by Maya Nicole
Jax walked out of the room without a glance back, and I breathed a sigh of relief. "Thank fuck."
Tory laughed. "He is something else. I guess when you have a body like that there has to be some kind of flaw to make the universe happy." She picked up her bag and turned off her screen. "See you tomorrow."
I was left alone and shut down my computer before taking a minute to put my head in my hands. Senior year was supposed to be the best year of high school. We were entering adulthood and making decisions that would affect our futures. We weren't supposed to act like children. Targeting me for something my father's company did was ridiculous.
"Riley." My head snapped up and I was face to face with Jax, who had somehow snuck back in the room without a sound. He was leaning against the door.
I put my bag over my shoulder and stood. "Stay away from me."
He laughed and held up his hands. "What do you mean? I'm not even near you." He took a step toward me and I headed for the door connecting the classrooms.
I was just about to it when he grabbed me by the back of the neck and maneuvered me to face him, crashing his lips into mine. My hands came up to shove against his chest, but instead, fisted his shirt as he backed me against the wall and pushed his tongue into my mouth.
My mind was screaming at me to push him away, but instead, I moved my tongue into his mouth and my knees weakened. If I had known kissing was so great, I would have found someone to make out with a lot sooner. Someone that wasn't paying someone to beat me up.
But maybe I was wrong and it wasn't him in particular. It seemed more like something Morgan would instigate. He was the one that was the notorious bad boy of the three.
He pulled away just enough so our lips were almost brushing. "You need to tell us where your father is."
My feelings of lust toward him evaporated and I shoved him, moving him back a few inches. "I don't know my father."
"I find that hard to believe." He crossed his arms over his chest, drawing my attention to how the button-up shirt he was wearing clung to his biceps and pecs.
He smirked and brought a hand to his mouth, rubbing a finger over his bottom lip. I was distracted for a moment at how his lips seemed swollen from our kiss. Did mine look the same?
"Why is that hard to believe?" It was a struggle to keep my voice steady as my eyes tracked his every movement. "He left before I was one."
"Does your mom work?" He unbuttoned his sleeves and rolled them up to show his muscular forearms. "How does she make a living?"
I looked away to stop myself from ogling him. "What my mom does and doesn't do is none of your fucking business."
"I never pegged you for a girl that cusses." He stepped forward again. "By the way, where is your mom, Riley?"
My eyes met his and my heart stopped. Did he know where my mom was? I wracked my brain trying to remember if I had mentioned my mom going to the Maldives during the yearbook retreat. I opened my mouth to respond and then shut it.
"Here's what's going to happen." He trailed a finger down my jawline and I flinched away. "You're going to get your dad out of hiding."
"But-"
He pressed his forefinger to my lips. "Listen." I nodded. "Once you make contact with him, you'll text me and I'll give you further direction."
Tears sprang to my eyes because I didn't have the faintest clue of how to get into contact with my estranged father. I had asked when I was younger about him and my mother had shut me down, telling me never to bring him up again.
He removed his finger and wrapped his hand around the side of my neck, bringing his forehead to mine. "Don't make this harder than it needs to be, Riley. There will be consequences."
He released me, and I sagged against the wall as he walked to the door. "Consequences? Like paying someone to jump me or putting fish in my dorm?"
He turned the door handle and paused, looking back over his shoulder. The look he gave me was enough to make me piss my pants. "You have seventy-two hours."
Chapter Four
"Three days to get your father to contact you? Who the fuck does he think he is, a capo?" Ivy was pacing in my bedroom as I typed an email to my father's company email address.
I didn't know what else to do since my calls to all the corporate offices went unanswered and my mother was still not contacting me. I felt so alone, even with my friends having my back.
My mom had always been there for me when I needed her. It wasn't often I had to turn to her, but this entire situation warranted the intervention of a parent.
"I just want to wake up from this nightmare." Tears filled my eyes. "What if they did something to my mom? Why would he ask where she was if he didn't know?"
Ivy sat down on the edge of my bed. "I don't know. If he's looking for your father for whatever reason, maybe he tried calling her, or showed up here looking for her?"
I shook my head and stood, going to the window. "Maybe I should call the police."
"They can't take you away and put you in foster care or some shit, can they?" She came to stand next to me at the window. We could see a faint sliver of ocean between the townhouses. "You're almost eighteen."
"I don't know." I knew deep down that I should call the police, but my mom had said she'd be back next week. There was a multitude of reasons she might not be responding to my texts and calls. She could have poor reception or lost her cell phone. She lost her phone at least once a year.
Going to the police would make it all too real.
"Have you looked in her office and room for numbers? She has to have documents somewhere since he's giving her money, right?" Ivy's face grew determined and she went to my door. "If you aren't going to look, I will. I don't like this at all."
I had already thought of snooping, but was putting it off. I wasn't the type of kid that went through my mom's stuff when she wasn't around. Just like she wasn't the type of mom that went through my stuff.
Of course, I never gave her any reason to snoop. Not that she'd find anything she didn't already know about if she did take a look around my room.
We started in the office that she seldom used. I sat down in the desk chair and looked at the photos of us over the years adorning the surface. I pulled open drawers and rifled through the contents, not finding much.
The files were filled with bills, receipts, and past tax returns; nothing with information about my father or his payments to her from what I could see.
"Did your mom have a recent boyfriend or anything?" Ivy finished opening and looking through some lower drawers on a bookshelf.
"You know how my mom is." Natalia Hernandez Moreno doesn't need a man. In my seventeen years, she hadn't brought any men home.
We left the office and entered my mom's bedroom. I didn't want to look in her nightstand drawers because I knew what I kept in mine, but we needed to look everywhere.
"Ew." Ivy slammed the drawer on the other side of the bed shut. "Do not look in this bottom drawer."
"I knew this was a bad idea." I opened the bottom drawer on the side I was on and frowned at the handgun and knife. "I didn't know my mom had a gun."
I picked up the knife and examined it. It looked like it was made of steel and the hilt had a swirling design made of abalone shell. It was gorgeous and should have been displayed, not shoved in a drawer.
"What was your mom going to do with that thing? Shank someone?" Ivy peered into the drawer. "Damn. Your mom doesn't seem like the type to shoot a gun."
I was too scared of accidently shooting myself to pick it up to see if it was real.
"Is there a type to own a gun?" I shut the drawer and set the knife on the top of the nightstand to grab later. "But you're right, I can't imagine her using it."
The closet was clean and organized. At first glance, nothing seemed amiss. I pulled on the top drawer of my mom's jewelry cabinet, not expecting it to open since it was usually locked. It was empty.
I frantically pulled out the other three drawers, finding all of them devoid of the extensive j
ewelry collection. A lot of my mom's jewelry had been semi-precious, but she did have diamond pieces passed down to her.
"All of her jewelry is gone."
"Did your mom take the shoe boxes with her?" Ivy had her back to me and was staring at the empty shelves.
I hadn't even noticed when we walked in. I rushed to the corner of the closet and knew as soon as I pulled the first container from the shelf that it was empty. I opened it up and confirmed that all of her purses were gone.
My mom had sold everything.
Ivy had offered to spend the night, but I needed to be alone. For the last couple of days, I had been refusing to believe my mom could have run off, but now I needed to entertain the idea that she had.
What other explanation was there for her silence, the missing expensive belongings, and the missing money? But would my mom do that to me?
It had to have something to do with my dad and the three assholes looking for him. I assumed Morgan was also, but he hadn't approached me at school yet.
I checked my phone for messages for the billionth time and stared at the ceiling. I still didn't understand why Jax would want me to contact my father. Was he mad about the lost sea life?
It angered me too, but I wasn't to blame for what happened. Maybe my inaction was what was angering him and I needed to step up and volunteer with an organization that helped the relief efforts.
My phone dinged and I swiped to open a text from Aiden.
Aiden: Miles just texted me and asked me on a date!
Me: What? That's amazing! About time he got his head out of his ass. You've liked him forever.
Aiden: Ivy told me what you found.
Me: I don't know what to do.
Aiden: I've been brainstorming all the ways your mom might know Jax's dad. They all grew up here, right?
Aiden sent me all his theories. Most of them were ridiculous, but one stood out. They might have known each other from high school. She never talked about high school and wasn't friends with anyone from when she was younger. All of her friends were transplants from other areas or went to Salinity Cove High at a different time.
I had none of my mom's friends’ phone numbers to call. Not that they would know where she was, but they might know if she was dating someone without telling me. What if she had secretly been dating a woman and they ran off together?
I jumped up and ran up the stairs to the office to grab my mom's yearbooks. I sat down at the desk and went to the index to look up my mother. I wrote the pages on a sticky note so I wouldn't have to keep flipping back and forth.
She was on the swim team, and so was my father. I closed the freshman book and opened the next. I was starting to feel like it was a lost cause when I spotted a photo on the swim page with a guy that wasn't my father with his arm around my mom's neck, pulling her to him and kissing her cheek.
I went to the caption.
Finn West.
My eyes went wide and I went back to the freshman book, locating him. I started skimming through the comments written by friends on the inner cover and autograph pages and came across one written by Finn in the junior book.
Nat, I can't wait to spend the summer with you.
My mom hated being called Nat. There was no signature or note from my father. The senior book stared up at me and I wiped my hands on my shorts before opening it. After a few glasses of wine, my mom mentioned my father taking her to senior prom. She'd never once mentioned Finn West.
In the senior book, my mom wasn't even found on the swim team. The only picture I could find of her was her senior portrait. It was like she had stopped doing any activities.
It seemed like my mom had been with Jax's father, but sometime between junior and senior year, started going out with my father. It made no sense why Jax would be holding that against me.
I had to be missing something.
The next day at school was torturous, waiting to see what they would do next. A few fish comments still reached my ears, but both Blake and Jax were impassive toward me in our classes together.
At the end of the day, I went to my locker, and inside was a folded note. Forty-eight hours. I shuddered and crumbled the paper before throwing it in the trash.
"Something wrong?" Morgan Wade, Salinity Cove's resident daredevil and playboy leaned against the locker next to me. "You look a little flushed."
He stroked my cheek with his knuckles and I pulled away. "Why are you assholes always touching me?"
His smile dropped as he thought about my question. "Why are you letting us touch you is the more important question."
He pushed off the locker and walked beside me as I headed to the parking lot. I should have answered him, but why waste my breath when they were on a mission to make me miserable?
"Did you need something?" I was comfortable confronting him since there was a school resource officer about fifty feet away.
"Can't a man walk a lady who is all by herself to her car?" He moved his motorcycle helmet into the opposite hand. "Wouldn't want anything bad to happen to you."
"I think I'll be fine." I sped up and stepped into the parking lot, careful to pay attention to anyone backing out. I'd had a few close calls. "Motorcycle parking is over there." I pointed without looking at him as he continued to follow me.
"Where are you going?" He stepped beside me again and I groaned.
I stopped walking and he turned to look at me. "It's none of your damn business where I'm going."
"Woah, there. I was just being polite. You should be grateful I'm by your side, protecting you from all these... cars." The shit-eating grin returned to his face and his hazel eyes twinkled with something unreadable. "Maybe we're headed to the same place."
"Doubtful." I purposely bumped into him as I passed him, making his hip bump against a car.
I now understood what drove people to beat the shit out of others. I was liable to punch one of them if they didn't leave me alone.
My car was my one safe haven where I could just drive away and forget about them. I took off toward the highway to head to my dance studio. For an hour, I could forget reality while I danced.
"Riley! Just the person I wanted to see!" My dance instructor, Bernardo, came around the counter and gave me a giant hug. "We might have finally found you a dance partner to compete with. He's coming in today, so go get dressed."
I instantly perked up. I loved competing on the amateur level, but always had to dance with an instructor. It was hard to find a partner around my age that could keep up with me. Teenage boys just didn't ballroom dance.
I quickly went to the bathroom to change into a skirt, tank, and my dance shoes. I touched up my make-up and redid my hair in a ponytail. As I slid the clasp on my shoe into place, I was hit with a reminder that I didn't have any money to pay for my lessons next month. My chest tightened as the reality of my situation sank in.
If my mom really had skipped town, I had no way of supporting myself. It was doubtful I'd get any help from the authorities since I was so close to adulthood, and the money in my college fund was only available for college.
A knock sounded on the door and I jumped. "Riley, your new partner is here." Bernardo lowered his voice. "He's hot."
I checked the mirror one last time and put my bag on the shelf in the corner before heading out to the dance floor.
Spotlight Studio was one of my favorite places to be outside of school. It was a large, open room that had a smaller studio room that could be blocked off by curtains. The walls were lined with floor to ceiling mirrors, and at night, the florescent lights were turned off and the chandeliers were turned on.
It might just have become my favorite place now, since school had taken an unfortunate turn.
My mom had dragged me to an open house my freshman year. Despite her Mexican heritage, she liked to say the rhythm must have skipped a generation because she danced with two left feet and no hip action. Although I'd never met my grandma, my mom said she was lusted over by men all across Salina Cruz.
I hoped whoever this new guy was, he could move his hips, because that was a constant problem with the males. I almost just wanted to give up and go the female partner route.
Bernardo clapped his hands together in excitement as I approached the guy leaning on the counter. His back was to me, but he had disheveled dark hair that was cut short on the sides and a muscular-looking back. I couldn't help but look at his ass, which was just the right amount of plump.
I really hoped he could dance well.
"This is the lovely Riley Kline, one of our most promising young dancers." Bernardo waved his hand with a flourish in my direction as the man turned around.
I came to a halt and clenched my jaw to keep from crying out in frustration. What the hell was Morgan doing in my dance studio?
The smirk on his face said it all, and I cursed myself for mentioning ballroom dancing the day before to Jax. This had to be planned and a way to further make my life miserable.
"Riley Kline." He reached for my hand from its spot at my side and brought it to his mouth, kissing the back of it. Heat spread across my cheeks. "It's my pleasure."
What I really wanted to say was, "Cut the crap, you sadistic asshole," but instead, I said, "The pleasure is all mine."
Bernardo had his hands clasped at his chest and mouthed oh my god to me. He'd have kicked him to the curb if he knew what had been going on. Instead, he did Cha-Cha lock steps all the way to the stereo and plugged in his phone.
I cringed at the thought of my feet being assaulted. Morgan was a swimmer and had never shown any inkling that he could dance or had any rhythm. During junior year, he had stood on the lunch table and tried to twerk and sent everyone into a fit of laughter before the school resource officer told him to get down.
"Can you even dance?" I've Got the World on a String by Michael Bublé came over the speakers and I made no move to offer my hand to him. "This is ridiculous. Do you even know what dance this is?"
"I watched some videos and then had my first lesson yesterday." He stepped forward and his hand slipped under my arm and splayed across my shoulder blade. He put his lips next to my ear and a tingle went down my spine. "Foxtrot."