the edge of my desk, spooning it into his mouth and talking as he chews. “That was before.”

“Before what?” I manage not to growl. But just barely.

“Before I spent the day with her.”

I just stare at him. “So you fucked her?”

He just stares back. “You got something you wanna say about this girl, Ark? Because I’m all ears, man. I get it, you saw her first. So she’s yours. But I spent the day with her. And I like her too. And no, asshole, I didn’t fuck her. I wouldn’t do that to you and if you think I would—” He shakes his head. “Well, fuck you.”

I look away and take a deep breath. Because he’s right. We’ve liked the same girl before. That’s why we have the I-saw-her-first rule. But this one feels… different. “Sorry,” I mumble. “It’s been a long day.”

“You take care of Ray?” He’s back to eating his cereal, so I guess our standoff is over.

“Yeah.”

“You talk him down? Or did you get the movies?”

“I got them.”

JD says nothing to that. He knows what it means, because I’ve had to do this before when we fell short.

“So…” I say.

“So,” he picks up. “I think you need to see something.” He stands up, sets his cereal down, and walks over to the doors. “Let me show you.”

I get up and follow him out and we walk down the hallway to his door, which is now closed.

“Shhh,” he says to me as we stop in front of it. “I don’t want to wake her up but I have to show you what I found.”

I give him a nod and then he opens the door and reaches into his pocket to pull out a tiny flashlight. We walk over to the bed where the girl is lying face down with her cheek pressed against his pillow.

A wave of jealousy flows through me, and by the time I get it under control, JD is moving her hair off the back of her neck.

She screams and flails out, knocking JD’s flashlight to the floor where it rolls under the bed.

“Fuck.” They are struggling, her still screaming and JD yelling back, telling her to calm down, when I reach for the light on the bedside table. It flashes on and JD is on top of the girl, pressing her arms above her head so she can’t struggle.

“Get off me,” she growls.

“Just calm down, Blue.”

“Fuck you. Get off.”

JD looks up at me. “Look at the back of her neck.”

“No,” she yells. “Get off me.”

JD and I both ignore her now. He’s looking up at me as he continues to straddle her waist and hold her arms still. “You need to see this, Ark. Just look.”

“Let me go,” she whines. But the fight is gone that quick. She starts to cry.

I lean down and swipe the hair off the back of her neck to find a raised scar in the shape of a circle.

I pull back and turn away, my hand covering my chin as I think about this.

JD gets off her, climbs off the bed, and walks up next to me. “That’s it, right?” he asks. “Tell me I’m not just seeing things. That I’m not just making it up.”

I nod. That most certainly is it. “I need to see her back again.”

“Fuck you,” she says in a small voice from the bed. “Just fuck you.” I look over my shoulder to see what she’s doing, but she’s still lying face down. Crying into the pillow. “You have no right.”

JD looks at me one more time and then walks back over to her and sits down on the edge of the bed so he can stroke her hair. He’s such a player. He knows exactly what to do for a crying girl.

Me? I have no clue. I’m a one-night-stand kind of guy. I don’t stick around long enough to care.

But this girl, man. Even before the mark. This girl is different.

So I walk around to the other side of the bed. The side she’s facing. I climb in next to her and lie back. Her eyes search mine for intentions.

JD lies down on the other side of her, his fingertips still gliding through the long strands of blonde. “Just relax, Blue. We’re not gonna hurt you.”

“No,” she huffs. “You just want to make me suck your dicks on camera so you can sell me in a different way.”

JD’s eyebrows go up, but neither of us says anything. There’s a time and a place, and this is not it.

“Blue,” I say calmly. She’s still looking at me, but the sound of my voice makes her take in a breath of air. Like I startled her. “We’re not putting those images online.” I have to stop for a second. Because that’s a lie and I know it. But it’s not the same, so I continue. “We can’t use you, even if we wanted to.”

“And we don’t,” JD interjects. “We don’t want to.” He looks at me over the top of her body and I nod.

“You don’t have any ID. And regardless of how it looks, what we do is one hundred percent by the book. Everyone signs consent forms. Contracts. Everyone gets tested for STD’s. Everyone gets paid and everyone pays taxes on those payments. We’re not about to fuck up our business just so we can use one sad girl who doesn’t even have a name. So forget about the pictures. I need to know where you got that brand on your neck. And I need to know when.”