That was her story. Sex tape. Gang rape. Stupid-ass parents.
Coming face-to-face with Nolan and Henry, knowing I couldn’t smash their faces into a rock until their airways were clogged with blood, killed a piece of me I really cherished. The piece where my morals were safely locked away.
The worst part about our situation was that Jesse might not have wanted people to touch her, but deep inside she was a carnal little pixie. The stunning siren with powder blue eyes I’d seen swimming to shore all those years ago still lived somewhere inside of her. I couldn’t overlook that fact, even with that hoodie and ball cap. She made her way to me, marching like a captured soldier—proud but defeated—her eyes fixed on an invisible spot behind my head. I was perched on a barstool, rolling myself a fat one. She stopped before we could smell each other. Before the ink at the nape of her neck reminded her that I, too, was a sin.
“I don’t like coffee,” she said flatly. No hi. No how are you. Social codes be damned.
“Me neither.”
She fought a timid smirk, shooting her gaze down to her Keds. Seeing her teeth sinking into her lower lip made my dick jam its way against my surf shorts. I didn’t even bother to hate myself for it. There were more chances of my making a move on a dead vampire bat than ever tapping her ass. Nonetheless—damn.
“You’ll get a smoothie if you behave. I have some stuff to do first. Let’s hit the road.” I started making my way outside, tipping my head down as a farewell to Gail and Beck behind the counter.
Snowflake followed. “Where are we going?”
“I have business to transact.”
“Sounds shady.”
Couldn’t argue with that one. “Some of us don’t have rich parents to buy our way through life. C’mon, it’ll be fun.”
Or not. It’s not like she had plenty of social calls to choose from, and I did have a job to do. Jesse matched my steps, light-jogging toward me. I was much taller and much faster, but she had good stamina on her. She didn’t get an ass worthy of a thousand poems and a world war sitting on those fine cheeks all day. I slid a joint between my lips, mainly because I didn’t know what to say to her.
“You smoke an awful lot of pot.” She plucked a piece of her hair and brought it to her mouth, chewing on the tips.
“Legal in California,” I said around my hippy stick, lighting it.
“Not if you do it in public. Are you begging to get arrested?”
“Begging—no. Trying, maybe.” Brian Diaz, the local sheriff, was in my pocket. I fucked his wife every Tuesday as a favor for turning a blind eye to my shenanigans. I could do anything I wanted short of decapitating the mayor in the middle of Liberty Park and get away with it with little to no repercussions. Plus, Grier was kind of hot, so it wasn’t exactly a torture.
We walked along the promenade, two very unlikely allies. I was the guy everyone knew, and she was a ghost desperate to be forgotten. A bunch of girls in bikini tops and Daisy Dukes passed us by, fist-bumping me with seductive grins while checking her out. At first, she didn’t say anything. But then when Samantha the lawyer winked at me and laughed when our shoulders brushed while she hurried in her cream suit to a meeting or whatever, Jesse crumpled her forehead.
“Is there one woman in this town you haven’t slept with?”
“Yeah. You.”
“Is that why I’m here?”
“As I said, my job doesn’t allow for a girlfriend, and you’re not exactly giving me the one-night stand vibes.”
We were passing by a fast food joint, a tattoo parlor, and a Sicilian ice cream place. The sun was dazzling, the sky liquid blue, and the smiles around us big and genuine. Life was a giant, fat sunray, but Jesse was shivering in a dark slice of shadow, refusing to join the fun.
“And why is that?”
In my periphery, I could see her fiddling with the straps of her backpack, just to do something with her hands. This was difficult for her. Going out. Being seen. I slowed down, giving her time to collect herself.
“Why is what?” I took a final hit of my joint before flicking it to the sand. Conversation went fine now. I didn’t need it.
“Why does your job not allow you to date?”
“Because I fuck women I shouldn’t be fucking to get away with fucked-up shit I shouldn’t be doing.”
There was no point hiding the truth from her. She was going to hear it from someone else sooner or later. When we stopped in front of a new shop that had opened just days ago by an interloper from out of town, I knew I’d done the right thing being upfront. Her face transformed from annoyed to…what was it exactly? Fascination. Mischief. I might have even seen a little attraction thrown in. Jury’s still out on that one.
My Whole Life Has Been Pledged to This Meeting with You
A sudden need—to break these walls and see who she was before what happened to her—slammed into me. This quote couldn’t be about us, could it? I wasn’t that person. I was the bastard who used her to get his surf park.
“You’re an escort?” Her already large eyes widened further. I reached for one strap of her backpack and snapped it against her shoulder, careful not to touch her, then smirked.
“I prefer the term sexual plumber.”
She snorted. “Oh, God.”
“Yeah. They sometimes call me that, too. Point is, you’re definitely not getting for free what people pay good money and services for. So you don’t need to worry. Look, you need a friend, and I need a barista and someone to hang out with who doesn’t see me as God. We make sense, ya know?”
She actually smiled a real smile for the first time, and holy fucking shit, Jesse Carter needed to smile for a goddamn living. She could very possibly bring about world peace, and I wasn’t even entirely exaggerating. It was those dimples. They dented that smooth, pale face of hers like a patch of dirt in the snow.
“Wait here. I’ll be back in ten minutes. Then I’ll buy you a complimentary smoothie for allowing me to save your ass.” I jerked my head to the store behind me.
“I’ll come with you,” she said, and I wasn’t surprised. She wasn’t a flickering candle. She was a blaze, but someone had put her flame out. Three someones. I was about to ignite her right the fuck back up, even if it was the last thing I did. I flattened my palm against an imaginary wall between us. “No way, Jose.”
“Why not?”
“Because then you’ll technically be an accessory to a crime, and no smoothie in the world is worth a criminal record. Trust me on that one.”
Instead of asking me more questions, she nodded, turned around and parked her ass on the first step leading to the shop. I watched the crown of her head for a few seconds before snapping out of it and pushing the glass door open.
I slammed the door behind me, feeling myself smile against my will.
No, she wasn’t a snowflake.
She was a snowstorm.
The secret to being an asshole was to not be an asshole.
This probably warranted some kind of explanation. Sure, there were people like Vicious. They were outwardly crass. But people like him were born with the world at their feet. It wasn’t so simple for people like me. I had to worm my way into people’s good graces and hearts when I needed something. Winning people over became sort of an art. I had to compete for affection, be it from my colleagues, my enemies, my one-night stands. Hell, even from my mom.
Freeze frame.
Rewind: I was born in St. Petersburg twenty-five years ago to Sonya, daughter of a semi-aristocratic family that fell from grace along with the Soviet Union and lost most of its wealth. My sperm donor was a Bratva soldier. If you ask yourself what a good girl like Mom wanted with a bad boy, the answer is—nothing. My mother had been raped. That’s how I came into this world, and that was my disadvantage in winning her over. My mom decided to flee the country and study in the US. She wasn’t considered rich anymore by any stretch of the imagination, but she had enough for the both of us to stay afloat and to put herself through school. Barely
. She became a child therapist. I always half-wondered if it was about me, if she wanted to make sure I wouldn’t turn out like my dad, so she studied how to defuse fucked-up kids. Maybe I overthought it. My guess was, the truth lay somewhere in the middle.
We’d come to the States when I was three, so I didn’t really remember much from Russia. My mom barely had money to buy a pair of sensible shoes, but she did have a fancy plan for out-of-country calls, and she talked to her family every day, twirling the curly phone cord, gossiping in Russian. Her face would light up like Christmas every time she’d hear a piece of hot gossip about her friends Luba or Sveta. For the longest time, I wondered what the fuck had made her move in the first place, since she was still so hung up on Saint Petersburg. But it was clear as fucking day.
Me. I was the reason. She wanted something good for me.
I may not have remembered Russia vividly, but I did remember America. Every piece of it. I remembered the looks, the glares, and the wrinkled noses whenever my mom opened her mouth in a new room for the first time. She would stutter, blush, and apologize for her heavy accent, which watered down with every passing year of living here.
I never forgot the way people’s smiles dropped every time she struggled with explaining herself to customer service and at job interviews. So, I vowed to be charming, and sweet, and good-natured. To be nice, and respectful, and too alluring to resist. I might have been fearsome to men, but women were a different story. You see, I had a bit of a mommy-issue, and putting women under my spell was a compulsion I did on autopilot.
Come. See. Conquer (then come again, but in a completely different way).
Unfreeze frame.
I silently locked the door to the store behind me then sauntered over to the counter, my hand already brushing the shit on the display shelf. What were they selling, anyway? It looked like a souvenir place. Todos Santos snowballs and pens. Who needed that kind of stuff? It wasn’t goddamn New York. Just a beach town in the anus of California. I dumped my ball cap on the counter and smirked.
“Nice place.”
“Thank you.” A woman—late twenties?—rose up from a chair behind the counter. A little stocky, with red-dyed hair and brown eyes. “Are you looking for something specific today, sir?”
“Yeah. My protection money.”
“Excuse me?”
“Protection. Money,” I said, loud and slow, like the entire issue was her hearing and not what came out of my mouth. “Twenty percent of your rent, to be exact. Which, I believe, is twelve hundred bucks. We only take cash at this time.” I let loose a wolfish grin. “I’m Bane, by the way.”
She gasped, slapping a hand over her chest and twisting a necklace back and forth. “I…I don’t get it. Who do I need to be protected from?”
“Me.”
“B-but, why?”
“Because you’re in my zone, and therefore play by my rules.” I loved giving that speech. It was very Scarface. “This is my beach. I brought the pro surfers here. I brought the annual competitions, the capital, and the tourists. The skaters outside your store? I brought them, too. I’m the reason why you wanted to open a shop here in the first place, so consider me a silent landlord. I have a business partner, Hale Rourke, and we alternate between months, just to keep things fresh and make sure you miss me.”
She nodded jerkily, taking it all in. The look on her face was anger flirting with horror. But I was casual, smiling, and nice. So, so nice. For now.
She gulped. “What if I don’t pay?”
I parked my elbows on her counter. She didn’t lean back, because she was attracted. I looked intimidating, but the kind you should be wary of in bed, not in an alleyway. “Accidents will happen. You’ve no idea how clumsy I can be.”
“What accidents?”
“If I knew, they wouldn’t be accidents. You feelin’ me?”
“Will you…will you hurt me?”
I clutched the fabric of my tattered, abused-by-bad-laundry Billabong shirt. “I will never lay a finger on a woman if the end game is not making her come. The only thing that concerns me is your business, ma’am. Or, lack of it, if you’re late on rent.”
“Do you ask everyone on the promenade for a cut?”
“Baby.” I lifted her chin with my index finger, locking my gaze on hers and throwing away the fucking key for good measure. “Don’t think for a second that you’re singled out because you’re new here. Everyone pays the same dues.”
Maybe it’s the Marxist in me, but I always liked the idea of true equality. I just never thought it was plausible. It’s like loving the idea of coming for three hours straight—it sounds great, but it also sounds fucking impossible. Still, I wasn’t lying. I charged protection from every single fucker on the promenade, save for Edie Rexroth. I liked Edie, but my not charging protection of her wasn’t personal or anything. She was great, but she was business like everyone else. I chose to ignore Breakline because I didn’t want to mess with her husband and his three friends. They had too much power over this town, and I was smarter than my ego.
Red blinked at me, finally coming to her senses. She stepped away from the counter, her quivering hand reaching for her cell phone. I cocked my head and tsked, making a show of sighing at her theatrics.
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you. I’ve made some real good friends at the local police station. Comes with the territory of getting arrested twice a month between the ages of eighteen and twenty-one.” Before I was Bane: Business Owner, I was Bane: Unhinged Asshole. Red got the diluted me. The post-probation dude who just came for what was his. This beach was dead before I stepped into it. Fact.
“Who are you?”
I usually made a habit of never repeating myself, but for the sake of being polite, and only because I’d come there out of the blue demanding shit, I indulged her.
“My name is Roman ‘Bane’ Protsenko, and I run this town. You pay up, or you get shut down. These are your only options. There is no secret, third alternative. There is no way out. Don’t worry. I got your back. I’ll send people your way, spread the word, and keep your shop safe and thriving. First payment is the second day of every month.” I knocked my knuckles on her counter, winking as her mouth slowly fell open in what must’ve been the first enthralled scowl. “Nice doing business with you.”
When I walked out, I found Jesse sitting on the step, right where I’d left her. She looked up from a book, and I immediately realized two things:
She was supposedly reading a red hardcopy of something. Something classic, by its cover.
She had another book tucked inside. And my eyes landed on a paragraph I was pretty sure I had no business seeing.
He slid his big palms down her thighs and spread them wide, pressing his hot tongue to her mound. “I hope you like it rough, my darling, because you’re about to get pounded like the pavement.”
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 w
ith 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.”