Under Locke

by Mariana Zapata

  Oh crap. There may have been a gulp that was processed in my throat. "About that..."

  He leaned forward over the counter, elbows propped up on the edge. "Sooner or later you'll figure out that eventually I find out everythin', Ritz."

  That suddenly sounded like way more of a threat that I hope he'd intended it to.

  ~ * ~ *

  "Get that ugly shit out of my face," Blake snapped at Slim.

  I—who had a hummus sandwich an inch away from my face—choked on air, right before gasping, "That's what she said," like there was a fire beneath my ass.

  Slim tipped his head back and laughed, loud, pulling the sheet of paper he'd been shoving into Blake's face away. "Ah, shit."

  "Sorry," I apologized, looking over at Blake. He was shaking his head, still tearing away at the baked potato he'd been eating. "You asked for it."

  He waved his fork-less hand in my direction. "Sure, smart ass."

  I waggled my eyebrows over at Slim, referring to the ugly shit Blake had been cawing at. "Not that my opinion matters, but I think it's awesome."

  The piece of paper he'd been holding up against Blake's face was a design he'd finished last night. The artwork was of a bright blue dragon with huge black wings, firing out a spray of rainbow colors. I mean, considering my name meant rainbow, I had a fondness of them. Plus, it was epic.

  "You want me to save this one for you?" he asked a little too quickly.

  Like I wouldn't remember he tried at least once a week to get me to agree to a tattoo. It wasn't like I hadn't thought about it regularly. I did. I loved the tattoos that the guys and Blue did, but there was only one place on my body that I could instantly think of where I'd want one at. That one place was the only location I couldn't have done.

  The inside of my arm.

  But I didn't want to hurt Slim's feelings and have him think that I didn't want his work since I'd kept shooting him down each time he brought it up.

  "If you could tattoo over some scar tissue I have, I'd tell you let's do it right now. You can't though, right?"

  The redhead nodded slowly, frowning. "Not a good idea." He tipped his head in question. "Where at?"

  That wouldn't give away too much, would it? "My inner bicep." Well, what was left of it.

  "Is it a lot?" Blake asked, narrowing his eyes.

  Crap, I forgot how observant he was. "Yeah."

  He pursed his lips. "Is that why you're always wearing long sleeves?"

  Of course he'd notice. Of course. I mean, I did happen to be the only person I could think of that wore long-sleeved clothing every day. Sure most of the material was light, but the fact was, in Texas heat, I'd stick out like a sore thumb. Someone was bound to notice it at some point.

  Most girls my age were usually trying to take clothes off instead of putting more on. That seemed to be the story of my life. When some people my age were worrying about certain things, I'd be stuck tackling a whole different type of monster. Oh well.

  I wanted to touch my arm but I had to fight the urge so that I wouldn't draw more attention to it. "Yeah. It's pretty big."

  Blake glanced down at the wrong arm before shaking his head, smiling just a bit. "Girl, we all have stuff wrong with us. You see these ears?" He pointed at them and for the first time, I noticed that they looked just a little bit larger than they should have been ideally proportional. "Kids used to call me Dumbo."

  Slim snorted really loud. "I can see that."

  I elbowed him in the side. "That's so mean."

  The redhead shrugged. "They used to call me Gingervitis." He paused. "Cinnamon dick." He looked up at the ceiling as if in deep thought. "Once, some shit-nuggets pulled down my pants in gym class to see if—," he sent me a sidelong glance, "the carpet matched the drapes."

  "Holy crap," I started laughing, not able to help it.

  Slim nodded, grinning. "Yeah. I was a late bloomer, so you can only imagine."

  Blake covered his face with his hands, his shoulders shaking. "You had a little tonsil tickler, didn't you?"

  "I hadn't hit puberty yet!"

  "Be honest, that really happened like last week, didn't it?" Blake snorted.

  By some miracle, right before I face-planted the desk from how hard I was laughing, I caught Slim shooting the middle finger in the bald man's direction.

  "Fuck you, Dumbo. I was just trying to make Iris feel better." He cocked his head to look at me with an expression that showed how hard it was for him to not bust an amused gut. "Did my Little Red make you feel better about your arm?"

  I didn't even have to think about it before nodding. Most of my life, my mom and yia-yia had told me that the imperfection gave me character, that it wasn't a big deal. And it wasn't. Really. It was ugly, but I'd managed to hide it as well as I could because frankly, more than the looks of disgust, the pity faces I got were what truly bothered me.

  Most people thought that the cancer made me into some weak, broken thing. The only thing I'd sacrificed along the journey of four different surgeries was physical strength. My left arm would never be as strong as my right for obvious reasons. I’d lost most of the muscle over a decade. But that was it. The doctors had worried that I'd lose mobility but thankfully—thankfully—I didn't. It was just a little smaller and weaker. Big deal. I couldn't ask for more when the prognosis could have been so glum.

  I wasn't built out of glass. I'd been healthy and strong my entire life except for those stages throughout my childhood and teen years. It was me who had kept my family afloat when things had withered. No one needed to feel bad for me because of my arm. I was made of tougher stuff than that.

  And in that moment, it struck me that I'd felt bad for myself. I didn't need to hide my arm to know what I was capable of, what I was made of.

  Because like Blake and Slim had tried to point out, we all had our physical nuances. Blake's ears didn't make him any less friendly or creative. Slim's hair was probably his signature now that he didn't have to deal with a bunch of immature douche-bags.

  I felt... renewed and grateful to them.

  I couldn't help but smile over at him. "You definitely did," I snorted. "Pippi Longstocking."

  To his credit, Slim waited almost a minute before tossing the balled up napkin at my face.

  “I think I liked you more when you didn’t talk.”

  I tossed the napkin back at him before collecting my leftovers. I opened up the fridge to put my stuff up and spotted Dex’s bottles of Nesquik lined up neatly inside. Snatching one up, I pressed the cold bottom of it to Slims’s neck as I walked past him and made my way toward the front. The office door was closed and so was the private room.

  Dex was at his station with a client when I walked by. He happened to look up at the right time, so I held the bottle up and gave it a swirl, mouthing, “For you.” I tipped my head in the direction of my desk and grinned at him.

  The smile that came over his face before he mouthed back, “Thanks,” made my chest constrict.

  What was happening to me?

  ~ * ~ *

  "You gonna make it all the way home?" Dex asked as we made our way out of Pins that night.

  The last three hours had been painful for me to get through. Having such a fitful night of sleep the day before on top of the two hours I spent at the YMCA when Dex had dropped me off that afternoon, and then working, had paid a toll on my body. I'd caught myself falling asleep once or twice at my desk.

  I nodded at him after waving goodbye to Blake. "Yeah, I'll be okay." At least I hoped so.

  He gave me a weary glance like he wasn't entirely convinced I wouldn't fall off the back of his bike halfway to his house. It'd be his fault though. After I'd told him that morning that I wanted to have a swim at the Y, he'd insisted on driving me there and picking me up. It made more sense to me to drive myself there, and then work, but the man was relentless.

  He had shit to do at Mayhem like always.

  That shit to do was why I found myself back on his bike, bordering on delusion
al. So I'd blame the fact I was delusional on how I ended up in his bedroom just minutes later.

  Yes, in his bed.

  It’d been hard enough to keep my arms wrapped around him so that I wouldn’t fall off the bike. Dex’s warm body and the mind numbingly loud roar of his motorcycle were like a potent sleeping pill. It was only an intense fear of falling off and getting run over by a car that kept me hanging onto him for dear life through my drowsiness. The moment he parked in front of his house, my brain stopped working altogether. There weren’t any cars to run me over in his driveway, thank goodness.

  I remember Dex pulling me by the hand across the circling driveway, into the house and past the living room before swiftly pushing me into his bedroom and closing the door in my face with an insistent, “You get the bed tonight.”

  I wanted to argue with him, I swear I did, but when I pressed my hand to the corner of the mattress and realized it was a Tempurpedic, that thought went right back out. Just one night. At least that’s what I told myself.

  Most of my clothes were stripped off, I rinsed out my mouth in his master bath, and stumbled into bed wearing just the tank top I’d worn that day and my panties. Exactly three seconds later, I was dead to the world. Hunger wasn't even a blip on my radar—nothing was.

  Until the bed compressed behind me not long after I laid down.

  “Dex?” I asked in a sleepy whisper. I was so tired it could have been those masked serial killers I’d been stressing about forever, and I would have stayed in bed regardless.

  Something touched my shoulder. A husky voice made a sleepy sigh. “Couch sucks, babe.”

  Even though I was tired as hell, I knew that there was something completely inappropriate about sleeping in the same bed as my boss regardless of how hot he was. And that I might have a bit of a—nope, I wasn't going to say it was a crush. That would make me feel like I was sixteen again. I liked him, that simple. How could I not?

  I wasn’t even sure if I could really consider Dex a friend, even if I wanted to justify what was going on by saying that friends could sleep on beds together. It took everything in me to roll onto my back and tilt my head over to where he’d laid down on the other side of the mattress.

  Besides the times when I'd had to share a bed with Will as kids, and that one time I messed around with my boyfriend a few years back, I'd never even been on the same bed as another guy. God, that made me feel lame.

  It took all the baby scraps of will I’d stashed under my nails and tendons to sit up completely, yawning like it was morning time instead of the middle of the night. “I’ll go sleep on the couch then,” was what I told him, although I’m sure it sounded like some mutilated version of it.

  His hand draped across my waist in a move that I had no doubt had been practiced many times in his life. “Stay. The bed’s big enough for the both of us,” was his brilliant answer.

  It was the truth but still. He was laying in the middle so it defeated the purpose of his comment.

  I yawned again. “It's not a good idea.” Once again I’m sure it didn’t sound anything like that out loud.

  Dex grumbled, fingers wiggling at the bend of my hip and waist. “Quit bein' a prude and go to sleep, babe.”

  If I'd been more awake I would have been offended by being called a prude. Though I kind of was.

  I groaned. “Dex.”

  “Baby, please. Just go back to sleep. That couch is fuckin’ uncomfortable.”

  Dang it!

  He made another grumbling noise. “I swear I’m not gonna try to feel you up or anythin', Ritz.“

  That notice didn’t exactly make me feel any better. Of course he wouldn't. I was like his... pet dog or something.

  “I can just sleep, I swear," he insisted in a yawn.

  Eek. Score two for Dex on the not-making-Iris-feel-better scoreboard.

  “Babe, c’mon. I promise.”

  And it was a Tempurpedic, damn it.

  I was a weak sucker. I knew that. Even though I made huffs and puffs as I shuffled back under the covers and rolled further away from Dex, I still didn’t think staying on the same mattress was a good idea. But I did it anyway.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Waking up next to Dex had to be the most awkward experience of my life.

  More awkward than the time I'd walked in on yia-yia naked.

  Because it wasn't like I opened my eyes facing the wall. I woke up on my belly. Normal, right?

  With an elbow digging into my shoulder and a heavy leg thrown over one of mine—not so normal.

  It wasn't like there was a boner pressed up against me or anything, but the bodily contact was enough. I straightened out as much as I could before trying to slide out from beneath the limbs pinning me down. I'd barely managed to scoot over about two inches before the leg over mine locked me down.

  "What'cha doin'?" Dex's incredibly husky voice asked.

  I froze. "Trying to get up."

  The weight of his leg lessened as his heel slid up from my ankle to my knee. He had to be sleeping on his back, I figured. "Mmm," he grumbled. The elbow on my shoulder shifted off of me at the same time I heard him yawn. His foot shifted again, the sole coming to rest on the back of my knee before sliding down my calf. Holy moly, that was hot. "What are you wearin', honey?"

  Aww crap.

  "I'm not wearing pants," I told him, not moving an inch while his warm foot rubbed up my leg again.

  All of a sudden, a cool breeze swept over my legs and I peeked over my shoulder to see Dex holding the sheet up, his head tipped down while he looked below it.

  Wait a second...

  I slapped the sheet down with my hand, half shrieking and for some unknown reason, half laughing. "What the hell are you doing?"

  Of the ten different ways he could have answered, Dex chose to laugh. But it wasn't a regular laugh, it was the lightest, most genuine sound I'd ever heard from him. "Checkin' out that ass," he answered breezily.

  "Jeez," I groaned, rolling onto my side to face away from him. My shirt didn't cover my upper arms at all, so as long as I kept my arm clamped down he wouldn't be able to see it. Which only meant that I needed to quit testing fate and get the heck out of the room. "That's inappropriate, Dex."

  "Who says?" he answered from behind me. I could hear the sheets rustling with his movement.

  My brother, I wanted to answer him but seriously? What had ever given me the idea that Dex would do something he didn't want to? Oh, please.

  I sighed and sat up on the edge of the bed, facing the wall. My clothes were piled on the floor and I carefully slid my pants up my legs without standing up too much.

  "You wanna shower before we get goin'?" Dex's voice carried over from the opposite side of the room.

  I had no idea what he was doing. Knowing him, probably not getting dressed. I had a terrible feeling he slept in only his underwear. I'd barely survived seeing him in shorts back in Austin. Seeing him in his underwear now that I realized how I—unfortunately—felt for him? Disaster.

  "Where are we going?" It was Sunday and the shop was closed.

  "My niece's birthday party." It sounded like he'd opened the bathroom door. "I need to stop and get her somethin' or else I'll never hear the end of it."

  Now that made me laugh. Dex Locke scared of his niece's wrath? The fact was, I hadn't met his family. I wouldn't know anyone besides him at the party, and just thinking about that made me anxious.

  I leaned back to zip up the tab on my pants. "I can just stay here if you don't mind."

  His huff was distorted by the distance. "I want you to go."

  Crap.

  The recommendation just kind of came out. "You sure you don't have anyone else that already knows your family?" The stupid redhead flashed through my brain. Ugh.

  "No," he answered too quickly. "You're comin'. So grab your bathin' suit and whatever else you're gonna need at the lake, so we can leave in an hour."

  A bathing suit? In front of his family? I'd just come to terms wi
th my arm the day before, but that didn't mean I was ready to have a ton of people I didn't know looking at it weird.

  Shit.

  "All right." I was such a wuss. Such a big, friggin' coward.

  I stood up and slipped my cardigan on over my tank top, grabbing my socks off the floor before rounding the bed. Dex was standing just inside his bathroom, a toothbrush shoved into his mouth, his face still too sleepy.

  And the cruel bastard that weaved the fate of people's lives together decided that the beautiful black-haired man with brilliant tattoos all over his upper body, would be standing there in his boxers. The hand on his hip only accentuated the contoured lines of muscle beneath all his tattoos. Damn him.