by Ace Gray
“Home, sweet home.” He gestured with the nose of Dantè’s surfboard before he slid it onto an outdoor rack filled with various sized boards and paddles.
The lump in my throat morphed into a hippopotamus when he reached for the sliding glass door, and I saw four figures standing around a kitchen island just inside. Meeting Bert was enough to throw me off my axis. But now I was going to meet the players in our wicked game. Up close, and in person. And that thought sent me reeling.
“Jordan? Jordan?” Bert was crouched over top of me, faint sun haloing his head where it filtered through the trees behind him. His face was the mirror of mine from earlier, crinkled with concern that bordered on sheer terror. “Jordan, are you okay?”
“What happened?” A voice asked.
“Is she okay?” A girl echoed.
“You get fucking lucky down at the beach, Bert?” I recognized that timbre slightly. “No one likes sand in their vagina.”
“You guys both look like you took a beating.” The fourth voice added with a laugh.
Bert didn’t shift his focus from me. “What happened?” Worry was still rich in his words even as he held me tight and safe with those big shielding shoulders…ugh.
“I think the adrenaline wore off,” I offered meekly.
“Fair,” he answered with a smile that flashed a sexy A. F. Harry Potter in front of me again. I almost swooned and fell again.
He carefully pulled me upright, his arms still tight. When he was sure my feet were under me, he tucked himself beside me, revealing them.
All four of them.
They stood like the beautiful cast of some television show based on deception and vengeance. Like some airbrushed daytime soap. But they were real. And I wanted to kill them. If the pressure of Bert’s grip wasn’t there as a reminder, I probably would have. He stilled me long enough to remind me Dantè was depending on me.
“These are my roommates.” Bert gestured to the four people I knew all too well yet had never met.
I forced the corners of my lips up into something that resembled a smile—or I convinced myself it did anyway—and reached out to shake their hands as Bert introduced them.
Rousse was closest and he’d just collected himself from trying to catch me. His strawberry blond, floppy hair cut blew in the breeze. I looked into the depth of his blue eyes and connected the freckles bridging his nose as I reached to shake his hand. Bert kept a sturdy hold on me as I leaned toward Rousse’s toned body covered in a tight white t-shirt and hugging denim jeans that were cuffed just above his ankles. He played the bad boy but the lines of his face were kind and his smile was boyish.
I probably would have liked him if I wasn’t predisposed to hate him.
“This is Diego, the surfer I told you about.”
The surfer. The Quintessential surfer. He was kissed by the sun and salt, and probably half the chicks in Northern California. He pulled back his shoulder-length, bleached-out curls into a pony tail before reaching for my hand. It was his high cheek bones and pervy smile on display that turned him from just some hottie to a full-blown predator. I felt like prey as soon as he looked at me.
And Danger…well, Danger was the epitome of his name.
He studied my hand when I reached out and an unpleasant jolt shot through me. I got the feeling he found me both interesting and completely beneath him at the same time. Something wicked oozed from each of his chocolate pores as he studied me. I felt as though he’d stripped me down and dissected each piece.
I shivered and it rattled my spine. Bert pulled me in closer to his side.
“Don’t mind them.” A woman’s soft voice interrupted my stare down with Danger.
“This is Mercy,” Bert introduced her.
Diego stepped in front of her even as she held her hand out for me. She looked at him, then her palm, then mine, and back at Diego before shoving her hand back into her pocket before letting out a deep and weary breath.
She was beautiful. Breathtakingly so. I didn’t think that even models looked like her up close. She had blonde waves straight out of a shampoo ad, and charming freckles dusted the bridge of her nose and apples of her cheeks. I didn’t think she wore a stitch of makeup. She was tall, and even with her softly flowing sun dress, I could imagine the way her Brazilian curves fit into the angled grooves of Dantè’s hard body.
I would have hated her most of all if she didn’t look so hollow.
There was a vacancy behind her eyes that echoed in her timid but weighted motions. And the heart she so obviously wore on her sleeve was beat to shit.
“Can I offer you a beer?” She gestured toward their kitchen. “It does look like you guys need one.”
“That’d be great, Mercy.” Bert shepherded me toward the sliding glass door, not even giving me a chance to protest or digest all this or, God, ground myself.
“Beer,” I said awkwardly as I crossed the threshold into some twisted version of hell.
Because, underneath the bachelor pad take on mid-century modern, that’s what this place was. Hell. Dantè’s anyways. He’d lived here, happy, and they’d ruined him. Here. I looked around and could see the night he had recounted to me numerous times in varying degrees of detail. I could imagine the minimal furniture of the living room shoved to the sides and lights flashing through the room. I was standing where a keg might go.
“And lucky for me, Jordan and her roommate were there.” Bert was retelling his story, and I wasn't sure when he had started.
“Drowning?” Diego laughed.
I felt like I was. In hate. In the ice of this place. In the way they all went about their days—their lives—like they hadn’t ruined someone. Like they actually deserved to sit in a warm home and drink a cold beer and poke fun at Bert. At Bert who was the only one who wasn’t a complete and total fuckface.
“You’re a little bitch,” Danger said smoothly to Bert as he knocked back a bit of beer, still eyeing me. Shivers renewed inside me, nipping at the base of my spine.
“Yeah, well you’re a big ole prick,” Bert shot back and while he laughed, I didn’t think it was totally genuine.
“That’s what she said,” Danger smirked.
“You’re gonna tell everyone on Monday aren’t you?” Bert asked, and he hung his head. I automatically answered his embarrassment with soothing circles on his hip where I still held him.
“The business hasn’t sold yet, so…” Danger trailed off and arched an eyebrow. “That seems like a yes.”
“What business are you guys in?” My question came out choked, words punching through my throat as I remembered my place in all of this.
“App development,” Bert answered. “But the business is in trouble, and God knows what we’ll end up programming if it doesn’t recover.”
The wheels in my head started turning, creaky and rusty at first, what with the mire these assholes pulled me into, but then they lurched faster. Smoother. I became the lawyer who had set Dantè free. The woman scorned who sought revenge.
I had to smother my smile as I gave myself a mission. A recon mission.
The plate in my hand was clean but I kept on scrubbing it anyway, dunking it back into the suds and circling again and again.
“Do you want to talk about it?” Max hopped up onto the counter next to me.
She hadn’t asked when she walked in. Or while I finished cooking—and I used the term cooking loosely—the spaghetti, sausage sandwich hybrid dinner. Or while we ate with The Rock on in the background. Part of me had been grateful. Part of me needed to know. Needed to hear.
“No.” I sighed, washing the plate for the fourth and final time. “But I need to.”
She started telling me about the boys as if I’d never met them. The color of their hair and eyes and how they looked at her or drank their beer. I had to bite my cheek and wash the pot in the sink until I scratched it to keep from shouting at her. I knew all this. I saw them in my waking nightmares.
“Bert works with Danger,” she continued.<
br />
I had to bite back at my job.
“They kept talking about how they’re going under. That the app wasn’t popular enough and there’s no new stuff on the horizon.”
I clenched my teeth again and nodded.
“They don’t know how they’re gonna get away with surfing midday if they get a new boss, or worse, have to get new jobs.”
She looked at me expectantly, eyebrows raised up over her glasses and fluffing her bangs. I shot her the same look back.
“Dantè.” She said as if my name was scolding itself.
My brow crinkled as I started thinking. Faster and faster. As I tripped and fell over the fortune at my disposal. Faster and faster.
“You’re starting to figure out what I figured out.” Max smiled and handed me my bottle of beer only to cheers it with hers.
“I buy it,” I said as the smile spread across my face.
She started nodding her head as her beaming grin grew. “Fuck it up from the inside.”
The ideas started spilling in. Small and wicked, they made my pulse race. They erased the doubt.
“This is good, Max. Real good.” I turned to face the same direction as her, both of us looking at the small dining table tucked in the corner.
“I know,” she said smugly as she leaned back against the cabinets and arched her eyebrow.
“When do we start?”
“I started drawing up the paperwork as soon as I got home.” She smiled and jumped off the counter and turned toward the living room. “Well, not right away,” she admitted. “He kissed me, ya know?”
“He feel you up?” I asked as I smiled.
“I don’t even remember,” she sighed, riding the swoon in her voice. “I remember that he stole my breath and made my knees go weak. That I could kiss him forever and it wouldn’t be enough.” Her beautiful blush tinted her skin and my smile grew.
Only to fall a moment later.
I knew a kiss like that. One I could remember the taste or shape of, one that stopped time and sped up my heartbeat. I knew I shouldn’t ask but…
“Did you see her?” I would have sucked the words back in and swallowed them if given half a chance.
Everything about Max softened and she sagged. She took a deep breath then tiptoed back to where I stood by the sink. She studied me for a moment, even lifted her hand to my cheek before managing a small, sad smile for me.
“Yeah, I did,” she answered softly. “I should have called her back…”
“Oh…?”
“You don’t want to hear it.” She looked at me with puppy dog eyes.
“I’m asking aren’t I?” I didn’t mean to snarl.
“Yeah,” she cocked her head, “but I mean it.”
“Max…” I warned.
“She looked like she was the one that died that night, okay?” she snapped. “She looked like she’s been rotting away. Happy?”
I turned away from Max and went back to the pot I’d been shining, dunking it back in the sink, and washing it for the third time. I wanted them to feel the sting. I wanted them to bleed. But Mercy…I didn’t know what I wanted from Mercy. I only knew I wasn’t happy. Not even a little bit. And I hated myself for it.
I pushed my new glasses up onto the bridge of my nose, and they pushed my dark hair aside where Max had styled it to hang all fancy in my face. Seeing the almost jet black she’d dyed it in the mirror was still a shock. The way the cut highlighted my scar was too. I had ditched my tie and unbuttoned the top two buttons of my dress shirt, showing a hint of my chest tattoo and a smattering of hair. Complete with full-fledged beard, I wasn’t the boy who’d gone to jail. I was the man ready to conquer this fucking world.
At least I hoped.
“God, I hope I don’t call you the wrong name,” Max said from the passenger seat.
“That makes two of us,” I said as I checked myself in the mirror again. “Do I look different enough?”
I knew I’d changed—my body stronger, inked. My soul older, weary. But would Danger see through it? Would he see me? If anyone would, it was that astute asshole.
“What did you tell Bert?” I asked her to repeat her story for what had to be the fifth time, checking for holes, reciting it with her and making it my life, my story, my history.
“That you came into family money and had been looking for something to invest in. I mentioned the company after they did because, well, you and surfing.” She shrugged and checked her fire engine red lipstick in the mirror.
“When did we meet?” I continued my quiz.
“About a year ago.” She smirked at the truth.
“Where have I been?”
“Traveling the globe like any good playboy.” She giggled.
“Why do we live together when neither of us need to?”
“We’ve both lost a lot and we’re lonely.”
I reached for her hand and squeezed.
“Make them weep, Dantè. Make them bleed.” She cupped our clasped hands with her other one. “For everyone who doesn’t get to.”
Determination creased her brow and I let it fill me up likewise. The front seat was silent for a few moments but then we blew out synchronized breaths.
“I have a staff address to give,” I said simply.
“I have notes to take.” She pulled out a yellow legal pad and a slick pen then started drawing child-like wave caps.
I shoved out of my car door and pulled hers open, offering her my elbow. “Well then. Shall we?”
“Hi,” Danger’s almost golden eyes lit up as he held his hand out to me. “I’m Danger, Senior app developer and huge part of the R & D team.”
Seeing him hit me like a sucker punch to the stomach. My best friend—Best. Fucking. Friend. Who had murdered rather than just tell me not to take the job. Rage churned with hate and utter agony in my stomach as I felt it all. All those good times, all the times that I was sure he was my brother. Then all those cold and lonely nights in prison.
And I had to feel it all with tame features and a held tongue.
What I wouldn’t have given to tell him I hated him. That I’d watch his guts spill onto the wood floor without a single drop of remorse. Instead I went with, “Nice to meet you.”
I held my breath as he studied me. As I tried to shove the hatred down.
“What do you know about app development?” he asked with a hint of skepticism but no more so than his usual air of I’m fucking smarter than you.
“Nothing,” I answered and pulled a wide and fucking phony smile into place. “I’m just money with a penchant for surfing.”
It took a moment, but there it was—Danger’s wickedly amused smile. A weight lifted off my chest as he clapped me on my shoulder. “Well, at least you admit it.” He even laughed.
“Nothing compares to loving what you do,” I said as I thought about the utter glee I’d get from getting away with all of this. “Even if it’s all new to me.”
“Stick with me.” Danger started explaining the app development and bug fixes that needed to happen. I had to dig my fingers into the palms of my hands when he explained it like a Neanderthal. I really had been better at this shit than he was. I hadn't let myself see that when good colored my glasses all rosy. “Make sense?” he asked, condescension dripping off his words.
“I think so.” I swallowed the jabs I wanted to level at his jaw and repeated a childishly rudimentary version back.
He clapped me on the shoulder again and laughed all the louder. “You’ll do just fine as the money.”
God, the laugh I mustered sounded disgusting but the prick didn’t notice. He just walked me to my new office and nodded at Max where she sat waiting. Max’s bangs wiggled, the telltale sign that she’d arched her eyebrows at us. At me. At the fucking plastic faced version of me I’d become.
“Well, Row,” Max emphasized my fake name, “we need to go over your schedule.”
“Of course, Jordan,” I shot back and gestured for Danger to show himself right back out of m
y office door.
Max smiled wide—too wide—as she shut the glass door behind him. “You think it’s sound proof in here?” she asked.
“Yes.” I took a seat in my high-backed office chair. “I had it checked.”
“They can all see in—”
“But our words are our own.”
She adjusted in her seat across the desk from me and put a pen to the legal pad in her lap. I prepared myself for an onslaught when she sucked in a deep breath. “You okay?” she asked softly.
I smiled if for no other reason besides being on display. “Not even remotely.”
“I’m sorry, Dantè.” Her head tipped down and she looked at me from over her thick black glasses.
“It’s okay, Max. That’s not why we’re here.”
She nodded and trapped her bottom lip between her teeth, her hand started moving aimlessly as she doodled on the page in front of her. “What do you need me to do?”
“I need passwords. Company-wide.”
Her pen scribbled more purposefully.
“And a meeting with whoever is in charge of finances. We need a plan for strategic growth.”
She made more notes as her smile grew.
“What?” I asked, my smile working to match hers.
She chuckled, and her eyes flicked to where Danger leaned over the top of a cubicle wall, laughing. I followed her gaze and thought about how his body would look covered in blood.
Max spoke first, the echo to my deepest thoughts. “I can’t wait to watch him hang.”
Two Months Later…
“Aaarrrrggghhhhh,” I snarled at the screen. “What the fuck?” I pounded the desk beneath me and tilted back in my chair.
“Everything okay?” Row asked from his door.
I eyed my new boss each time I saw him, searching for the answer my mind kept reaching for. Why is he familiar? But I couldn’t find it. Sometimes I thought it was his voice but it was deeper and more crisp than most. He seemed nice enough but a bit boring for my taste. I liked his ink and could tell he knew a shit ton about surfing and next to nothing about computers. Maybe it was just his overwhelming mediocrity packaged in a decent suit that made him seem like every other person here.
