Cusp (Renzo + Lucia Book 5)

by Bethany-Kris

  “Just … behave, Luv. And get him the hell out of here. This is not a place for someone like him.”

  “He has a name.”

  Diego cleared his throat, happy that he’d stayed closer to the door of the office and didn’t walk in further as Luv had. “That’s fine—he doesn’t need to use my name.”

  For a moment, Dare’s gaze softened. Just as fast, he reverted to unsettling ice.

  “Exit the property, Luv. No detours.”

  That was that.

  Diego left the office first; Luv was quick to follow. This time as they headed through winding hallways that only seemed like a maze to Diego, more people milled around than before. None spoke to him. All of them wore some variance of black. A few nodded Luv’s way.

  “League members,” Luv told him, clearly seeing his curiosity about the people. “Like me, and Ren. Some just got back from a heist in Paris. There’s also two being trained, so a team is here for that, too.”

  “I didn’t ask.”

  “I know.”

  Finally, he started to recognize where exactly they were. Or rather, that they were walking down the hall leading to the doors where they had first entered. At the far end, Luv pulled the black card from her back pocket and held it up for the camera overhead to see.

  Diego glanced behind him one last time. He wouldn’t come back here. Of that, he was almost certain. Some places just didn’t feel like they were meant for him. This was one of those.

  A click sounded. The doors opened to the outside.

  This time, Luv didn’t need to tell him to hurry up or follow along. He was all too ready and willing to leave.

  EIGHT

  Luv

  Luv Moore had a great many skills. Her training for The League started just after what was assumed to be her seventeenth birthday, but no one was really sure of her true age because her past was full of shadows that even she couldn’t see through to understand what waited behind the veil.

  She didn’t know where she had been born, or who brought her into the world. Just that she had been shuffled from hand to hand until finally coming to The League. A year and a half after finding her way to the organization hidden within the depths of the Nevada desert, she now toted a profile as an up and coming assassin that could do just about any task put in her hands.

  She excelled in bombs. Hence her mentor in Renzo. Hacking was her favorite. Put any kind of weapon in her hands, and she could be a man’s worst nightmare. She also had a liking for all things undercover or even … jobs that required infiltration.

  What she didn’t do, though?

  Tracking, recon, and so forth. Luv found all of that to be slow and boring. And while she was supposed to have an easy week looking after Renzo’s younger brother, she certainly didn’t expect to have to track Diego down because he just decided to up and go MIA on her.

  She had much better things to do on a weekday.

  A touch-up on her blonde hair; a fill for her nails because they were starting to grow out. Hell, she could have stayed in bed all day and read a book. Literally anything except tracking a guy from New York all over Las Vegas. And yet, that’s exactly what she found herself doing.

  Luv showed up at the hotel around noon on the third day of Diego’s stay. He hadn’t done much after their trip to The League’s complex, and he didn’t seem interested in leaving the hotel on the second day, either. She left him be figuring they could meet back up today and maybe his mood would be better.

  Except he wasn’t there at all, and the clerk at the front desk simply said Diego had left. Knowing better than to call Dare and say Renzo’s brother was missing when she was supposed to keep her eyes on him, she decided to handle the issue herself. She put out a few calls to some people in the city with boots on the streets and ears to the ground. It was always good policy in her business to have contacts in high and strange places.

  It took an hour.

  She grabbed lunch while she waited.

  Eventually, her contacts came through with the information she needed. Diego—or someone they thought fit his description well enough—had found his way to an indoor and outdoor skatepark a few blocks away from his hotel. Luv made her way to the address without rushing because what was the point?

  The guy was almost eighteen. Basically an adult, or soon becoming one. If he wanted to do something, he could. He didn’t need to ask for permission. She just needed to make sure he was safe while he did it, right? Simple enough.

  That was how Luv found herself watching Diego from a distance as he laughed with a group of guys who had music blaring from portable speakers while the sound of wheels rolling over cement echoed all around the space. In her shadowed corner, Luv stayed where she couldn’t be seen, both amused and curious about the boy from New York and how he seemed entirely different from the one she met in the airport just days before.

  With the people at the skatepark, he seemed a bit looser. Lighter, if that were possible. He chatted with the strangers and flipped over his board while a blunt was passed around the group. At least they were in the outdoor section to smoke, she thought. It was also the first time she noticed all the gear Diego carried in the backpack that rarely left his shoulder.

  Camera stuff.

  Or something.

  He wasn’t doing anything wrong.

  Hadn’t found trouble, either.

  If anything, he looked like he was having a good time making friends with … normal people. People who seemed, from afar, more like him than her. It was so removed from what she knew—she didn’t really make friends when her life didn’t allow her to keep them for long. She didn’t really bother to try, either.

  Luv stayed in the shadows until she decided to get a refill on her vanilla latte. Diego was just fine—they could catch up later.

  • • •

  “How long have you been standing there?”

  Luv glanced up from the screen of her phone, her attention leaving the social feed she’d been scrolling down to find Diego standing only a few steps away from her current position. After coming back to the park, she found a post near the exit where she thought was a good place to lean and wait. So, she did.

  “Didn’t really take you for the type,” she said, nodding at the item in his hand. The joint still curled with gray smoke at the cherry-red tip when he lifted it up for another quick pull from the end. “You seem too quiet for that—it’s always the quiet ones.”

  Diego laughed, eyeing the joint in his hand. “Favorite part of my day, really. You didn’t answer my question.”

  Luv shrugged. “Most of the afternoon.”

  “How’d you find me?”

  “I said I would keep an eye on you. I’m going to do that.”

  “That’s not really an answer.”

  She smiled. “You don’t want the real one.”

  Diego arched a brow at that, and a slow, lazy smile curved his lips as he pointed his skateboard in her direction. “You know what, you’re probably right about that.”

  Yeah, she figured that out.

  He didn’t really like her world.

  It wasn’t made for him.

  Luv waved her phone, but Diego didn’t even glance at the device. “Apparently, it’s not too hard to find you anywhere, though. You put location stamps on all of your social media posts. Isn’t that a little … stupid?”

  He worked on stubbing what remained of his smoke and then packed it away in a black case he’d pulled from his pocket. “I meet the coolest people that way.”

  He also had a lot of followers. She’d never been the type to have social media accounts—for one, because she wasn’t really allowed, and they would all be monitored by The League; but for two, because she didn’t see the appeal when she didn’t want to be seen most of the time.

  Diego, on the other hand …

  He seemed to live his life online.

  Every single day.

  “Hey,” Diego said suddenly.

  Forgetting the phone in her hand, s
he met his stare to find that lazy smile of his seemed a little … cuter. Sexier, even. He was still a fucking babyface—all smooth and cute and young—but that didn’t mean he wasn’t handsome with all the strong lines that made up his features. From the square jawline that could cut glass, to his dark eyes that always seemed focused and intense, it wasn’t troublesome to stare at the guy. It didn’t hurt her a bit, in fact.

  Even she had to admit that.

  “Yeah?” she asked.

  “I wanna have some fun. Maybe find some music. Do you know somewhere we could do that? I mean, if you wanted.”

  Did she?

  “I think we could find something.”

  Diego grinned. “Awesome.”

  Somehow, he looked even cuter.

  NINE

  Diego

  “My place is closer.”

  Diego hadn’t thought much about Luv’s offer as the night bled into the very early morning, and the buzz that he’d been feeding for hours finally reached its peak. On one side of the elevator that lifted them to a higher floor, Diego grinned as Luv used the tip of her shoe to scoot his skateboard back and forth on the tiled floor.

  “Ever tried it?” he asked.

  Her blue eyes widened—a trait of hers that he’d noticed more and more often the longer he spent time with her. Everything was always right in the girl’s eyes. Very little was hidden there. The window to anything she was thinking or feeling at any given time.

  “Never,” she admitted.

  “I bet you could pull something off—an ollie, at least.”

  Luv didn’t miss a beat, replying, “Probably.”

  That had Diego laughing because it wasn’t at all the answer he expected. Usually, chicks looked at a skateboard like it was the last thing they wanted to touch. They didn’t typically have an issue with saying there was no way in hell they could get on one and ride like he did. Luv was so confident in her answer that she could do something; he didn’t have a choice but to believe her.

  Glancing up, Diego watched the numbers overtop the elevator doors light up one after another as they climbed higher. The lightness in his chest—compliments of the remnants of his smoke from earlier—and in his mind had him more relaxed than he’d been in weeks.

  This was what I wanted, he thought.

  That morning when he woke up in the unfamiliar hotel room, the only thing that had been on his mind was to find some fun. To do anything except think about the things waiting for him back in New York. All the choices he had yet to make and how his future might look because of it.

  He didn’t want to think about any of it. So, he didn’t.

  Instead, Diego did what he did best. He got on his board, found a park, vlogged, snapped some photos, and made friends. He hadn’t expected the time to fly like it did, and he certainly hadn’t thought he would find Luv waiting for him outside the skatepark at the end of the day, but none of it had been a bad thing.

  She took him across the city, and they found the music he wanted. Then, drinks and lights and fun. He didn’t think he would end his day—or rather, start the next day—by heading to her place with the promise of a couch to sleep on because the drive would be shorter than going back to the hotel, but he didn’t mind.

  This was a good way to end it.

  Diego dragged in a breath, smiling when Luv’s gaze landed on him, and she raised a brow in silent question. What she was asking, he didn’t know. The gesture still had him opening his mouth to tell the girl things he just wanted to get off his chest.

  She was there.

  So, why not tell her?

  “Maybe it’s because I’m really faded,” Diego said, chuckling, “but this was the best day I’ve had in a while. I just want to do this for as long as I can … have fun, you know? Everybody else wants me to grow up, and I’m not sure I’m ready for what that means to them. Because it doesn’t mean the same things to me.”

  Luv pursed her lips, and it made the tip of her small nose lift in the cutest way.

  Cute?

  Diego blinked.

  Luv didn’t seem to notice his distraction when she said, “Just because people want you to do something doesn’t actually mean you have to do it, though, does it?”

  He thought about that.

  Because he hadn’t before.

  “I don’t know,” he muttered. “It’s not like what they want is bad. It’s just—”

  “Not what you want.” She shrugged. “And isn’t that what really matters?”

  Without very much context to Diego’s current situation regarding LA, his sister, and all the rest, Luv had given him a frank answer to what had felt like a complex problem. It wouldn’t make it any easier, sure, but it really did boil down to that one thing.

  What he wanted.

  He knew that answer.

  Of course, Diego didn’t get the opportunity to ruminate on his realization. The elevator came to a shuddering stop before the doors pulled open. A hallway lined with exposed, gray bricks greeted him. Luv was quick to surprise him again by giving him a wink and dragging his skateboard out of the elevator with the toe of her shoe. With a poised twist of her heel on the floor, she balanced on the board with the other and pushed off to roll down the hallway.

  Her laughter chased him out of the elevator. The little grin she tossed him over her shoulder made him take a second look at the woman down the hall. The sliver of creamy skin of her lower back peeking out under her bomber jacket had his chest growing tight. The swell of her ass under those tight, low-rise jeans swayed with a beat only she could hear, but he swore whatever music she was doing the little dance to echoed in his own mind, too. Every movement the girl made radiated with her confidence and rawness.

  Yeah, he’d noticed she was beautiful. How could he not? Now, he was really seeing it.

  His heart thundered hard.

  Harder than he expected.

  Diego passed two white steel doors with brass numbers overtop peepholes before he reached the one at the far end of the hallway where Luv waited for him.

  “You know,” she said, popping his board up with the heel of her shoe to catch it in her hand, “the offer of my couch was just to get you here, right?”

  “Was it?”

  Luv smacked her red-stained lips, and then her tongue peeked out to wet the seam of her mouth. “Kind of, yeah.”

  He stepped closer. She lifted to her tiptoes at the same time.

  That red stain on her lips? It tasted like cherries when he kissed her. He only wanted to know if the rest of her would taste the same … and he planned on finding out.

  • • •

  Diego pulled open the sliding doors that led out to a glass-walled veranda. Sitting on a chair that she’d covered with one of the beige blankets from the bed, Luv peeked up from the book she had spread open on her lap. In a black, silk camisole and short set that showed off her gleaming skin, he was reminded all over again how soft that flesh of hers felt under his hands. And how she tasted in the dark.

  At the sight of him, her grin grew wide. She closed the book, and set it aside to the table. With the exposed gray brick behind her, and the natural light coming in from the morning, he thought she looked kind of … perfect.

  She opened her mouth.

  Maybe to say hey.

  Or even good morning.

  “Don’t move,” he said before she could get anything out.

  The confusion that knotted her brow didn’t last for long. He made quick work of heading back inside her apartment and returning with his camera. She tipped her head to the side a bit, that smile of hers turning slyer in a blink.

  “You want a picture, really?”

  Diego shrugged. “Why not? It’s … a memory. It’s how I keep them.”

  “What is?”

  He hesitated in lifting the camera to his sights. “What?”

  “What memory,” she clarified.

  Oh.

  Everything, he wanted to say. Except he didn’t think she would understand. Aft
er all, she had only been a very small part of his trip to Vegas, but she had also been a big factor in making him come to a decision about what he planned to do when he left to return home.

  “Here,” he settled on saying. “Being here.”

  She drew her knee up on the chair and glanced out at the view surrounding the tall building. “Well … okay.”

  He took the shot.

  Didn’t second-guess it.

  Diego didn’t even check it, either.

  Luv smiled his way again. “And hey, I got a call this morning. Everything is on track with Ren, so he’ll probably finish with the job before you go back to New York.”

  Even better.

  TEN

  Diego

  The email Diego found waiting for him on the last day he would spend in Vegas was short and to the point. Like maybe Marty Lorde had shot it off last minute because he didn’t have time to do much else. Considering the man’s job and the client list he toted, it was a very real possibility that he did only have time for the three sentences he emailed Diego.

  Not that it mattered.

  The three sentences were more than enough.

  Diego,

  Attached is a plane ticket—thought you might want to fly out to LA to see the project my team is working on with Nexit Entertainment in Hidden Hills. I showed them some of your stuff, and they’re interested in putting you in a campaign or maybe doing a sponsorship if you’re up for it. I’ll be in and out for the next week while I finish up things so any replies will go to my assistant.

  Regards,

  Marty Lorde, Manager

  Los Angeles

  Diego took in a breath and read the name of the company again. Nexit Entertainment. Known across the world for their festivals, the organization’s events typically sold out in minutes. Getting any kind of brand deal or sponsorship from Nexit would be … beyond his wildest dreams. Undoubtedly a five-figure check, not that the money was the most important thing. It was still a big deal to him, though.