Convict: A Bad Boy Romance (4 page)

“I need something else,” I say.

Sylvie waits.

“I need a gun.”

She sighs and looks at her drink.

“Oh, Stone,” she says. “Are you in trouble?”

“No,” I say. “I just like to be prepared.”

Sylvie narrows her eyes, then nods once, briskly, and asks about a few particulars.

As she stands to leave, she turns back to me and gives me a long, appraising look.

“I don’t know what you’ve gotten yourself into, but you’re a nice kid, Stone. Don’t get too far into the shit,” she says, and then leaves.

I nearly laugh. She has
no
idea.

The next day I get a call. I meet a guy I don’t know in the parking lot of a mall. He hands me a Glock, I hand him a wad of cash, and we leave. It’s over in two minutes. Sylvie knows how to take care of shit.

You’re backsliding
, I think as I drive away.

You got one chance to reset your life completely. You got a new name, a new city, a clean record. And you’re going to fucking blow it.

I glance at the glove compartment where I’ve stashed the gun.

At least I’m not running
, I think.

* * *

A
nd then
? Nothing.

There’s no more graffiti, no smashed windows, no car fires. I start to think I braced myself for something that won’t happen. Hell, I start to
hope
for that.

Maybe it was a coincidence. Maybe there’s some local gang that happens to use the same symbol.

Maybe I went and bought an illegal gun for no reason at all.

The
other
problem only gets worse.

I hide Detective Rivers’s business card the moment I get home, just to keep myself from calling her. I keep waking up early, but I sit at my kitchen table and drink cup after cup of coffee instead of going to the beach where she might be.

I
cannot
get involved with a police detective, no matter how smoking hot she is. Not only am I trying to evade some very bad people, but figuring shit out is her job. I have plenty of shit I don’t want figured out just now.

I settle for jerking off and thinking about her a
lot
.

* * *

F
inally
, I can’t take it any more. I can’t have Luna, but I can still get laid.

I pull my motorcycle out of the garage and go for a ride down Highway 1, along the Pacific coast. The cool sea breeze that seeps under my helmet and through my jacket is the first thing in days to make me feel better, and I lose myself in the twists and turns of the asphalt, in the constant roar of my engine combined with the ocean down below.

When I get there, the Landlubber is almost crowded. There’s a tiny stage in the back, and some band full of long-haired hippies is playing. They’re not good, but they could be worse. At least they’re loud, and it’ll keep me from having to talk too much.

In one corner there’s a group of women. They’re all wearing sequins, one’s wearing a crown, and as I get closer, I can see her sash: BACHELORETTE.

The gods of getting laid must be smiling.

I order a Jim Beam on the rocks, and just as I’m about to go over, a blond girl from the group comes up to the bar and rattles off a list of shots to the bartender. I check her finger, because I learned
that
lesson. No ring.

“You’re with the bachelorette party?” I ask.

She looks over at me, almost annoyed at first. Then she smiles.

“I am,” she says. “I’m not the bachelorette, though.”

“I guessed as much,” I say. “You’re not wearing the crown.”

The blond glances back at her friends.

“She insisted,” the blond confesses, then rolls her eyes. “It’s not a bachelorette party unless
everyone
in a five-mile radius knows she’s getting married. Congrats, you found some guy to put a ring on your finger.
Great
.”

I lean in toward her.

“You know, forty percent of women cheat at their bachelorette parties,” I say, lowering my voice.

I made that up, but her eyes widen and she raises her eyebrows. She sneaks a glance over at her crowned and sashed friend.

“She wouldn’t,” the blond says, but she doesn’t sound like she completely believes it.

“It’s one last chance to get crazy before you get married, I guess,” I say, and take a gulp of Jim Beam. The blond is pretty attractive, in a generic sort of way. It’ll be enough to scratch this itch, at least. “You know, go to a bar, go home with some guy who’ll do absolutely
filthy
things to you, and then settle down.”

I wink at her, and she bites her lip. The bartender comes over with the shots.

“I wouldn’t know,” she says, handing the bartender a credit card. “I’m not engaged or married or even seeing anyone right now.”

Subtle
, I think. Not that subtlety is my strong suit.

“Is one of those yours, or can I buy you a drink?” I ask, draining my whiskey.

The girls laughs a little, playing with her hair.

“Sure,” she says. “Let me take these over there.”

“What do you want?”

“One of those purple things in a martini glass,” she says, and walks back to her friends.

I order two of those purple things, because why not. The girl takes a long time with her friends, and there’s lots of giggling and squealing, but I’m not that worried.

The bartender puts the drinks on the bar.

“Two Golden State Aviations,” he says, and leaves again. The girl’s still not back, so I take a sip of the ridiculous drink — it’s actually
good
— and scan the crowd.

Across the C-shaped bar, a woman with a
mane
of curly, blond-red-gold-brown hair wedges herself against the bar and waves at the bartender. Something clicks in my brain.

Then she pushes her hair out her face, just as the bartender steps aside, and all my suspicions are confirmed.

It’s Luna. Detective Rivers. Whatever.

Fuck
. I came here specifically
not
to see her.

What I
should
do is leave and go somewhere else to get laid, but I’m already walking over, purple drink in hand. I can feel eyes on the tall, pushy guy with a leather jacket and a girly drink, but I don’t give a damn.

I lean against the bar next to Luna, elbowing a guy with flip-flops and long hair. He looks at me like he’s gonna say something, but changes his mind pretty fast. Luna doesn’t notice.

“You
have
to stop following me,” I say.

She turns and looks at me, her mass of curls bouncing. Then she laughs.

“If I had you under surveillance, you’d never know,” she says, her warm brown eyes dancing. “Give me a little credit.”

Luna’s leaning against the bar with her forearms, wearing a sleeveless shirt and shorts, her skin pale gold. I have to fight the urge to lick her shoulder.

“It’s still suspicious, detective,” I say. “You watch me for months and don’t say anything, and then suddenly we’re talking three times in a week.”

“You came up to
me
,” she points out. Then she looks at my drink, and raises one eyebrow. “Apparently after trying to impress some married lady by buying her an Aviation, only to get turned down.”

Even though our eyes are locked, I can tell she’s checking me out again. I fight the urge to pull on the collar of my t-shirt under my jacket, just to make sure none of my ink is showing.

“You think I bought a drink for someone who turned me down,” I say, and take a slow, deliberate sip.

“I had you figured for the gruff, whiskey-on-the-rocks type,” Luna says, nodding at the martini glass in my hand. “That’s positively
delicate
.”

“I’m dainty as fuck,” I say, twisting the stem of the glass between my fingers. “Couldn’t you tell?”

She laughs.

“So you fix cars, surf badly, wear leather jackets, and prefer your drinks purple?” Luna asks.

“I’m complicated,” I say. “Besides, I can make myself a whiskey on the rocks at home. I don’t even know what’s
in
this thing, but it’s delicious.”

“Looks like the Cheshire Cat took a piss in a martini glass,” she says.

Luna squeezes her eyes shut for a moment, like she’s wincing. Then she laughs.

“I spend too much time around cops,” she says. “Those filthy assholes are wearing off on me.”

“I’m deeply offended,” I deadpan.

“You do strike me as the pearl-clutching type,” she teases. “You write a lot of letters to the editor about how disrespectful the youth of today is?”

“Thousands,” I say. “I live for it, Detective.”

The bartender comes over and sets two beers in front of Luna.

Two
?

I raise my eyebrows, then take another sip of the tasty purple drink to cover my surprise.

“Same tab?” he asks.

Luna just nods.

“Yeah, he owes me,” she says, and the bartender leaves again.

She grabs the beers and turns to me.

“I
did
tell you my name,” she says. “You don’t have to call me Detective, you know.”

I can’t stop wondering who the other beer is for, or whether it’s the
he
is who owes Luna.

“I had to drag it out of you,” I say. I’m trying to sound light, but my voice sounds a little hollow, even to me. “I thought you might prefer your title, Detective.”

“Well, I’ll see you around,
mechanic
,” she teases.

Then Luna walks into the mass of people in front of the stage, and I stare at her as she leaves. She’s wearing shorts and flip-flops, the long muscles of her legs practically an arrow to her perfect ass.

For just a moment I imagine standing behind her, sliding one hand up her warm skin, and slipping my fingers under the hem of her shorts.

Then she walks up to a tallish, skinny guy and hands him one of the beers, and they clink them together. He’s wearing a tie-dye t-shirt, he’s got dark hair in a top knot, and he’s wearing flip-flops.

I’m
one hundred percent certain
I could kick his ass. Fuck, if I hit him I don’t think he’d get back up, just lie on the floor and moan. I wouldn’t even have to hit him hard.

I force myself to turn back to the bar. It doesn’t work like that here. I can’t just hit people and get what I want.

Besides, I don’t think I
would
get what I want. If I punched Luna’s date, I have a feeling she’d be way more pissed than impressed.

I glance across the bar. The blond is back and suddenly way less attractive. I sigh.

Then I walk over.

S
omeone pushes past Raine
, and he jerks out of the way, sloshing his beer onto my feet.

“Dude, come
on
,” I say.

He looks down.

“Shit, sorry,” he says, looking at my toes. He goes into one of the many pockets in his shorts, and after a moment, comes up with a crumpled tissue.

“I’ve got this?” he says, offering it to me.

I look at the tissue, and try very hard not to imagine where it’s been or what it’s been used for.

“How the hell are you a
nurse
?” I say, one my favorite rhetorical questions to ask him. “Don’t tell me you go around offering patients gross old tissues and spilling beer on them.”

Raine grins.

“I keep my beer in a sippy cup when I’m on duty,” he says. “Hospital regulations. Come on, Loony, I’m a professional.”

I
almost
tell him not to call me Loony, but if being Raine’s older sister for twenty-four years has taught me anything, it’s that telling him not to do something is the number one way of ensuring that he does it.

Professional or not, Raine is still kind of like a puppy, all giant hands and feet with no concept of where his own body begins and ends. Especially when he’s had three beers.

He puts the tissue back in his pocket, and I glance over my shoulder again, looking for Stone and trying
very hard
not to look like I’m looking for Stone. For some reason, he makes me feel like the uncool, dorky middle school girl again, the one who wore baggy jeans and t-shirts every day while the other girls all learned to apply lip gloss and mascara.

I figured mascara out eventually. Hell, I’m wearing some right now. But even so, when he talks to me I have to fight the urge to look over my shoulder so I can find the girl he’s
really
talking to.

Men who have green eyes and sideburns and one dimple, who are tall and
built
like marble statues, but really sexy, muscly ones? Those men don’t talk to me. They talk to girls who manage to
act
like girls at least once in a while.

Besides, I don’t see Stone anywhere. He probably left.

“Hey, so, like, this is our last song,” says the singer, pushing his hair out of his eyes.

I applaud, along with everyone else.

“I wrote this one night when I was out in the mountains on a spirit quest?” he goes on, ending every sentence with a question. “And it was just so peaceful out there, just me and the trees and I felt this intense, like, belonging with everything? Even the worms and the mosquitos?”

You mean, you went camping and got high as balls
, I think.

“But, like, the world is really all one,” he goes on. “And I wrote this that night because I wanted to respect the one-ness of all life, even the weird ones. This is called
Dirt Worm Love
.”

I clap again. On stage, my other brother Skye makes eye contact with the other band members, then starts playing. They’re actually not bad, at least if stoner rock is what you’re into. I’ve always preferred my music with a harder edge, but I do have a soft spot for this kind of stuff. Hard not to if you grow up here.

“They’re getting better,” Raine says as the song ends, and I nod in agreement.

“Thank you!” the singer shouts. The band puts down their instruments and walks off stage, and the house music comes up again.

“That sounded pretty good,” I say. “Do you wanna hang around for the next band?”

“Yeah, but I can get a ride from Skye or one of the guys,” Raine says, jerking his thumb toward the side of the stage where the band disappeared. “Is it past your bedtime already?”

I glance at my phone. It’s past ten, and even though I know Raine is just being a dick, it’s been a long week, I’m tired, and I want to get up and go surfing tomorrow.

“I might head out,” I say.

“Cool,” he says.

The band comes out of a side door, so Raine and I make our way over to them. Skye’s already got a beer in his hand, and I give him a hug and tell him it was a great show. He and Raine high five, and we all chat for a moment.

My eyes wander back to the bar. It’s cleared out a little, and after a moment, I can see Stone sitting on the opposite side.

Talking to some pretty blond. As I watch, she laughs and plays with her hair, and I feel a pit open up in my stomach.

I bet she’s had her colors done and can apply eyeliner without stabbing herself in the eyeball
, I think.
Shit, I bet her underwear matches her bra and everything
.

I try not to feel disappointed.

He told you he comes out here to pick up girls
, I remind myself.
You already knew that. Besides, fucking look at him. Of course he’s always knee-deep in pussy.

Good
God
I’m around cops too much. Knee-deep? Seriously?

Across the room, Stone sits up straighter, takes another sip of his drink, then smiles. One dimple.

Why is he so HOT though?
I think.

Then I look back at my brothers.

“Right on,” Skye says to Raine, nodding. Then he looks at me. “Raine says you’re heading out early?”

“Yeah, I’ve had a long week,” I say.

“Thanks for coming to the show and hanging out with us dirty hippies,” Skye says, smiling.

“You’re not
that
dirty,” I tease.

I hug them both, and I’m just walking away when I remember.

“Raine,” I say. “I need my keys.”

He looks at me blankly.

“From when you left your phone in my car earlier and had to go back out and get it?”

He blinks. Then looks away. Then makes a face and starts going through his pockets, one by one.

Instantly, I know where my keys are, but I let him look for a moment first.

“Did you lock them in my car again?” I ask. I cross my arms and glare, because this isn’t the first time this has happened.

He just keeps searching without saying anything.

“For fuck’s sake,” I say, and start walking for the door. Raine scurries after me. “Tell me they’re locked in the car and not in the street where
anyone
could have picked them up
,
” I say, over my shoulder.

“They’re in the car?” he says.

We walk past the bar, and as irritated as I am, I still sneak a glance at Stone and the blond girl. She’s
still
playing with her hair, and now I’m even
more
annoyed.

At the last second, Stone suddenly looks over at me. I look away, because I feel like I got caught staring.

“Would it kill you to keep track of something for five minutes?” I ask Raine.

“Sorry,” he mutters.

“Just
once
?” I say.

“
Sorry
,” he mutters again, and we walk out to my car, parked across the street.