Those Heartless Boys

by E. M. Moore

  Eventually, they get everything off the floor and in piles on the desk that they turn right side up again. I move to the kitchen to grab the broom and dustpan that are in the corner. When I come back, they’re talking in hushed tones, so I stop just outside the room. “You think it was them?”

  “Or your dad.”

  The last was from Wyatt. They were obviously talking about Lance and even from here, I’d know Lucas’s voice, so I can rule him out.

  “This wasn’t my dad,” Stone growls.

  “Yeah, you say that a lot.” A sigh filters through the room. “You have to tell her what’s really going on.”

  “I tried, but she wouldn’t listen. It’s not my fault she’s stubborn.”

  “Make her listen,” Lucas demands, and the hairs on my arms prick.

  “Just because you want to fuck her now,” Stone deadpans.

  I peek around the corner as several heavy footsteps sound. Stone and Lucas are in each other’s faces, and Wyatt, with his wide-brimmed hat, pushes them apart.

  “It’s more than that and you know it,” Lucas seethes. “You’d feel the same if it weren’t for the fact that you’re content being your father’s little bitch.”

  Stone roars and moves forward. Wyatt shoves them away from each other again. “This is hardly helping. Save your pissing contest for later.” He eyes them, studying their stances. He must like what he sees because he steps back. “I agree with Lucas. We have to help her see what’s really going on. We aren’t being fair. We dragged her into this, now look what’s fucking happening.”

  Stone lets out a sound of frustration, turns, and pulls his fist back to punch the wall. I step through the doorway, stopping him in his tracks. A myriad of emotions play over his face until he pushes past me, storming from the room. A few seconds later, the front door slams.

  “What’s his problem?” I ask, pretending I didn’t hear their conversation. I don’t think any of what they just said to each other was for my benefit. Something else is going on with these notes, but I’m also not convinced it isn’t Jacobs related.

  “Explaining just one of his many problems would take forever,” Wyatt says, sighing.

  At first, I think he means it as a joke, but he doesn’t laugh. I drop the dustpan on the floor and go to work sweeping. Lucas and Wyatt pick up the bigger pieces of the broken lamp and rearrange things in the room, so it doesn’t look like a bomb went off. When they drag a broken cupboard outside, I wait until I hear the front door open and close, and then I run to the loose plank in the wall. I feel inside, and my fingers close around a set of keys. I let out a long sigh. My heart’s been in my throat this whole time waiting to make sure that this was still here. The one piece needed to get to my father’s most important papers. “Thank fuck,” I whisper.

  I slip the keys into my pocket and continue sweeping up every last bit of glass but end up getting a big pile of dust bunnies and dirt too. It’s been ages since anyone has cleaned up in here. I quickly sweep everything into the dustpan and head to the kitchen to dump it in the trash.

  It would be impossible to figure out if anyone took anything from here. My guess is they were looking for something specific and didn’t find it. In that case, it’s a damn good thing they didn’t find the keys. Though, if they did, they wouldn’t know the hiding place.

  Or this could be something else entirely. Just another scare tactic like with my dorm and the letter I got in the mail.

  I don’t know what they’re referring to in the last two notes though. The first said, GOOD GIRL. The second, STUPID GIRL. They’re obviously referring to me, but what exactly are they referencing? A cold shiver runs through me. If they’re picking apart my life, then they must be watching me too.

  I’m so deep in thought about being watched that when the door slams behind Lucas, I jump out of my skin, a scream working its way up my throat. I stop it before I let the whole thing out, but Wyatt and Stone run back into the house as Lucas places his hands on my shoulders to calm me. “Christ,” I breathe out when I’m no longer worried I’m going to scream bloody murder.

  Stone gazes at the house and walks right back out. No doubt he thinks he’s going to catch a disease just by being in here. Unless it’s the poor disease, which isn’t even a fucking thing, he’s wrong.

  “There’s really not much we can do here right now,” Lucas says. “You want to go back to the house?”

  I glance around the room. I can feel my father everywhere. I’m not saying I had the best childhood. Obviously, that would be a lie. But I am saying that I miss him. Being here brings me that much closer to him too. It makes me feel like he’s still alive out there somewhere, and that I have a chance to find him. I hope.

  I nod, and Lucas steers me out of the house. I lean the broom against the countertop and exit, sifting in my pockets for the front door keys instead of the other. I’ll have to hide the other set of keys in my room at Jacobs Manor somewhere in case whoever is looking for treasure shit comes there next. Then again, as they’ve already pointed out, we’re much safer there than here. To think I thought about coming home when my dorm got trashed. Who knows what would’ve happened if whoever did this would’ve found me here alone.

  The drive to Stone’s house is much more solemn. Even Wyatt doesn’t joke. There’s no pulling me onto his lap as punishment that wasn’t a punishment at all—for either of us—unless you count blue balls as one. Stone beats us there, pulling into his spot in the garage. Wyatt follows, parking in the other bay, and then we all get out.

  “I don’t know about you,” Wyatt says, “but I don’t feel like cooking.” he lets the sentence hang in the air for a bit before he says, “Oh, that’s right. None of you assholes cook at all.” He playfully hits himself in the forehead. “I forgot who I was talking to.”

  “Just use the credit card to order some pizza,” Stone says, ignoring Wyatt’s jab.

  “Yes, Master,” Wyatt says. He starts walking like Quasimodo. “You know I only live to do your bidding.”

  When we get in the house through the garage door, Stone apologizes. “Sorry,” he says. “I’m just stressed.”

  Wyatt claps him on the back. “I know, bro. Just keep the dickishness to a minimum before Dakota up and leaves us all.”

  Stone tracks his gaze to me, lingering there for a moment, before he retreats further into the house, turning down the glass-lined hallway.

  Wyatt goes to a drawer in the kitchen and pulls out a credit card. “What do you like on your pizza, Tits?” He smirks to himself. He’s really too proud of himself for that nickname.

  Lucas speaks up. “Dakota had pizza for lunch.”

  “Oh right,” Wyatt says. He grins. “That was fun, by the way. I loved seeing you stick up for yourself in front of those bitches.”

  “Weren’t you just talking about shoving your dick in one of those bitches this morning?”

  He shrugs. “Seemed like a good idea at the time. Turns out it was more fun watching Tits get revenge.”

  “That name really doesn’t bother you?” Lucas asks.

  I shrug. “I’ve heard worse.”

  He frowns, but Wyatt interrupts. “Have you ever had a calzone? It’s like pizza but not.”

  “If it’s not, then what is it?”

  They explain to me the ins and outs of calzones, and it sounds like heaven.

  Wyatt orders enough food for an army and then hangs up the phone.

  “They really deliver out here?”

  He winks. “We give them an extra incentive. It helps that the card is under Jacobs.” He walks past me. “I don’t think I need to explain to you the almost celebrity-like fervor that goes through the air at that name.”

  My jaw sets. He sure as hell doesn’t.

  With Wyatt and Stone gone, Lucas leads me to the couch in the living room. I wasn’t sure anyone ever sat on this furniture. Like it’s one of those pieces for show that I’ve seen on television before. That’s obviously not the case when Lucas pulls me next to him,
draping my legs over his lap. He works his fingers through my hair again, and I sigh.

  With his other hand, he rubs at his face like he could sleep for days. “I know there are more important things to talk about, but…do you want to talk about what happened in Mythology earlier?”

  He’s right. There are definitely more imminent topics to discuss, but maybe not one that’s as much fun. “If you want,” I say casually like it’s no big deal, but I doubt I’m hiding anything from him. While kissing him, I felt more exposed than I ever have.

  His fingers trail over the line of my jaw and then back into my hair. “I just want to say that I’d like that to happen again. Maybe not that exact scenario, but now that my hands have been on you, I don’t want to take them away.”

  My breath hitches. His brown-eyed stare takes me down roads I wasn’t sure I’d get to. My only chance was getting out of Clary, and I wasn’t sure that was in the cards for me. At my worst moments, I pictured myself as an old lady in my father’s house, living in the walls he built up with no one.

  I snap myself out of it. Lucas isn’t offering a forever here. He’s just offering more fun. “I’d like that, too.”

  Stone strides out into the living room with different clothes on. “If you’re done making heart eyes at each other, we have more important things to discuss than you getting your dick wet.”

  I glare at him, and he matches me stare for stare as he takes a seat on the couch across from us. “Save it, Jacobs,” Lucas purrs.

  Something’s gotten wedged up Stone’s ass though. He leans forward with his elbows on his knees, “Your house was a pigsty.”

  My stomach rolls. “Oh, sorry it offended you, your highness. Not all of us can afford a goddamn maid. All we had was your mother, and she was shit at it.”

  Stone charges to his feet. “Leave her out of this.” He clenches his fists, his nostrils flaring. In the next moment, he regains control of himself like the outburst never happened. The man has more self-control than anyone I’ve ever met. He straightens his shoulders. “It’s bad enough she was living in that filth.”

  Lucas sighs next to me.

  “Maybe you should take that as a lesson learned. There’s more to being a man than just having money. Your dad has all of it that he’ll ever need, and your mom still left him for my dad.”

  Stone laughs. It’s maniacal, nothing like the cultured laughs I’ve heard spill from his mouth before. “You’re still under the mistaken impression that she wanted to be there.” His blue-gray eyes twinkle with delight. “It was all a ruse, Dakota. She hated being there,” he growls out. “And most of all, she hated your father.”

  I suck in a breath as air gets sucked from my lungs. The truth of what he’s just said is in his cold, heartless eyes. Marilyn marrying my father was some sort of ploy? A sham?

  My insides twist with second-hand pain for my father. He was always so happy when he looked at her. To think someone could’ve played him so badly makes me want to vomit. I stand on shaky legs. “You’re despicable, Stone Jacobs. Stay away from me.”

  21

  I stride from the room. My body thrums with hatred for him and everything he stands for.

  So, that’s what his problem was at my dad’s house. The reason he couldn’t stand to be in there. Marilyn.

  Behind me, Lucas sighs. “You know we’re never going to be able to get shit done unless you two can learn to be in the same fucking room as each other without acting like children,” he growls at Stone.

  In front of me, Wyatt turns the corner in nothing but a pair of sweatpants and his cowboy hat. His chiseled torso is backdropped by the setting sun behind him, leaving him in a haze of oranges and pinks. The whole scene is dreamlike. If only he had a pair of low-slung jeans, it’d be the perfect picture. A cowboy out on the ranch, performing his evening duties so the rest of the house could sleep.

  Dear God, my imagination just takes me away sometimes, doesn’t it?

  Before I can slip past him in the hall, he places his arm out, barricading my exit. His blue eyes hold heat. “Where are you going? I thought we were talking.”

  I turn to face him, and he searches my face for clues. Whatever he sees there makes his brows pinch together. Back in the living room, harsh whispers are thrown back and forth. I smile without feeling, which I’m pretty sure makes me a psychopath. I can’t help it if Stone brings out the worst in me. “Your douchey friend strikes again.”

  He flicks his gaze toward the living room then back at me. “Yeah well, he’s our douche.” He lowers his voice and leans down. I take a step back, but he follows me. We do this awkward dance until my back hits the wall and he’s caged me in with the brim of his hat just barely skimming my forehead. He reaches up to pet my hair. There’s no other word to describe what he’s doing. He watches as his fingers skirt over my curls then returns his attention to me. “The line between love and hate is painted with ill intentions.”

  “Did you read that out of a Cracker Jack box?”

  He smirks, shaking his head as he looks away. “I like you, Tits.”

  I force my chin in the air, pulling some self-confidence from somewhere within me. Or maybe I’m just channeling all the literary heroines I’ve read about in the past. What would Jane Austen make her characters do? “I felt your—” My gaze drops, signaling that I’m referring to his package when I was on his lap in the truck. I don’t know why I think Elizabeth Bennet would’ve started off with that line. They weren’t even allowed to be alone with a dude, but if she’d been forced to live in the twenty-first century, she would have.

  Wyatt chuckles. “Oh, Tits. In this house, we use proper terms. You felt my cock against your ass? Is that what you’re trying to say.”

  A fierce blush rises to my cheeks. It’s been such an odd day. The incident at school. Lucas. My dad’s house. Now this? I feel like I’m living two different lives. One where I’m being seduced by devils, and the other where the unthinkable is happening.

  “Say it, Tits,” Wyatt presses. “Be the Wild Girl Lucas thinks you are.”

  I smirk because it’s funny he thinks I need to be taught. Dude, please. I’ve been reading romance books since I was twelve years old. Most of the time, my only entertainment was books. I place my hands on his chest and push. I keep going until he hits the opposite wall. I can tell Wyatt likes it. Like this is all a big game he means to keep playing until it bores him. I slip up onto my tiptoes. “I felt it,” I say, my voice barely above a whisper. “Your cock growing beneath me every time I moved on your lap, poking my ass like if you could just. Slip. Through.”

  Wyatt’s smile grows more appreciative. “You know it, baby. I’m a horny asshole. I don’t care where the pussy comes from, I’m down.”

  Unfortunately, I think that’s true in Wyatt’s case. His humor has to be a shield from something.

  Not that I should care.

  “Well, now that we’ve got that settled,” I say. I turn and start to move toward my room again.

  Wyatt grabs my shirt, pulling me backward. I stumble into his chest, and he moves an arm around my middle. “Two things, Tits,” he breathes. “One, I don’t care how much of a dick Stone just was to you, we have a job, and we’re getting it done. So, you’re going to march your pert little ass back out to the living room so we can talk.” His fingers dig into my side in a dominant way. It’s not uncomfortable, it’s...hot. Wyatt Longhorn knows how to play the alpha asshole, that’s for sure. His hands linger there, and he forgets to keep talking. That one-track mind of his is going to get him in trouble.

  “What’s number two?”

  He moves my hair from around my shoulder and leans in, his lips just grazing my ear, making fire roar through me. The barest of touches fuels my lust like the first spark of dynamite or lick of heat. “Oh,” he breathes. “I just wanted to tell you that when you said cock, my own responded.” He presses his hips into me as proof. Just like when I was sitting in his lap, his hard cock sits firmly against my ass.

 
; I swear I’m going to combust just by living here. “So, does that mean I own you?”

  He freezes and pushes me away. His dark laughter rings behind me. He’s very good at that. Flicking from normal to prick in an instant. All of them are. “No one’s ever been able to claim that,” he says, voice as sharp as jagged glass. He walks past me with a dismissive once-over. “I highly doubt it will be you.”

  He leaves me in the hallway and waltzes out into the living room. I could just turn around and head back to my room but there’s no lock on the door and I’m afraid the caveman here would just throw me over his shoulder and drag me out. Part of me wants to try to see if he would, but the other part of me knows he’s right. Whatever shit Stone and I have needs to be put away for the greater good. If he can’t be a man and put it behind him, I’ll have to do it.

  The doorbell rings.

  Plus, there’s pizza. Who am I to say no to trying whatever this calzone thing is?

  Wyatt whoops it up as he answers the door. I walk back into the main room and stand there awkwardly. Wyatt opens the door, and the pizza delivery guy strides in. He gives me a double-take, and my own heart sinks. I’m just like my father. I hate seeing people I know. Seeing people means being forced into socializing, and that’s never been my strong suit. Mainly because Clary is filled with a bunch of gossip-mongering, hateful hypocrites.

  I’m surprised this guy even remembers me.

  “Is that you, Dakota?”

  His gaze moves up and down, taking in my hair all the way down to my outfit. I feel exposed. Stone really did only pack a few articles of clothing. Not that there were many at all, but he left all my comfortable clothes. All the clothes that let me fade into the background. I guess no one fades into the background in a house like this though. “Hey, Matt...” I say, waving awkwardly.

  He slips the pizza onto the island in the kitchen, eyes still round. “Damn, you look so different. I mean, I don’t think I’ve ever seen you with your hair down before. I barely recognized you.”