Moreau Davy was Rook’s biggest client, and also an international movie star. He was one of the most famous people in the entire world. He’d also had his life saved by Rook’s private security team just about six months ago. And, as a thank you, he had offered to put up the entire team, and their families, in a villa on a private island in the Caribbean for a week this summer.
May had, in fact, gotten the email. “I did. Ricky’s thrilled.”
May knew that in many ways she was so freaking lucky. There weren’t many fifteen-year-old girls who would be over the moon about going on vacation with their dad in the middle of the summer. But Ricky and Rook had a great relationship.
“Yeah. I talked to her about it this weekend. I can’t tell if she’s excited to spend time with me or if she just wants to stare at Moreau in a bathing suit.”
May laughed and grimaced at the same time. Moreau Davy was impossibly good looking and their daughter had had a bit of a tough time concealing her crush on him in the past, even though their close friend, Geo, was his girlfriend now.
May sunk down on the couch, much more comfortable now that they were discussing their daughter. Ricky was neutral territory. “Truth be told, I think her crush on Moreau might be waning in favor of Jake Bastille.”
Rook stiffened. “Who the hell is Jake Bastille?”
“Some kid at school. She’s mentioned him a few times. And they’ve been writing notes back and forth.”
“Notes? What kind of twenty-first-century kid writes notes?”
“The kind whose nosy father runs a private security firm and knows exactly how to hack into her texts.” May raised an eyebrow at him and Rook pursed his lips.
“For the record,” he told her. “I’ve never done that. But it’s not a bad idea.”
May couldn’t help but laugh.
Rook pulled out his phone and started typing stuff into it. “I’m looking up Jake Bastille.”
“Ooh!” She jumped off the couch. “I wanna see.”
She perched on the arm of Rook’s chair and he shoved over to give her a little room in a move so familiar and natural it tugged on her heart painfully. Six years ago, if she’d come to sit like this, he would have shoved over to give her space and then snaked an arm around her, nibbled her throat, smelled her hair. Even at the end, when things had been so fraught and so bad, he had been physically affectionate with her, as if he couldn’t help himself. Today, though, he kept to his side of the chair, holding his phone out so that they could both see the screen.
“Oh, Christ,” Rook moaned. “He’s in a band.”
An image of a kid with brown skin and wavy black hair that fell into his eyes filled the screen. He had a goofy grin, a Brooklyn Nets jersey on, and a trumpet in one hand.
May turned to eye Rook. “He’s not in a band. He’s in the band. Trust me. That’s very different.”
“How is that different?”
“He’s a band geek!” May scrolled through the kid’s profile. “Look, he’s going to science camp this summer. His idols are Miles Davis and Bill Nye. I think our daughter’s virginity is safe for a while.”
He gave a full-body wince. “Don’t say that!”
“What?”
“Don’t talk about Ricky’s…” he, apparently, couldn’t even say the word out loud. “She’s a kid still. Let’s not even talk about that.”
“Rook. She’s obviously too young to be having sex, but she’s not that much younger than we were when—”
“I know. I was just thinking about that tonight. But she’s too young for sex. That’s an important year.”
“Two years,” May corrected. “We were seventeen when we finally had sex.”
Rook paused, his brow furrowed, like he was trying to think back to the timeline of it all.
“Remember?” She nudged his side with her elbow. “You made me wait an entire year before you gave it up.”
He laughed, rolling his eyes, his cheeks pink. “That’s right. If it were up to you, we would have done it in the backseat of my dad’s car behind the Church’s Chicken on Flatbush on our second date.”
“And it would have been awesome.” They both laughed. “Instead, you insisted we do it your way. Waiting a freaking year, until we were both so horny and in love I was surprised we didn’t cause a tear in the space/time continuum when we finally did it.”
“My way worked out just fine, if I remember correctly.” He tipped his head back and May realized that she was sitting close enough to see the blue in his eyes.
Yikes. Yowza. Red alert.
She jumped up from the chair and strode back over to the couch. She could not snuggle up to Javier Rook and talk about sex. Not when he smelled like that and looked like that and felt that good to laugh with. Nuh uh. No go. Turn back. Danger.
She crossed her legs over one another and her arms over her chest. Closed for business. “What were we talking about before that?”
“Oh. Right. Moreau’s vacation.”
“Right. Well, I think you guys are gonna have a great time, and it’ll be good for you to get some time with her before she heads off to field hockey camp for a month. I’ll miss her though. Maybe I’ll try to do something special with her, just the two of us, right when you guys get back. Before she ships out.”
Rook was staring at her in confusion. “You mean you’re not coming? On the vacation?”
May gaped at him as her brain took in his meaning. “Rook, are you joking? I’m not invited on that vacation.”
He stared at her blankly.
“I’m your ex-wife,” she reminded him.
His face tightened and his eyes got dark. “If you read the email that Moreau sent you, he’s totally inviting you along, May.”
“Yeah, but it’s not up to Moreau. I’m your ex-wife,” she repeated, as if either of them needed the reminder of their broken marriage.
Rook stared at her for a long time, his head propped on his fist again. “Are you saying that it’s up to me whether or not you join us?”
“I’m saying that it would be beyond weird for me to come. Moreau invited you.”
“Moreau invited me and my family.”
May wilted on the inside. She felt like an oyster contracting around a hidden pearl. There was this one, perfect thing inside of her, that hadn’t been destroyed during their divorce, and she refused to let Rook prod at it.
But apparently he wasn’t finished making his point. “Obviously we’re not married anymore, May, but that doesn’t mean you’re not my family. That doesn’t mean…” He leaned forward, showing frustration for the first time since he’d arrived. He ripped one hand through his hair and then flattened it with his palm. “You’re the mother of my daughter, May. We’re a family.”
May felt her armor assembling. There was only so much vulnerability that she was capable of at a time like this. “I’ve lost track of what exactly we’re arguing about.”
He sighed and stood up, shoving his hands in his pockets. “Just consider the vacation, May. It doesn’t have to be weird. Obviously, we’ll be staying in separate rooms. All our friends will be there. Our daughter will be there.” He came a few feet around the coffee table and nudged her foot with his foot. “It’s on the ocean. There’s jet-skis. And a pool.”
She swallowed down her reluctant smile. “Don’t push it.”
He smiled, even though she wasn’t letting herself give in to hers. “All right. I’ll quit while I’m ahead. See you on Wednesday.”
May didn’t watch him leave. But she waited for him to say the words. The words he’d always said to her, since that first night at her window.
“Make sure to lock up behind me.”
CHAPTER THREE
Rook pulled away from May’s house and started to drive back to his house, but in the end, took a left and headed toward work instead.
There was very little he hated more than returning to a kid-less house on Sunday nights after he dropped off Ricky at May’s. Divorce sucked going up the hill an
d it sucked going down the hill. There was no way around the fact that he was desperately lonely.
But work served to fill the void a bit. He was passionate about it and luckily there was always something to be done.
Twenty minutes later, he pulled through the Red Hook neighborhood, his window down in the warm early summer evening, he could smell diesel and the East river at the same time as he drove through the round circles of orange light from the street lamps. Red Hook was a strange Brooklyn neighborhood and changing fast. This close to the river was mostly abandoned warehouses and factories. Only in New York was waterfront property some of the most derelict and dangerous.
He’d bought the old warehouse while he’d still been married to May. Just a few months after he’d returned home from overseas. About a year before their divorce.
He pulled up to the fenced gate and inputted his personal code and his fingerprint for the gate to roll open. With a soldier’s superstition, he touched his fingers to the dog tags warm on his chest as he pulled through and down the drive toward what he’d come to call the bunker. Returning to the bunker always felt just like returning to his army base when he’d been serving overseas.
Any day that he’d gotten to return from a mission and lay his head on his bed in the base had been a good day. He said his thanks with a touch to his dog tags. An acknowledgment that things could have gone differently, but hadn’t. He was still here.
Here at the bunker, he reminded himself. Not in Iraq. Brooklyn.
He checked in through two more security systems before he was able to park his SUV in his spot in the atrium at the center of the warehouse. This was where they kept all the Rook Securities vehicles parked, and ringing around it was the track where his employees often jogged. Looming around the atrium on every side were windowed hallways that looked down over it. There were five floors to the bunker, with two crow’s nests sitting atop the building like a crown. Those were reserved for clients who needed twenty-four-hour protection. Rook took those clients on very carefully because they required so much extra effort from his employees.
When he’d started Rook Securities almost six years ago, all of his employees had been single, like him. But slowly, all of them had found their people. And one of them had a kid. Rook felt less and less comfortable taking over their lives and time with complicated clients that required days, weeks, or months of undivided attention. The business model just didn’t work as well anymore.
He was starting to wonder if the bunker was even necessary anymore, or if they should just start following the shadow security model, where his bodyguards simply shadowed their clients about their normal lives. It was much more conventional than what he did. But it was also less effective. The Rook Securities bunker was decked out with a kitchen, game room, library, offices and private quarters for each of his four employees.
They offered a lockdown service, in which the client was basically locked inside the bunker with the bodyguards and the world was locked out. They also did comprehensive security on a client’s cyber life as well. So every piece of their private lives and information was heavily guarded and secured.
It was this model that had landed him Moreau Davy as a client. Which had been a turning point in his business. He’d been working with Moreau Davy for five years now and, as a result, was four years out of debt.
It was also the model that had landed him squarely in singles-ville with no pitstops in sight.
Rook sighed as he sat down at his desk and logged into his computer. There was an email that he had to answer. And he deeply dreaded it. But he couldn’t avoid it anymore.
He clicked into it.
To: [email protected]
From: [email protected]
Subject: Cup of coffee?
Hi there,
This is one of the more embarrassing emails I’ve ever had to write in my lifetime, but my brother, Ray Wilkes, mentioned that you and I might hit it off? I should probably mention my name, Shaya. Shaya Wilkes. I’m a hairdresser, I live in Queens, and like I said, my brother thought we might have a nice time if we met up for a drink or a bite to eat. No pressure! I just thought I’d cast a line and see what happened.
Hope you’re having a good day!
-Shaya
As he had the first time he’d read the email, Rook just stared at it in utter bemusement. He’d been married for nine years and divorced for almost six, you’d think he’d have some dating experience at this point. But yeah. Nope. Pretty much none. And now Wilkes was pawning off his sister? What kind of guy did that?
Rook tried to picture setting up his sister, Tabby, with some schmuck. It’d pretty much have to be a Nobel Peace Prize winner for him to be satisfied, and even then, there was a lot of room for improvement.
But Rook liked Wilkes. He really did. So maybe it stood to reason that he’d like Wilkes’s sister?
He hated that after almost six years of divorce, the thought of accepting a date from an interested woman still felt like infidelity. He’d been faithful to May during their marriage, gladly and effortlessly. It had taken a few years for him to be able to sleep with someone else, and the impetus for that had ended up being pure loneliness. Lust and desire had been very secondary to the need for human connection.
It was probably time, he figured, to start going on casual dates. May was. He knew for a fact that she had a tinder account. And he’d had to meet her blonde fucktard of a boyfriend last year. It’d been a gift from God when she’d finally kicked that guy to the curb.
“It’s time,” he told himself out loud.
Holding his breath, he typed a quick response to Shaya, telling her he was going out of town but would like to meet up when he got back.
Then, he quickly shifted into the much safer territory of work mode. He fielded many work emails over the next hour and a half and was about to shut down and head home when a new incoming email appeared.
His stomach pulled tight and not in a good way. It was a reunion email. A request from one of the guys that Rook had served with overseas. It’s been too long, the email said. Why don’t we all get together for a bite to eat next month? Make a weekend of it out in Connecticut. Somewhere quiet and cheap where we don’t have to worry about our PTSD acting up ha ha ha.
Rook scrolled the list of email addresses that the note had been sent to and his stomach tightened even further.
It wasn’t a list of old army buddies, it was a list of survivors. It was the group of men who’d survived the IED blast that had killed eight men and wounded six of them.
Some worse than others.
His chest getting a little tight, Rook shut down the computer and made his way back to his truck. It wasn’t until he was in his SUV, halfway home, that he realized that one of his palms was flat against his chest, against his scars.
***
“Well, to be fair, it would be so much more fun if you came along, May,” said Naomi, one of May’s good friends. She also happened to be married to a member of Rook Security.
Actually, looking around the table at dinner on Monday night, May realized she was surrounded by the ladies of Rook Security. There was bubbly, redheaded Naomi who was married to Sequence. And next to her was thin, quiet, smart Bex, who was living with Atlas, who happened to be Sequence’s twin. Next to Bex was Geo, who was a member of Rook Security herself, her beau was none other than Moreau Davy. And finally, there was Elena, who was soon to be wed to Cedric Swift, the final member of Rook Security.
That made May the odd woman out. Though six years ago, she would have fit right in with the group. Until the day she divorced Rook, that is.
Sigh.
“Oh, a lot of help you are,” May griped to Naomi and raised her hand to the waiter for another round. The ladies sat at an outdoor cafe in Crown Heights that was fairly centrally located for all of them. It was cooling down, though it was still warm as the early summer sun set behind the trees lining one side of the block. “I called you all here to agree on how ridiculous it would be
if I showed up at Moreau’s vacation.”
“Well, I for one agree with Naomi,” Elena said, dipping a chip in some salsa. “It would be way more fun if you were there.”
“I’m not saying it wouldn’t be fun. I’m just saying it would be weird. Right? It’s weird for exes to go on vacation together?”
“Haven’t you two already done that before?” Geo asked, finishing her beer and making room for the next. She leaned back and let her face absorb some of the afternoon sun. Ever since she and Moreau had gotten together, her air of restless energy had subsided. These days she looked like a woman who was moving to her own clock. Content at every turn.
Lucky bitch.
“Grrrr,” May said, stabbing an olive with a fork and eating it with gusto. “I was hoping no one would bring that up. That was an accident. My boyfriend was supposed to be there to act as a buffer to me and Rook while we took Ricky on vacation.”
“The same boyfriend you kicked to the curb like ten seconds into the vacation so that you could have Rook all to yourself?” Naomi asked innocently, her big blue eyes batting.
“No comment.” May tried another tactic. “Besides. There’s no way that both Bex and I could take off for a week. Our dance studio would go down in flames.”
“Lies,” Bex said in her trademark way of mincing zero words. “We’d put up notices in the studio and on the website that there would be subs in our classes that week. And the other teachers would rejoice at receiving more hours. The end. Big whoop. Come on the free vacation that is being gifted to you by a handsome movie star.”
By the time Bex was done talking, the rest of the ladies were all grinning, even May. Bex sure could make a solid point when she put her mind to it.
“I’ll think about it.” May let the conversation drift to different topics. Elena’s wedding, Naomi and Sequence’s daughter. Ricky’s summer camp situation. But always, in the back of her mind was the question of whether or not she should go on this vacation next week.
She glanced at her watch and saw that Ricky was going to be getting dropped off any minute and she wanted to be home for that.
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