Broken Compass

by Jo Raven

  “Just get inside her already,” I wheeze. “’M fine.”

  He chuckles.

  And then he does. Get inside her, that is. He pushes into her, holding her around the waist, and her mouth falls open as he fills her up.

  Hot damn…

  Watching just doesn’t cut it anymore. Invisible strings are pulling me to them. I sit up and put my hands on her tits. Man, I’m obsessed with them. Soft and round with taut pink nipples. I fondle them and stroke them as she rides West. I put my mouth on them, sucking on her nipples until she cries out, then I kiss her.

  She kisses me back, and bites on my lip. I recoil, the pain shooting straight to my dick. She goes angry and wild, beats on my bare chest with her small fists.

  I let her pound me for a few beats, then I catch her wrists. “What’s wrong?”

  West stills behind her, his breathing ragged. “Syd?”

  “I wish…” Her breath hitches, and her eyes shine too bright. “I wish Kash were here.”

  “Me too, girl. Me, too.” West wraps one hand around her throat, then tucks her against him. “It’s okay.”

  Goddammit, Kash. Goddamn you for leaving us.

  “West…” She hiccups.

  “I got you, girl.” West is moving again, and she presses her hands to my chest, moaning. Her head falls back against West’s shoulder as he thrusts inside her.

  My cock is rock hard again, and I rub it against her clit, smear precum over her stomach. I hold on to her arms, kiss her neck. She’s crying and we’re fucking, and I don’t know what the hell we’re doing, just that it feels good, and we need it.

  I need it.

  West groans, his thrusts faltering. I reach behind Syd, grab his jaw and haul him in for a kiss. Salty, hot. Spicy.

  Then Sydney scratches her nails down my chest and bucks between us, and I turn my head to kiss her, swallow her cries as she comes, her eyes glazing over, her thighs trembling.

  I grab my cock and jerk off as West sinks back on his heels, taking Syd with him, thrusting deeper inside her and cursing. His hips jackknife once, twice, and he shoots with a growl.

  My dick jerks in my hand, and I come all over her tits and belly. Losing balance, I fall on top of them, catching myself in the last second on West’s shoulder, my dick still twitching. I lift my other hand to Sydney’s face, wipe the tears from her cheeks.

  Damn you, Kash.

  Damn you for making us care for you and then going back to the unknown you came from—right when we’d started realizing what this relationship means, how to work with it, how happy it makes us, believing we found a home.

  Damn you for breaking all our fucking hearts.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  West

  “West. West, wake up.”

  The voice is distant through the ocean of blood I’m sinking into. A woman’s voice.

  Della is calling for me, trying to tell me something, but I know she’s dead, and I’m sure I’m dying, so why can’t she wait a little? I mean, there are more important matters at hand.

  I can’t fucking breathe. I struggle, and look for the surface, but I’m in too deep, and it’s so fucking dark.

  No light.

  No air.

  “Dammit, dude, come on.” Another voice, a guy this time. “It’s a dream. Snap out of it.”

  Need to move. Can’t move. Can’t speak. Can’t fucking scream. Hands on me, pushing me, rolling me, and I fight them to sit up.

  Holy shit. Whoa. I gasp and sputter and suck in sweet oxygen as I push everyone away.

  “It’s okay. Okay, look. No touching.” Nate lifts his hands. “You sounded like you were dying, man. Got worried.”

  “Then let me die in peace, goddammit.”

  Syd draws a sharp breath and scoots closer to nestle against my side. “Shh.”

  “Not even as a joke, man,” Nate mutters, turning away, shoulders stiff. “Not even as a goddamn joke, do you hear me? I’m not losing another one of us.”

  It takes me a long moment to gather my wits. I can still see Della’s face as it was in my dream, superimposed on the image etched in my mind of the last time I saw her, lying dead on the floor.

  And the time before, when I thought I’d killed her, when my stupidity had almost gotten her there. My mother.

  My stomach churns. Sourness fills my mouth.

  Ah fuck.

  Wrenching myself away from Sydney, I practically fall off the bed and stumble across the room and into the bathroom, where I toss my cookies in the toilet.

  I heave until there’s nothing left, and then I flush, unable to move from the spot, my arms folded over the toilet top.

  My fault. My fault again.

  And I never got a chance to ask her why. Why she never told me the truth, why she let me think she was my sister. To ask if she ever loved me, if she ever wanted me.

  If I really ruined her life.

  Sydney comes in with a wet cloth and wipes at my mouth, my face. It feels good against my heated skin. Her big eyes are full of worry. “What do you need?”

  “Nothing.” I take the cloth from her hand and pass it behind my neck. “Just bad dreams.”

  “They’re making you sick.” She huffs, kneeling on the cold tiles, buck-naked. Cute. Sexy. “You haven’t been eating, or sleeping much, ever since before Kash left.”

  “None of us have. Stop worrying.” Not over someone like me. But I don’t say it, only tug on her curls, the floral scent of her shampoo comforting. “Maybe I caught a bug.”

  She gives me a dubious, unconvinced look that still manages to get my dick interested. Even after this nightmare from hell, my body knows what my mind is slowly coming to recognize: I’m in love with this girl. I’ve fallen for her.

  So damn hard.

  “Come to bed?” she whispers, and I let her take my hand and pull. Bracing myself on the toilet, I climb to my feet and follow her out of the bathroom on legs that feel as if they’re made of rubber.

  Nate is waiting outside. “Jesus, West.” He grabs me around the shoulders, drags me into the bedroom together with Sydney and plonks us down on the mattress, Sydney sinking down beside me with a yelp. He pokes a finger into my chest. “So what is it?”

  “What is what?” I’m trying to buy time, gather my wits, but he doesn’t give it to me.

  “You know what I’m asking.” He shakes his head, then sits down beside me. “How can I make it better, West? What is it that’s still weighing on your mind?”

  The past. The past is weighing on me, and I wish I could cast it off like a filthy coat lined with lead and stones, but I can’t.

  It’s part of me.

  “I’m okay. Seriously, guys. I’ve had bad dreams for years. I just need to sleep.”

  Nate sighs, rubbing at his eyes. “Something’s killing you, and you won’t tell us about it.”

  “Says you,” I mutter. “Like you ever told us. We had to find out from overhearing your fucking dad.”

  He winces, and I want to punch a hole through the wall. I’m right. So why do I feel guilty—again?

  “Enough guys.” Sydney climbs to the middle of the bed, and I turn to follow her curvy form as she curls up on the mattress. “Dawn is a long way off. Let’s get some sleep.”

  Grateful for the respite, I crawl beside her, and Nate takes her other side.

  But long after we’ve lain back down, their warm naked bodies surrounding me, sleep eludes me, fragments from the dreams—and reality—haunting me, and I can’t help wondering, with all the drama of my family dying and me coming to live here, with them…

  Is Kash leaving my fault, too? It wouldn’t fucking surprise me.

  Living in an apartment where I still don’t know where everything is, where I haven’t yet cleaned every corner, is fucking weird. All my life I’ve lived in Jonathan’s apartment, cooking and cleaning and taking care of him and Della, and now…

  Now everything’s changed.

  Weeks have passed since Kash vanished. I’ve moved my
stuff into his room. It feels surreal, and sad, and it’s not even like I sleep in there at all. We always sleep in Nate’s room. We even discussed getting a bigger bed for a more comfortable fit and better sleep.

  Good luck with the latter, but otherwise… it makes sense. And I may not sleep much, but with their limbs twined with mine, I tend to sleep much better than I did before.

  Even if I still go through the days like a zombie, living on caffeine. Luckily, I’ve landed a job in a Starbucks, so I have a constant supply of coffee to keep me awake.

  I carry my extra-large cup home after work today, my hands shaking, my heart beating a double beat from what is likely to prove a fatal overdose of the stuff.

  And no, I don’t wanna die. Not really.

  Though it feels like it sometimes, after a nightmare.

  “West, that you?” Nate pokes his head out of my room. Kash’s room. “Get in here.”

  “What are you doing?”

  “Searching. And thinking. Mostly thinking.” He’s dressed in sports clothes—a black T-shirt and light blue jogging pants and shoes. Probably ready to head out to his second job at the gym. “Join the party.”

  Curious, I step inside, the cup in my hand.

  Sydney grabs it from me and takes a long gulp, red curls sticking to her sweaty face. She makes a face and hands it back. “No sugar?”

  “If I had sugar, too, I’d be climbing the walls.”

  She throws me a concerned look, and I move away from her, cursing myself. Shit, I’m slipping. Goal is not to worry Syd and Nate, right? Stick to it.

  “Why are you rolling in the dust?” I ask quickly. “What did I miss?”

  “Syd thinks Kash had a journal.”

  “I don’t think. I saw it.”

  “Yeah, yeah, he had a journal. But we can’t find it, and Sydney won’t accept the possibility that Kash had planned to leave and had it with him that night.”

  Frowning, I turn to study her face. Her eyes are red as if she’s been crying. Her chin is lifted in a stubborn tilt. “You still don’t think he left on his own?”

  “Of course I don’t believe it. He wouldn’t do that.”

  I don’t want to believe it, either, but the police told us they asked around and no clues, so they have to assume he just walked away.

  “And the thinking part?” I finish my coffee, place the paper cup on the nightstand and sit on Kash’s bed. Run a hand over his pillow. Swallow something jagged and bitter in my throat. “Clue me in.”

  “We’re just pooling knowledge about Kash. Everything we know, which is admittedly very little.” Syd sits down beside me. “Too little for a guy we lived with for a year, at least Nate and me. Our guy.”

  Our guy. He is that.

  I slide a hand over her knee. She’s wearing denim cut-offs that leave her silken legs bare, and a top that’s tied in a knot in the front, baring her bellybutton. It’s summer.

  I love Summer. Syd in Summer. Syd half-naked.

  Syd buck-naked on the bed, legs spread—

  “I said,” she says, waving a hand in front of my face, her cheeks flushed, “pooling knowledge. Earth to West.”

  But Nate is also staring. “Man, if you want her to take off her top, why don’t you just say so? I promise I won’t complain. Though I doubt we’ll get any thinking done after that.”

  “You guys, stop.” She smacks my hand lightly, laughing. It’s great to see her laugh. “Focus.” When I open my mouth, she lifts a hand to stop me. “On Kash. Not boobs. Kash.”

  Damn. Nate groans. “I’d much rather think about your tits than the possibility of anything happening to him.”

  We sit in somber silence for a moment, considering this.

  “So, why not…?” I gesture for her to take off her top.

  “No.” She snorts, and sighs. “Stop distracting me.”

  Dammit. Yeah, like Nate, I’d rather play with her than think about the dark stuff, but she’s right. We should talk about this.

  “I think we need to find George at the restaurant where Kash used to work,” she says. “He worked there for what, two years? Anything the guy can tell us…”

  “But like what?” I stroke her knee, and she shivers. “The police said they talked to him. That he knows nothing.”

  “Maybe they missed some clue,” Nate mutters.

  “And what are we, private detectives? What sort of clue could they have missed?”

  “I dunno, man. Anything. I’m trying to track down the numbers of the last students he tutored, too.” Nate runs his hand through his hair. “I mean, all I know about Kash is his surname, and that his tattoos were done by a Madden guy.”

  “Madden?” Syd frowns. “That doesn’t ring any bells. All I know about Kash is that he’s our age, despite what his papers say, and comes from somewhere in the north.”

  “Zane Madden,” I say. “In Wisconsin.”

  They both turn to look at me. “How the hell would you know that?”

  And this brings me to the uncomfortable position where I realize that I have more info on Kash than either of them.

  I feel bad telling them what Kash told me—in confidence, I thought. In exchange for me telling him about myself. And guess what? I never even got a chance to tell him what he wanted to know.

  Now he’s gone.

  “That night he came to talk to me as I was gathering some stuff to bring home with me. He said he got the tattoos in Wisconsin. And that his real name is Kasimir. That’s it, I swear. That’s all he said.”

  “And just like that, after years of us asking and not getting a reply, he told you all that?” Sydney looks hurt.

  “All that being his name and where he got inked.” I rub a hand over my mouth.

  “That’s two things more than the zero things he told us,” Nate says.

  What do they want me to say? “It was a weird-ass evening,” I mutter.

  “You can say that again.” Nate scowls at the floor. “Kasimir… Russian. We knew he had a Russian connection. But how does that help?”

  “Should we assume Graham is his real family name… or not?”

  I exchange a questioning look with Nate.

  “Not,” I say.

  “Yes,” he says.

  “He’s Russian.”

  “Born and raised here. Who knows when his family immigrated. He could well have a non-Russian family name.”

  “Fine. What else do we know?” Syd chews on a lock of her red hair.

  “He’s a good fighter.” I consider what I said. “An amazing fighter. He could be doing this professionally.”

  “Like a boxer?” Sydney blinks.

  “More like mixed martial arts and street fighting.”

  Nate shudders and rubs at his arms. That night he was so out of it, I doubt he had a chance to observe Kash’s fighting style.

  But Kash is the reason we’re all here, that Nate is here, dammit. So I try to think, like Syd suggested. What else do we know about Kasimir Graham?

  “We can try and find this Zane Madden, pump him for info,” I offer. “Kash said his name like he’s someone famous. Maybe up north he is.”

  Nate and Sydney nod.

  “We’ll do that. I’ll Google the crap out of that name.” She scratches at her chin. “What else?”

  “Try and hack into his laptop, see if we get anything from there.”

  “Dude.” Nate grunts. “We tried.”

  “We can try some more. And we should look for any other evidence of who he really is. You never know what we might find.”

  What I do know is that we’re grasping at straws. But if we stop, it would mean we give up. Grasping at straws is better than admitting defeat and that we lost Kash for good.

  But the laptop won’t be hacked, and nothing else turns up in Kash’s room. Despite the dust it’s been gathering, it’s mostly empty. Not many places to hide, unlike Nate’s room that’s a jumble of papers and dirty clothes and boxes.

  I itch to tidy it up. And I mean, you’d think
that a guy who ran out of his dad’s apartment in the middle of the night with a duffel full of clothes, his tablet and nothing else wouldn’t have so much stuff. But Nate’s a hoarder, apparently.

  When I wake up later, in the middle of the night, from images of blood and a sick feeling to my stomach, I blink in the half dark, trying to get my bearings. I’m facing the wall and there are boxes stacked against it, with clothes thrown over them. Nate’s clothes, and some of Sydney’s, well, unless Nate has taken to wearing lacy thongs and bras.

  The image makes me grin and dispels the rest of the nightmare.

  That’s when I hear it.

  Sydney. She’s crying in her sleep. For some reason, she ended up behind me, and I ended up facing away instead of curling my body around hers and holding her.

  No wonder we’re both having nightmares. Holding on to each other seems to help with that on most nights.

  I can’t turn around without falling off the goddamn bed, so I sit up and turn to find her eyes open, staring at me.

  “Syd?” I sit down and stroke her hair. “What’s wrong?”

  She draws a broken breath, then another. “West.”

  “I’m here, girl. Tell me.”

  “Syd?” Nate slides a hand over her hip, lifts his head and locks dazed eyes with mine. “What’s going on?”

  I wish I knew. “Was it a nightmare?” I ask her.

  “No, I couldn’t sleep.” She says in a small voice I barely make out. “I’m scared.”

  “Baby. Scared of what?” Nate’s dark brows knit. He lifts up on his elbow so he can look down at her. “Tell us.”

  “It’s just that… my mom left. Kash left. What if you leave me, too? I can’t…” Another hitched breath. “Can’t stand that thought.”

  “We’re not leaving,” Nate says gravely.

  She gives him a ghost of a smile, then turns her face into my palm, and I let out a breath I didn’t know I’d been holding.

  “I swear I’m never leaving you,” I vow in my turn, and it’s a huge thing to say, to promise, but when I say it, I feel lighter—because I know it’s the truth.

  I shift on the bed, dangling one leg off, and my bare foot hits something. “Ow.”