Scandalous (Sinners of Saint Book 4)

  After dinner, I poured half a cup of sugar into the organic, sugar-free FroYo and took it to the living room, where we watched Girl Meets World. I was ninety-nine percent sure that it was out of her age bracket, but it kept both of us entertained. Eight o’clock came and went. Rules were bent, because Trent had been the first to break them. He broke them the day he broke my mother’s expensive Louboutins. The day he’d agreed to hire me. He’d broken them when he bossed me around to get into his car when I was with friends, and forbade me to have sex with Bane, and way more other times than I cared to count.

  After watching the show and slowly recovering from the food coma and sugar rush, Luna, who was sitting next to me on the dark brown leather sofa, turned her head in my direction and grinned, staring at my ribcage.

  “What is it, Germs?” I frowned. She pointed at my neck, and I looked down.

  “This?” I fingered the seashell on my necklace, made out of black shoelace and dark cerith shell. It looked like a dagger, and it felt like one, too. Luna nodded, her hand tapping her thigh. She wanted to touch it. I removed it from my neck, placing it in her hand. “Watch out, though. It’s sharp.”

  She pressed her fingertip to the end, sucking in a breath.

  “I was running on the sand one day—it was really hot and I left my flip-flops in my car because I like walking barefoot, when I stumbled over something. It cut my heel so deep I could see my tendon. I picked the prickly thing up. I couldn’t believe something so pretty could hurt me so badly. So I decided to keep it. Because sometimes, our favorite things are the ones that make us cry.” I chuckled at the skeptical look on this girl’s face.

  “Have you ever swum in the ocean?” I asked. I had a feeling I knew the answer to that one. She hesitated for a moment before shrugging.

  “I’ll take that as a no.”

  It was definitely a no.

  “Would you like to?”

  Luna shrugged again, but in a totally different way. Her first shrug was disappointed, resentful. Her shoulders sagging down. Her second shrug was more wistful. Maybe I was reading too much into it, but I clung to nuances like they were my lifeline. After all, sometimes, they were the only thing I could squeeze out of Theo.

  “Would you? If I took you? If I…taught you,” I probed, my skin catching flames at her intense stare.

  She nodded, her head snapping up, as if she remembered something. She put her little hand on my forearm, telling me to wait, and jumped from the sofa, padding down the hallway. This girl was living directly in front of the ocean, yet all she was ever allowed to do was go to Funny Felix parties on the dry, boring sand, without dipping a toe. Her dad seemed like such a self-centered prick. I wondered if she was able to share any of her likes and dislikes with him. I sat on their couch, gawking at the walls around me. The feature wall was decorated like some big shot artist had thrown dark paint on it on purpose. Grays and blacks and deep purples. It was half-graffitied, and looked exactly like something you would find in a bachelor’s pad. But Trent wasn’t a bachelor anymore, no matter how emotionally unavailable and single he was. He had a daughter.

  This place looked like him.

  Dark. Brooding. Moody.

  It didn’t look like Luna.

  Hesitant. Curious. Gentle.

  Luna came back with a big children’s book, square, thin, and flat. She dumped it on my legs, climbed on the sofa, and started flipping through it until she found what she was looking for. She stabbed her finger to the image.

  “Seahorse?” I asked, furrowing my brows. She nodded, staring at me expectedly.

  “Oh, you want to know if I ever see any seahorses when I surf? No. They’re hard to find. They’re shy creatures, I think. They live in reefs and sheltered places.”

  The disappointment on her face made my heart twist. I rubbed the back of my neck and looked around. Trent’s laptop sat on the dining table across the room. I knew it wasn’t an afterthought. He wanted me to see it. Wanted me to touch it. It was a test, and I was about to fail it—jeopardizing my father’s plan—to try to pacify Luna.

  “Hey, why don’t we read more about seahorses on Wikipedia? Maybe there’s a good documentary on them on YouTube.”

  Her eyes lit up like Christmas, and it was worth all the shit he was going to give me when he found out.

  “I’m kind of bending the rules for you. Are you going to tell on me?”

  She scrunched her nose, shaking her head like the mere idea was insulting. And that gesture—the nose wrinkling—it was so me.

  For the next forty minutes, Luna and I learned everything there was to know about seahorses. We watched a male seahorse giving birth to a gazillion baby seahorses and laughed. She laughed because there were so many. I did because it looked like a man shooting his load after watching the filthiest porn ever recorded.

  Then before we knew it, it was ten o’clock and bedtime became non-negotiable, because I was pretty sure Trent would hang me from his balcony if he found us still hanging out in the living room when he got home. Luna didn’t put up a fight, which I thought was strange, because Theo always had. He would yell and plead and bargain and try to manipulate me, just like his father.

  I tucked Luna in, sitting at the edge of her black wood bed. The whole room was blue and full of posters of seahorses, seashells clinging to the walls. It had her personality, and suddenly, the need to cry slammed into me. Because it wasn’t my first rodeo tucking someone into bed, and it wasn’t the first time I knew I’d have to say goodbye to them, eventually.

  I wanted to hug her, but I didn’t. Couldn’t.

  Every bone in my body ached, burned, and yearned for it. Which was exactly why I needed to stay away. I couldn’t bulldoze into her life, knowing I couldn’t stay. It was like planting myself in, watering the seed, letting the sun kiss it and allow it to grow only to yank it from its roots. Knowing Luna was like me—attached to an unstable man who could tear her away from me tomorrow morning if he wanted. And who knew what Trent Rexroth really wanted? He was an eternal riddle enfolded in a delicious suit.

  “Hey, Germs, do you know what?”

  Luna nodded, letting me “burrito” her by tucking the edges of her blanket under her body so she was positively cocooned. That’s what I used to do to Theo, the rare times he’d let me.

  “I had a lot of fun tonight. And I hope you did, too.”

  She nodded, and I smiled, and maybe it was too dark for her to see it, because the next thing she did shocked me.

  “Me, too.”

  Throaty. Small. Breathy, like wind caressing waves at dawn.

  Floored, I blinked away my surprise. Luna had spoken. To me! I wondered if she did it with Trent and Camila, too, every now and again, but I doubted it—he’d made too big of a deal about her nodding. I wanted to jump and call him, but had to play it cool. Fretting about it would only serve as a reminder that she was different.

  “You’re just saying that because I fed you pizza and Coke and broke every single one of your dad’s rules.” I smirked. She laughed. I stood up awkwardly, moving away. Not kissing. Not touching. Not caressing.

  “Good night, Germs.”

  A little nod in the dark. I turned on the Dora the Explorer lamp by the door and smiled. I’ll take it.

  KATIE DEJONG MADE ME THINK about teenage Trent.

  One thing about him was he didn’t believe he’d be sitting here today, eating a lobster (he hated lobster), drinking imported wine even though he lived in California (he hated wine), discussing the pros and cons of college rankings (he didn’t give a shit.)

  This was exactly why I’d never dated. It was boring. The end game—marriage and kids—didn’t interest me, and the short-term touchdown—sex—was available without the inconvenience of wining and dining someone.

  I didn’t say more than sixteen sentences the whole date, but I wasn’t rude, either. And I walked Katie to her car, and smiled at her, and didn’t promise I’d call, but when she leaned forward for a kiss, the kind I’d never give a
steady fuck, I smoothly diverted it to a peck on the cheek.

  Then I drove the fuck out of there, realizing, when I parked my car in the underground lot, that I couldn’t even remember what she’d worn or what color her hair was.

  The weird sense of urgency grasped me in the balls in the elevator. The notion that I fucking went and put my kid in the hands of someone I barely knew suddenly made very little sense. All I knew about Edie Van Der Zee was that she was a liar, a thief, and a girl in trouble. Why I’d have her anywhere near my kid unsupervised was a mystery. I was worked up even before I shoved my key in the door. By the time I opened the door and saw what was going on, I was on the verge of flipping my shit.

  A pizza box was sitting on the island, making the whole living room and kitchen area smell like oily bread and fucking mushrooms. Two cans of Coke on the counter—of course, she hadn’t even bothered throwing them in the trash—and that’s before I walked into the living room and found Edie sleeping on the couch, with my laptop in front of her. Spying, no doubt, and not giving a single fuck about hiding it.

  I walked over to her, tucking my hands in my pockets, watching her. The way her chest rose and fell. The blonde hairs of her eyebrows. Her full, pink lips and golden hair. The tan lines on her shoulders. Her freckles.

  “Wake up,” I commanded, my voice dripping ice all over her stirring body.

  Her eyelids fluttered, at first slowly, and she didn’t sit up until I took another step forward, nudging her arm with my knee.

  “Hey.” Her voice was hoarse. “How was it?”

  “You ordered pizza.” I ignored her. “My daughter doesn’t eat fucking pizza.”

  It wasn’t about the pizza. It was about the laptop. Not that there was anything on it—I kept everything on the flash drive—but it drove me nuts that I’d trusted her with my own daughter and she, in return, had spent the time in here trying to fuck me over. Again. Had she ignored Luna the whole time to play hacker?

  This thing between us had long since separated fucked-up territory and was now deeply in batshit-crazy-ville.

  “I paid for it, and she only had one slice. I also made her eat the bell peppers and mushrooms, if that makes a difference.” Edie yawned, rubbing her eye sockets with the base of her hands before standing up. She stretched, her long limbs on full display. She was barefoot, and a purple tank top and cut-off denim shorts clung to her body.

  “And Coke? Really? Again?” I growled, getting in her face. I was angry. So fucking angry. At Mel and Katie and Edie and Luna and Val and life, and fuck, women were such complicated creatures. I tried goddamned hard to stay away from them as much as I could, but they seemed to be everywhere.

  “Jesus, Trent, she brushed her teeth. It was a one-off, so I thought we could splurge. And I mean really splurge. What the hell!” She bolted to the other side of the room, sitting on the floor and putting on her shoes. I wanted her to get the fuck out. At least, I thought I did.

  “Last but not least—the computer? Really? No fucking class whatsoever.”

  “We were watching YouTube videos!” she exclaimed, snagging her backpack and getting up in a hurry. “Geez!”

  “YouTube videos. Right.” I let loose a chuckle, pulling out my wallet from my back pocket and plucking out the money to pay her. “Wasn’t it you who told me to never bullshit a bullshitter?”

  “I’m not bullshitting you!”

  I shoved the banded stack of money to her chest and growled into her face, “Just go.”

  “Hey, wait…” She hurried after me as I pivoted toward Luna’s room. The money dropped to the floor. She didn’t bother to pick it up.

  “Luna talked.”

  I spun in place, my eyebrows dropping down.

  “Edie…” I warned. If she was lying again, there were going to be consequences. She fidgeted with the hem of her shirt, tugging at it, but her eyes were determined and brave. She didn’t look away.

  “She did! When I tucked her into bed. I told her I had fun tonight, and she said ‘me, too’ and it was small, but I heard it, Trent. All I wanted, all I ever wanted was to make her feel not like a robot or a charity case. We ate junk food and watched TV past her bedtime. We broke the rules and she survived. Not only that, but I’m pretty sure she had fun. Maybe it’ll help her through another week of therapy sessions and you acting like she is in some kind of dire situation.”

  I rubbed my forehead. Shit. She was doing this again. Confusing me. And the worst part was that I believed her. I shouldn’t have, but I clung to each of her words and let them settle in my stomach and revive me. Luna had spoken. This was a huge breakthrough, but daring to believe it and hoping for more could break me—and I didn’t know if I could trust Edie as far as I could throw her.

  We stared at each other for a long beat, from a safe distance.

  “She talked,” I repeated, finally. It felt monumental. As if she was going to wake up tomorrow and start blabbing about the weather. It wasn’t the case, but Edie was only the second person Luna had spoken to.

  She nodded. “Her voice is so sweet and soft. Like velvet on cool skin.”

  Who the fuck talked like that? Edie. Edie talked like that. “I’ve never heard her.”

  “You should. It’s really great.”

  I believed her.

  She swallowed. “Let me take her to the beach on Sunday. She’s never been in the water. I want to…show her things.”

  I looked down, wanting to say no. I was scared for Luna. I didn’t trust Edie with Luna outside the apartment building. But I also couldn’t just hang out with them, because that wasn’t appropriate, nor beneficial for the raging obsession I was beginning to develop toward this girl.

  “You know what your problem is, Trent?” She was panting, breathing fire, and I was too selfish to cool her down. I liked her hot. I liked her messy. I liked her all over the place, because that’s how she made me feel. Deprived. There was some poetic justice in it.

  “No, but I’m sure you’re about to tell me.”

  “You fight the tide. You fling your arms, kicking your legs, trying to escape it, overpower it. The secret is to go with the flow. The secret is to ride the wave. Don’t be afraid to get wet.”

  I was wet, though. I was fucking dripping. Shit, half the time, it felt like I was drowning. Maybe that was her point. Edie was a lot of things. Stupid wasn’t one of them.

  “Don’t forget your money.” I pointed at the floor, clearing my throat and averting my gaze. I was uncomfortable to say the least, and that was a fucking first. She walked over and picked it up, flipping through and pulling four fifties off the top.

  “There.” She tried to hand me the rest. “I think it was, like, four hours.”

  “It’s yours.” I shook my head, curling her fingers around the wad of cash. “All of it.”

  “What?” She blinked, thumbing through them. The Benjamins were fanning each other like in the movies. “That’s a lot of money.”

  “Twelve thousand dollars.”

  “What?!”

  I shrugged, staring at the pizza box on the island to keep myself from doing something stupid. “You said you needed the money. I’m not going to ask you why. But I am going to be a responsible adult and strongly advise you to get this situation sorted quickly, because it’s not an easy sum to come up with on a monthly basis.”

  “I appreciate the tip, and the money, but I can’t take this.” She shoved it to my chest.

  “You can, and you goddamn will.”

  “No.” She took a step back, the money falling between us again. We were both too engrossed to even look at it. It wasn’t the fucking point of all this.

  “Give me one reason why not.”

  She started counting with her fingers. “One—it’s a lot of money I didn’t earn, two—it would make me owe you, and three—because we’re not friends. We’re enemies.”

  I used the same finger method. “One—it might be a lot of money, but not for me. Two—I don’t expect shit from you, and three??
?it’s cute how you think you’re my enemy. You’re not on my level.”

  Her stare told me she didn’t care that I’d undermined her. And for a good reason. The girl had managed to get her way and steal my shit several times. She might have been the underdog, but she sure as hell knew how to put up a fight.

  I expected her to argue over this, as she had with any subject matter, but she surprised me by tucking the money into her bag. She swallowed loudly—her pride, most likely—flung her backpack over her shoulder and silently made her way to the door. Watching her made me feel like shit, so again, I looked the other way.

  “Thank you, Trent.”

  “It’s fine.”

  “No, I mean it.”

  I meant it, too. I didn’t know what the fuck was happening with her, or to her, but I knew the idea of her being in deep shit made me queasy.

  The door was beginning to slide shut in my peripherals as I braced myself against the counter, and I couldn’t resist showing her that not only was I getting wet, but that we were both about to get soaked if we weren’t careful.

  “You still there?” I asked.

  She didn’t answer, but I didn’t hear the click of the automatic lock.

  “The date. It sucked.”

  I heard the smile in her voice when she said, “I didn’t have sex with Bane after you found me in the reservoir.”

  Click.

  I didn’t go after her. But I was still screwed because I knew that next time—I would.

  LOVE IS MERCILESS.

  Love is cruel.

  Love is not a feeling, it is a weapon.

  Love destroys.

  Love destroys.

  Love destroys.

  I couldn’t stop reading that line on my way back from Theo. My car had stopped working two days before and was at the shop. I couldn’t afford a taxi or an Uber, so I took two buses each way. It gave me the time to read an old paperback I’d found in our library. An autobiography of a French poet who ended up committing suicide after his fiancé left him for a man she treated as a nurse in the army. The other man was a hero, so French Poet Dude’s unrequited love was swept under the carpet.