by Julia Kent
“Exactly!” he said, smiling and nodding, with the damn look I knew so well, the one that was so pompous and pleased with himself and pleased that his little project (that would be me) was coming along so nicely in her education.
Fucking Pygmalion my ass.
SLAP!
Don’t blame my hand. It couldn’t help it. Involuntary, like a sneeze, the smack I gave him across his face made his neck pull a full ninety-degree turn to the side, his mouth open and lips rippling from the impact. I could see it in slo-mo (and would, for the next hour or two, like a loop I couldn’t control, so intrusive it took over half my mind, and I would need that half, as you’ll see in a moment).
I stormed off, unable to even look at him, knowing what I’d see in those eyes.
Suzy had tried to fat shame me the other day, but Joe?
Joe was just plain old shaming me.
Trevor
“That went over about as well as trying to ride a lead balloon out of a tornado,” I said as we watched her leave.
“You sound like her,” Joe said.
“After a while, it’s hard not to.” My belt cut into my belly, which was now tight from tension, and blood roared through my ears. Being surprised by the reporter was one thing, but what Joe’d just said…
He deserved the growing red blotch on his cheek.
His hand came up to press it. “Damn.”
“What made you think it was acceptable to say that to her?” I demanded, increasingly pissed as the crowd filed into the dining hall. My appetite was gone. Our woman had stormed off down the hallway, hurt and righteously angry.
Rightfully so.
Joe’s face hardened. He looked like a piece of tanned marble with a pink overlay in the shape of a hand. “I was trying to do damage control.”
“You failed.” I turned and spun away, my pants crisp, with a razor-sharp crease in the front. The walk to my seat in the dining room wasn’t enough time to get my emotions in check.
I found Sam and Liam at a huge table that seated twelve. The room was enormous, with at least a hundred of these. Who knew there were so many guests?
And, thankfully, we were all clothed.
The faces swirled in my vision as I looked around. Men. Women. People of undetermined gender. Some obvious cross-dressers. A few not-so-obvious cross-dressers. Hell, there was one woman, a gorgeous Chinese lady who looked so porcelain smooth in a way that only laser treatments could achieve—which made me think she wasn’t born a she. Which was cool—live and let live.
Not that we had any room to judge.
I took my seat where a placard with my name, written in an antique font, rested. Sam and Liam were sprinkled about the table, and I saw Darla’s name on one of the cards.
A waiter took my drink order and within a minute I had a tequila shot in front of me. One drink before a performance was fine, and I had four hours to go. This would work. It had to work.
Joe wandered in about ten minutes later, looking hangdog and filled with regret. Shit. This was deteriorating fast, and we couldn’t take the stage acting like our puppy just got run over by a steamroller.
Liam was chatting up a very hot, older blond woman, and Sam just took in the room, an awed expression stretching his face. Scores of tuxedoed waiters milled about. I felt like I was at a pre-Oscars dinner.
As the first course was served, there was an empty spot across the table and Darla’s still free. I ate my food robotically, and Joe seemed agitated as they cleared the plates and brought the next course, a simple squash bisque. Soup and tuxes don’t exactly go together, but I ate, knowing I’d need the energy for our performance.
Joe came over to me and rested his hand on the back of my chair. I turned and he whispered, “I think I need to find her and apologize.”
“You think? Now you think that?” I checked my smartphone. “We have to finish here in twenty minutes and then go get ready to rock. No time.”
He frowned. “I guess I’ll see her at the stage, right? Maybe she’s just skipping dinner.”
When did Darla ever skip something like this, though? She wasn’t the type to hold grudges. Then again, until forty minutes ago, I’d have never guessed she was the type to slap a guy like that.
“Give her time to cool down,” I whispered. Sam’s eyes caught mine and he pointed to Darla’s empty spot near me. I shrugged. He mimicked me and continued gawking, taking in the gold-painted ceiling and the frescoes on the walls.
The room reminded me of a trip my parents had forced me to take with them when I was thirteen, a sprawling vacation throughout Italy. My autistic brother, Rick, had just been put in a new group home and Mom and Dad had needed the change of scenery. I understood that now, but back then I thought I was being tortured with this boring trip to some boring country.
Man, was I a spoiled little shit.
And that was how Joe had just acted toward Darla.
The soup dishes were cleared, a second tequila magically appeared, and I broke my own rule. Joe and Sam were tapping their feet so hard I could see their bodies vibrating, bouncing up and down. I expected it from Sam. Not from Joe.
Nerves. We were going to be destroyed by nerves if we didn’t get this shit under control. Everyone except Liam, who was now nuzzling the neck of the painted blonde, a woman who was the polar opposite of his old high school girlfriend, Charlotte. That wasn’t an accident.
Time crept by like the kind of unending ennui I remembered from high school, my inner self screaming inside, overcome by waves of needing to escape. Every second that Darla didn’t appear made my teeth ache.
Joe was rapidly coming unraveled before my eyes.
How could he say “I love you” and then a few days later treat her like she was some expendable piece of meat, good enough to fuck behind closed doors but not worth acknowledging in public?
Hypocrite, my conscience whispered.
I closed my eyes just as a gorgeous plate of filet mignon, lobster, julienned vegetables, and artistically shaped root vegetables was put in front of me.
I wasn’t much better.
Much.
Chapter Twelve
Darla
Storming away, my hand stinging from hitting Joe’s cheekbone, I felt the tears in my throat first, thick and indignant, my brain a mush of rage and horror and disappointment.
How could he do that?
Who did he think he was?
Who did I think I was, stomping down a hallway like a mermaid with split legs on shiny high heels that would be better used for picking locks than to support my frame, walking down hallways where the carpet-cleaning fee alone was more than I made in a year, and in an atmosphere where, once again, it was clear that I was the fucking weirdo.
The outsider.
The outlier.
The outcast.
You know what it’s like to feel that way all the time? Every damn moment of your life? It’s like pressing your face against the cold glass of a big old department store window, or a fancy restaurant, and watching all the fun taking place so close, but so far and out of reach. Seeing the clothing you can’t wear. Watching other people take bites out of food you can’t taste. Separated by something as simple as a clear quarter of an inch, yet continents away, because you’re outside.
And the rest of them are all where you don’t belong.
I would never, ever belong with Joe. The damnedest part of it was my heart ached more than it had any right to at that thought. Whatever made me think he could care about me in the first place?
I tore the comb thingy out of my hair and flung it against a wall, where it bounced off a sconce made to look like a vulva. The shoes came off next, because who could balance on toothpicks?
I looped my fingers in the straps of the sandals and walked to my room, wishing the distance were longer. Might as well just go back, grab a snack, and change into jeans and a t-shirt for working the concert. Not that I was feeling it, but they had to have someone there to mother-hen them, managing all the
stupid shit that they couldn’t handle when it was showtime and their brains and mouths had to click over to live in the world of music.
Even in this state I could shift into manager mode. The night unrolled in my mind: change, concert, sleep, and then we’d fly home tomorrow and I’d be done.
And I do mean done.
Joe could be done, too. How do you break up with one person in a threesome? The relationship logistics of this were worse than trying to avoid potholes in Ohio in March.
But I wouldn’t let myself be shamed any more. Letting someone who didn’t love me, and who had no hope of ever accepting me—us—for what we were was like smashing your head against a brick wall over and over only so you could stop sometimes and feel so much better.
The little patch that magically did everything was on my ankle now, and the door opened. The made-up bed, my discarded earrings, the half-drunk bottle of water, and the scent of shaving cream all hit me as I stared across the threshold. Taking in a shaky breath, I let my eyes well up with tears.
Add a good cry to my to-do list tonight.
“Oooh, lookit you!” said a voice behind me, a hand on my glittery green hip.
“Trevor, cut it—” A hand clamped over my mouth. Strong, stronger than me, and my palm sought anything I could grab to fight, finding a bald head.
Excited blue eyes.
In double.
It was the twins. What the fuck? The men from yesterday near the docks, with the big, beautiful women who got off the boat. And they were…?
Hands tore at my dress, pinning my flailing arms and grabbing at my fingers, bending them until I cried out. My neck whipped back and forth, muscles strained to the hilt, making bobby pins dig in behind my ear, the sickening crush of torn skin less important than the thought that I was being abducted. My mind reeled.
The two men lifted me into the air like I weighed no more than a candy cane, but I fought, long and hard, kicking and biting their hands, screaming ineffectively. They muted me easily.
“Ooooh, she’s good,” one of them said as I struggled with a loose hand to grab one of their sacs and twist and hurt them. No luck.
“Yeah, baby, that’s right,” the owner of the now-erect penis said. I tried to hurt his inner thigh, tried to get out from the gasp of four strong hands, but failed. These French-tipped nails were useless.
Joe! Trevor! my mind screamed. My mouth tried.
Fingernails that only a woman could possess cut deeply into my ankle as I was lifted into the air by what felt like an octopus, but turned out to be only two men. Both twins frowned deeply as I twisted and scratched, feeling my own blood dripping down my Achilles tendon, and heard a woman’s voice.
“Not here. Down the hall.”
And then a cloth over my face and one final sound from the woman before I descended into darkness.
“Moo.”
Trevor
Dinner dragged on. And on. Liam slipped out with the blond chick he was chatting up, leaving with a wink and a promise to be at the stage long before we started. Sam ate his dinner quickly and then left, claiming he needed to call Amy, but I knew the truth: the loud, opinionated bloviator sitting next to him, a guy about our fathers’ age, was a bit too much like Sam’s abusive minister dad.
So I was left with Joe.
Joe kept looking at the main door, as if watching it every ten seconds would make Darla appear.
“Did she drop her glass slipper?” I finally asked.
“Huh?”
“Nothing.”
The bloviator, without Sam to target, tried to talk to us. “Who missed dinner?” he asked, pointing to the two empty spots, silverware perfect and untouched.
“Our—my—girlfriend,” Joe said quietly, face a neutral mask.
“I don’t know about the other person,” I added. One of the music techs appeared at Joe’s side and whispered something in his ear. I checked my phone: ninety minutes to showtime. We had to get down there.
Bloviator stood and peered at the placard. “Darla Josephine Jennings.” He looked at me with rheumy eyes. The guy’d had more than a few. “Girlfriend?”
We both nodded. Joe paused, chin dipped down, and slowly closed his eyes as if in pain.
“What about,” the guy said, looking at the other card, the one turned away from us, “Suzy Bergen?”
What
the
Fuck?
Joe stood and ripped the placard off the table, staring at the words.
“No Suzy. No Darla,” he groaned, urgency in his voice. “This is not good. Not good. We have to go find her. Darla would have come back. I wondered—” His voice caught. “I’m such a fucking asshole.”
Ninety minutes to showtime and we discover this? “We don’t have time,” I blurted.
Joe’s eyes bugged out of his head, all decorum gone. Fuck, mine was, too, because all I could imagine was Darla, chained to a bed, being tortured by Suzy like Joe had said he was.
Or down in a hole in the ground with a bucket of lotion being lowered.
“What the fuck do you mean we don’t have time.” His voice was so low and angry he might as well have gargled with broken glass, the words a comment, an indictment. Not a question.
“We have a show,” I said in the calmest voice I could muster. “We cannot back out. We’re on a fucking island. The show lasts ninety minutes. Suzy won’t kill her…” And that was when my own words stopped making sense. What was I saying?
He sprinted out the main doors and called back: “I’ll be there. Just hold out for me.”
And even I knew not to shout out for him, but I did anyway, turning heads as I called out, “No way you’re going anywhere alone.”
Taking off at a sprint, my new shoe soles slipping on the marble floors, I was stopped by a music tech. “Ms. Jennings hasn’t appeared to help with setup,” he said in an annoyed tone.
“I know. She’s missing.” My terseness didn’t affect him one bit.
“We need someone to help with sound checks and mics.”
“Can’t Sam or Liam do that?”
“Mr. McCarthy isn’t there, and Mr. Hinton said he’s not knowledgeable enough about vocals.” True. He wasn’t.
Only me and Darla were. Damn.
Joe disappeared down the hall and I walked quickly with the tech. “I’ll help with setup,” I barked. “But I need you to contact security and ask them to search the entire island for Darla Jennings.”
The tech repeated my request into the small headpiece he wore, nodded curtly, and said, “You can change into your concert clothes—”
“Not now. Let’s get this over with and then I need to get back to this…” What do you call it when your girlfriend may have been kidnapped by your friend’s ex-fiancee?
“This what?”
I sighed. “This random act of crazy.”
Joe
Our room opened easily when I waved the cuff link to which I’d attached my little piece of patch. I didn’t even need to set foot in there to know Darla wasn’t here.
Without knowing where Suzy’s room was, I sat on the edge of the bed and thought. Darla would have come back here, wanting to change and go to the stage. Never in a million years would she miss the performance; she had too much integrity to let anger get in the way.
I fiddled with my cuff link, nervous and frayed on the inside. Way to fuck up your life, Joe.
And then—my cuff link.
The patch.
The patch. I took off for the concierge desk, shooting past two people in Pokemon costumes, a Charmander and a Pikachu, and someone dressed in a steampunk masterpiece with a copper espresso machine looped around their chest as armor.
A young Asian woman about my age, with pale porcelain skin and long hair in a braid, tipped her face up from the counter and smiled.
“Mr. Ross.” They always knew our name. Always.
“Can you locate people with this?” I held out my piece of patch.
Her eyes went neutral. “We…use
that as a smart device for guests to move about the premises in—”
“What if someone’s life is at stake?”
Her eyes widened and she pushed a small button on the counter. I’d seen enough movies to know what she’d just done.
“You just called security?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“Good. Now track the location for Darla Jennings.”
With a few taps the clerk looked up, puzzled. “She’s in the ocean.”
My balls tightened and my throat closed. I wanted to punch something until I bled. “The ocean?”
“According to the GPS coordinates, yes.” Aha! So they did track us.
“That makes no sense. There’s no way Suzy would take her out into the ocean.” Unless she’d killed her and dumped her body. No. Couldn’t think like that. Besides, Darla could twist Suzy around her neck and wear her like a scarf, so no amount of Pilates could make Suzy strong enough to beat Darla.
“Suzy? Ms. Suzy Bergen?” Her lips turned down at the ends as she typed. “We’ve had a few complaints about her,” she said under her breath.
“I can’t believe you let her on the island after the way she acted back on the mainland.” My words were meant to be a pointed barb but they came out with more bite than poke.
The woman ignored it. “We are well aware of Ms. Bergen’s past,” was all she said, her face neutral.
“Where is her location? You have to track it,” I demanded.
Two huge security guys, dressed in black suits, appeared as if materializing with a molecule ray. “You need help, Li Ping?” Burly and Big looked like twins with shaved heads and beefy cheeks, though Big had gray in the light stubble that covered his pate.
“Mr. Ross needs assistance in locating his guest, Darla Jennings.”
The big guys frowned at each other. “We just got a request from Trevor Connor to search the island for her. Why?” Big asked, pressing an earpiece and holding up one finger.
“My ex-fiancee is here and may have kidnapped her,” I explained.
“Is this part of a role-play gone wrong?” Burly asked, his face a mask.
“A role-play?”
Li Ping shrugged. “It happens. People express their fantasy wishes, and then reality does not hold up to fantasy.”