The Naughty Boxset

by Jasinda Wilder

  I wanted to see what had been so funny, so I scrolled to the left to bring the video back to the beginning. The video had caught Michael as he tripped over his own pants and fell backward onto his ass, leaving Tawny bent over the chair, dress shoved up past her gyrating hips. Michael’s erect dick flapped and flopped and wobbled as he toppled backward. Honestly, it was hysterical. It was funny enough that despite the circumstances, I actually giggled.

  But I sobered quickly.

  “He’s still in there?” I demanded, tossing Eric’s phone at him. “Fucking Tawny?”

  Nobody answered, which was all the answer I needed; I’d seen enough, no need to confront him.

  I wiggled my full-carat diamond solitaire engagement ring off my finger and sucked in a deep breath—well, as deep as I could, anyway—to fend off the meltdown for a few more minutes. I turned to Lisa, grabbed her wrist and pressed the ring into her palm. “Tawny can have him.”

  I turned and left, fighting off the need to have a total nervous breakdown.

  Dad was still waiting on the bench, and he looked up as I stormed past him. “Baby? Dru? What’s going on?”

  I kept marching, and let Dad catch up. We were out of the church, and into the pouring Seattle rain in less than sixty seconds.

  “You were right, Daddy,” I managed, as I approached the driver’s side of Dad’s beat-up red ’07 Tacoma—he’d driven us here, but now I needed to drive. I needed to get away as fast as possible.

  Dad wasted no time hopping into the passenger seat, which was good since I wasn’t waiting around. The second my ass hit the faded, ripped cloth seat, the engine was on and I was peeling out.

  “Right about what? What’s going on?” he asked as I skidded out of the parking lot of the church and onto the main road.

  Dad having trained me to drive, he was fairly relaxed despite my wild driving.

  “About Michael, about everything.” I sniffled and tried to stop the next one, because I knew once I let it out there would be no stopping it. “He—he—Tawny, he was—SHIT!” I slammed my fist on the steering wheel so hard the whole truck shook. “That piece of shit was fucking Tawny in the dressing room.”

  Dad’s eye twitched, and his massive fist clenched. “Knew that punk was a slimy bastard.”

  “Yeah, you did.”

  “So now what?”

  I unbuttoned the trench coat, shrugged it off, and handed it to Dad. “Now I go get shitfaced. After that? I don’t know.” I contorted in place, trying to loosen the bodice, and managed to give myself enough room in the dress so I could actually take a breath without it hurting.

  Dad rested his meaty hand on my shoulder. “Pull over, baby-cakes. I’ll drive.”

  I yanked the wheel to the right, hopped a curb, and skidded to a halt in a drug store parking lot. We did a Chinese fire drill, and when I was seated Dad took off again, albeit far more sedately than I had.

  He glanced at me. “You gonna cry?”

  I nodded. “A lot. I’m gonna ugly cry so hard, Dad, you don’t even know.”

  He dug into his back pocket and produced an actual handkerchief. Dad, classic, right there. He’s not all that old, since Mom had me at nineteen, but he acts like someone from a previous generation. Handkerchiefs, trench coats, and I’m pretty sure he has a fedora somewhere.

  I stared at the handkerchief. “Do you use that on your nose?”

  He shrugged. “Well, sure, it’s a hanky.”

  “That’s disgusting.”

  Dad stuffed it back in his pocket. “Suit yourself. But it’s clean, you know. I have several, and I wash them. It’s not, like, the same hanky with twenty years of snot crusted into it.”

  That got a laugh from me, because that was kind of what I’d been imagining. But the laugh was what broke me—I couldn’t hold my feelings back anymore. It started with a single tear and a sniffle, which turned into a sob, and then I was full-blown ugly crying, as promised.

  I took the hanky, gross as it was, and wiped my eyes with it, not caring if I smeared my mascara.

  Pretty soon I was crying so hard I couldn’t see, and I felt Dad pull the truck over. He unbuckled me and hauled me to his side, wrapped his thick arm around me, and held me close as I sobbed. He smelled like Dad and felt like comfort.

  He let me cry for I don’t know how long, and when I was finished, he took the hanky from me, wiped my face with it, and stuffed it back into his pocket. “Better?”

  I shook my head. “No, not even close. But I’m done crying for now. Time to get hammered.”

  Dad took me to his favorite dive, a cop bar near a small rural airfield way outside Seattle. By small, I mean postage-stamp tiny. The biggest airplane anywhere on the field was a twin-engine prop plane getting loaded with crates; the rest of the planes were single-engine Cessnas, Piper Cubs, Beechcraft, and other single-engine private aircraft. He knew everyone there, since he’d been on the force for twenty years and had been going to that particular dive bar for even longer; it wasn’t so much a cop bar as it was the personal, mostly private hangout of Dad and his cop buddies.

  When we walked in every head turned, because it was the kind of place you just didn’t go into unless you knew you were welcome. So when the guys saw me in my dress, bedraggled from walking through the downpour, mascara smeared from crying…well, those cops were a tight bunch. They took care of their own. One look at me, and they pulled the tables into a circle, sat me down, pulled a bottle of the finest scotch in the joint and poured me a double on the rocks. I’d grown up with these guys, you see. Their wives had babysat me when Dad worked a weekend or school night shift. They had come over in the middle of the night when Dad had to go interview a suspect. They had covered for me when I snuck out to make out with boys in high school. These cops had all been there for me my whole life.

  I finished my first double scotch and listened to them discussing plans for Michael, and then waited while Detective Rolando poured me a second. I looked at them all in turn: Rolando, Vickers, Johnson, Dad, Benson, Ayers, Mickelson…Dad had obviously texted them to meet us here after I’d bolted from the wedding.

  “No revenge, guys.” I stared them down until they saw I was serious. “He’s not worth it. He can have Tawny and she can have him. No revenge. Although, if you ever catch him speeding, don’t let him off with a warning. I’m not going to waste another moment of my life on him, and neither should any of you.”

  I got a chorus of agreement. After finishing my second double scotch, I started taking the pins out of my hair and, once my hair was down, it was on.

  I switched from scotch to bourbon, from doubles to shots chased by pints of local stout.

  See, I’d learned to drink with the cops, too—and these boys could pound the liquor like nobody’s business.

  I could say I lost track then but, hell, I hadn’t bothered counting in the first place.

  At some point, Mickelson put breakup music on the bar’s radio, and considering how drunk I was by that point I got into it. Really, really into it.

  Dad and Ayers had left at some point to haul in some suspect they’d been chasing, so I was alone with Mickelson, Benson, and Rolando, Dad’s closest friends on the force, men who were like uncles to me.

  Mickelson was seated beside me, spouting drunken wisdom. “Can’t let the bastard get you down, Dru. Gotta keep your head up, y’know? He’s a bastard, and a punk, and he ain’t worth your tears. So just forget him, right?”

  “Right,” I said, because that had been my plan all along, but they kept bringing Michael back into the conversation. Which, to my inebriated thinking, was counterproductive. “I gotta start over.”

  “Start over, that’s a great plan. Scrap everything, and start new,” Rolando agreed.

  I stood up, wobbled dizzily across the bar to the grimy window. A plane getting ready to take off, taking advantage of a lull in the rain. “Been in Seattle my whole life. Never been anywhere else. Michael is…everywhere I go in this whole damn city I’ll see him. I was with him
for four years. Four fucking years! How long was he cheating on me? Or was that, like, some kind of stupid last hurrah, instead of a bachelor party? Or wait, no, he had a bachelor party. And I’m pretty sure they went to a strip club. So…fuck, whatever. I just—” I wasn’t really talking to anyone at this point. “I dunno if I can stay in Seattle anymore. I gotta…I gotta get out of here.”

  Rolando came up beside me, careful to stand a respectful distance away, but close enough to grab me should I pass out or start heaving. Either was possible. “Where would you go?”

  I shrugged, which sent me off balance, and I put a hand on the bar to steady myself. “I don’t know, ’Lando. Anywhere but here. Maybe I’ll just…get on one of those planes and go where it goes.”

  Rolando patted my shoulder. “Your old man wouldn’t know what to do with himself if you left, Dru. But I get your point.”

  “I’ve been here my whole life. I went to college here, got my first real job here, met Michael here. How can I start over in the same place I’ve always been?” I was starting to see double, but I felt the truth of my own words deep in my bones.

  I had my purse on my shoulder, which contained all my ID and bank cards, as well as my cell phone and charger. I had no clothes, though, except the wedding dress I was still wearing.

  But fuck it, right?

  I couldn’t stay here any more—I had to leave.

  I stared out the window as a plane taxied onto the runway and took off.

  What if…?

  I straightened.

  Another plane was visible in the distance, lights on, propellers spinning, waiting for the cue to leave. I didn’t really even see it, just what it represented: freedom, a fresh start. I saw twin propellers spinning, wing lights blinking, saw it pivoting from the line of waiting small aircraft onto the runway.

  I turned to Rolando and Mickelson. “I’m leaving.”

  They both frowned. “You’re—what?”

  I grabbed my purse off the back of the chair and slung it over my shoulder. “I can’t stay here anymore. I need to get away.”

  “So where are you going?” Mickelson, who resembled a slightly smaller version of Fat Bastard from Austin Powers, stood up and hobbled after me. “You can’t just leave, Dru. What about your dad?”

  I lifted my phone out of my purse and waggled it at him. “I’ll call him when I get wherever I end up. I’m not leaving forever, I just—I can’t be here anymore.”

  I pushed out the door and jogged in my three-inch heels across the parking lot—this was truly nothing but a postage-stamp airfield: no security, no fences, no one to stop me as I hauled ass through the grass to the runway

  Rolando was hot on my heels. “You’re drunk, Dru. You can’t do this now, not like this.”

  “I have to. It’s crazy, but it’s what I have to do. It’s happening. Tell Dad I love him and that I’ll call him as soon as I can, okay?”

  I slipped my heels off and held them in my hand, then took off running across the field toward the runway. The plane was taxiing toward the runway now, props whirling into a blur. I was wasted, but somehow I stayed upright until I reached the runway, held up my arms, and waved at the plane to stop.

  The pilot flung open his door, props slowing. “What gives, lady? You can’t just jump in front of a plane like that. You wanna get killed?”

  I climbed up the side and opened the door, and hopped into the co-pilot seat. “I’m going with you!” I shouted.

  He stared at me. “The hell you are.”

  I opened my wallet and pulled out all the cash I had—over a thousand dollars I’d been planning on spending on my honeymoon in Hawaii. “Here,” I said, handing it to him. “Twelve hundred dollars to shut up and take me wherever it is you’re going.”

  “I’m taking a load of supplies to—”

  “I don’t care, I don’t want to know!” I said, interrupting him. “It doesn’t matter. As long as it’s far from here.”

  He stared at me for a long moment, then took the cash, stuffed it into the breast pocket of his short-sleeve button-down shirt; I thought I heard him mumble something like “Alaska here we come, then,” under his breath, but I wasn’t quite sure, because the last few shots had suddenly caught up to me, and we were taking off and I was dizzy and fighting nausea.

  When I finally beat the urge to puke, I turned to the pilot. We were in the air now and climbing steeply, going up through the rain clouds into the night sky above them.

  “Did you say Alaska?” I had to shout the question, because it was so loud in the cabin I couldn’t hear myself speaking.

  He handed me a pair of headphones with a microphone attached to it, and when I put it on, he glanced at me. “Thought you said you didn’t want to know where we were going.”

  “It sounded like you said ‘Alaska,’ though.”

  He nodded. “Ketchikan, Alaska, sweetheart.”

  I went faint. “I thought—I was thinking somewhere more like…Portland, or San Francisco.”

  He chuckled. “Nope, we’re going to Alaska. Well, you are. When we land, I’m dropping off this load and picking up a load of fish and taking it inland. Won’t be going back to Seattle.”

  Dizziness hit me again, and I bent over to put my head between my knees. “Alaska? Jesus.”

  He eyed me warily. “You gonna puke? Because there’re sick bags under your seat if you are.”

  I grabbed a sick bag, but instead of puking into it I used it to help me breathe.

  “Alaska.” I said it again, as if saying it again would make it more real.

  “Ketchikan, to be exact. Nice place, lots of cruise ships go through there. Beautiful. A bit chilly, sometimes, but beautiful.”

  Another wave of nausea tossed through me. “Would it be horribly rude if I asked you to shut up?”

  He just chuckled. “Fine by me.”

  And he did just that, shut up, fiddling with knobs and switches and tapping gauges, adjusting the controls.

  Alaska?

  What the hell had I gotten myself into?

  2

  Sebastian

  * * *

  Where are the fuckin’ cruise ships when you need ’em?

  I wiped down the bar for the forty-seventh time in the last hour, staring out at my bar, which was dead as a doornail, deader than a graveyard and a ghost town put together. Not a damn soul in the bar and it was seven in the evening on a Saturday. There should be fuckin’ somebody wanting a goddamn drink. But no, hadn’t been one stinkin’ customer since we’d opened at four. Usually the bar was hopping, or at least had a decent crowd, even on week nights or stormy days. I’d blame it on the rain, but that didn’t usually stop people from needing a drink or six. Shit, most of the time it made it busier, not deader.

  I should just close. What was the harm? Wouldn’t be anybody in anyway.

  But I couldn’t do that. Badd’s Bar and Grill was struggling enough as it was, so if I had any hope of keeping Dad’s bar alive, I couldn’t afford to close early. Dad may be gone—three months in his grave—but no way I was going to let his bar go under, too. I’d been doing my damndest, but one guy to run a whole bar wasn’t ideal, and meant I’d seen a decrease in business, simply because I couldn’t keep up with the demand, so people went elsewhere.

  I’d been raised in this damn bar. I learned to walk going from table three to four. Kissed my first girl in the alley behind the place, bedded the same girl in the storeroom in the attic, got in my first fistfight right out in that parking lot.

  I wasn’t going to let the place close. I’d struggle along somehow. Keep it afloat, even if it wasn’t the hot spot it had once been. Maybe I just had to bite the bullet and hire somebody to help out. Hated the idea, since in all the years I’d been alive, we’d never hired a soul outside the family, and I hated the idea of breaking that tradition.

  I’d been hoping there’d be some kind of windfall after Dad died, you know? Like, an inheritance or something. I figured Dad had been doing okay all those years
, figured he’d have money saved. Guess not. Don’t know how he managed not to save anything, since he lived in the bar and rarely ever left it, and when my brothers and I were younger we all lived above it. Mom cooked the food, Dad served the drinks.

  Then, when I was seventeen, Mom passed and I took over the food prep. I’d get home from school, tie on an apron and start slinging burgers and fries and chicken wings. It was my first job and now, ten years later, this bar was the only job I’d ever had. Dad let me help with the books when I was twenty, let me split the shifts with him—three days a week for him and four for me.

  I knew the business had been struggling for a while, but in the last few months since Dad died things had really taken a nosedive.

  I did my best to keep things afloat but it didn’t help that I was the single employee. I cooked, bartended, bussed, mopped, swept, and worked open to close, four p.m. to two a.m. seven days a week.

  The frustrating thing was that even though I had seven brothers to my name, not one was around to help.

  That’s right, there were eight of us. Mom and Dad had raised eight boys in the three-bedroom apartment above this bar—four of us to a room in double bunk bed sets. When Mom died Zane had been fifteen, Brock thirteen, Baxter twelve, Caanan and Corin the identical twins ten, Lucian nine, and Xavier, the baby of the tribe, had been seven.

  Ten years later, Zane was off being a Navy SEAL somewhere, Brock was playing football in the CFL and was being scouted for the NFL, or so he claimed, Baxter was a stunt pilot traveling the country doing airshows, Canaan and Corin were touring the world with their hard rock band, Bishop’s Pawn, and Lucian was…well, I wasn’t entirely sure. He’d left the day he turned eighteen and hadn’t come back, hadn’t so much as sent a damn postcard. I figured he’d taken the money he’d made working on fishing boats from the time he was fifteen and was just sort of bumming around the world like a damned vagabond. That was like him, brooding, lazy, and just inherently cool. Xavier had gotten a full ride to Stanford from soccer and academics, and there was talk of FIFA scouts watching him…on top of think tanks or some shit like that. Then there was me, Sebastian Badd, the eldest, stuck in goddamned Ketchikan tending a dead-ass bar, same as I’d been doing since I was seventeen.