by Ace Gray
“Hey, pretty girl.” Dantè had managed to park and settle himself beside me. I twisted toward the man who was the most stunning of the universe’s small gifts. “What did he do?” he asked softly as he wound himself around me.
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Okay.” He kissed my shoulder and more droplets of the coming storm followed his lead dotting my knees and the back of my neck. “You know I love storms, Mercy?” He seamlessly changed subjects.
“I didn’t know that.” I managed a smile for him but then thunder shook my shoulders and my smile.
“There is no other way to see the rainbows.”
I bit my lip but couldn’t stop my smile from spreading wide even as the rain drops picked up pace. “Beauty in the small stuff, huh?”
“And the bigger things,” he answered, as he tucked a piece of my hair behind my ear. “Like you. Dance with me?”
“In the rain?” I giggled.
“I think someone wrote a song about it.”
He stood and held his hand out for me. I eyed him, barely able to contain my smile or the pitter patter of my heart, but then I reached out.
Just like the rain that deluged from the swollen rain clouds as if a pin had popped a balloon. I screamed and tried to run to the passenger side but Dantè snatched me by the waist and pulled me back.
“No way.” He laughed. “We’re slow dancing in the pouring rain.”
I swore he tried to sing it but landed way off key. It made me smile and turn toward him to take up hold. He grabbed me low on the small of my back and threaded his other hand into mine. I was lucky he was holding me when he leaned his forehead to mine and started to sway to the driving beat of the rain.
Just like that, I wasn’t just falling for Dantè Rogue. Oh no, this was so much more. I was carving out a space for both of us in my version of forever. For the beautiful dark haired James Dean that liked the fury of thunder and the spectacle of a rainbow.
“I wish I had a picture of this,” I breathed.
He bent down and rubbed his nose along mine. Steam rose off our bodies, and I trembled as my heartbeat hitched. I could smell him, the very essence of him mixed with the fresh rain. My lips were desperate to taste him. I blinked fast, too fast under the driving rain.
“That can be arranged,” he whispered just before he kissed me.
I ran my fingertips over the photo from that day we’d danced in the rain. He’d ruined his phone to get it and one of the best moments of my life was finding out he’d managed to save it before dumping that iPhone in a bowl of rice.
It had started my love affair with photography every bit as much as Dantè Rogue. The way the light had hit us amidst the shimmering bands of rain put the droplets I’d been admiring to shame. Capturing the beauty in the tragedy around me became my only obsession besides the man who made it possible.
My fingers ran over the beautiful Nikon that Dantè had bought me just before he went to jail. I had planned to start my own photography business when we had our own place. He’d made sure to find a rental with a room we could convert into a darkroom. Now…
I sighed.
“It’d be nice if you started taking photos again,” Patty said from the doorway, and her appearance made me yank my hand back as if I’d touched a hot stove.
“I’ve moved on,” I said automatically.
“Oh honey, you have not. It’s been almost three years.” She pushed her bifocals up her weathered nose and shuffled behind the register to pat me on my shoulder.
“I just mean from photography. It doesn’t quite fit anymore.” I shrugged. “Three years is nothing when it comes to Dantè.”
She arched her eyebrow and shot me a look as she fiddled with a few packing slips then slid back out to the few boxes we’d received today. “Maybe, after all this time you want to—”
“Not you too,” I groaned as my heart sagged in my chest. This was my last haven, Patty the last one who believed in him. “He’s innocent, I know it. I’ll prove it if it kills me. Being without him is bad enough.” My voice crescendoed, and Patty’s warm and knowing smile just followed.
“I just care about you sweet girl,” she said hefting a giant box, one that was far too heavy for her small and fragile frame.
“Patty, I can do that.” I closed my bag up and pushed it back beneath the desk and followed her. I knew her words came from love. The same ones came every four months or so.
“It’s a shipment of photos…” Concern colored her voice. The same concern that always had her unpacking all our photo deliveries by herself before I got in.
“I still love photography, I just don’t want to shoot.”
“Okay,” Patty said with a smile, “if you say so.”
I rolled my eyes and smiled as I knelt down and started unpacking the crate in front of me. They were a mix of framed photos and canvases. They all highlighted the California wild around us. Tall redwood trees and mossy under forests. Jagged coasts and cliffs. The churning waves. The brilliant sun. They weren’t wide sweeping vistas but close ups of the details, obscured except to those of us that searched for the small things.
My smile stayed in place as I uncovered more gems in the collection, and I started to find places to put them in the boutique, matching them with existing photos.
“Those look nice. We should get some of them for our room.” Diego made me jump just before he slid beside me and kissed my cheek. The shiver that always accompanied his touch made me shake. I’d protested as long as I could but that voice, the one that had helped me survive for so long, had sensed the shift in his eyes that morning he finally kissed me. Had sensed it and told me to tread carefully. Mercifully, he’d been gone, competing, for most of the time since.
“What are you doing here?” I tried to keep my hand steady as I shifted away from him to position one of the framed photos in a display amongst candles and pillows.
“I missed you.” He pressed against me, and I felt his fingers toying with the hem of my dress. I stepped away again, keeping my back to him as I jostled into a bigger display case. and swallowed the lump in my throat.
“You saw me this morning. Bert made breakfast, remember?”
Bert. The only ray of sunshine in our crumbling darkness. The only roommate that didn’t live with the shadow of Dantè over him. I loved him as much as I loathed him for being free of that burden. But at the end of the day, he was sweet. And his paying rent was the only reason that I still had a roof over my head and a chance to save Dantè. It was either that house, that awful house that reeked of loneliness, or my childhood home, which reeked of alcohol and rape.
It was the lesser of two evils. And the only place Dantè would come looking. Besides, that house on the cliff had been a good home. Those boys had been family. That memory clung to me. Rousse’s hugs and Danger’s smiles. I just didn’t know how to break free of that. Of them. Besides it had taken almost three years but I was spent. Literally and figuratively.
“These look like they could be yours,” he said as he stepped toward the photos I’d been lining up, grazing his fingers across my upper thighs as he went. I closed my eyes and prayed for a steadying breath.
“That one in the middle is,” I answered as I tried to shake the tingle of his ticklish touch.
“That’s Dantè’s surfboard, huh?” I tried not to flinch at the mention of Dantè’s name or the anger Diego let loose when he said it.
I could still see Dantè bent over this board, his muscles rippling as he waxed it. He wasn’t a morning person but he’d get up early to take care of his board. His board then mine. I’d sit with coffee on the step and watch, and live in the smell of pineapple Sex Wax and Dantè and the sea. I had never wanted anything more than an endless amount of those mornings, sprawled out like he’d be on that board in just a few hours. What I wouldn’t give for the simplicity of those days, for those days to be my only yearning now.
“Where’d you go on me?” Diego stood too close beside me and
tucked my hair behind my ear. I automatically shoved at it too, hoping my touch would replace his. “Were you with him?” He shoved his hands into my hair and knotted it at the nape, yanking my head back so my neck was open to him.
“No,” I lied, seeing what flashed behind his eyes, his brutality. “I don’t think about him much these days.” Such a big fucking lie.
His smile had that wicked edge that reminded me and the voice inside me why I said it. He stepped toward me and pressed me to the display case, his legs spreading on either side of mine. He grabbed my hips and leaned in. Diego was going to kiss me. My hands flew up and I tried to shove at him.
“I will make you forget him completely.” He nudged his hips against me, and I didn’t miss the steely column of his erection that pressed into my belly. My stomach knotted. “And your name.” He pressed his lips to my collarbone. “If you’ll only let me.” He kissed my neck slowly, leisurely, then latched on.
“Diego!” I hissed as I tried to push his strong, lean body.
He was sucking so hard that my blood thumped beneath his mouth and the heat bubbled up and over in that singular spot.
“Stop. You’re gonna give me a hickey.” I shoved at him.
He let my skin go with a pop then ran his hand up my body, making sure to detour between my thighs, before brushing over the aching spot.
“I want nothing more than to mark you. Fucking every inch of you.”
“Diego, I’m at work.”
“I know.” He bent to kiss the hickey gently. “But I leave in a few hours. I’ve never thought about leaving the circuit, the shoots, but now that I have you, maybe I need to settle down. Start a little surf shop.”
I felt the curl of his smile against my skin, and I had to steady myself.
“What am I going to do without you?” He sucked in a deep breath. “I mean, besides jerk off every few hours thinking about the taste of you. Your scent.”
I swallowed the knot in my throat, wondering if he could smell fear.
“Do the same for me, Starfish, then by the time I come back, you’ll crave me.” He backed away slowly, that off-kilter swagger he’d adopted that day he first kissed me firmly in place, capped off with a lunatic’s crooked smile.
I didn’t breathe until he turned and the shop bell dinged behind him. My lungs ached as I drug in a breath and lessened the grip I had on the edge of the display case behind me. When I finally had the ability to stand on my own again, I looked down at the series of photos.
They did indeed reflect my work. My truths. I just couldn’t tell if I was the shore, being pummeled by the wave, or the surfer lying in wait, floating on top. I couldn’t even tell which I even wanted to be.
“You’re driving me insane.”
I’d been around Max enough to actually hear her roll her eyes.
“We talked about this, Max.” I lifted my hand to shield my eyes from the reflection on the water.
“When I said I was in, that I wanted revenge, not only for you, but with you, I didn’t think that meant we’d spend a few months surfing and getting tattoos.” She devoured my inked torso and shoulders. Then the scruff I was letting grow.
“Yeah, I can tell it’s real rough on you.” I laughed as the telltale blush that colored Max’s skin spread like wildfire.
“I want to fucking kill them for what they did to you.” Her voice was a mix of fury and frustration.
She had reacted exactly the same when I came clean about the memories. About what my friends—no, my family—had done. The law went a little gray and retribution snapped into focus where Max was concerned. My heart had thumped each time I realized she was with me. I had a friend again, and she was equal parts soothing and terrifying. Each day I chose to embrace the balm that she was becoming.
“Death is too good for some people, Max.”
“Bullshit.”
I smiled over at my little accomplice. Vicious looked even better than her new white bikini. I hadn’t kissed her since that night she told me her story three months ago. I tried to tell myself it was just because it had made everything awkward between us—she was my only friend—but in reality, it was the pain. The actual physical pain it caused me to think I was somehow, someway, in some alternate universe, cheating on Mercy.
She helped frame you for murder. The small voice in the back of my mind protested. Reminding me of my true loves wicked heart. And then it made another comment about Max’s teeny-tiny suit. Maybe it wasn’t a voice in the back of my head at all. I looked down at my crotch and arched an eyebrow. My dick twitched in response. I laid back on my board with a heavy sigh.
I thought about what Mercy was doing a lot. Way more than I cared to admit. I thought about whether she still slept in baggy t-shirts and nothing else or if she bought matching pajama sets like she’d always admired on Audrey Hepburn. About whether she’d learned how to pop champagne corks or cook soufflés; both of which were on her bucket list. About her photographs and how she would have captured the lacy wisps of clouds above us.
I thought about what she’d unearthed deep inside her that had let her fuck me over. It had to be the hate Danger, Diego, and Rousse had harbored in their hearts. And even though I wouldn’t let myself be soft, that stuck into my side and stayed there.
What did I do to deserve this? Maybe the heavens had an answer.
I twisted enough to watch Max catch a wave, still shaky but better every time. In command of her board more and more. Her words reminded me of the answer. Nothing. I’d done nothing. Life just sucked sometimes. And people hid their black hearts away too. Even the girl whose heart I’d run my fingers over time and time again.
My board and body bobbed as one on the soft lap of the deep ocean. I let it rock my thoughts away. There was nothing but this moment, the sea breeze, and the gulls cawing on the wind. The cool salt of the ocean beneath me.
“What’s next? We mini-golf our way to triumph?” Max called, and her words were punctuated by her choppy paddling. “Show them absolutely nothing with our prowess in all things neon and windmills?”
“I’ve never been good at golf,” I called, as I crossed my arms on my stomach. “Don’t have the patience for it.”
“Well this is mini-golf,” she snarked.
This time I’m sure she heard me roll my eyes as I curled up to sitting. “Max…” I chided.
“No. You’re right. Maybe we can just beat them with whiffle bats.”
“Max.” I tried to stop her but she just kept trucking.
“One giant game of whack-a-mole with the assholes that stole years, YEARS, of your life.” She threw her hands up, her balance improving every day. “Squirt guns. We should definitely buy squirt guns too. I mean we’re playing like we’re pissed off, brooding kids, and who knows when we’ll need to make it look like they pissed themselves.”
“Max!”I barrel rolled off my board and glided through the temporary silence to pop up in front of her board, and in an admittedly smooth move, to clap my hand over her still-running mouth. She whomp, whomp, whomped behind my hand for a moment while I treaded in the water, waiting. “Anytime.” I simply waited.
She glowered at me but her words stopped behind my palm. I let it drop only for her to start in again.
“Do you want an answer or not?” I yelled over her sass and her voice finally cut off.
I stroked twice back to my board and pressed myself up, straddling it then paddling closer to her.
“We need time, Max. And as much as I’d love to just sit there and stare at a wall, someone I respect told me to get a hobby.”
“You’re an ass.” Her eyes were rolling around in her head again.
“An ass who’s planning,” I countered.
“How?”
I shot her a look. It hadn’t been second nature to brawl before prison, but now? The urge to push into her face, to rise up over her and puff my chest into her face was almost overwhelming. My word should have been enough. But I sat back, keeping my temper with her. With my only
friend.
“I have to get close to them, Max. So close.” I shoved my hands through my hair then rubbed my scruffy face. “I need time to accept that. To know that I’m going to have to look into their eyes and smile.”
She sagged on her board and her face softened.
“But then I realized I need more than that too. They can’t know. At least not right away.”
“Hence the longer hair, beard and tattoos?”
I nodded and flexed my bulky muscles that were also a far cry from the wiry, adolescent body they once knew. “The scar doesn’t hurt.”
“I got that halfway through. A fight with someone trying to rape me. It landed me in solitary.”
Her wide eyes darted to the splice that cut through my eyebrow then down my cheekbone and she winced.
“Max, I need to know more. I need to know how.”
“What do you mean?” She spun on her board and managed to cross her legs without dumping herself into the ocean.
“I didn’t spend one day, fuck, not even one minute, contemplating what I would do to them. I loved them,” I said softly. “The second I remembered, I wanted revenge, but I don’t know how to do it. I have to learn their secrets—I loved them in spite of them before—I’m still working on the deceit now.”
“How? When?”
“Roofing,” I answered with a shrug. “That’s what Danger did for a while. Well, that and sell drugs apparently, which isn’t really much of a surprise.”
“That’s why you chose it?”
I nodded then gazed off into the distance as my smile thinned, and my teeth grit.
“What did you find out?”