by Emilia Finn
She’s pulling in her armor, and it bothers me that she feels the need for protection from me.
“If I must die,” her lips pull up into a gentle smile, “being smothered by overgrown puppies is a good way to go.”
“You keep grabbing that black and white one.” I study the floppy-eared, massive-pawed horse masquerading as a puppy. “Every single time we’re here, you grab him. You gonna take him home yet?”
She releases the puppy, but only so they can lay eye-to-eye, her fingertip stroking the bridge of his snout. “No. I’m away most of the week, and when I’m home, I’m still living with Mom and Daddy. Bringing home a dog that’s gonna weigh two hundred pounds in a few months probably wouldn’t be a good plan. I don’t even have a job – can’t buy dog food with cute smiles and clapping hands.”
“Probably could if you tried.” I smile when her eyes dance with muted laughter. “You know the dude that works at the store. They sell dog food. He’s always checking you out.” I lift a brow. “I’d bet you twenty bucks that he’d hand anything over if you smiled for him.”
She snorts, but when the puppy she long ago named Deck bops his nose against hers, she relaxes back and closes her eyes. “I don’t gamble anymore. That shit is expensive.”
“It’s not expensive if you don’t lose. And I thought you only bet on sure things?”
“Guess not everything is a sure thing.” She shrugs and accepts the dog when he wiggles closer and goes for the equivalent of a hug. “Anyway, no, I can’t afford him yet. Maybe someday, but for now, I’ll just be his aunt and visit a couple times a week.”
“He likes you.” I slide down the cabinet until I sit on the floor, and when my leg just so happens to touch hers, I lecture myself on moving the fuck away. But is that what I do? No. Because my willpower is waning and my blood pulls me closer.
“Deck?” she asks, “or the guy at the store?”
Me.
I accept one of the girl puppies with a grin as she plops into my lap. “I meant Deck, but the dude at the store too. Jerry’s gaga for you. Forgets how to speak the second you walk in.”
Narrow-eyed, Lucy’s smile flattens and her disbelieving gaze comes to mine. “Lies.”
“You think I’m lying?” I laugh so hard, so fast, that she jumps. “Dude forgets how to speak. He gets all fidgety and shit, doesn’t know if he should put his hands on his hips, in his pockets, in a power socket.” I look away from her beguiling eyes and scratch the puppy’s ears. “He’s just one of many admirers you have around town. You break hearts, Lucy, because you’re blind to them. You don’t even realize they’re looking.”
“It’s hard to notice,” she says quietly, “when I’m always walking with my cousin. The eyes are for her. That’s the way it’s always been.” She shrugs, accepts her fate, and looks back to Deck. “I got used to it a long time ago.”
You have no clue how fucking beautiful you are.
“What have you got going on during the tournament?” I point a thumb over my shoulder. “I heard what you weren’t saying in there. You’ve got something else you need to do that week?”
“No, nothing.” She stretches her neck back when one of the puppies bats at her hair with soft paws. “Like I said; I got used to it years ago. Juggling, shuffling, doing whatever I have to do to keep life sailing the way it’s supposed to be. It’s not a big deal.”
“What’s the thing?” I press. “What are you juggling for Stacked Deck?”
She shrugs again. “Doesn’t matter. I’ll talk to Soph and see if we can move it.”
“Dance?” My eyes, without my permission, slide along her legs. I think of her in her booty shorts, I hear Camila Cabello’s voice in my head, and then I have to fist my hands because I swear, if I concentrate hard enough, I can feel her seductive body in them. That day in the studio was forever ago, and yet, I still think of it every single day. “You have something for dance?”
“On the twenty-second.” She shrugs. “It doesn’t really matter.”
“What is it? Practice?”
“No, a recital sorta thing. It’s…” She considers. “It’s just something I would have liked to do. But it’s not important enough to throw a tantrum over.”
“You do that a lot.”
I watch as she lifts herself up and sits against the cabinets opposite those I lean against. Her long legs, bare and tanned, rest against mine, and though she clasps her hands together and squishes them between her thighs, my gaze is drawn to the fire engine red nail polish on her toes. Lucy Kincaid likes pretty things, but she never tells anyone. She likes to keep her business to herself, and because of that bad habit, people overlook her in favor of her louder cousins.
“What do I do a lot?” she asks when I say nothing more. Her toenails twinkle from a stream of sunlight pouring through the kitchen window. “Mac?”
“You brush off your own wants.” I clear my throat and glance up. “You have something else that you’d rather do. But you brush it off and make plans so that everyone else is happy.”
“Some habits are hard to break,” she exhales on a laughing breath. There’s absolutely no humor in the sound, but this is another thing she does; she laughs to de-escalate a situation, she shies away from attention the way no one else in her family does. “Like I said, it doesn’t matter. It’ll be rescheduled, and then I’m not going to miss out. It’s called juggling. It’s called compromise.” Her eyes meet mine, and when the electricity threatens to spark and explode, she stands with a huff and places Deck on his broad paws. “You should try it sometime.”
“What did I do?” I sit taller as she walks away. “Lucy?” I make my way to my feet, but I’m slower than her. I’m fitter now than I ever was, healthier, but going from zero to sixty is still a struggle. “Kincaid? What did I do?”
“Nothing.” She stops just before the doorway to the room Ben and Evie make out in. “That’s the damn point. You did nothing.”
My hands ache as I work on the engine of an old Chevy truck alongside Chuck in Ang’s garage. His name isn’t Chuck at all, but we like to tease him. A joke from years ago turned into a nickname that’ll stick for the rest of time.
“I don’t know what her problem is, but that’s what she said.”
Dirty-faced, dirty hands, he sits in the cab of the truck and works on the stereo. It’s not what most folks bring a truck to a mechanic for, but he’s a man of many talents, and since they asked, he said sure.
“She said you did nothing?” he confirms. “Your inaction bothers her?”
I shrug. “A guy can’t know how to fix a problem if he doesn’t know what the problem is.”
“She wants you to do something, but you won’t do it…” The way he talks it out while we work is both comforting and infuriating.
Laine – my boss’ girl – walks through the garage with her platinum blonde hair and tiny denim shorts that draw every man’s eye as she passes. Even mine. I’m not trying to check her out, but sometimes, just like a car crash, a guy can’t look away.
She passes through with a cute smile and a finger wave, then she moves into Ang’s office with a bag of subs in one hand, closes the door, and sends Chuck’s brows lifting when the telltale snick of the lock echoes across the shop.
“Boss is gonna play naughty secretary today.” Chuck gives a throaty chuckle and a shake of his head as he works. “Ya know, years back, Ang was best friends with this chick, right? She was hot, sassy, and liked to torment him with those itty-bitty shorts.”
Without my permission, a memory of Lucy’s shorts slams into my brain. “Mm. Best friend, tiny shorts. I can relate.”
“And yet, you can’t riddle this out?” He scoffs. “You need to take your ass back to school, kid. Because you haven’t switched on your thinking cap yet.”
“What’s Ang and Laine got to do with me?”
“Your inaction annoys her!” He throws his hands up. “She literally told you, your inaction annoys her. She wants you to ask her out, you dumbfuck.�
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My brows draw closer, and though my heart yearns for his words to be truth, logic takes over and fractures my hope. “Nah, that’s not what she wants. She’s probably pissed about something else.”
“You bet she is,” he huffs. “She’s pissed that your brain got left in the OR when they did your heart. They figure ‘dumbshit doesn’t use it anyway, so there’s no point putting it back.’”
“You’re an asshole.” I work on a rusted nut and accept the pain that radiates along my wrist when the fucker won’t come loose. “It doesn’t matter,” I grunt, working to release the rusted metal. “Maybe she does think that. Maybe she is interested… fuck knows I’m about as subtle as a bull in a china shop, but—”
“Ya know, they did that on MythBusters one time.”
I pause. Frown. Lean around the hood. “What?”
“They did this experiment with bulls. They stacked all this breakable shit up to see if the bulls would make a mess.”
“Okay…”
“They didn’t.” He grins. “Those giant fuckers were like little dancers, moving around the shelves and trying really hard not to break shit. Apt, I suppose, considering we’re speaking of a dancer and her bull.”
“You’re an ass. The point is, even if she was interested, I can’t give her that. I can’t give her what she maybe wants, because it’s not a lifestyle choice she should make.”
“You’re the lifestyle choice?” His brows come higher. “Help me understand the metaphor. I thought you were a bull a second ago. Now you’re… a pot-smoking, tree-hugging hippie?”
“I’m saying that taking what I want now would feel good. Fuck…” I set my hands on the grill and groan. “It would be amazing. And maybe we could do it twice. Or ten times. Or twenty. Just enough to take the edge off. But after that, it becomes something else. I stop being the guy that makes her feel good, and instead become a burden. Pills, appointments, worries. Every time the wind changes and I can’t catch my breath, I go into a fucking meltdown thinking now is the time I’m being put down. She’s just a couple months out from finishing her schooling, so say we get together—”
“She’s becoming a nurse, right?”
“Right. So then, if we end up together, is she my girl, or my nurse? And if I give in, will she think I only gave in because she’s a nurse and could help me? Will she think I’m using her?”
“How long you guys been friends?” His calm tone is my opposite. He’s the balm to my pending panic attack. “Years, right?”
I nod. “Lots of years.”
“So she chose to pursue nursing long into your friendship? You didn’t just head over to the school and pick one out for your personal use?”
“Of course I didn’t.” Rolling my eyes, I pick up my wrench and go back to work. “She was my friend first.”
“Then your heart up and bummed out on you. You remain friends, she’s there with you, she’s got your back. Then she becomes a nurse…?” He leans out of the cab and meets my eyes. “Am I following?”
“Yes,” I grit out.
“So maybe, just maybe she became a nurse for you. Maybe she wants to be there for you, maybe she wants to help you. Now she’s, what, three or four years into her schooling, all of this time and effort she’s putting in for you, and you’re still too stupid to ask her out?”
“If she went to school and chose a degree just to help me, then that makes it worse. I don’t need a fucking warden, Chuck. And I don’t want her tied down to a patient like it’s some kind of job she can never clock out from. I’m supposed to take care of her, I’m supposed to support her, show her the good life. Instead, she’s the one with money, with the health, with the brains. No.” I shake my head. “I can’t ask her out, because the balance is all wrong.”
“It all works out when you’re horizontal,” he quips. “Short, tall, fat, skinny, rich, poor… it all works out once you’re naked.” Something in Ang’s office crashes, his walls shake from the force. Staring for a moment, Chuck turns back to me and flashes a wicked grin. “Or, ya know, vertical. Upside down. Handcuffed or plugged. However you go about it, once you drop the clothes and pretenses, it works out pretty perfect.”
He puts these images into my head, not of Ang and Laine, but of me and Lucy. From the moment I met her, I’ve wanted to touch her hair. Long, silky, straight and perfect, I swear, I’ve spent the same amount of time staring at her hair as I have at her eyes. Now I imagine fucking her, dragging her head back, exposing her delicate throat with her hair knotted around my hand.
From sweet thoughts to pure filth, I slam the wrench against my finger and force myself to slow down, to breathe through the pain, and then to set the offending tool down before I throw it at the wall and scream.
“I’m just saying,” Chuck pushes. “Ask her out. She wants you to, and you aren’t dying today. You, of all people, should know to seize the day and all that shit.”
Lucy
Seize His Nuts in a Vise
Rudy – my dance partner – is just an inch shy of six feet tall. Some might consider that a little short, but for dance, it’s perfect when his partner is five feet six. Rudy’s body, I swear, is less than five percent fat, so every muscle stands out in stark contrast when we dance under the studio lights. Add in a pair of tights, and the whole world knows what he’s packing.
I don’t know if dancing guys add socks to their shorts when they dress for class, but I’ve yet to come across a single one that isn’t bulging at the front in a way that used to make me blush. With time and familiarity comes the ability to not stare all the time, and now, when we dance, it’s a non-issue.
I have a brother – Jamie – so after a year or so of dancing with Rudy, he’s now been placed firmly in that same category. Sisters don’t blush for their brothers. Sisters don’t check their brothers out. Rudy, the poor, sweet man, is destined to a lifetime of never being checked out in our dance school – except of course, when his boyfriend walks through to watch us dance.
“Higher, guys! Where the hell is your rhythm? The beat is half a step ahead of you.” Soph restarts our song and stares straight into my eyes in a way that threatens bodily harm if I don’t do better. Rudy isn’t the problem. He’s never the problem. “You gotta let him lift you, Kincaid. Stop overthinking it.”
“I’m just…” I stand in front of my mocha-skinned partner, rest my hands on my hips, and steal this moment to catch my breath. “I’m sorry. I’m tired.”
“So sleep more!” she snaps. “Fuck. You get twenty-four hours in a day. What do you do with them all?”
“I go to class.”
“Five hours a day?”
I nod. “And I study in my dorm. Another five hours or so.”
“That’s ten, and leaves fourteen. What else?”
“I travel home some nights, rather than stay at school.”
“And on the nights you travel home?” she pushes. “What do you do?”
“I train at my gym.” My shoulders come higher in defense as she steps forward and I try to take a step back. “Two hours a day. Then here, two hours a day.”
“That still leaves ten, Kincaid! Ten hours to sleep.” She walks closer, lifts a brow. “Don’t lie to me.”
“Then I work on Mac’s fitness,” I admit. “I train him, and make sure he’s not going to hurt himself anymore. Then we plan Stacked Deck. We’ve got applications coming out of our asses, and Smalls thinks because of what I’m studying that I wanna check each medical form that comes in. Then I need to visit with my mom and daddy for a minute so they don’t forget I exist. Then I go to my room and study some more, and maybe practice my choreography for something else I’ve been working on. Next thing I know, I have five hours to sleep before my alarm sounds and I have to start again.”
“You’re working on something on your own?” From anger to a hungry glint in her eyes, Soph snatches her cell from her back pocket and tosses it into my hands. “Find your song, show me.”
“What? No!” Panicking, I
lift my hands and step back until I hit Rudy’s chest and stomp onto his foot. “Shit, Rudy, I’m sorry.” I drop low and place the phone on the floor, then I step to the left, as though the device is an explosive. “It’s not even close to ready.”
“I wanna see it anyway.” Soph moves forward and snatches up her phone. Scrolling to her music app, she flips songs. “Rap, choir, girl band, boy band. Tell me when to stop, baby girl.”
“Soph, I said no. It’s not ready.”
Backstreet Boys come on, Boyce Avenue, Bon Jovi, none of which elicit a reaction from me. But then Beyoncé’s voice comes from the speakers, and my heart comes to a standstill.
Somehow knowing, and lazily grinning, Soph zeroes in on Beyoncé’s albums. Destiny’s Child. Beyoncé on her own.
I school my features and clench my fists. I last a whole minute of flipped songs, but it all comes undone when Jay-Z joins the fray and my breath dies out.
“Mmm… Not Beyoncé,” Soph murmurs. “But her man.”
She brings Empire State of Mind onto the sound system, bobs her head as the bass slams through the room, but I remain still. I refuse to give into her intrusive request… until she hits on it. She hits it so hard that tears itch the backs of my eyes.
“Encore?” Her eyes light with fun. “Hell yes, that song is badass. Go. Show me.” She waves me off, and turns the music so loud that my hands literally itch to move. My hips actually try to override my brain.
My body is a traitor, because my toes want to lift, lift, lift me, and then my thighs want to shoot me into the air for my dive.
“Dance, Kincaid! Fuck.” She restarts the song, and storms around me, only to grab Rudy and shove him forward until we slam together. She steps back in a baby pink nightie-type dress. It’s satin, barely there, but it’s what she wears today. And studying it is how I procrastinate and deny her requests.