“This looks good,” Ace says, eyeing the partially unwrapped honeybun clutched in her other hand. She freezes, fluttering her eyelashes at him as he reaches up and unwraps it a little bit more. “Here. Open wide now.”
She makes a gagging noise as he forces it into her mouth, lips circling the funnel of bread until she can’t anymore. She pulls away, glaring at Ace before she trots down the stairs to the safety of other Snake Eyes members who might enjoy her company more than we do.
Ace doesn’t bother to stifle the laugh that sputters from his lips, but despite the kick he’s gotten out of getting rid of her in the most creative way possible, I know he’s done me a solid. Unlike her, Ace has been around long enough to know what happened with Jessa, and to know she’s not to be brought up under any circumstances, alluded to or not.
Fabian comes walking up a second later, eyeing Krystal’s dramatics with curious eyes. “What was that about?” he asks, one level less intense than Ace, but just as mean, and twice as skeptical. I know he turns that skepticism on me sometimes, and I can’t blame him. I’m someone new, and I need to prove myself.
“You bring it?” I ask, ignoring his question, because the situation isn’t worth my time of day.
“Oh, I’ve got it,” Fabian confirms, and he sounds way too fucking happy for something I’ve been mildly dreading for days.
But it needs to be done.
I give a nod. “Let’s get the fuck out of here then.”
***
The ocean brings adrenaline.
Every time I come back to it I remember just how long I was away from nature. Just how long I was away from everything.
There were times I had hoped being expelled from Diablo Beach would make me forget everything that went on here, and a few times I actually let myself believe that were possible. But inevitably, I’d come around to the truth again.
I was always doomed to come back.
Wetsuits donned, the twins are generous enough to let me borrow a surfboard. We paddle out to the rough seas just beyond the pier, a rocky swell of beach that manages to trip up even the initiated.
I don’t tell Ace and Fabian that this is where my sister came to die.
My eyes stray up to the pier. It’s a hell of a drop, one I’ve studied half a dozen times since I’ve been back. The height is bad but the waves are worse, battering everything in their path into the rocks and concrete beams below. It’s a relentless torrent of violence.
I ride the swells, battle the waves, urging the water to suck me in the way it did her, but it only ever spits me out, the board doing most of the work, or my own ingrained sense of preservation. Every time I’m pulled beneath the surface, it feels like my vision shifts to Jessa’s point of view.
There’s a part of me that can’t resist the experience. My sister was only one year younger than me. We experienced most of life together, and this is the last thing I can share with her.
I know I’m a stronger swimmer, my experience with the waves giving me an advantage she never had. But a part of me knows she never even tried to swim at all.
That wasn’t the point.
Once we’re done taunting death, we head back onto the beach and collapse on the sand. It’s squarely winter now, and while most days in Diablo Beach are still sunny, this one is overcast and gray. The weather means the beach is deserted, which is good.
I don’t need a spectacle. The only thing I need is this fucking tattoo.
Ace pulls the homemade tattoo gun from his bag, and I don’t bother looking at it close enough to let in any second doubts. After all, I’ve got a version of one myself, and this isn’t the first time I’ve received some variation of prison-yard ink. Doing it back at the academy was a hidden ceremony that, if caught, could get you scrubbing toilets with a toothbrush for a month, or pumping out push-ups until your arms fell off. But the risk was always worth it, because it could make you feel human again in a place that’s sole purpose was the exact opposite.
Fabian lights up a joint, passing it to me as I peel off the top half of my wetsuit to offer up my arm for marking. Ace assembles the gun. A second later, it buzzes to life, ready to mark me for life as a member of the Snake Eyes Crew.
It’s time anyways. I’ve been waging a war on their behalf for weeks now, doing mischievous shit that could’ve got me killed if circumstances didn’t go in my favor. I had been barely fortunate enough to leave a fight with the Daggers’ enforcer, Jax, with my fucking face bones intact. It had been a sacrifice I had been willing to make at the time, but I’m only starting to realize I need to take better care of myself if I plan on making any real difference in this city. One false step, and my reign could be over almost as soon as it started.
That can’t happen. Not when I still have so much left to do.
“Got it,” Ace announces, the final component of the gun clicking into place. “You ready?”
I give a nod, and the tattoo gun buzzes to life. The sound it makes stokes my imagination, trailing my thoughts back to the vibrator Windy keeps in her drawer. I’m so fucking distracted by my fantasies of her using it that I almost don’t notice when Ace begins to etch into my skin.
Almost.
But it’s enough to keep me optimally distracted enough to ignore the pain. I know the vibrator isn’t a new concept, and it’s far from dirty, but in the context of someone I like, it feels positively fucking filthy.
Then again, it may be time to remind myself that I don’t like Windy. It’s just always been undeniable that she’s hot, a curvaceous little snack for my eyes to feast upon, but a temptation I’ve been resisting long enough that my resolve should be rock solid by now.
So why tease her the way I have so far? I’ve touched her more times in the past few days than I have the entire time I’ve known her. With my sister gone, maybe it’s possible I feel entitled to everything she’s left behind.
“Ow, fuck,” I grunt instinctively, but I know my reaction is only because I’m irritated now. “How long does it take to draw two circles?”
Otherwise known as the official marker of a Snake Eyes member. I’ve been lucky enough to put it off as long as I have, but doing it now serves as a sign of my commitment to the gang.
“Longer than you think,” Ace replies, furrowing his brow. “That is, if you want it to look like actual snake fang punctures and not just like your arm got hit with a hole punch. Now hold still.”
I suck on the joint and turn my attention back towards the waves, employing another measured dose of patience when I need it most. Good thing patience isn’t finite, or I would have been fucked a long time ago.
“How’s life with step-sister?” Fabian asks me in a bid to distract me from the pain. The twins are on an exclusive list of people who know I’m staying with the Jacobs. On the surface, it looks like I’m only staying there to avoid the watchful eye of my sheriff father as I carry out my role with the Snake Eyes, and while that’s definitely one element, it isn’t the entire picture.
“She’s not my step-sister,” I mutter.
“Ohhh,” Ace muses in response as he etches away at my arm. “You wanna fuck her, is that it?”
“No,” I reply. “That’s not it.”
At least, not all of it.
“Okay,” he says sarcastically, obviously not taking my words at face value. I can’t blame him, but it still pisses me off. “I mean, you’re telling me you’re gonna have unfettered access to pussy like that and not take advantage of it? She’s easily in the top ten percent of fuckable girls at school. A little quiet, a little weird. But hey, it’s always the weird ones who are into freaky shit. She’s probably into getting choked, or cut, or who knows. I bet she just likes to suffer while you—”
I pull my arm away from his grasp and lunge forward, tackling him against the sand and yanking the tattoo gun from his stilled hand.
“Are you done?” I ask, letting the gun buzz dangerously close to one of his widened eyes. “Or should I give you two littl
e teardrops in memoriam of the balls of yours I’m going to bust if you don’t stop busting mine?”
Fabian looks on in silence, smoke sputtering from his lips in amusement.
“Come on, man, not the face,” Ace utters, sounding more upset at the possibility of his flawless fucking façade getting marked up than he does the possibility of irreversible damage to his nuts. “I was just messing around.”
I lower the tattoo gun, satisfied enough with the warning I’ve given. “Me too,” I offer, loosening my grip on his neck to take a look at the fresh ink on my arm. “This done?”
“Yeah,” Ace replies, sitting up again. “But you’re lucky it didn’t get fucked up just now.”
“So are you,” I say, eyes narrowing at the twin black holes that taper at the end. “It really does look like a snake bite.”
“I told you.” Ace’s expression brightens as the tiff between us fades into the background. He holds out his arm next to mine, twin tattoos marking both of our forearms. “An eye for an eye, bitchez,” he drawls enthusiastically.
I give a nod. “That reminds me of something.”
7
By the time I make it home, it’s nearly dusk.
My stomach flips when I spot Damien’s car parked in the driveway. I don’t know why I would expect him to be any place else but here. Maybe I thought he would be out, searching the city, looking for me.
I cut out of my last period of the day to catch my usual bus back home, albeit thirty minutes earlier than usual. Once I was on, I felt a rush of relief, a feeling of near elation that I had managed to give Damien the slip. The win was short-lived when I realized leaving school early probably wouldn’t work more than once or twice. And definitely not two days in a row.
That’s when my world froze, and I decided to stay on the bus, riding the same route over and over until the driver looked at me funny. I got off at the transit station after that, where I waited another forty-five minutes before catching an alternate bus home.
The whole time, my heart pounded in my chest at the thought of him finding me. Now I know all that dread and anxiety was for nothing, because there’s obviously no avoiding him, not as long as we both live under the same roof.
I head inside, dropping my bag at the foot of the stairs and gazing around the lowlights of the darkening house. Noise grabs my attention, and I head towards the open glass door to the backyard, beckoned forward by the breeze and my own curiosity.
Mom is standing just past the patio with her back turned to me until the sound of my footsteps alerts her to my presence. She gives me a look of relief. “Windy. There you are.”
“Yeah, Wind. There you are,” Damien says, striding into view with a stack of wood in his arms. He looks mind-numbingly good, biceps swelling under the rolled up sleeves of his T-shirt and tanned skin just the right amount of sweaty.
He’s been working on something, obviously with my mom’s blessing.
“Uh, what’s going on?” I utter, confusion clouding every bit of my consciousness.
“What’s going on with you?” Mom counters back at me. “Damien said he waited for you for twenty minutes.”
“It was no big deal,” he adds, but the look in his eyes makes it obvious he’s enjoying my scolding.
“I caught the bus. It must’ve been force of habit.”
“And you’re only just getting here now?” my mother says.
“I was studying. At the library. Downtown. I needed the atmosphere.” The lies are floating out of me one at a time, and I bite my tongue, stopping while I’m head. Good thing my grades are good enough, and I’ve always been nothing less than trustworthy, that the claims I’m making are just believable enough to pass my mother’s sniff test, if she even has one at all. It’s not like I’ve ever given her any reason not to believe me.
But Damien gives me a look that says he doesn’t believe me at all. My cheeks flush with warmth the longer he stares at me, but I turn my own skeptical stare towards him. His hair looks sea swept, the way it used to.
"What's going on back here?" I try asking again, if only to change the subject.
"Damien offered to help start cleaning up Dad's old shed," Mom declares. "I figured this might be the perfect opportunity to start using it again."
My eyes stray towards the back of the yard, towards 'the shed', which has really always been a mostly open air gazebo that doubled as my dad's workshop. He used to sit outside for hours tinkering away at various projects, mostly woodwork and the occasional oddball garden invention he would try to innovate for my mom.
"But..." I find myself saying. "That's Dad's stuff."
"It's mostly just a bunch of leftover odds and ends," Mom tries to reassure me. "You know what a packrat he could be."
I hide the cringe that wants to spread across my face like mold, because even all this time later, I still hate hearing him referred to in the past tense.
Without thinking, I take a step towards Damien, reaching up and taking a piece of wood from the top of the pile he's holding. I hate that he seems to be able to watch me crumble, a deterioration I'm trying so desperately to hide, only the best I can do is a transparent veil of apathy.
Only I can't hold it together anymore, and if he can see me as I really am, I may as well not even try. "Put it back," I say, my eyes narrowing.
I know this was your idea, is what I really want to say, but I won't, not in front of Mom. I'm still trying to be desperately, pathetically, frustrating careful.
"Windy," she says anyway, continuing with her scolding tone. I've gotten more shit from her in the past five minutes than I have in the past five years, and maybe that's a good thing. Maybe she'll finally start to catch on that having Damien here isn't good for me.
I turn and look at her. "What? I'm serious. Why do we need things 'cleaned out' anyway?"
"Because it's a fire hazard," Mom replies. "Or at least, a spider hazard. Plus, you should see it now. You can actually see the floor again." She stops talking, almost like she knows I'm a lost cause. "Well, follow Damien back there and he'll show you."
Never mind. She's the lost cause, not me. At least when it comes to seeing through Damien's bullshit.
I watch as he strides away from us, unloading the wood he's holding against the side of the house before making his way back. He pulls one leather hide work glove off, wiping his forehead with the back of his hand before raking his fingers through his hair. His shirt is sticking to him just enough to highlight the muscles of his chest, and I clench my jaw, irritated at his subtle sexy construction worker cosplay.
"Well," he asks me in a tone that's downright flirtatious, hazel-eyed gaze giving away every bit of amusement he's getting at my expense. "Wanna see it?"
I look at him with a secret glare I know he sees. "Sure," I utter, still under my mother's surveillance.
"You two check it out," she declares. "And I'll start cobbling together something for dinner."
"I'm not hungry," I tell her, as though knowing that will make her drop the whole idea, or at least the part where she leaves me alone with Damien.
"Well maybe, by the time it's ready, you will be," she offers. "Besides, you probably worked up a bigger appetite than you think from all that studying."
"Yeah, Wind," Damien murmurs. "How'd that test go today, by the way?"
"That's right, the test," Mom latches onto his words. "In, what was it again? Which subject?"
"I didn't say," I respond, feeling myself begin to get flustered again. "Trig. But it was postponed until next week, so..."
Mom raises her eyebrows. "Huh, lucky break," she muses before heading off in the direction of the house.
"You're becoming a pretty adept liar," Damien tells me once she's disappeared inside. "Although, I guess 'becoming' isn't the right word, since you've already been practicing for a while now."
I glower at him. "Yeah, whenever I act like I can stand you."
He cocks his head to the side and r
aises a hand to his chest melodramatically. "Ouch."
I turn to leave but he catches my arm, stilling my movements. "Not so fast," he tells me. "What's your mom going to think if you go back inside already? I'm supposed to be showing you my handiwork."
"I'd rather sit in the corner of the yard for five minutes and say I saw it," I mutter with a glare.
He grins, tugging me forward like a condemned prisoner to the gallows. I trudge across the grass with him, knowing I don’t have a choice.
Despite knowing he loves to mess with me, I still yelp with surprise when he picks me up and hoists me up the stairs in front of him. "Watch your step," he tells me, right before dropping me with an unceremonious thunk onto the wood floor of the shed.
"I know how to use stairs," I counter, turning around to see him looming at me. His arms are spread across the doorway, trapping me, and for the first time I notice the bandage on one of his forearms. “What happened to you?”
He smirks but doesn’t say anything. As usual, he's enjoying my discomfort, his eyes gazing back at me with interest as he lets go of the doorframe and takes a step forward.
The structure may be mostly open air, but there's still a layer of cabinets on one side, artificial privacy for the benefit of my dad's concentration, and the perfect obstruction to hide the way I back up with fear from Damien's approaching steps.
"It’s a tattoo,” he tells me finally. “The same tattoo I’m gonna give you, one of these days.”
My back brunts up against the far wall of the shed, giving me nowhere else to go, and I steel my gaze. “Yeah, right,” I utter sarcastically.
Damien stays quiet, staring into my eyes as his hand drops to begin a slow ascent up towards the hem of my skirt. Goosebumps raise on my skin but I stay statue still, not wanting to give him the satisfaction of the slightest shiver despite my every nerve tingling with electricity when his fingers skim my skin. “We’ll see.”
Dammit. After everything, how is it possible my body still wants to react with ecstatic fireworks whenever he touches me?
Lots of training, ingrained from secretly drooling over him for years, trapped by my own lust.
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