“And how much do you need from me?” he asked.
“Six mill,” I said, unblinking. He rubbed the back of his neck. For a second, I thought he was going to tell me to get the fuck out of there and throw something sharp at me. But he didn’t. He glanced around. Scratched his face. Downed his bullshit-expensive scotch like a champ, wincing afterwards, then—and only then—met my gaze, defeat shining in his eyes. “Fine.”
“Fine?” I echoed, almost dumbly. That was it? Fine? Whatever this guy was high on, I wish I could sell it.
“Fine, I will shell out the money. You can have three mill upfront.”
“I don’t need three mill upfront. There is no guarantee I will get the land,” I spat out. My instincts told me there was a catch, but Darren looked as harmless as a fucking Teletubby. Dude couldn’t play Twister, let alone someone like me.
“You will, when they thee my name on it. Anyway, conthider it a gethture of goodwill. I don’t need your equity.”
“Are you on something right now? Because we can’t have business together if you’re a junkie. Pot is fine, but if you’re on meth, I need to know.” I scratched my cheek with the edge of my joint, one eyebrow raised in amusement.
He gave me his version of a sneer, and I’ve seen more character on faces of goddamn goats. “I don’t need your equity. It’th not money I’m after. I have enough of it. I want thomething elth from you. As I thaid before, I heard all about you, Bane. I know who you are, and what you do. What I need from you ith not to make me richer. I need you to help my thtepdaughter.”
What you are.
What you do.
Holy hairy shitballs, Stepdaddy Darren wants his kid to get laid.
The first question I had in mind was how ugly was this daughter of his, exactly? Was she Quasimodo-ugly? With the amount of money and resources this chick had, hopefully she could at least pass as cute. Maybe not hot as shit, but surely, fuckable to someone. Anyone. Luckily, I was twenty-five, and when you’re twenty-five, you find everything bone-able, pencil sharpeners included. If he wanted me to screw his stepdaughter for six million dollars, I would get my lawyer to draft this shit tonight and by morning, she’d be so thoroughly fucked she’d have a few extra holes and orgasm-induced foggy brain for days. I’d even throw in oral and after-sex spooning for good measure, because it wouldn’t feel right not to give her a little extra for all this cash.
“That’s fine.” I waved him off. “I usually do a six month contract, no exclusivity clause. Twice a week. Condom is non-negotiable, and I want her tested before I touch her.” I’d been told I was a good-looking son of a bitch, and I never knew when I’d need to stick my dick in someone as a favor or to gain something. As it was, I stopped taking on new clients for money. Cash simply stopped being an incentive once all my bills were paid and my mom was taken care of. But no one told me my dick was worth so much. The Morgansen kid’s stepdaddy sure knew how to spoil her.
Darren shook his head, panic smeared all over his face.
“Wait, what? Oh, Lord. No. No. No, no, no.” He flapped his hands around frantically, coughing. I straightened in my seat, not really sure how this guy was not dead from a heart attack already. “I didn’t mean it like that. I don’t want you to thleep with her. In fact, if there ith one clauth I want in, it’th one where you promith not to make a move on her. I want you becauth you’re for hire, and you do ath you’re paid to do, nothing leth, nothing more. Jethy doethn’t have many friendth. She’th been through a lot, and she jutht needth thomeone. A companion. I want you to help her gain her confidenth back and make thome friends. To hire her for your café, tho that she will have to leave the house every day. It will be thtrictly platonic. Jethy ith untouchable. She doethn’t let people touch her.”
Jesse. But, of course, his stepdaughter has a name he can’t properly pronounce. Poor bastard.
What was this Jesse girl’s deal? She didn’t even bother answering her stepdad, even though she was obviously there. It was tough luck that she sounded like a spoiled princess, because I was going to take the job, even if I needed to hear about her shopping sprees with mommy dearest until my ears fell off. For a few hundred thousand dollars, I wouldn’t have bothered. But there was so much money on the line, and such a lucrative investment, Jesse had just bought my attention. And, to an extent, my affection, too.
“What does this job entail?” I asked, fingering my beard.
“Her therapitht thays she needth a job. Any job. Hire her. Humor her. Court her. But don’t touch her.” His quivering fingers danced across the edges of his planner again. “Breathe life into her.”
“Is she…” I didn’t know how to articulate it without sounding like a politically incorrect dick. Slow? Impaired in any way? Not that it mattered, but I needed to know what I was dealing with here. Darren shifted in his seat.
“She’th a very bright kid. She jutht needth a little push back into thothiety.”
“Why?”
“Why?” he echoed, blinking rapidly, like the question had never occurred to him. His jaw ticked then he pinched the bridge of his nose. He looked on the verge of tears. Dude was about as put-together as a coked-up teenager at Coachella. He obviously needed a backbone transplant, and for the right price, I was a willing donor. If he needed help with his kid, I was going to give it to him. I wouldn’t even have to feel like a dick, because it’s just taking her to the movies or whatever. It wasn’t like I was going to stick my dick in her and whisper love declarations in her ear.
“I’ll tell you why, but you’ll have to thign a nondithclothure agreement.”
Rich people had the craziest stories. She was probably into bestiality or some shit. Money makes you bored, and being bored makes you an asshole.
“I’ve signed so many NDAs in my life, at this point I don’t talk to anyone about anything other than the weather.” I eased back into my chair, suddenly feeling very smug about getting into business with this dude.
His eyes darted to me, glistening with hope. He loved her. I’d always been embarrassed by love. It was such an uncomfortable feeling. People did a lot of stupid stuff in the name of it.
“Right. Right. Tho…do we have a deal?” he piped, taking a greedy hit of air. I looked around, scanning his office for the first time. Traditional. Dark oak and floor-to-ceiling shelves with hundreds of thick, pristine books. A Persian carpet and camel-hued silk armchairs. The bar was the only thing that looked used, the bottles half-empty, sad, and riddled with his fingerprints. Everything else was for show. This man was lost, and I was the lucky bastard who’d found him.
Like taking candy from a fucking baby.
“I’ll give her six months, and I want to know her story.”
Morgansen poured himself another glass of whiskey, stared into it as one would into an abyss, gulped the whole thing as one would when they jumped to their death, and let the glass dangle between his fingertips before it fell to the carpeted floor.
“You want her thtory?”
I hitched one shoulder up. I never repeated myself and wasn’t going to make a habit of it because of this fucker.
When the first words left his mouth, my fingers clutched my seat.
When the first sentences dug through my skull, my throat went dry.
And after ninety minutes of listening, I had only one response to spare. It was one word, actually. And it summarized what I was feeling pretty accurately.
Fuck.
“IT’S A GOOD DAY FOR a hang eleven.” Beck laughed wildly, his long, wet, brown hair flipping in the wind as he lay stomach-down on his surfboard while riding a bomb wave. It was called dick-drag, and I hated when people did that. It was the equivalent of wasting a gorgeous supermodel on a drunken hand job. Truth was, every day when the beach was mostly empty was a good day to surf naked. That’s why every sea creature in SoCal knew the shape of my dick by heart. I laughed and watched as he pulled his shorts down, wrapping them around his wrist like a bracelet. My high school friend, Hale, was a few feet a
way, busting through the break zone, and my high school girlfriend, Edie, was right beside me, sitting on her surfboard, staring at the beach in a lull.
I followed her gaze and spotted her husband, Trent, and his daughter, Luna, building elaborated sandcastles with their shapers. Edie was my favorite, and consequently only, ex. She was also one of my best friends. That sounded complicated, but it really wasn’t. I liked people for who they were, regardless of my likelihood to fuck them. Edie—or Gidget, as I’d called her since high school—was unfuckable for me, but she was still Edie. Her forehead was crinkled in concern. I squatted down, straddling my Firewire Evo, and flicked her ear.
“You’re doing it again.”
“What?”
“Overthinking.”
Gidget scrunched her nose. “I’m just a little dizzy.” She sleeked her blonde hair back, squinting to the golden shore.
“You look pale.” It was an understatement, but not a very gentleman-y thing to point out. “Go home. The waves ain’t going anywhere.”
She twisted her head back. “Hey, Beck! My daughter is on the beach. Put your trunks back up, you creeper.”
I loved how she referred to her stepdaughter as her daughter. They’d only known each other for a few years, but this family was the realest thing I’d seen.
“What about you? Are you okay?” Edie moved her fingertips across the water.
“Never been better.”
“Still using a condom?” She arched a wet eyebrow. She’d been asking me this a lot ever since I decided I was open for business five years ago. I fought an eye roll and gave her surfboard a push with my foot. “You’re breaking the waves, Gidget. Surf or get the fuck out.”
I watched Edie paddling back to shore before I turned around to deal with Beck and Hale, only to find they were both straddling their surfboards mere feet from me.
“Show’s over.” I spat into the water. Beck jumped on his board—fucker had the core of a yoga instructor—and did the annoying groin-thrust dance douchebags do when they want to sexually harass everyone in their radius. He kind of looked like a young Matt Damon with long brown hair. He started singing “The Show Must Go On” by Queen, clutching his fist dramatically.
I’d taken Beck under my wing in hopes of making him the pro surfer everyone would drag their asses to competitions to see. He was Kelly Slater good, but he was also Homer Simpson lazy, so I was training him for his next competition in late September. I was pretty much the only person he was afraid of, so I figured if anyone could drag his ass out of bed every morning at five, it’d be me.
Hale shook his head. “Get a trim, asshole. Your crotch looks like Phil Spector.” He motioned to Beck’s dick. The latter laughed, his dong flipping like hair in a shampoo commercial. Hale turned back to me, and now the three of us were sitting like assholes, killing the waves. Peachy.
“This month’s my round, right?” The Round was what we called paying visits to the shops at the promenade, collecting protection money.
“Right.”
“Anything else I can do?” He plastered his abs to his stick. Hale had red hair, green eyes, and the soul of a self-destructive Holden Caulfield who’d been injected into the synthetic town of Todos Santos. Another thing he had that I didn’t: helicopter parents. He was getting close to finishing his master’s degree in philosophy and following his parents’ footsteps in becoming a professor. They wanted him to turn SoCal’s plastic souls into thinking individuals. But Hale didn’t want to be a professor, or even a teacher. He wanted to be a savage, like me.
“Be good and finish all your homework.” I laughed.
He splashed me like a five-year-old. “I want more responsibility. I want to be a part of SurfCity.”
Hale and I split the protection money fifty-fifty, which worked for me, because he did all the legwork. But he always pushed for more. SurfCity was my idea, my baby, my dream. I wasn’t going to share it with anyone.
“I’m serious,” he groaned.
“So am I.” I looked up and watched naked Beck paddling away, taking his hairy crotch with him. “I don’t need more help.”
“I have money. I can invest in SurfCity.”
“You can invest in getting the fuck out of my way and letting me surf.”
“Why not? You need the money, obviously. Did you find anyone yet?”
I wasn’t going to tell him about Darren and Jesse, because I wasn’t sure how shit was going to pan out, and anyway, I wouldn’t put it past Hale to try to fuck it up a little just for funsies. He was made out of the same cloth as the infamous HotHoles. Sometimes he liked to break shit for the simple reason of liking the sound of it cracking in his ears.
“None of your business.”
“It’s really hard to read you, Protsenko.”
“Or,” I tilted my chin down, smiling, “maybe you’re just illiterate at reading people, Hale.” His nostrils were comically wide. He took off on his surfboard, his own version of slamming the door in my face. I laughed. Beck appeared by my side a few minutes later, his chest rising and falling with adrenaline.
“What’s up with everyone? Gidget is acting like a chick, and Hale is acting like a pussy. It’s like you’re everyone’s abusive daddy.”
I smirked, staring at the disappearing figure of Hale, my mind on SurfCity.
“So. Same time tomorrow?” Beck pretended to punch my arm, but didn’t actually have the balls to do it.
“Yeah. Let’s make it early; I have a plan for the afternoon.”
My plan had a name, a description, and an end game.
My plan was a nineteen-year-old girl.
What I didn’t know was my plan was about to blow up in my face in a spectacular fashion, making the same breaking sound that made Hale’s balls tingle.
The first thing I did was learn Jesse Carter’s routine. I use the term “routine” loosely, because weirdo wasn’t hot on leaving her house, or room, or…bed. Her name gave me déjà vu, but I didn’t think much of it. It was a small town. I’d probably run into her at some point. Maybe I was even in her at some point.
That would be a whole other brand of awkward.
Darren told me Jesse’s dad had died when she was twelve and that had fucked her up even before those boys finished the job. He also said that meeting her seemingly spontaneously was going to be a task akin to teaching a pig how to waltz.
“You’re going to have to worm your path into her world, becauth she doethn’t leave here often,” he said on the phone. “She goeth to therapy every Thurthday, that’th in downtown Todoth Santoth, and runth the track around El Dorado every noon and every night at around three.”
Twice a fucking day? Still, none of my business.
“Interesting hours,” I commented, my eyes on the paper.
“Leth human traffic.” Of course.
I wrote everything down on a piece of paper, trying to figure out where in the fresh hell I fit in.
“What else?” I snapped my gum in his ear.
“She visith our neighbor, Mitheth Belforth, often. Eighty-thomething. Thufferth from Alzheimer’th.”
Jesse Carter sure led an interesting lifestyle. And I was the lucky bastard who was going to lure her back to the outside world.
“That’s it?” I asked.
“That’th it.” He sighed.
“No one else? Boyfriend? Best friend? Shopping sprees with Mommy at Balmain?” It left me very little room for action. I couldn’t exactly drop by her neighbor’s house unannounced and pretend to bump into her. Well, I could, if I was in the mood for getting arrested.
“Nothing.” Darren gulped. “She’s got no one.”
I squinted at the paper I held in my hand. At how little I had to work with. It’s like the girl didn’t want to exist outside the realms of her house. There was one more thing I needed from Darren. He’d already signed the contract, and everything was set and in motion. There were two clauses he insisted on, that were highlighted in bold letters. One—Jesse Carter should never,
ever, ever in her life know about this deal. And two—I would never, ever, ever have a sexual relationship with her. “Break one or both, and the deal is off.”
Truth was, I skimmed the motherfucker, because Darren struck me as such an impotent man, I didn’t really think he was capable of hurting a fly.
“Email me a recent picture of her. I need to know what she looks like, you know, so I don’t hit on a rando.”
“You’re not hitting on her,” he enunciated. “You’re helping her.”
Semantics, the western society’s favorite mistress. It didn’t matter how I did it—all that mattered was that Jesse Carter would leave her fucking house. I didn’t bother to search for her online. If I read this chick correct, and I thought I did, she wouldn’t have a Facebook, Snapchat, or an Instagram. She wanted to disappear from earth, so she had.
I was about to drag her back to society.
She could come alone, or with her demons.
I really didn’t fucking care.
The photo Darren sent me was grainier than Tobago Beach and I couldn’t make much of Jesse. It looked like he’d taken a picture of her when she wasn’t looking, which made my Creep-O-Meter ding a few times. She was sitting on a tapestry bench, a copy of The Captain’s Daughter by Alexander Pushkin clasped between her hands. Her face was buried inside. All I could make out was her raven hair, snowy skin, and long lashes. I had a weird feeling that I’d already seen her, but I shoved it to the back of my mind. Even if I had, she was business now.
Strictly business.
The kind of business I didn’t want to lose.
Especially after using five hundred thousand dollars of the three million Darren had transferred to my account for importing Italian furniture to my new boutique hotel. Oops.
I decided the best course of action was to corner Jesse when she visited her therapist. I waited across from the glitzy building where the clinic was located. I sat in a coffee shop at Liberty Park and gawked through the glass wall. She parked her Range Rover in front of the building and stepped out. Her slumped shoulders looked like broken wings; her overcast eyes were where your soul went to fucking die.