by Bethany-Kris
Including the one he currently used.
A square hammock attached to large wooden beams stretched out from the side of the terrace, hanging over … well, nothing but air, really. Thirty feet down below was the lush greenery of the forest and foliage, but the hammock itself simply hung out into the air, giving the person lying in it the appearance and sensation of free floating.
And that’s where her husband rested.
With an arm flung over his face, turned half on his back and half on his side, one might think he was sleeping because of the rhythmic rise and fall of his chest. Lucia knew better, though, because she saw that soft smile curving his lower lip beneath his arm. His grin grew a little wider as she approached him, letting her know he was awake despite his position. She couldn’t help but wonder what about this hammock was more comfortable than sleeping in bed with her.
Not that she was offended.
Ren had strange ways sometimes, and she had simply become accustomed to rolling with the punches, so to speak. He occasionally still slept in a bathtub when shit was extra stressful, or he had something on his mind that he didn’t really want to talk about.
Eventually, she would find him wherever he hid away, and he’d tell her all the shit keeping him quiet and inside his mind. She figured, if that’s what this was, then the same thing would happen. It was something they did time and time again—his thing—and she never complained about it one way or another. That was something she’d learned about love a long time ago, and she thanked Renzo for teaching her that, too.
You had to love the whole person.
Oddities and flaws included.
“Morning,” she said, coming to stand next to the hammock. “The bed wasn’t good enough for you last night or what?”
A chuckle echoed from the man in the hammock. “If only, babe.”
“Hmm?”
Finally, he pulled his arm away from his face to give her a better view of him. He grinned up at her, and Lucia couldn’t help but smile back at him. His arms opened to her, inviting and far too tempting for her own good. And damn … didn’t he look so fucking good below her with that sexy grin, his fingers wiggling to urge her forward? He was like her own personal little devil sitting on her shoulder, whispering about sin and how good it would be.
“Come here, would you?” he asked.
How could she say no to that?
Well …
She couldn’t.
Lucia kneeled down before climbing into the hammock and Renzo’s waiting embrace. She didn’t typically like the sensation of floating that the hammock provided, but while she was wrapped in his arms, nothing else mattered but this right here. The world went away, and so did the rest of the stresses and problems she faced.
She snuggled against his chest, burying her face into his warm scent. The black T-shirt he wore wasn’t what he had gone to bed in the night before, and neither were the black jeans that rubbed against her bare thighs. She didn’t bother to ask about those things because for one, she didn’t care, as long as he was holding onto her, and for two … well, sometimes it was better not to ask when it came to Renzo.
She never knew what the answer might be.
“I wanted to be in bed with you,” he said, his words whispering along her hair after he’d tucked her head into the crook of his neck, “but you know how wants go, huh?”
“No, I usually get what I want, actually.”
Renzo’s chuckles echoed all around them. A dark, lovely sound that affected Lucia in the best way, and even overtook the noise of the forest and waterfall that usually gave them a nice soundtrack to relax to when they were outside. She liked the sound of him far more. She always would.
“I’m trying to tell you something here, Lucia.”
She tipped her head up, perfectly happy to remain hidden from the world while she used Renzo to do it, but some things were just more important than what she wanted. “And what’s that, exactly?”
“I had a job last night.”
She blinked. “What?”
“Just what I said, babe,” he replied.
“And you didn’t tell me? I thought Bali was—”
“Just a vacation, and it was. Still is. It was a last-minute thing,” he said with a sigh, “and given how simple it seemed—I had it done in a night, and you didn’t even know the difference—I didn’t want to refuse when it was a favor, anyway.”
Huh.
“Still could have told me, Ren,” she whispered.
“Why, so you would worry all night that I might not come back?”
Lucia opened her mouth to deny that.
Renzo gave her a look that kept her quiet.
“I would have tried really hard not to do that,” she told him.
“Exactly, and that’s not what this trip was about.”
“Is that why you’re all in your feelings out here in the hammock, instead of waking me up in bed like you usually do?”
He smiled. “You know me too well.”
“Of course, I do, Ren.”
“Anyway,” he said, his words barely above a murmur as he tucked her back into his embrace and tightened his hold just enough to make her shiver, “I came back—like I promised.”
Right.
Yeah.
That’s always what mattered.
EPILOGUE
Two months later …
“Ren, what has you calling me? I thought you were taking a year sabbatical from—”
“I am,” Ren interjected before Dare could continue speaking, “and maybe even longer, but we’ll see how it goes.”
“Hmm, I hear people around here might actually miss your special brand of arrogance, but who am I to say?”
And they could keep missing him.
For now.
“Anyway, why the call?” Dare asked.
Ren dragged in a quick breath, settling the sudden nerves he felt making themselves known. It wasn’t like him to get nervous, but here he was. It also wasn’t like him to give a shit about some stranger—a kid from an island that he barely spoke more than a handful of words to—but here he was doing that fucking nonsense, too.
Maybe the kid reminded him of his brother.
Maybe it was something else …
Shit, maybe Ren just cared.
“The kid—Taman—from the Bali job a couple months back. Uh, how is he?”
Dare quieted for a minute.
Longer than Ren thought was normal.
“All things considered; he’s adapted well to training. Bit of an attitude, but we’re used to that here, and even you learned to tamper it after a while.”
“Is he out of phase one?”
The dark room.
The fucking tank.
“As of three weeks ago, yes,” Dare replied. “Something you want to tell me, or …?”
“No, I just—”
“Felt the need to check in. It happens.”
“Does it?”
Dare let out a slow breath. “Sometimes. You know, a long time ago, I thought I could raise men and women in this organization to be … individuals without feelings. It would be for the best, considering the work you all do.”
“And?”
“You’re all still very human.”
Dare almost sounded proud of that fact.
For whatever reason …
“I’ll probably check in on him again,” Renzo said.
“Feel free, and you’re always welcome to come to Vegas to check in directly, you know?”
“I’ll keep it in mind.”
But no promises.
He only made those to his wife.
Speaking of which …
“Ren!”
Lucia’s shout from upstairs brought him back to reality, and far away from the phone call. He quickly said goodbye to Dare and hung up the phone. Setting the device to the counter, he didn’t even bother taking it with him as he headed for the upper portion of their brownstone. He figured his wife would be in their bedroom, as
that’s where she liked to spend the majority of her morning when it was one that she didn’t have to go to the gallery first thing.
Instead, he found her in the bathroom.
With a pregnancy test.
Ren froze in the doorway.
Lucia smiled as she turned the test around for him to seeing the blinking word on the digital screen spelling out the one thing they’d been waiting for since that Bali trip. It hadn’t happened the first month, but they weren’t too worried about it, considering she’d just stopped her birth control. He didn’t know if it would happen on the second month, but apparently, they were just lucky enough that it had.
PREGNANT.
“Look, Ren,” she whispered.
“I see it—I see it, babe.”
Each word he spoke took him one step closer to her until he had her in his arms, and that test was hidden between them.
“Love you, love you so fucking much, Lucia.”
She hugged him back even tighter. “Love you, too, Ren.”
It was time to start another piece of their forever.
He couldn’t wait.
CUSP
A RENZO + LUCIA COMPANION
BETHANY-KRIS
ONE
Diego
“Are you up in there, or do I need Trevor to turn on the speakers and—”
“I’m up,” Diego threw at his closed bedroom door. Behind it, he heard his older sister, Rose, laugh under her breath. Jesus. She knew how much he hated her husband’s country music. How a big city lawyer like Trevor could stand to listen to that shit, Diego would never understand. Then again, there was a lot about his sister’s husband that he couldn’t relate to.
Nah, that wasn’t it.
More like Rose and Renzo—his siblings—raised Diego after their addict mother drugged and drank her way into a pauper’s grave somewhere. Their father … or rather, his siblings’ father? Who knew? Somethings were just better left alone.
Then, when Ren couldn’t look after Diego, Rose stepped up alone to do it. For a long time, it was just him and his sister.
Until she got married.
Trevor wasn’t a bad guy.
Mostly.
He did, however, seem to have a hard nut for the fact he thought it was also his responsibility to fill some role in Diego’s life that he believed was missing. Like a father. At first, it was little things but the closer he came to turning eighteen—not long now—the more Trevor thought he needed to be the dad Diego didn’t have.
Listen …
Diego didn’t want a dad.
He’d done fine without one for this long; he wasn’t trying to be an asshole to Rose’s husband or anything. He simply wasn’t interested in the kind of bond Trevor was trying to make. Did it cause some issues?
Sometimes.
It didn’t matter to him.
Diego wasn’t letting someone else into his life just for them to fuck off like most everybody else had already done at one point or another. Other than his siblings, that was. He loved Ren and Rose to the ends of the earth and back for it, too. Well, and Lucia, Ren’s wife. Not to mention their kid, Lorenzo. Honestly, that was enough for him. His life wasn’t open to new people he had to make time for.
What was so hard to understand about that? Diego thought it was pretty clear.
“You’ve got fifteen minutes before you miss the—”
“Got it,” Diego said over his shoulder while he shoved all the shit he needed from his desk into the black backpack on the chair. The patches he’d sewn onto the bag to make it more custom and his style had taken years to collect. After he threw in his kit—extra parts for his skateboard so long as he didn’t break the board itself—and his wallet, his phone went in last. Under his phone was a sleek, gold business card with white lettering in the middle that caught the lamplight from his desk when he picked it up.
He twisted the business card over and over in his fingers, eyeing the name on the front while his foot tapped a fast beat to the floor. Sucking air through his teeth, he read the name again just to be sure he was seeing it right.
Marty Lorde, Manager
Los Angeles, CA
The man’s cell number—Diego had a good idea how rare it was to get one of these cards, especially after he did a quick check of the guy’s socials—stared back at him, winking in the light. Taunting him almost.
Was he too chickenshit to call?
To say fuck it—be great.
Skateboarding had been Diego’s thing since he was eleven. That and photography. And one day he realized he could do both and put it on the internet for other people to see things the way he did. When he was younger, he had a hard time fitting in with other kids. Sometimes, he found trouble just to belong.
When he found skateboarding and learned to share it with the world … Diego realized he didn’t need to make friends when people would just find him. His main social where he shared the majority of his photos and videos—and where he was most active—had just crawled over two-hundred thousand followers.
His sister didn’t like it. Trevor said it was dangerous. Ren thought it was kinda cool.
And up until the moment Diego met Marty Lorde at the skatepark two blocks away from his private high school—where he should have been in class—he never realized he could make a career out of being on the fucking internet. Or doing what he did on the internet, for that matter.
Marty said shit Diego didn’t understand. And some he did.
Sponsorships. Product placement. Representation. Maybe some modeling. Definitely brand deals. Contacts are everything; you need to come out to LA.
“Are you even listening to me?” Rose called.
Her voice brought him back to the present all at once. Responsibilities. Decisions. The exam he was supposed to write during fourth period, and the graduation he probably wouldn’t attend if he decided to chase the dream that had just been placed into his hands.
Adulting was for the fucking birds.
It wasn’t even the whole turning eighteen part of the growing up business that Diego thought was stupid as fuck. It was the expectations that followed him because he was turning eighteen and what people thought he should be doing with his life because of that fact.
Like college.
Choosing a career.
Doing something … normal. Expected. And entirely fucking boring. All things Diego had no interest in whatsoever. Mostly because he never bothered to sit down and think about it at all. The things his sister wanted him to look forward to and work toward as an adult weren’t the kinds of things he’d ever considered for his own life. Not when he’d been too busy learning how far he could fly on a skateboard while filming it for others to see, too. He did the school thing. Like they told him to.
Wasn’t that enough?
“What is up with you lately?” his sister asked through the bedroom door. “It’s not like you, you know? You can’t miss the exam today, Diego. Don’t skip again, all right?”
Diego turned to head for the bedroom door and shoved the card into his bag before zipping it up and tossing it over his shoulder. He had more questions about the LA thing that wouldn’t leave the back of his mind, and since Marty was only going to be in the city today, he didn’t have a choice but to miss the exam his sister was currently bitching about.
Pulling the bedroom door open, he already had a smile waiting for Rose. She worried about him enough. Her entire life seemed to revolve around making sure he was doing what he needed to do. Diego understood why that was … but he wished she would just let him grow up the way he wanted to now.
Her eyes widened, and the hand she’d raised to knock again on the wood lowered back to her side. His grin had her softening a bit. Last year, his height shot right up and now he stood six inches taller than her at six feet. She shook her head as she looked up at him.
“Sorry,” he said. “I was just late this morning.”
“Ace that exam. You need the grade.”
Right.
> For college.
“And I got an email today,” Rose added, “about the open house at UNR. I mean, you’re going to see Ren for a week in a couple of days, why not check out the university while you’re there?”
The text he received that morning from Marty in reply to asking if the man could meet up burned a hole in the bag hanging off his shoulder. So did the exam and grade. His sister.
“I’m not sure I want to go to school. I was thinking I might move out to LA and—”
“Diego,” Rose said, rolling her eyes and smiling like she thought he was being silly. “Come on, be real for a second. You gotta get serious about this stuff. You can’t play on your skateboard forever—all right?”
That was the thing.
He was serious about it.
He just needed to be taught how to do something with it.
“All right?” Rose asked again.
“I guess,” he said.
What else could he say?
He had a manager to meet.
She still wanted him to write that exam.
TWO
Renzo
“Do I have your attention now?”
Considering every stare in the room was currently locked on the projection across the room, Renzo would say his boss achieved quieting the space. An entire team of League members shoved into Dare’s office at the compound made the room seem a great deal smaller than it actually was. Ren found himself a corner for this briefing because he would really only be doing one thing if he’d been called in for the job Dare was prepping to show them. The same thing he always did when The League needed him.
Blow shit up.
It’s what he liked.
Even if it did almost kill him.
“Have you started?” asked a new, but familiar, voice.
Attention flew to the man who strolled through Dare’s open office doorway without a single concern. His gaze barely drifted over the roomful of people, and he walked straight through the projection like he didn’t distort it for everyone else at the same time. Cree, always the one to do what nobody expected him to, took his spot beside Dare who simply stared at the man as if he was considering asking, “Are you quite done?”
