True Blue (Blue Series Book 3)

by Jules Barnard

  I press the heel of my hand to my forehead, fighting a headache that’s building with every heartbeat, and glance around. It’s not much up here—a mattress on the floor with a couple of bookshelves built into the wall on either side, my clothes scattered about—but I’ve come to like this place. It’s cramped, and it reminds me I don’t need a lot to survive.

  I pull on my jeans and climb down the ladder. I should start paying my sister rent. As a dealer at Blue, she pulled in sweet tips, but all that’s changed. Cali isn’t making as much as she used to, and she and Gen are barely living here anymore. I enjoy irritating them both, but I’m not that big a mooch. I’ll pitch in. I have money saved. A lot, actually. I just didn’t want to be alone. Makes me sound like a pussy, but I needed to return to my roots and regroup after Colorado. There’s something about Lake Tahoe. It’s my hometown, and maybe that’s it.

  At the bottom of the ladder, I turn around to find Mira standing in the center of the living room, pulling her long, dark hair into a ponytail.

  Her hands pause as she takes me in. She looks away, but not before her gaze trails my bare shoulders to the waistband of my jeans hanging low.

  Movement down below has me fighting an adjustment. Fuck.

  Maybe walking around without a shirt first thing in the morning isn’t such a great idea. Mira is still a beautiful woman, and that little eye linger sent the wrong signals to my body—which is primed for release this morning, thanks to the anxiety I’m bottling.

  Mira brushes past me into the kitchen, dragging a chair with her. She climbs on the bottom rung that supports the legs, and opens one of the upper cabinets, the chair creaking and wobbling beneath her.

  Great. She’s going to kill herself all on her own.

  “What are you doing, Mira?” My voice comes out irritated. The view she’s flashing me in her pajama shorts is adding to my annoyance.

  I drag my gaze from her smooth, shapely legs to the cuts on her arms, the bandages on her head and the tip of her ear. She’s injured, fragile. Only she’s not acting like an invalid. She’s moving around spryly for first thing in the morning. She seems normal, and the male parts of me, fully awake at this hour, agree. It doesn’t matter that I tell myself she’s off limits, the worst possible choice. My body has tuned out that voice.

  Fucking biology. How can I possibly still have a physical attraction to this girl?

  The black widow occasionally chews off her mate’s head. How’s that for postcoital thanks? Why the hell do we males put up with this shit? And yet I believe it. I’ll need to remind myself continually what Mira was like in high school, because my dick has a mind of its own.

  Mira reaches for the top shelf, her shorts riding up higher. The curve of her ass is on full display, her long legs narrowing to delicate ankles. I look up, and she’s glaring at me. “You could help, you know.”

  This living together is the worst physical and mental torture I could imagine. “With?”

  She points to the top shelf. “I need that mug.”

  Cali’s place houses every coffee mug in existence. Cali and Gen have their favorites, and it seems Mira has picked out hers as well. Must be a chick thing.

  I walk over and move right up behind her, resting my hands on the countertop on either side of her body, until my chest is touching her back.

  “Which one?” I say near her ear.

  She swallows. “That one.” She points again.

  Keeping one hand on the counter, I reach for the “Dear Karma, I Have a List of People You Missed” mug, and hand it to her.

  “Thanks,” she says, remaining very still.

  It’s not wise, but I’m a guy and she’s beautiful, so I breathe in her scent. It’s vanilla and floral, like last night, along with the intangible something I still gravitate to. The cells of my body are saying, Her, her. Now.

  I’m telling them to shut the fuck up.

  It’s always been this way with Mira. From the first time we sat near each other during our tutoring sessions, she smelled so good to me. I couldn’t stop myself from breathing her in then. I can’t stop myself now.

  But I will keep my hands off her.

  It’s sheer cruelty. Thanks to nature, my prehistoric pheromones recognize this girl’s scent and form, out of all the other beautiful women out there, as the most attractive imaginable.

  Mira pushes back, her ass against my lower abdomen, a not-so-subtle indicator that she wants me to move. And not at all helping my body’s inconvenient physical response to her.

  Her face is close—inches away—close enough that the glisten on her full bottom lip where she wets it with her tongue captures my attention. That, and her smell. Combine it with her slender body pressed to my chest and other areas, and a series of memories fire through my mind…Mira naked with me above her, my lips skimming the inside of her thigh…

  Heat spikes down my groin, turning me rock hard, tension rolling off my back.

  “Hold up.” I move my hand from the counter to just above her ass, keeping her still while I reach for another cup.

  She scans my selection. A mug with the words “Morning Wood” scrawled below an image of a stack of lumber.

  Those full lips twist into a smirk. “Classy,” she says, heavy on the sarcasm. My hand and body continue to press into hers, and her breaths turn hitchy. Not so unaffected.

  I have no doubt she can feel my want.

  She clears her throat. “I’d like to get my tea now.”

  I back away, holding my hands out in surrender, the Wood mug in one of them. “Have at it.”

  I flip the switch on the coffeemaker I filled the night before, and stealthily make an adjustment to my jeans. How am I going to stay away from her when she smells the way she does? No one should smell that good first thing in the morning. Then she has to look at me all pissy and hot-tempered. Why is that such a turn-on? Was it always? I don’t recall being drawn to bitchy chicks, but Mira’s always had the sauce. At one point, I thought she had a sweet hidden core, but I was wrong. So wrong.

  I push off the counter, away from the kitchen, away from her amazing scent.

  Space. That’s what I need. Space and distance.

  Mira walks out of the kitchen with her cup of tea, and sits on the couch in the living room.

  God. She’s a tea drinker on top of it all. Out of every reason we’re not compatible, that one settles it. I can’t live with a tea drinker.

  “How long do you think you’ll stay here?” Not subtle, but whatever.

  She stops in the act of raising the Karma mug to her wine-tinted lips, and shrugs. “I had planned to only stay the night when I thought I’d be with Cali, but now I’m not sure. It’s not ideal, but…” She takes in my tense features and lets out a huff, daggering me with a glare. “Lewis is right. I can’t go home, Tyler.”

  At my blank stare, she sets her tea on the end table. “Jesus,” she says, and stands forcefully. “I don’t like this any more than you do.” She storms out of the living room and into the bedroom.

  A moment later, Mira returns with the clothes she wore yesterday, and slams the bathroom door behind her, the sound of the lock scraping home.

  Humph. A little more sensitive than I remember.

  I boot up my laptop, the squeak of the shower starting coming from behind the bathroom door, the pipes rumbling below the house.

  I’m well into my edits by the time I register Mira emerging from the bathroom, her long, slightly wavy hair wet and hanging in thick strands down her back, making her beautiful face all the more pronounced.

  My fingers pause above the keyboard, my breath catching in my throat. She removed the bandage on her ear, and the cut seems to be healing a little. The sweatshirt she borrowed yesterday hides the curves I know exist. Doesn’t stop my gaze from searching them out before she disappears into the bedroom.

  I continue typing, my zest for tightening my manuscript sapped. Grabbing a random textbook from the piles I keep stacked along the wall of the dining area, I wil
l my research to suck me away from the drama surrounding me.

  I’m thumbing through The Neurobiology of Olfaction, having a hard time keeping my attention on the text instead of the girl behind the bedroom door, when a red Jeep pulls up.

  Lewis’s car.

  He honks, and Mira exits the bedroom, whipping out the front door and slamming it shut faster than I can blink.

  I slump in my chair, my head tipped to the ceiling. I breathe in deeply for the first time since I found Mira in the woods last night.

  This will never work.

  Chapter Nine

  Mira

  “I can’t live with him, Lewis.”

  Lewis frowns at the road as he drives to my studio apartment. “Why? Tyler’s a good guy.”

  And here’s where it gets tricky. Tyler is a good guy, even though he’s trying hard to be a royal ass.

  What Tyler doesn’t realize is that I know his game. I play it every day. I can tell the bad seeds from the good. Tyler doesn’t make the cut. He’s complex for sure, and something happened to give him an edge, but he’s not what he’s making himself out to be. For one, he didn’t need to stay with me last night. If he were a true jerk, he would have left me on my own like any self-respecting asshole.

  No, Tyler’s a mix of good guy and fire. That fire was there all those years ago, but hidden, and never more evident than the night we were together at Holly Walker’s house party. I wasn’t ready for it then. I’m not ready for it now.

  “It isn’t a good idea for me and Tyler to live together. We didn’t really get along in high school.”

  Lewis glances at me, his brow furrowed in confusion. “Wasn’t he your tutor for two years? I thought you guys got along fine. Not that you needed his help. I still don’t understand why you didn’t let me tutor you.”

  Lewis was one of the best students in our high school, but I had my sights on Tyler, so…

  I rub a smudge of dirt off the door that I’ve brought in with my shoes, feigning nonchalance. “He helped me for a year and a half. And I didn’t want to bother you with tutoring. You spent all your time studying; you didn’t need another reason to have your nose in a book. Studying with Tyler worked out for a while, but then we had a falling out. It happened right before you guys graduated. He pretty much hates me now.”

  Lewis’s gaze flickers over, his expression contemplative. “I don’t think he hates you, Mira. Give the guy a chance. Cali’s is the safest place for you right now. You said so yourself—no one knows you’re there. Tyler is taking time off work and he’s around. He’s the best person to keep an eye on you.”

  I could grumble about not needing anyone to look out for me, but even I have to admit that I’m in deeper than I thought. I woke up this morning in a cold sweat from a nightmare involving the men from the woods. In my dream, they didn’t stop at a beating. I woke before the guy choked me to death with his hands.

  “Yeah, okay.”

  “Good, now tell me about last night. I took it you didn’t want to talk in front of everyone, or even the police, but I need to know the details. In fact, we should give the police the full story and how we paid off that man a few weeks back. The loan shark shouldn’t be involved in this, but you never know.”

  I’d gotten so behind when I told Lewis and his parents about the money. Lewis insisted we pay the guy off. It sickened me to borrow from them, but there was no way I could get out of it without help. I asked for just enough to get the loan shark off my back.

  “I owe more,” I say.

  “Mira,” Lewis growls, which isn’t like Lewis at all. I’ve really pissed him off. “What do you mean you owe more?”

  “About twice what I told you.”

  “Twice the amount?” His gaze darts from me to the road and back again as he angles the Jeep down the street to my apartment and pulls into the driveway beneath the carport. He shuts the engine off and turns to me. “How did this get so out of control? Have you been gambling since—”

  “No.”

  He sighs. “Well, that’s one good thing. Your therapist is getting through to you?”

  “Yeah, she is. She’s helping me with my problems.” Which is true. I see my therapist every week, and we go over all my shit with my mom.

  “Exactly how much more do you owe?”

  “Another twelve. I didn’t want to worry you,” I say in a rush. “I thought if I told you the full amount, you’d freak out. I gave the man half, thinking that would get him off my back until I saved up the rest.”

  “You owe a hitman another twelve grand? What the hell, Mira? What were you thinking, spending that kind of money at the casinos?” He grabs the back of his neck.

  I lean my head against the glass, staring at the dumpster beside the carport. “Loan shark. And yes, I’ve stopped.” No way can I give my mom any more money.

  “So the men who hurt you were sent by that man? Why didn’t you tell me the truth? Do you realize how dangerous this is? My parents and I would have paid it off, Mira. We need to tell the police. And I’m giving you the rest of the money.”

  “Lewis, stop. You need to give me a chance. I have a plan on how to pay the rest back.”

  Well, the seed of a plan, anyway.

  He stares at me. “You don’t get it, Mira. You could have died last night.”

  I close my eyes for a beat, because he’s right. That doesn’t mean I can keep depending on Lewis to fix my problems. Yes, I’m making changes when it comes to my mom, but I’m also working on not relying on Lewis and his family for everything.

  “Just give me a couple of weeks to look into some things. A job opportunity just opened up. I’ve wanted a normal schedule for a while. This position pays better and it’s a total nine-to-fiver. If I cut down on expenses and find a better job, I know I can get these guys off my back. I don’t need much, and I’m good at saving money.”

  “When you’re not gambling,” he grumbles. “You’re frugal as hell. Which is why this entire thing makes no sense.” He looks at me. Really looks at me, and I wonder if he sees the truth.

  I avoid his eyes.

  “In fact,” he continues, “you hardly have any expenses as it is. I don’t know how you think you can cut back.”

  I open the door and step out, meeting Lewis at the back of his car. “The guy I owe is an ass, but he takes installments. He charges insane interest, but it’s worth it. I got behind last time, but I can fix this. I know I can. You can’t bail me out of everything. Even my therapist says I need to stop depending on you.”

  Resignation crosses his face. My words hit their mark. Lewis has been asking me to listen to my therapist for weeks. He can’t turn around and tell me not to now.

  He rubs the back of his neck again and stretches it, as if our conversation has given him a neck cramp. It isn’t easy for Lewis to allow me to take care of myself. The dependency goes both ways.

  He drops his arm stiffly to his side. “Two weeks, Mira. I’ll give you two weeks to come up with a plan.” We start walking toward my apartment building. “If you live at Cali’s, and stay away from your mom, and stick by Tyler’s side. I’ll cover the rent at your studio.”

  “You don’t—”

  “That’s it. Those are my conditions.” We climb the stairs to my second-floor apartment, and I pull out the keys. “You won’t have to pay Cali for the cabin. Tyler texted Jaeger he’ll pay the rent while Cali is away. This is what I’m proposing. Otherwise, I pay off that man, and you’re going into a treatment center—for gambling.”

  Huge emphasis on the last word.

  Lewis is no dummy. I’m sure he suspects my mom is behind this somehow, but if he isn’t bringing it up, neither am I. Maybe he’s giving me the benefit of the doubt. Or maybe he doesn’t want to deal with the consequences of the truth.

  I open the door to my apartment and we walk inside. It’s not much. A love seat and end table. A small bookshelf with more knickknacks than books—a vase that held flowers from my high-school graduation, a small Washoe
woven basket my mom gave me before she lost her home.

  I turn to him. “But living with Tyler…”

  Lewis shrugs. “Your choice. Those are my conditions.”

  I’m not sure how he thinks he can throw me in a treatment center without my consent, given I’m an adult, but I can tell he’s at least trying to give me space to do the right thing. It goes against Lewis’s instincts not to bail me out.

  “Okay, agreed.”

  He looks around. “Where’s your suitcase?”

  I point to the closet by my bed, and Lewis pulls my suitcase from the top shelf while I grab clothes out of a drawer.

  He stares at the broken handle and wheel, and shakes his head. “Frugal girl…You need a new one of these.”

  I dump the clothes on my bed. “It’s fine.”

  Lewis unzips the suitcase. “Why were you in the woods? Tyler mentioned he found you near a cabin your mom is living in.” He raises his eyebrow. “You said you wouldn’t go to her place anymore.”

  I knew this was coming. “I was on my way to visit her,” I say reluctantly, leaving out the part about how I was going to give her cash. That was so stupid. I can’t keep giving her money and still be able to pay off my debt.

  He groans. “We talked about this. She’ll hurt you and keep hurting you. She’s selfish.”

  He’s right, but I don’t want to be a crap daughter because I have a shit mom. That doesn’t mean I’m risking my life again. I’ve been enabling, as my therapist puts it. It’s a fine balance.

  “It’s not as easy as you think. If Becky made a mistake, could you walk away and never look back?”

  His mouth compresses. “You know that’s not the same.”

  Lewis’s mom is amazing. She’s loving, supportive without overdoing it. She’s shown me the kind of woman I want to be.

  “My mom is as fallible as anyone else.” He grabs a stack of clothes to toss in the suitcase, his gaze narrowing on the lacy underwear in his hands. He drops them like they’re hot coal. “I think I’ll wait in the kitchen while you pack. The point is that my mom tries to be a good parent. In her case, she succeeds most of the time. Your mother has never put you first. Her only concern is for herself, and she’ll drag you down if you let her.”