by L.J. Shen
“You will be kissed by a lot of men. A lot of men I’d love to punch in the face. A lot of men who aren’t me.”
Recognizing that I was begging, I scooted away from him, my butt touching the passenger door. I needed to leave, and I was going to, despite not wanting to. I didn’t want him to go to anyone else. It was greedy, and selfish, and uncalled for, but it was the truth. I wanted Bane for myself.
“I don’t want you to sleep with anyone else.”
He smiled bitterly. “You can’t always get what you want.”
“I know,” I grumbled, waiting one more minute for him to say something more. To take it back. He didn’t. I threw the door open and hopped out. I wanted to be mad at him for the way he’d reacted, but he was right. From the outside, it might look like he was using me, had I slept with him. I raced toward my house, refusing to look back. Maybe it was for the best if he didn’t show up at Café Diem tomorrow morning.
“Hey, Snowflake,” he hollered from behind me. I stopped, but didn’t turn around.
“Care to explain why you came out of that bathroom all flustered today?”
I put my hand on the door handle, twisted it, and walked in, leaving him high and dry. I thought I heard the thump of his head hitting the leather headrest behind him before I slammed the door, and wasn’t surprised.
He wanted me to feel empowered.
And that’s what I was going to be.
That night was the first in months when sleep came. And with it, the nightmare I’d been avoiding.
It felt like a memory more than a dream.
A black empty room. A figure of my slightly younger self, curled in a corner, on a couch. I watched the entire thing like I was watching TV, outside of my own body.
Young Jesse was reading a book. She flipped the pages, munching on a lock of her hair. Then the scent came to me. Alcohol. The kind my dad used to drink. Vodka. And with that scent, an intense fear that intensified in my gut.
A shadow floated over my figure. A man. I couldn’t get a good look at him. His back was to me, but he was facing young Jesse.
His back.
His back.
His back.
That’s why I did it. That’s why I took pictures of backs.
It was because of this man.
But who was he?
The Jesse in my dream dropped the book to her lap and stared back at him. She looked about ready to jump up and run away, and I wanted her to. Badly.
The man took a step toward me. Her. Us.
She dragged my body to the corner of the couch.
“No,” she said. “Please. I know I shouldn’t be here, but I promise I won’t come back if you let me go.”
My brain ordered my body to move. For my eyes to open. I wanted to get out of the dream before it consumed me. I wanted to get out before I remembered something I was pretty sure there was a good reason for me to forget. The only thing I could feel was my eyelids fluttering in REM. My body was frozen, my mind reeling.
Move. Wake up. Get the hell out of bed right now.
The man inched closer, and she curled inside herself, much like I had after what Emery, Nolan, and Henry did to me.
I wanted to kick my legs. To fall off the bed.
The scent of vodka pierced my nose, settling in my gut.
I finally managed to open my mouth, but nothing came out. Not a whisper, not a scream.
Somehow, I managed to grip one post of the bed and straighten myself up, gulping the morning sun and cracking my eyes open. Panting hard and dripping cold sweat, all I could do was turn around to the pin board behind me and flatten my hands around it, frantically looking for this man’s back. I couldn’t find it.
I put on my Keds, finger Taser, and black hoodie and went out for a run.
This time, I didn’t stop until my knees hit the concrete.
I SPENT THE NEXT FEW days dragging my ass to business meetings, surfing with Beck, and sulking like a little bitch. Everything and everyone annoyed the shit out of me. My friends. My mom. My beard. I was even pissy at Edie just because she reminded me of my last conversation with Jesse.
Jesse, whom I’d been ignoring religiously for the past couple days, avoiding Café Diem just because I knew seeing her would make me start a world war.
I knew it was a dick move, but now that she was getting better at the whole life-ing gig, I definitely needed to put some space between us to make sure it wasn’t my cock she was riding the next time her crayon-blue eyes flicked at me beguilingly. As it was, I was entering dangerous territory by spending the advance Darren gave me like that shit was guaranteed.
New furniture for the hotel? Ka-ching.
New plumbing for Café Diem? Ka-ching.
New asshole Darren’s lawyers were going to tear me had they found out I broke our deal, touched the untouchable, and was now around a million bucks indebted to him? Ka-ching, ka-ching, ka-fucking-ching.
Truth was, I didn’t think I had more power over Jesse than she had over me.
She had plenty of power over my ass. I was just a damn good con who knew how to hide it.
And power was a game I knew all too well. Once upon a time, my mom had dated a dude who’d stuck around long enough for me to actually remember his name. Artem. Russian. Well, obviously. Artem was not a piece of shit in the grand scheme of things. Maybe I’m not giving him enough credit. He was actually a father to me without doing the whole parenting crap. One thing he did was teach me how to play chess. The rules of chess were very simple: while it was true that the king was the most important piece in the game, he was also the weakest. The queen was the most powerful, and you best not forget that if you wanted to get ahead in life.
Jesse was pretty much the only pussy in this town that was completely forbidden to me, and yet, I found myself craving her more and more. It was a combination of a few things. Her defiance, her quiet strength, her wit, and her compassion toward others.
I found myself trudging to Café Diem despite my best efforts because I wanted to make up for not checking on her on her first day. And the day after. And the one after it.
It’s okay to judge me. I’m fucking judging myself, too.
It was surreal. Opening the door to my café without wanting to. Strolling between the busy tables without meaning to. Parking my ass on the stool by the counter, in front of Jesse and Gail, knowing I should be somewhere—hell, anywhere—else.
Gail’s bald head was shining like a marble, totally weird in contrast with her feminine, round face, and she wore a Stay Weird black T-shirt, red Chucks, and matching nail polish. Her lips were powder pink, against dramatic makeup. Jesse was wearing something, too, though I was too mesmerized by her moving, pouty lips to notice what it was.
“Tell me more about him,” Jesse probed, so focused on Gail she didn’t notice me. But Gail sure did. And she did that little let’s-fuck-things-up smirk of hers before she turned around back to Snowflake for an answer.
“He’s nice, I guess. Kind of strange, but that’s hardly a fault in my book.” Gail wiped steamy mugs fresh out of the dishwasher with a cloth and arranged them neatly behind her, against the white, exposed-brick wall. She better not have referred to me, because not only was I not nice nor strange, but I was also her fucking boss.
“Hale is super hot, though. Plus, he’s like this crazy philosopher dude. And he never hits on anyone, so he obviously likes you,” Gail sing-songed, her words shooting straight to my veins, heating my bloodstream.
Hale? Fucking Hale was here? Hitting on my Jesse? I mean, Jesse. Not mine. She wasn’t mine. Only, the small hole that opened in my chest didn’t agree with that last statement.
“Oh, I don’t date. I was just wondering what his story was. I caught him staring at me the other day. He wore the same FREE tank today. I just wondered what his deal was.” Jesse used her hip to shut a stainless steel fridge underneath her, where we kept the crushed ice. She prepared a smoothie for a surfer chick at the cash register. I was in awe of how natural
she looked behind the counter. A part of me had still believed that Snowflake wouldn’t be able to fully settle into her job, and it was still early, but damn, she looked…normal. Although I was happy for her, a small, crazy, petty-ass part of me was pissed. Pissed that she no longer needed me like she thought she did.
I mentally started listing reasons why she needed to stay in the picture. My picture.
I gave her a job with flexible hours. I gave her security. I humored her with whatever she needed. But I also told her I was going to fuck other people. She not only accepted that, but also seemed to fit right into her role as a barista. Not that it bothered me that she didn’t need me as much as she thought.
Okay, yeah, it did bother me.
And it bothered me that it bothered me, because what kind of asshole wants others to be dependent on them simply to keep them close?
Me. That’s who.
“Famous Last Words” by My Chemical Romance played over “Crystallize” by Lindsey Stirling (we had a DJ drop ready-made music weekly because we couldn’t decide on playlists we liked), and Gail dug her phone out of her back pocket.
“Whoa!” My super emo employee held her cell phone in the air, her mouth forming into an O. I was still pretending to browse through my phone, pinching my eyebrows like it was important, and cursing Hale for figuring my shit out. I was ninety-nine percent sure he’d worked out my so-called angle and had decided to piss me off by hitting on the girl I had my eye on.
“Dude! Hale just texted me. He asked for your number. What do I do?” Gail squealed. Jesse’s eyes widened, as did her smile, and I wanted to die a thousand deaths.
You stab him in the face and then hand him over to me to finish the job.
Snowflake punched the blender’s button to buy time. I wanted so badly to kiss her for it. She was flattered, sure, but she wasn’t going to hand over her number so fast. Hell, she’d barely given it to me, and I’d courted her ass for weeks. But that didn’t change the fact that there would be more Hales. More good-looking, smooth-talking assholes that would try to hit on her ass, now that she was in plain sight, looking delicious and alive.
Snow White had woken up, and a prince was on his way, probably riding in a white Tesla.
There was always a fucking prince to rain on the villain’s parade.
The blender stopped. Jesse plucked it out of its hub and slapped the bottom as she poured the pink smoothie into a tall cup.
“Jesse? Should I give him your number?” Gail’s thumbs were already moving on her screen, and I wondered how much she would hate me if I broke them.
Say no.
“Sure.”
Fuck.
At the risk of becoming the douchiest dipshit to ever set foot in Todos Santos—a goddamn mission, considering the average income per household and number of entitled teenagers in this place—I decided to stay the fuck out of this conversation and actually found it in me to allow Jesse the time to give Gail her number. Not only did I successfully manage not to detonate with anger while Gail repeated it aloud while typing it back to Hale, but I also chose the moment after Gail tucked her phone into her jeans to make myself known.
By the way, did I mention that Hale was a dead man? No? Because that was the case.
“How are my favorite ladies?” I flashed my come-hither smirk. See? Casual. What’s that tick in my eyelid? Not a stroke, that’s for sure.
“Good question. That’s roughly eighty-five percent of the female population of SoCal, so you better start an online questionnaire to save time,” Jesse said sweetly, sliding the smoothie to the girl in the wetsuit. I’d walked right into that one, so I permitted her the moment to bask in Gail’s giggles.
One point to the girl with the Pushkin tattoo, zero to the asshole who is pissing all over her hard-earned trust.
The surfer chick rolled two dollars into the tip jar, then winked at me, sucking hard on her straw. Jesse followed that silent exchange, and that made me feel better about shit. Kind of.
“Work’s good so far?” I ignored Jesse’s spunk. She placed her elbows on the counter from the other side, and it didn’t escape me that she looked confident, and radiant, and fucking edible. I zoned in on her again, realizing she wasn’t wearing her usual black hoodie. She must’ve pulled that shit from the depth of her closet, because she looked…fresh. Colorful, even, with plaid red leggings that were tight everywhere, her trademark Keds, and a long yellow T-shirt with two skeleton hands giving you the finger. She looked delicious and alive, and I suddenly felt both possessive and protective of her.
“Great. Thank you. Did you surf today?”
“Did you breathe today?” I challenged.
She smiled. “Yes.”
“Yeah, I surfed today.” I grabbed a bottle of sparkling water from behind the counter and unscrewed the cap, taking a swig. “You should learn how to surf. You’ll love it. It’s a lonely sport. A lot of shutting up involved.”
The thought occurred to me out of nowhere. It meant more time with Jesse, and even more importantly—more time with her while she was wearing either a bikini or a wetsuit. A huge win for my libido, a terrible loss for my balls. It only took one look at her to know that plan had flushed down the drain. She looked like I’d offered her a threesome with Shadow.
“No, thanks.”
“’Cause?” I snapped my gum in faked boredom.
She looked down at her shoes, clutched her stomach through the yellow fabric of her shirt, and then shook her head. “It really doesn’t matter, Bane.”
“Call me Roman.”
“Why?”
Because no one else does, and I need something about us to feel different.
Of course, I didn’t actually entertain myself with the idea of saying something quite so Kate Hudson film-ish. I shrugged. “I don’t know. Just sounds weird coming from your mouth. You didn’t know me in high school.”
Bull, meet shit.
I stuck around for the remainder of her shift. I tried to tell myself that I needed to supervise my own coffee shop, but the truth of the matter was, I didn’t want any more Hales to show up and hit on her ass. I didn’t actually think for a second that she was going to go out with him. But Hale, like his hair, was a red flag. Another guy would come, soon. He would look wholesome, and she would take a chance. Why wouldn’t she?
I sat in the corner for a while and pretended to work on some numbers. I hated numbers, though I was good with them. Every time I looked up, Jesse was busy. Finally—fucking finally—at one in the afternoon, she loitered by the coffee machine, flipping songs in our playlist. I moved my ass in her direction, watching her back, her neck, that tattoo that peeked back at me, now that her hair was gathered into a messy bun on top of her head.
“No one touches the playlist,” I said coolly. “That shit is cherry-picked by a Swedish indie music producer. No one wants to hear your Taylor Swift songs.”
I was an asshole. She didn’t like Taylor Swift, and I knew it.
“Jesus H, dude!” She turned around, jumping by the sudden intrusion. She’d said dude. She never said dude. Hell, I sometimes forgot Jesse was a twenty-year-old. Actually, not really. Her birthday was next week, and I was hyperaware of that. Because of the deal and everything, of course.
“Come with me.” I motioned with my head to the storage room. I wasn’t going to risk another public meltdown. Jesse was good at handing me my own ass in public. And I wanted to talk to her about something sensitive. Namely—how we couldn’t be rubbing each other’s privates anymore.
She followed me silently. I felt her steps a foot from mine. Darren was going to shish-kebab my head Game of Thrones-style if I touched her. Besides, there was a bigger plan.
A bigger end game.
The door behind us closed, and because my dick didn’t get the memo that I was not sixteen anymore, I had some serious wood to take care of. My cock was so hard the slit stared directly at my face, only Jesse couldn’t see it, because I still wore surf shorts. But it was just shorts,
and I was morally opposed to any kind of underwear on men or women, so she could make out my hard-on if she simply looked.
Which she didn’t.
Thank fuck.
She hopped on top of a crate of orange juice gallons and folded her arms over her chest, dangling her legs. The light was murky and shitty, and she looked even more beautiful, now that I could clearly see her imperfections under the harsh yellow bulb. Her eyes were tired and red. Her mouth was curved in sad dissatisfaction with life. And the freckle under her left eye stained her otherwise pristine skin.
I needed to stop fixating and start fixing. I took her hand in mine. Wasn’t that supposed to be the thing you did when you wanted to be sympathetic? Hold someone’s hand? I’d never been in this position before. I mean, I’d broken plenty of bad news, but I never felt bad about breaking it, if that made sense.
Okay, now I was definitely stalling.
“Repeat after me, Snowflake: the queen is more powerful than the king.”
Her eyes were on mine, and the passion in them surprised me. It was like she knew what I was talking about. Maybe she was good at chess, too.
“The queen is more powerful than the king.”
I took her face in my hands, knowing the natural thing to do was to crash my lips against hers and see my plans and dreams rising in flames.
We can’t touch each other anymore. Not even a peck on the cheek.
Only I didn’t say that. I didn’t even think that all the way. Instead, I asked, “What’s the story with the surfing? You won’t do it?”
I thought she was going to tell me she didn’t like displaying her body after what had happened—which was fair enough—but I never expected her to silently lift her shirt and show me that.
That being her scars.
Purple and deep and taunting.
Slut
I felt my throat bobbing but couldn’t feel the swallow. Her top was bunched up around her tits. I wanted to yank her into me and hug her. I wanted to kiss that damn scar better. I wanted to lick it and bite it and show her that she was still sexy, with or without it. Actually, especially with it. What’s sexier than a goddamn survivor?