Cityscape Affair Series: The Complete Box Set

by Hawkins, Jessica

I smiled a little. Tiffany was all about her CDs. Saying you didn’t like music was like admitting you weren’t cool. Everybody had something to say about the latest album or some underground band or the ‘song of the summer.’ “I play a little piano,” I said. “But I’ll probably stop.”

  “How come?”

  “I’m not any good. Anyway, my sister says piano’s for geeks.”

  He studied me a few seconds and then nodded toward my parents’ house. “Was that your sister yesterday?”

  Of course he wanted to know about Tiffany. It should’ve occurred to me earlier that she was the reason he’d talked to me, but for some reason it hadn’t. Even though I was pretty sure he was around Tiffany’s age, he seemed more mature.

  I nodded. “Tiffany. She’ll probably go out with you.”

  “Yeah? How do you know?”

  “She goes out with lots of guys.”

  His heavy black brows fell. “What do you know about who she goes out with?”

  “She tells me.”

  “Tells you what?”

  “About who she likes and stuff.”

  “And stuff.” With a grunt, he reached into his back pocket, took out another cigarette, and stuck it in his mouth without lighting it. “You should stay out of your sister’s business.”

  I jutted my chin out. He sounded just like my dad, except when Dad said it, it was an order, not a suggestion. Dad made Tiffany’s business sound filthy, like I might go looking for it in the garbage cans out back.

  “Look at that.” The cigarette sagged from between his lips as he glanced at my feet. “You dropped it again.”

  I followed his eyes to where my bracelet had fallen in the dirt. Damn. I picked it up and tried again to get it back on.

  “Come over here,” he said. “Let me do that.”

  I breathed through my mouth. “What?”

  “The clasp,” he said.

  My heart skipped as he beckoned me. I took a few tentative steps and held out my arm, the chain dangling precariously. He moved the unlit cigarette from his mouth to behind his ear, then leaned forward and turned my forearm face-up. He could crush my wrist with one hand, I was sure of it. It took him several tries to even get the two ends between his huge fingers. He squinted, muttering under his breath. His callused palms brushed over the thin skin of my wrist until goosebumps traveled up my arm and my insides tightened up. The ends slipped from between his fingers over and over.

  His knee brushed my ribs, and I flinched.

  “Sorry,” he said.

  I was pretty sure with a little more focus, I’d have better luck with the bracelet than he was having, but I didn’t want to stop him. An unfamiliar tingle made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. It wasn’t as if I’d never had a crush. Like my friends, I blushed when a senior said hi in the hall. I got giddy when someone like Corbin Swenson, the most popular boy in school, acknowledged our table in the cafeteria. But the boys at school were just that—boys. Tiffany liked to tear out pictures of celebrities and tape them to her wall—Andrew Keegan, Luke Perry, Kurt Cobain—and this man was as wall-worthy as he was sweaty, dusty, and quiet.

  He grasped me, his tanned hand covering more than half of my white forearm. “Hold still.”

  Men of his age or size were never this close to me. I hadn’t moved; I was certain of it.

  Finally, he got the two pieces to connect. “How’s that?”

  I gave my wrist a shake to make sure the bracelet was secure. “Good, I think.”

  “You walk home from school a lot?”

  “What?”

  He nodded at my backpack. “Didn’t you walk?”

  “Today was the first time.”

  He tilted his head back, looking down his nose at me. “Probably shouldn’t be walking home alone. Or at all, maybe.”

  “It’s not far. I don’t have my license yet.”

  He knocked the heel of his boot against the brick, looking anywhere but at me. “But you’re old enough?”

  I almost asked how old he thought I was so I could tack “what about you?” on to the end, but what if he guessed too young? I suddenly regretted my t-shirt, high-necked and white cotton with a round, yellow happy face in the center. I’d bought it from a record store, so it wasn’t really childish, unless, I realized, a child was wearing it. On Tiffany, it would look cool, but I was flat-chested. Suddenly, a year seemed like a lifetime to wait for breasts.

  “I’m old enough . . .” I said. He looked as though he expected me to continue. “I’m sixteen, but I have to get a certain number of behind-the-wheel hours with my parents.” Tiffany was a licensed driver and could take me, but she’d had two speeding tickets and a fender bender in the last year alone. My dad would never allow her to teach me. I shifted feet. “We started, but I haven’t had time lately.”

  “You haven’t? Or your parents?”

  I went to answer but stopped. Dad usually worked until past seven. Mom was probably showing houses or at some meeting. I had time now, but there were a hundred other things I should be doing, like reading from the list, studying for SATs, or volunteering. “We’ve all got stuff going on.”

  “What keeps a sixteen-year-old so busy?”

  “College prep,” I said in the same tone Tiff said duh. “Do you go to school?”

  “At night.”

  “Oh. Like community college?”

  “Yeah.” He let his posture fall and laced his hands between his knees. “You sure you don’t want to get up here? That backpack’s as big as you.”

  I looked around, as if someone might be watching. “I don’t think I can.”

  He gestured for me to come closer. When I was at his feet, he took my backpack off and dropped it. It landed on the ground with a thud, disturbing the sand into a cloud. “Christ. What’s in there? Rocks?”

  I unzipped it to put The Grapes of Wrath away and showed him the inside. “More books.”

  “Figures. You need to lighten your load, like me.” From his back pocket he pulled a paperback small enough to fit in one of his big hands.

  I read the title—The Metamorphosis. “What’s that about?”

  The cover had what looked like a huge cockroach on it. He studied it, his eyebrows drawn. “To be honest, I’m not sure yet. It’s weird. I’ll get back to you.”

  I wrinkled my nose. Nobody I knew ever called a book weird. My English teacher and classmates were always using words like abstract, poignant, or metaphorical. It was so unheard of that I started to laugh.

  Without any warning, not even a grunt or word to prepare me, he lifted me by my waist and sat me on the wall like I weighed a hundred pounds.

  Well, I about did, but that wasn’t the point. He was strong, all dirt and grime, long and lean, his face and arms bronzed by the sun. He could pick me up. He could throw me if he wanted to. He could probably put me over his shoulder and walk a thousand miles without running out of breath. My urge to slide closer to him was as strong as my urge to jump down, run inside, and hide in the house where men like him only existed in my glossy magazines.

  The hard brick didn’t give much of a welcome. All at once, I was an absolute and nervous mess about sitting next to a man. I didn’t think of my dad as a man, and certainly the boys I went to school with weren’t. The sun beat down on us, and he smelled of heat and sweat. It wasn’t bad.

  “What’s your name?” he asked.

  “What’s yours?”

  He wiped his palms on his jeans. “Manning.”

  “Lake.”

  The cigarette was back in his hands. He rolled it, flipped it around, tapped it against his knee. Everything but smoked it. “Are you trying to quit?” I asked.

  “Quit what?”

  “Smoking.” My feet dangled over the wall. “You look like you really want to smoke it.”

  He returned it behind his ear. “Lake,” he said as if trying the word out. “And your middle name?”

  That, I’d never reveal. “I hate it.”

  He turned his
whole body to me. “Tell me.”

  “It’s ugly.”

  “How can a name be ugly?”

  “Trust me, it can,” I said simply. Mom liked to remind me it was a family name when I talked like that, but I didn’t care. Family or not, Dolly seemed like a babyish name, and it was no better than the stuffy-sounding Dolores from which it came.

  He half-smiled, one corner of his mouth lifting. That was the first I saw of his straight, white teeth. My heart skipped. Under the dirt, the sweat, the calluses, he was handsome. I’d known it already, peripherally, as I knew the direction of the beach or the artwork hanging in my dad’s office. But now it was right in front of me—I couldn’t miss it.

  His forehead creased with lines. “Careful, or it’ll come off a third time,” he said.

  It took me a second to realize I’d been twisting my bracelet around my wrist.

  “This time, I might not give it back,” he said.

  “You’d take it to the porn shop?” It came out fast, breezily, before I could think about it. But it was probably the most brazen thing I’d ever said.

  “The what?” he asked, pulling his entire upper body away.

  “The . . .” I widened my eyes at his incredulous stare. “You said you’d take it to a porn shop.”

  “Pawn,” he pronounced slowly. “P-a-w-n.”

  I shook my head. I was still confused. “I—I don’t know what that is.”

  He blew out a sigh and glanced up at the sky. “It’s a place you can take valuables for quick cash. Never mind.”

  “Oh.” My embarrassment was palpable, like an anvil on my chest. The silence made it worse.

  “You can go if you want,” he finally said.

  Did I want to? My impulses since I’d come over here had ping-ponged between smiling and shaking and lots else. Everything felt different. Even the house they were building looked further along than it’d been yesterday. Nobody seemed to think it was weird, me sitting here with him. “Do you want me to?”

  He kept his eyes forward. “You remind me of my younger sister.”

  “I thought you said you didn’t have one.”

  “When?”

  I thought back to the conversation earlier. I’d suggested he might’ve given the bracelet to someone like a girlfriend or sister. Maybe I hadn’t said sister. I shook my head. “Never mind.”

  With the squeal of tires against pavement, I checked over my shoulder. Tiffany’s BMW zoomed in our direction. I wasn’t supposed to be out here. I didn’t think Tiffany would tell Dad, but I didn’t want her to see me and come over. I also wasn’t ready to go inside.

  Tiffany parked at the curb. I sucked in a breath and held it, sitting as still as possible, hoping to blend in with my surroundings. After all, Tiffany overlooked me all the time.

  I should’ve known she wasn’t in the habit of overlooking attractive men.

  * * *

  Download the series now on Amazon / Kindle Unlimited or start with book 1.

  About the Author

  Jessica Hawkins is a USA Today bestselling author known for her “emotionally gripping” and “off-the-charts hot” romance. Dubbed “queen of angst” by both peers and readers for her smart and provocative work, she’s garnered a cult-like following of fans who love to be torn apart…and put back together.

  She writes romance both at home in New York City and around the world, a coffee shop traveler who bounces from café to café with just a laptop, headphones, and a coffee cup.

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  Copyright

  Cover Design © Najla Qamber Designs

  Copyright © 2013, 2020

  Come Undone, Come Alive, Come Together (Cityscape Affair Trilogy) All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system without the prior written permission of the author.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  This book contains a quote from the poem “L’éternelle chanson” by Rosemonde Gérard.