by Shen, L. J.
“Thank you,” her voice traveled between us, hoarse and smoky.
“Bet,” I mumbled, my thumb sliding over the screen. Kardashian on a cracker, I missed Cali. I had to remind myself this was going to be over in less than six months. I was going to make Da give me the dope apartment, make sure the door didn’t hit Sailor’s flat ass on her way out, and fuck until I fell into a coma.
“Aren’t you going to ask what for?” she challenged in her smart-ass voice.
Fuck. Even when she looked good (and she actually did look good in that dress with her hair up), she just had to ruin it by being so…herself.
I looked up from my phone unenthusiastically. “My bad. What for?”
“Managing the situation when I freaked out earlier…” She trailed off and frowned at my hand. It took me a second to realize why she was angry again. My screen was stuck on a thirst trap of Alice squeezing her tits together and winking at the camera with a cherry in her mouth, wearing nothing but a tiny, sunflower-patterned bikini.
“Who is this?” she asked.
I wasn’t keen on airing my shit, and I never told people who I fucked, how many times, where, and when. It seemed tacky—more so when it was to Sailor, who was probably more virginal than the punch in a pre-K after-school dance.
“A chick I went to school with.”
“Nice,” she said, in the way girls lilted the word when things were anything but nice.
She turned back to the window. I turned back to imagining myself fucking Alice’s tits.
When we got home, Sailor dashed straight to her room, slamming the door with a huff. As I made my way to mine, I heard her saying “stupid, stupid, stupid,” thumping her head against the wall. Figured she was feeling bad about that little meltdown earlier.
I closed my bedroom door and shot Alice a text.
Hunter: Send n00dz.
I followed it up with a GIF of a dog humping a pillow. Courting in the twenty-first century was the shit.
Instead of smarting off, or breaking down, or generally being a mess—cough, Sailor, cough—Alice replied with a picture of her from the neck down spread eagle on the bed, wearing nothing but a neon pink thong. I shimmied out of my cigar pants. I’d never really stopped being hard since I danced with Sailor.
Hunter: Now a video of you touching yourself.
Alice: Are u sure? Heard Daddy got you on lockdown.
Hunter: This is not breaking the rules. Just tilting them a little. To the right. ; )
Alice: LOL perv. They say you moved in with someone. A girl…
Hunter: Not what you think.
Alice: I don’t think anything.
Ain’t that the truth, baby.
I jerked off twice that night to unholy videos of Alice.
When I woke up, Sailor was gone.
Carrot Top didn’t bother coming home on Sunday. Not that I cared, but it was almost taunting to have the huge-ass apartment all to myself without being able to put it to good use. My father’s so-called bodyguards/private investigators were under the building, and based on the way half the goddamn world already knew I was living with Sailor, I gathered the staff in the premises also ran their mouths.
I spent the time studying statistics and other kill-me-now business-management subjects. I’d barely attended my evening classes because I’d been in the office all day every day last week—fetching coffee, answering spontaneous quizzes about the company’s history my brother and father threw at me, and generally being the designated office bitch.
When Sailor failed to show her face by dinnertime, I hit the building gym to let off some steam. Yesterday at the fundraiser, Mom had suggested I go back to playing polo in one of her attempts to strike up a conversation. I’d suggested she mind her own business. I didn’t want to play sports. I didn’t want to do anything.
And therein lay the problem. I had zero ambition when it didn’t involve fucking and partying. I felt hollow inside, the kind of empty that gnawed at the edges of my flesh, threatening to devour the rest of me.
I heard the front door to the apartment open around midnight. I was in my room, my door ajar, reading some bullshit textbook. To my surprise, I felt too butthurt to ask Carrot Top where she’d been. I heard her shuffling around the kitchen, pouring herself a glass of water and rummaging in the fridge. She fixed herself something to eat. She had a real good hand when it came to food. I smelled fresh bread, peanut butter, Nutella, and roasted nuts. She was either FaceTiming her family or had put them on speaker. Her brother and dad bickered about who got to take her for lunch the next day, since they were going to be in different parts of the city. I hated her surprisingly functional family.
Ten minutes later, she turned off the lights and shut her bedroom door, locking it for good measure.
HHH: No need to lock your door. Not gonna sneak in on you.
HHH: ?
HHH: Still giving me the silent treatment to punish me for absolutely fucking nothing?
HHH: Go to hell, CT.
It was a gray Monday morning, which brought with it the urge to hurl myself under a bus.
I started the day by helping the company’s executive accountant to go through the quarterly numbers. After being holed up for four hours in a dungeon with Excel sheets and middle-aged men who smelled like underwear crust, coffee, and diabetes, I took my lunch while studying in the kitchenette, enjoying the background noise of my father shrieking at people about the refinery, which was apparently at a shutdown state because of some minor explosion. After I finished, I was heading down to the compliance department to help out with filing some documents. Such was my rock-n-roll life.
I threw my empty poke bowl into the trash, rounded the hallway, and decided to take the emergency stairs instead of the elevators on a whim. Those were busy as fuck around lunch hour, and as it turned out, people in Royal Pipelines didn’t care for me. Apparently, they all knew I was a lazy fuck and weren’t pumped about my co-running the company with my tyrant brother when Da retired.
I took the stairs down two at a time until I heard a voice drifting from downstairs, two floors below. The echo carried it up, even though the person was obviously whispering.
“…really don’t care. As long as it’s done. Discretion is key. I’ll call you next week from another burner phone. Do not call me, understand? It’s too risky. I shouldn’t have even picked up your call today,” the voice seethed.
Syllie.
I wasn’t one to eavesdrop. Not out of good manners, God forbid, but because I gave zero-to-minus-thirty fucks about other people’s lives. Syllie, despite being an okay dudebro, was at the bottom of the list of people I was interested in. If he had a sidepiece, good for him. I shook my head, smiling to myself. Old sport was sampling other flavors secretly. Naughty. I waited, letting lover boy finish his call.
“I’m not worried about the old sod. He’s getting smugger by the second. His younger kid is also a literal fucking joke—wouldn’t recognize trouble if it gave him herpes and cut his dick off. But the older son is dangerous. We need to watch him.”
Whoa.
Re. Fucking. Wind.
Literal fucking joke? This had my name all over it. I’d nearly trademarked this bitch in my family. Dangerous older son? That would be mo órga. Precious Cillian.
Also, this sounded nothing like a torrid, harmless affair with an anal-loving mistress.
I wasn’t offended, though I knew he’d referred to me as a goodie bag of incompetency, STDs, and failure. I was more occupied with what he was up to. I plastered my back to the wall, trying not to make myself known. For the first time since I’d discovered my dick was good for more than pissing interesting shapes in the snow, I was interested in something that wasn’t pussy.
“Yes, that’s fine. Listen, I need to head back to the office before people ask questions. We’ll talk next week.”
He killed the call, sighed heavily, and started making his way up the stairway. Thinking on my feet, I went back up the stairs, tiptoeing, open
ed the first available door, and slid in. I pressed my back to it, listening to Sylvester ascending the stairs to the eighth floor. When the coast was clear, I opened the door and made my way straight to Da’s office.
I was out of breath by the time I got to him. He was sitting with Cillian—surprise, surprise—laughing over their bowls of salad. I didn’t knock. Part of me wanted to please him, but the other was happy to piss him off.
“For the love of God, learn how to knock.” Da put his salad down and patted his mouth with a napkin. “What do you want, ceann beag?”
I waited for the slow-ass door to close all the way, regulating my breath, before I talked.
“First of all, for you to stop calling me this.” I thought about how I called Sailor CT even though she hated it. “Second, I just heard Syllie talking weird shit with someone on the phone. I think it was about us.”
“Specify,” Cillian ordered, chewing on a piece of lettuce and steamed chicken from the organic bar downstairs. Even that didn’t emasculate the fucker.
“I think he wants to bring us down or something.”
“Us?” Cillian arched a thick eyebrow, assessing me through honey-hued eyes. He took assholeness to a whole new level today—probably still pissed about the refinery explosion. But nobody was hurt, so what was the big deal?
“You. Happy?” I crushed my teeth together angrily. “He wants to take you down. He said something about how Athair was smug, and I was stupid, and you were dangerous, but that he wanted to go on with some plan.”
“Where was that?”
Cillian was the only one talking. Da had returned his attention to his salad, and I wondered if he even took me seriously. I felt my ears pinking with rage. “Emergency stairway.”
Cillian and Da exchanged looks I couldn’t read. Maybe I’d have been able to if, you know, I saw them more than twice a year.
“Probably bitter about his quarterly bonus.” Da patted the corners of his mouth with his green handkerchief, chewing.
Cillian frowned, but didn’t correct his assumption.
“Go back to your duties, boy.” My father waved me off.
“But Da…”
“Chop-chop now,” he stressed, pointing at the door with his plastic fork.
I glanced between them. My brother looked at me in a strange way. The wheels in his brain turning. Whatever he was thinking, it wasn’t enough to back me up. I kicked a trash can, sending paper and bottles flying everywhere.
Nice. Asshole doesn’t recycle, either.
“Jesus fuck, you never listen.”
“Stop. Cursing,” Athair bit out.
Cillian motioned to security through the window emotionlessly.
“No need to call your guard dogs. I’m leaving.”
I wanted to slam the glass door in their faces, but again, watched as it closed inch by inch for half a goddamn hour.
Sylvester Lewis wanted to fuck my family up, and despite everything, or maybe because of everything, I wasn’t okay with that.
I wanted to get to the bottom of this. Before or after I screwed my father’s little redhead project? Only time would tell, but I had two incentives now. Two things to wake up in the morning for:
1. Find out what Syllie was up to and deal with him myself
2. Tame Sailor Brennan, the unbroken, wild horse I wanted to use as my own personal pet until this nightmare of an agreement was over
On Monday, I woke up to a picture of me in the local newspaper, ducking my head down while following Hunter to a limo on our way out of the fundraiser.
“The Hunter Games: Royal Pipelines Playboy Caught Canoodling Archery Mistress Sailor Brennan!” screamed the headline, which I thought was both incorrect and unwitty.
I figured Gerald was behind this, and also knew he had decided to market his son and me as a couple to tame Hunter’s disastrous image, so I tried to tell myself I didn’t care—all while shoving the newspaper to the bottom of my duffel bag, making sure Junsu couldn’t find it.
As it turned out, a couple days later it didn’t really matter.
“The boy. He’s here again,” Junsu announced solemnly, his hands clasped behind his back, a disapproving pucker on his lips.
Ignoring him, I lifted my bow, which looked like an arm ripped from a Transformer robot, drawing a breath to regain my composure. It had taken me forty-eight hours to get my head straight after the stupid fundraiser. I spent Sunday with Persy, Belle, and Aisling, eating cupcakes, watching Riverdale, and talking about anything other than Hunter Fitzpatrick. I realized one dance meant nothing in the grand scheme of life. The fact of the matter was, Hunter was scrolling through pictures of half-naked girls in the limo after our so-called moment. I got temporarily blinded by his looks, but checked myself quickly. Now, it was time to focus on what truly mattered: archery.
My eyes zoomed in on the target, and I imagined it was Hunter’s beautiful face. I released the arrow, watching it travel the 76.5 yards to its destination and landing on the eight-point ring.
I knew it had nothing to do with my lack of cold-eyed precision and everything to do with my sore right shoulder, but every time I complained to Junsu, he said it was the usual discomfort athletes had to deal with.
“You think it is any different in judo, fencing, and artistic swimming? They all hurt. Art is pain, Sailor.”
I lowered the bow, adjusting my ball cap before plucking another arrow from the stack beside me.
“Did you hear what I said?” Junsu asked. His stern gaze prickled my skin with awareness.
“Loud and clear.” I punched the timer on my watch to twenty seconds, the time given Olympic archers when they reached the finals, and began to draw the arrow. I’d been shooting between two hundred and three hundred arrows a day, working day and night.
“Well?” he said impatiently. “Shoo him away. He is waiting outside.”
I shot the second arrow—this time imagining the target to be Hunter’s elusive, cold heart—watching as it got the seven-point ring.
Shoot. I needed a steroid shot or I was going to perform miserably this week.
I twisted my neck to look at Junsu, smiling calmly. “Acknowledging him would encourage him. As I said before, he is not my boyfriend. If he decides to visit me here, I have no control over it, but I’m not going to stop my training because of it.”
Junsu didn’t mention Hunter again, and I tried not to think about his presence here. I sucked for the remainder of the practice.
Half an hour later, I strolled out of the shooting range to my car, surprised to find Hunter leaning against my trunk in his pristine navy suit, his arms and legs crossed.
He waited outside all this time?
“So this is how living in the doghouse feels.” He spread his arms, gesturing to an imaginary kennel, his words seasoned with buoyancy.
“If you’re about to make a bitch joke, please spare the world, and while you’re at it, get off my trunk,” I shot back.
Hunter surprised me by obliging, muttering something about things he would like to do with my trunk that had nothing to do with my vehicle.
I popped the trunk open, dumping my gear inside. I slammed it shut, feeling the sweet, curling pressure of excitement escalating in my chest despite my best efforts. When I turned around, Hunter was there, in my face. Closer than the time we’d danced together. He planted his hands on either side of me, on my car, his lips inches from mine.
“You’re avoiding me,” he hissed.
“So are you.”
My roommate hadn’t exactly sought me out since the fundraiser, other than the unanswered text messages. Truth was, I had no right to be hurt because he was checking out other women, and he had no right to interrupt me while I was training. The lines were beginning to blur, and I didn’t like it.
Hunter’s thumbs touched the edge of my butt from either side, and I wondered if it was on purpose. “Just gave you time to calm your tits. Obviously, they still need some chilling.”
“Obviously,” I s
aid flatly, pushing at his chest. He didn’t budge. I looked up, frowning.
“Out of my way, Prince Syphilis.”
“Have dinner with me, Princess Psychotic.”
“Go away. I’ll see you at home.”
“Not at home. Somewhere else. Somewhere public. Somewhere fun.”
He said the word fun like it was an awful profanity. Like fun was my archenemy. He sounded like my parents. Sure, I had fun. I just didn’t have it with boys.
Or outside of my room.
Fine, maybe I could use some help in the fun department.
“There’s perfectly edible food at home. Nora, the cook—”
“Fuck Nora in the ass with a spatula. You don’t eat outside because you’re hungry. You do it for the goddamn experience. It’s an indulgence.”
“Something you’d know all about,” I huffed, hating that he smelled like laundry detergent and male, and another thing that made my stomach dip pleasurably.
“Yup.” He flicked my ear, taking a step back when he realized I was going to relent.
And I was. Because deep down, I knew I had no right to give him grief. He was making good progress on all fronts, and I was his babysitter. I should be more involved.
I tugged my car keys out of my pocket and winced as my shoulder burned with pain. How on Earth was I going to drive?
Hunter read my mind and snatched the keys from my hand, rounding my car, a bounce in his step.
“Allow me. You’ll probably get us there sometime next Thursday. My delinquent ass can donut our way and still get there faster.”
I was going to protest, but he was actually doing me a favor. The best thing I could do right now was give my shoulder some rest and ice it when we got home. I slid into the passenger seat, careful to close the door with my healthy left arm.
“Where to?” I buckled, peering at him when I was sure he was busy trying to arrange his long limbs into my space. He looked comically big, his knees touching the steering wheel on both sides. He adjusted my seat, starting the car.