by T. S. Joyce
They ate in silence for a few minutes before Candace reached for a conversation starter. “Why have a mansion with old couches and paper plates?”
Vyr and Torren ignored her, but Nox pulled out a little book from his back pocket with bent, worn pages and a title on the front cover that read Manners & Shit.
He flipped through a few pages, popped a strawberry into his maw, and read aloud. “When you have a dinner guest, you should answer their questions with politeness and honesty. Huh.” He scooted his chair back loudly and stood, clinking a plastic knife against his beer bottle. Clunk, clunk, clunk. “Okay, I’ll go. Vyr was rich, but the government froze his accounts when he burned Covington and ate like a dozen gorillas and lions. Torren is greedy with his money, I’m between bounty hunting jobs, and Nevada hasn’t been paid but once by her library job, so…paper plates. And no heat. And we all pitch in to keep the lights on and keep this fine cuisine on the table.”
Vyr and Torren were chewing their burgers and glaring at Nox.
“What?” Nox asked, sitting back down.
“Why do you have a book on manners?” Vyr asked around a bite of food.
“I don’t know this shit, and I’m trying to be a good crew member because Nevada gets horny when I’m polite.” Nox kicked Torren under the table.
Torren yelped a curse, then shoved Nox so hard the plastic leg of his chair broke and he went down hard.
“Idiots,” Vyr muttered. “We’re out of duct tape. Now you get to stand.”
“I hate you,” Nox whispered.
“I hate you more,” Torren whispered back.
They glared at each other another few seconds before Nox whispered, “You’re my best friend.”
“Stop.” Torren shook his head and rolled his eyes and looked so mad that Candace had to purse her lips against a smile.
“It’s not funny,” Torren said, glaring at her.
“I know. I’m not laughing.”
“Well,” Torren growled, “you look like you’re laughing.”
“You two have a very cute bromance.”
“See?” Nox crowed from where he was eating his burger on the ground now. “Even she sees our chemistry.”
“Well, she’s a stripper, so—”
Splat.
Candace gasped and clapped her hand over her mouth. She couldn’t believe she’d just thrown a mayo-covered tomato slice at him. It was sliding slowly down his cheek, and when he turned a wild, green-eyed gaze on her, he looked enraged.
Beside her, Nevada was giggling as quietly as she could, which was making Candace have the giggles, too.
“Stop bringing up that I’m a stripper. If you have to call me something, call me a dancer.”
“Well, you dance for money, soooo…”
“Whoa, judgey judgerton,” Nox said from somewhere on the other side of the table. “Manners and Shit, page fourteen. ‘Try to be open minded with dinner guests to make them feel more comfortable in your space.’ And besides, you can’t say anything. So she dances for money? You fight— Oooow!” Nox howled when Torren kicked at him.
Vyr sat up straighter and stopped chewing. “What were you about to say?”
“Nothing,” Nox ground out.
“No, you said something about fighting. T, are you fighting?”
“Manners and Shit, page fifteen,” Torren rumbled. “‘Give the guest a tour of the house.’”
“I don’t see that on page fifteen,” Nox said over the sound of rustling pages.
Torren was already carrying his empty paper plate inside, though.
“Am I supposed to follow him?” Candace asked, confused.
“Uh, I think so,” Nevada answered.
Vyr was glaring at the ground where Nox was eating his dinner.
“What?” Nox asked around a full mouth.
“I hate this crew,” Vyr muttered.
“You lied!” Nevada sounded so happy right now.
Everything was confusing. Candace grabbed her empty plate and followed Torren inside for some mansion tour she was pretty sure he used as an excuse to escape Vyr’s questions.
Letting him off the hook, she said, “You don’t have to give me the tour. I have to go to work soon, anyway.” Candace pulled the sleeves of her sweater down over her hands and forced a smile as he turned toward her in the kitchen. “It was really weird eating with you and your crew. But…it was a good weird. You have something special here, Torren. Protect it.” She gave him a little wave, and turned for the door.
“Wait.” Torren scrubbed his hand down his short, dark beard. “My sister. She’s why I don’t share my money. Or much of it anyway. She’s the reason I’m not bankrolling us here.”
Candace fidgeted with a loose thread on her sweater. “What do you mean?”
He twitched his head to the side. “I’ll show you.” Turning, he led her down a hallway to the last door on the left. Torren pushed open the door and watched her face—for what, she didn’t know.
The bedroom was done in dark colors. Dark brown walls and a navy-blue comforter on a queen-sized mattress on the ground. There was no end table or even a bed frame. There was no dresser, only four piles of clothes stacked neatly against the wall. On the wall hung a single picture. It was a black and white of four people. Torren was younger in it, twenty perhaps and lankier than he was now. He had his arm slung around a dark-haired girl with a pixie cut. She had the biggest grin on her face as she looked right at the camera. Torren was smiling down at her, and beside them, a giant, short-haired man stood behind a petite blond woman with his arms around her shoulders. They were both looking at Torren and the girl.
“Your sister?” Candace guessed.
Torren lifted his hands and began to sign something, shocking her that he knew American Sign Language. She couldn’t do more than sign the simple alphabet, but he was speaking without words, and his hands were poetry.
When he was finished, she asked, “What did you say?”
“I said this is my sister, Genevieve, and she was born deaf. She’s smart, brave, and loyal, and she’s my favorite person. And when she got old enough, she wanted to be a part of a family group. Her gorilla wanted the big family. But her silverback alpha was awful and so were the females. They took her life savings away from her. She was supposed to get cochlear implants. They have a good chance of working for her, making it so she can hear. Not like you and me, but it would still be something very important to her. She would be able to hear her mate tell her ‘I love you.’ She wants to hear his voice so badly. So, a lot of Damon’s Mountains and her Red Havoc Crew have been working to save money for her, but it’s really expensive.”
“How expensive?”
“Shifters don’t get insurance because we aren’t supposed to get sick. She has to pay forty thousand dollars out of pocket.”
“Oh my gosh,” Candace murmured, dropping down to sit on the edge of Torren’s mattress.
Torren joined her and pulled out a metal ammo box from beside his bed. He glanced at her once, his eyes churning that bright inhuman green, before he opened it and showed her what was inside. There were neat stacks of money, mostly fives and tens.
“You’re a stripper. You can’t judge. You have issues just like me so we’re safe.”
Candace nodded. Safe. That felt right.
“I have to fight. The gorilla is fucked up. Nox and Vyr think it’s because I don’t have a family group under me, but that’s not it. I was always fucked up, even when I was a kid. I can’t control the Changes. I’m getting worse. The only thing that steadies me is fighting. I have to fight all the time. I hide it from Vyr because we’re supposed to be perfectly behaved right now. We can’t draw any attention. But I can’t be perfect because I never was. I can’t even pretend. I’m a monster.”
“You’re not,” Candace said, shaking her head.
“I am. Best you understand that right away if you want to be friends. You dance for money. I fight. I don’t judge you. I like to give you shit because you have
funny reactions, but who am I to say you live your life wrong? Mine is a disaster.”
“You have more going for you than you realize, HavoK.”
“Everything I tell you stays in here. Swear it.”
“I swear. I’m good at keeping secrets.”
Torren drew his knees up to his chest and rested his arms on them. He searched her eyes before he said low, “I’m trying to stay sane long enough to help my sister get those cochlear implants. I want her to hear my voice before Vyr has to put me down. She’s what keeps me going.”
Ooooh, so Torren was much deeper than she thought at first glance. He wasn’t just being silly with Nox with his fighting and jokes. He wasn’t just this big, tattooed gym rat. He had layers, and the ones he’d just exposed were kind of beautiful. Still, he believed he would be put down. Only shifters who were really bad off were put down by their alphas, but Torren seemed strong, steady, and capable. “But you seem fine.”
“I’ve Changed six times today.”
“Oh my goodness,” she murmured, feeling sick to her stomach. Changes hurt. They hurt badly. Torren seemed in control now, but clearly, he wasn’t. His gorilla forced a Change that often? She couldn’t even imagine her tiger betraying her like that. She Changed once a week, and it was on her terms, when she wanted to. “How can I help?”
“You can’t. No one can.” Suddenly, Torren yanked his shirt over his head and bunched it tightly in his hands. He swallowed hard and turned so she could see his back. The top of his shoulders and the back of his neck were tattooed, but the rest of his back was free of ink. There was a massive birthmark that stretched like the milky way from his left hip up his back to the edge of his tattoos. “I’m marked, like my father was. It’s called the Mark of the Kong. I’m supposed to be the silverback leading the biggest family group with the best genetics. I’m supposed to be Kong now, but my dad gave me the choice. I could take my place with my people and rule them, or I could be like him. I could buck tradition and live the life I chose.”
“What would you have to do as Kong?”
Torren squeezed the shirt until his knuckles turned white. “Breed a bunch of females. My dad was supposed to sire this generation of monsters like me. But he chose my mom, and they only had me and my sister. As soon as the gorillas figured out I was marked, the pressure was on. I’m supposed to make the monster gorillas for the next generation. An army. That’s how they work. Family groups aren’t these big loving crews. They have their intentions on child rearing for the sake of numbers. I always wanted a baby… Fuck. Let’s go. I don’t want to talk anymore.” Torren stood suddenly and walked to the door where he turned. “It’s just I wanted what my dad found, and I chose wrong. I went all in, thinking I would find a single mate like my parents, but it never happened and now I’m messed up.” He held her for a few more seconds with eyes that had muddied to a forest green and were begging her understanding. “I’m going crazy, and I chose wrong. I can’t be your friend. Relationships make me unstable, and I have to make it to my sister’s surgery. You understand? I have to keep steady enough until then. I can’t do this. I’m sorry.”
Candace’s heart physically hurt for him. He was carrying more burden than any man she’d ever met. And she had the bone-deep feeling not even his crew knew how much weight he was shouldering.
I’m sorry. He’d apologized for not being able to give her friendship. He was admitting he was stretched too thin. Torren didn’t realize it, but that was a mark of a good man. He wasn’t one to build up peoples’ hopes, or lead anyone on. He knew what he was capable of, and though he’d looked gutted to admit it, he’d told her upfront he couldn’t be fixed.
And now she would go back to being alone, and he would go back to being in a crew, but still alone with the burden of a too-short life.
“I’m sorry, too,” she murmured.
Chapter Six
“Well, that sucked,” Carl complained as he threw the curtain back on the dressing room. “You were like a landed fish flopping around out there! How is anyone supposed to get turned on by that? Your eyes were completely dead. Are you high?”
“What? No! I’m just having an off night.” Candace slathered on another layer of glitter blush to her cheeks and plumped her lips with fire-engine red lipstick. She hated the way she looked all done up for work. She was like this doll someone had given a little girl who wanted to try make-up, and the little girl had made a rainbow mess all over her face. It was part of the job though—a part that was necessary for her. If she looked into the mirror and saw her real face here, she wouldn’t be able to go back out there and do what she needed to do.
A hundred and fifty dollars is what she needed to make, but Torren’s story about his sister had been swirling around in her head all night. She wished she was rich and could help. She wished she could do something. She desperately wanted him to live long enough to tell his sister he loved her. Anything less would be too tragic to bear.
Why did she care so deeply already? Candace put another layer of eyeliner on in the mirror. It was one of those old-fashioned ones with the lightbulbs around the edge. Carl had tried to make the dressing room glamorous, but mostly it looked cheap and smelled of sadness. Oh, she’d known exactly what Torren had been talking about with that. Doris had been working here damn near ten years, and her eyes were dead every night. She went through the motions like a trained corpse. Currently, she was sitting in the last chair, staring at herself in the mirror, not moving. She was up next, but she’d looked close to tears all night.
“I can’t,” she whispered.
“What did you say?” Carl asked.
Doris arched an empty gaze to Carl. There was a rim of tears in her eyes. “I said I—”
“She wants me to do her number,” Candace cut in. “We’ve been working on it. Doris had a bad day, and she wants a little break. It’s okay. I’ve got this.”
Carl narrowed his eyes. “Fine. Doris, you can take the rest of the night off. That was your last dance. Cinnamon, don’t fuck this up. At least look alive out there.” He hustled out of the room, and the curtain swished closed behind him.
“You didn’t have to do that,” Doris murmured.
“They gotta job opening at Essie’s Pantry,” Candace said fast before the other two girls got back from their dance. The music was blaring, and she had to repeat it for Doris to hear. “I’ve been looking at switching things up. I won’t go after that job if you want it.”
“But then you won’t get out of here,” Doris said in a vacant voice. “You’ll end up just like me.”
“I’ll find another way.”
Doris huffed a laugh and shook her head, returned her attention to her reflection. “You and I both know that grocery store salary won’t touch the instant cash we could make here.”
“But is the cash worth the cost?” Candace asked.
Doris didn’t answer. Instead she pulled her fake eyelashes off and tossed them into the wastebasket beside her, then pulled her duffle bag over her shoulder and strode for the door.
“Aren’t you going to change? It’s early enough to grab dinner somewhere?”
“No, honey. I’m going home. I have a microwave dinner with my name on it, and it don’t care that I’m dressed in hoochie clothes.” She gave a little half-assed smile and left the way Carl did.
Tonight sucked. Candace had been struggling with this job for a while, but seeing Doris so sad made her afraid that if she didn’t change her stars, she really would end up like her. Ten years in, and she’d be completely jaded by men and the way they looked at girls like her and Doris. The way they treated them. Oh, some were nice enough, but Candace didn’t do lap dances, and sometimes men got angry when they drank at the bar here. Sometimes they got rough or said cruel things to try to shame her into dancing just for them.
What was she doing here? Dad would’ve rolled over in his grave if he knew she was paying his medical bills like this. She was so far from the girl her dad has raised, and the shame she t
ried so hard to keep at bay reared its ugly head. Heat crept up her neck and made a pit stop in her cheeks, and carefully, she turned her face away from the mirror.
“You’re up,” Carl yelled through the curtain over the cheering from the main room.
A hundred and fifty dollars to dance half naked, and for some reason she’d felt less cheap when she’d considered sleeping with Torren for money. Why? She’d never been tempted to sleep with a boy who wasn’t serious about her. Why now? Was it desperation for money? For a friend? For a change? For him?
“Cinnamon!” Carl yelled.
She dashed a knuckle under her eyes just in case a tear had escaped, then stood and inhaled deeply, steeling herself to put on the show so she could pay her electric bill. She could do this, same as every other night.
“Coming,” she murmured.
Chapter Seven
Torren was at the bar getting Vyr a beer—ha, Vyr a beer, a poet as fuck—when he heard a man call for Cinnamon. God, he hated that name. Candace was much prettier and suited her better. Her real name. Real suited real, and there was something about that woman that had drawn up into fine focus when they’d been talking in his room.
Vyr was a douche for ordering him to come here.
“You don’t do the alpha shit right,” he mumbled as he handed Vyr his drink and sat down beside him, close enough to the stage to touch it. “You’re only supposed to make orders for the good of the crew.”
“Yeah, I don’t care. I never wanted to be alpha, so if you and Nox and Nevada are going to make me do this, I’m going to run it how I want. Now shhh. It’s starting, and I don’t want you to miss the best part. Oh.” Vyr slid a silver-eyed glare at Torren. “And I order you not to Change.”
There was steel in the Red Dragon’s voice, and inside of Torren, something awful happened. The gorilla roared as he shrank into a ball, bringing an instant wave of pain to Torren’s body. The silverback side of him didn’t like to be controlled. He fought everything.