“Wait, what did you mean that everyone is basically a chef?” I watch her layer a piece of dough onto a pile of apples that looks much too large to fit in the pan, her hands flying as she crimps the edges. She looks up at me. “Does he cook? Has he cooked for you?”
“He cooks,” I confirm dreamily. I can feel myself grinning like a complete idiot, but I'm happy. More than happy. “He’s cooked for me. Really well.”
June makes little slices in the top of the pie before adding decorative pieces of dough to the top: little leaves. Of course she has an infant and a toddler and runs a bed and breakfast and adds decorative leaves to the top of her homemade apple pie. If she hadn’t become the closest thing I had to a best friend in this town over the past two years, I’d totally hate her.
She raises her eyebrows. “It looks like cooking isn’t the only thing he’s good at,” she says, the corners of her mouth turned up.
I suppress a giggle that seems to rise up involuntarily from my throat. “No,” I agree. “Cooking is definitely not the only thing he’s good at.”
She slides the pie into the oven and turns back to me. “What are they teaching these young boys now?”
Heat rises to my cheeks, and I know I’m flushing.
Images flash in my mind, one right after the other – Luke’s mouth on my breast, his tongue swirling around my nipple.
Me straddling his face, lying across his body, my lips wrapped around his cock.
Luke, lying naked in my bed with his body stretched out and his head on my pillow, explaining how to cook a soufflé just before I slide my hand down his body, wrap it around his cock, and give him cause to shut right up.
“Wow, you really are smitten,” June says.
“What?”
“What, says the woman staring off into space at the mere mention of her boyfriend?”
“He’s not my boyfriend,” I insist, shaking away the images in my head, still distracted by thoughts of Luke. I can’t exactly help it. He’s an incredible distraction.
June smiles, her head cocked to the side. “You sure about that? Because you’re awfully smitten for a fling. And you’re not seeing anyone else.”
“I’m not smitten.” I pop another apple slice into my mouth. Olivia wanders over and demands one, then little Stan follows suit, and I grab cheese sticks from the refrigerator to go with the apples. “Here you go, guys. Snack time. Smitten is for, like, sixteen-year-old girls. Not women my age.”
“Smitten,” June says, shrugging. “It’s the most accurate way I can think of to describe your current state, what with all the daydreaming and mooning about.”
I toss an apple slice at her and she laughs. “Mooning about.” I snort. “Now you just sound like a grumpy old lady.”
“I am a grumpy old lady.”
“You guys are talking about mooning?” Cade walks into the kitchen and heads straight for June, planting a kiss on her forehead and squeezing her ass at the same time. Stan and Olivia run headlong for Cade, crashing into his legs, and Cade scoops them up in his arms. “Have you been helping cook? It smells like apple pie in here.”
Cade sets the kids back down to play and they’re off, running into the living room, Stan dragging Olivia behind him, the cars immediately forgotten.
“In the oven,” June says as Cade scoops coffee grounds into a fresh filter. “I swear, you’re going to die at an early age, drinking that at this time of day.”
“I’m already far too old to die at an early age.” He turns on the coffee pot. “And this old man got worn into the ground, getting up with the baby last night.” He starts the coffee and walks behind June, sliding his arms around her.
“He let me sleep all night,” June brags. “Nine whole hours.”
“I thought you looked refreshed,” I note.
“I’m not the only one looking refreshed,” June says, eyeballing me.
“Is this a conversation I want to be part of?” Cade asks.
“No,” I say immediately.
“I thought so. Where’s the little minion who kept me up all night?”
“Keep your voice down,” June warns. “She’s sleeping. Like a log.”
“She’s a vampire baby, I swear. Sleeps all day, up all night.” Cade sighs. “Why don’t I go watch the other hellions so you can have this conversation I shouldn’t be a part of?”
“See how nice he’s being?” June says to me. “It’s all an act just to get pie.”
Cade snorts, slapping June on the ass as he turns to pour himself a cup of coffee. “Don’t let her fool you,” he says back. “It’s no act. I’m nice all the damn time. This is a prime specimen, right here. Grade-A husband material.”
“Get out and leave us alone, since I’m cooking for you and everything. Make sure the children don’t destroy the living room.”
“Yeah, yeah.” Cade waves at her as he leaves, coffee cup in hand. “I’m requesting steak for dinner, though.”
“What about you guys?” June asks. “Are you staying for dinner, or do you have other plans?” She practically leers, wiggling her eyebrows when she says other plans.
“I think Luke and I are… I think he’s cooking for me again,” I say as she laughs.
“Cooking. Oh? Is that what they’re calling it these days?”
“Shut up.”
“Everyone’s in the living room, so now’s the time,” she says. “Spill it. He’s hot, isn’t he? The sex is totally amazing, and you’re doing it like bunnies, and he has a big –“
My phone goes off in my purse, and June laughs.
“Saved by the bell,” I say.
“Is that your phone or your vi–“
“Oh my God, you think I carry a vibrator in my purse?” I hiss, pulling out the phone and sticking my tongue out at her. I slide my finger across the screen. One text, from Luke.
Can’t make it tonight. Something’s come up. Call me.
“Is that from him?” June asks. “Is he sending you love notes? That’s so adorable.”
I roll my eyes and slide my phone back into my purse. “He’s not sending me love notes,” I say, sighing loudly. “And yeah, we’re staying for dinner.”
June’s brow furrows. “Anything wrong?”
“I’m not sure.”
28
Luke
I glance in my rearview mirror at the empty road, then reach between my legs for the cell phone I’ve wedged in there. Sliding my finger across the screen for the millionth time since I've been on the road, I verify that there's no signal. But I knew that already.
I called Elias after leaving Silas’ place. He’s in Hollywood with his girl, River Andrews, a big-time movie star. They're at some awards show tonight. When I called, there were people around, stylists or something. I told him I’d keep an eye out for him on television so I could see how stupid he looked in a monkey suit. He called me an asshole and told me he’d try to flip me the bird if he could.
I'd tried to call Autumn again before I left, but it went to voicemail. I left a second stupid message – terse, short, not at all what I wanted to say.
What the hell do I want to say to her?
I’m the guy who fucks bimbos with big tits and small brains, girls who don’t ask for anything more than a good time and no damn conversation. I’m the guy whose idea of commitment is a second beer. I’m not the guy who cooks dinners for some girl, playing with her kid, not wanting to leave in the morning after I fuck her senseless all night.
Every day I keep going with Autumn is another day playing this charade. At some point, I’m going to break her fucking heart. And I don’t want to be that asshole.
I don’t know if I can be still.
I’m afraid I can’t stay still. I can’t give her what she needs.
She deserves more than me.
Fuck, this is goddamn depressing, driving down a deserted road in a truck with just my thoughts for company. Time to think is never good, not in my book, anyway. It’s one of the things I appreciate about sm
oke jumping – or base jumping, rock climbing, snow boarding, hell, anything that floods your system with adrenaline the way that shit does.
Take smoke jumping, for instance. You jump out of a fucking plane, gear strapped to your ass, and it’s just you and fate. Yeah, you’ve got skill and your gear and all that bullshit, but anything can go wrong. It’s a dice roll.
And when you’re in the air, freefalling, it’s like white noise.
Pure adrenaline.
Everything in the world turns off, and you don’t think.
It’s the same thing when you’re in a fire. Despite all the sounds – trees groaning and cracking under their own weight and falling to the ground with an earthshattering thud, the roar of the fire – all you care about is the seconds in front of you and nothing else. You’re not thinking about past or present or future bullshit.
When I left West Bend and got my first taste of that – the way my mind turned off, unburdened with all my family bullshit, worrying about my brothers – I knew I was hooked on all of it: jumping, climbing, boarding, surfing, whatever ate up my focus completely and entirely.
Driving is the exact opposite of that.
I pull out my phone, slide my finger across the screen, as if something different is going to happen this time.
No signal.
Screw Silas and all of this.
Conflicted. I think that’s what the shrinks call this shit. I have conflicted fucking feelings about her death.
I was more than interested in her death before I read that bullshit in her diary about killing the old man for money. Money, of all things. It’s not like we grew up with money and then lost it somehow. We never had any our whole lives. She never had any. So when the hell did money become so damn important?
So I don’t know why I’m crawling along this windy road up the side of the mountain and way the hell outside of West Bend. It’s colder as the elevation increases, the trees up here bare of leaves. I don’t know where this cabin is, but it’s cold enough here that there’s probably snow on the ground at the top. Normally, I’d be pleased about the fact that snow weather is coming soon. That means snowboarding. And snow bunnies.
Except now, all I’m thinking about is the fact that I’m driving my ass up the mountain in the damn cold while Autumn and Olivia are hanging out in their warm house without me.
I don’t like it.
I don’t like that I don’t like being away from them.
This whole thing is making me edgy as hell.
I check the paper again, holding it against my steering wheel as I squint to look at my crude drawing of Silas’ directions. If it were anyone but one of my brothers asking me to meet him and whoever the hell else up here in the middle of nowhere, I’d tell them they were fucking crazy.
But it’s Silas.
So I’m driving up to a remote cabin to meet him and his con artist girlfriend. And her team.
Isn’t that some shit?
When I finally find it, everyone is already there.
“Is this the twin?” A nerdy-looking dude yells from across the room before I even get a word out.
“We’re just brothers.” I look at Silas and roll my eyes. “I hope we don’t look that much alike. I’d hate having to look at your ugly mug in the mirror every day.”
“Yeah, unfortunately we’re brothers,” Silas says, wrapping his arm around me and trying to put me in a headlock. We struggle for a second until I look up to see his girl holding a glass of champagne and standing in front of us.
“Boys, please don’t destroy this place,” she says.
“Yeah, okay.” Silas laughs as he lets go of me and slides his arms around her. He says something to her, his face pressed against hers. I look away from the intimacy of the moment, a pang of jealousy running through me.
Silas makes the round of introductions. Tempest, his girl, is striking. She's way too beautiful to be with him, I decide to tell him later. And she’s smart. The whole group of them are. They're smart and charming and… criminals.
There’s Iver, dressed in a suit even though we’re out in the middle of nowhere, talking about places I’ve only seen on TV – Monte Carlo and Santorini and Crete. He should be a pretentious dick, the kind of guy with too much money that you just want to punch, except that in the next breath, he’s showing me how to scam people in card games.
There’s Emir, who I think might be the nerdiest nerd I’ve ever met. He hardly looks up at me when I walk in and basically spends the rest of the night hunched over computers – four of them lined up on a table, wires crisscrossing and zigzagging everywhere in a tangle – working on God-knows-what. Probably an algorithm involving world domination.
And there’s Oscar. Oscar is old school, the grandfather of the group. He’s classy and British or European or something with an accent, and he’s quiet. He looks completely unassuming, a doddering old man, but then he says something and you realize that not only has he heard everything going on, but that he’s sharp as a tack.
They make normal conversation, talking about old times, old heists, stuff I’d be interested in if it weren’t for the fact that I’m sitting here instead of at Autumn’s place. I get annoyed that we’re not talking about what we’re actually here for, the con or whatever the hell it is we’re going to do that’s going to solve everything. But then Elias is on the television, and I’m momentarily distracted. He doesn't flip me off at the awards show, although River does punch some jerk in the face who tries to talk in the middle of her acceptance speech, and I immediately like her.
I think about what Autumn and Olivia are doing right now. They’ve eaten dinner, I’m sure. I wonder what Autumn cooked – probably some atrocity. Olivia has had a bath by now. Autumn’s sitting beside her on the bathroom floor, her knees tucked up to her chest while looking at a magazine, Olivia playing in the tub with her bath toys and drawing on the walls with crayons made of soap. When Olivia’s done, Autumn’s bathing her and then reading to her.
I finally got to read a story to Olivia the other night.
I palm my cell phone, wanting to look at it again, silently cursing my stupidity for being so wrapped around the axle about a girl.
Except I know it in my gut. She’s not just any girl. She’s the girl.
It hits me, right there, that realization crashing against me full force like a ton of bricks.
“We’re going to grift the town,” Iver says.
“It’s so dramatic when he says it that way,” Tempest says, rolling her eyes. “You’re always so over-the-top with these things.”
“You need a little more flourish in your life, darling,” he says.
“I have just enough flourish, thank you.”
“Look, maybe we just let it go,” I say, shrugging.
“Fuck, are you kidding?” Silas asks.
“No, I’m not joking. I’m aggravated,” I tell him, the edge returning to my voice with a vengeance. I don’t want to screw around here with them. Don’t they get that? “It’s not like one of us can’t just go kick the hell out of Sheriff Easton and get his confession on tape or something. Shit, I can go wail on him myself.”
“That doesn’t solve the issue with the town,” Iver points out.
“We’ve looked into the mining company, the one buying people off their property,” Oscar says. “These people are no good. They're the worst kind of business. They have a history of destroying towns, blowing into a place like West Bend and bribing law enforcement, stealing people’s homes out from under them. Then, they strip everything from the land, make a windfall, and pull up out of a place, the town totally destroyed, residents left in the lurch."
“So what?” I ask, feeling suddenly defensive and noncompliant. “This isn’t my fight. I’m not Robin Hood, taking from the rich and helping the poor.”