by Finn, Emilia
He turns to Laine. “You can surf, too?”
She nods distractedly and writes notes on their ‘we’re going on a girl’s trip with a thug’ itinerary. “Yeah. Pretty decent at it, too.”
He looks to me. “Can you surf?”
I shrug. “I can skate. Haven’t had much chance to try it in the ocean, though.”
“Fuck me,” he ponders. “I better nimble the fuck up. I can’t have the girls making me look bad.”
“Can’t take guns into the ocean, Bish.” Jess playfully bumps his shoulder. “What ever will you do?”
“Shut up, Blondie. Just wait–”
“Kane.” I set my drink aside with a loud clang and stand. “Get up. I wanna talk to you.”
Laine tilts her head to the side, but I ignore her before I spill my guts like an idiot. Instead, I drag Kane out of the room, down the stairs, and into the garage.
He’s not stupid, nor is he clueless.
He closes the door and turns back with folded arms and a filthy smirk. “Feeling a little put out, Ang? I saw you humping her in the yard; your balls a little blue? Don’t fret, brother, at least you have a set.”
“Shut up. Turn the cameras off, and the sound, and whatever else you got in here that feeds right back to the girls.”
Chuckling, he steps to a control panel built into the wall and enters a passcode into the screen. I catch a glimpse of a house floor plan – this house’s floor plan – and watch his high-tech crap turn from green to red in certain parts of the house.
“Done. We’re in the cone of silence, Ninety-Nine. What’s up?”
“You’re going on this road trip with them?”
He scoffs. “It’s insulting you think otherwise. No way in hell am I letting her go on her own. Plus, I wanna go to the beach, too. Picture it,” he raises his hands to make a frame, “blonde hair, itty bitty yellow polka dot bikini, smackable ass, and sass for days.” He flashes a filthy grin. “And I didn’t even get to Jess yet.”
“Dude!”
He chuckles. “I’m kidding. I don’t look at yours, you don’t look at mine. But seriously; bonfires, the beach, days and days of driving. Sounds like fuckin’ heaven to me.”
“I wanna come. Make it so I can come.” I was coming in here to lay down my ‘you’ll make them safe, right?’ and ‘they’re gonna go wild on this trip, and the ocean is way too fucking far away for my comfort,’ but those aren’t the words that leave my lips. “Tell them you don’t wanna play third wheel. Make it so I can come.”
“Just tell them, dumbass. It’s really easy – clap your hands and say ‘Road trip!’ They have no clue I bamboozled them. I already told you at Greg’s place – attitude is half the fun. Act like you already have an invitation, and they won’t question it.”
“It’s not so easy for me, Bish. You’re with Jess, but I’m just a friend. I can’t demand shit, which is why you gotta do it. This trip is about freedom for her, it’s about shaking Graham off and having fun. And there’s no fucking way in hell I’m staying here while she’s over there doing that.”
“She chooses to hang out with you every damn day, idiot. Why wouldn’t she want you to come on this trip?”
Before I can argue back, something heavy crashes inside the house, followed by the girls’ squeals. Kane and I look at each other before bolting through the door, similarly to how we ran into a burning building last year.
Pushing at each other and jockeying to be the first through, we burst into the living room to find Jess and Laine wrestling on the floor amid tangled limbs and girly squeals, a large ceramic lamp shattered a mere three inches beside their heads.
“What the fuck?” Kane holsters a gun I didn’t see him pull and folds his arms. “Did we interrupt something important, ladies? Care to share your news with the rest of the class?”
“Baby’s being a baby!” Jess slams her fist into Laine’s shoulder. “She’s not playing fair.”
“I’m not being a baby! I just want you to mind your own damn business.”
“Everything’s my business! I’m a lawyer.”
Kane lets out an exasperated sigh and steps forward. He lifts Laine off his girlfriend as easily as if she were a child, and when he sets her on her feet, I’m both relieved and insanely jealous that his touch doesn’t make her flinch.
He picks her up with a strength that should scare her, but all she does is roll her eyes and turn away when he goes back for the other twin.
Jess stands and shoots a glare from behind Kane’s restraining hold. “Don’t be a baby, Baby! Sack up! You’re better than that.”
“Shut the hell up, Jessica! Mind your own business before you ruin it.” Laine stomps across the room with her arms folded, her eyes glaring into mine.
I step back before she can hit me. “What did I do wrong? Why are you mad at me?”
“I’m not.” She shakes her shoulders the way I’ve seen the Rollers do a million times just before a fight. Prepping for a throw down, or shaking the shit off and drawing in the calm? “Um…” She clears her throat and drops her eyes. Anger makes way for insecurity, and her worry sets my gut on fire. “I was wondering something…”
Insane curiosity, and desperate worry, swirl in my gut simultaneously. “Okay. What’s up?”
“Well…” She watches the floor and deprives me of her expressive eyes. “I was wondering about the garage… Can you take time off? Get your employees to open and close for a little while?”
“Time off from the garage? Um, I mean, I guess. I can do whatever I want. It’s my place.”
“Right, but do you have weird deadlines you need to meet that someone else can’t do? Can you take time away without it all going to shit?”
I glance over her shoulder at Kane and Jess as they sit on the couch, grinning as they watch us intently. They’re paying attention to every word we say, every single move we make.
“Ang?”
“Yeah.” My eyes come back to Laine’s. “I could take time. You want me to look after the apartment or something? I don’t need time off for that.”
“Um. No. Actually, I was thinking maybe you’d like to come with us?” Finally bringing her eyes back to mine, the bottom lip caught between her teeth kills me. “That is, I dunno… We’ve been friends a long time, and since Jess and Kane will be making out a lot, I figured I could do with a friend while away. Someone safe and familiar, ya know?”
Fuckkkkk.
20
Angelo
New Beginnings
Now that the car is done and I’ve run out of legitimate reasons to drop by Kane’s house without looking like a total idiot, I don’t close my garage early and race out. Instead, I work my Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday right until the five o’clock buzzer, and after letting my guys go, I stay back another hour or two to work in the silence and think.
Thursday – today – I finalize a parts order for a Chevy and write up a messy Post-It note for my apprentice to see to while I’m away.
Chuck – whose name isn’t Chuck at all – is the youngest man I employ, but he has a gift with his hands, and a sense of responsibility most of the older guys don’t possess. Kids that have had a rough life tend to move one way or the other; stupid and reckless, or the most dependable person you’ll ever meet.
I don’t know Chuck’s story, but he’s the latter kind, and his twenty and thirty-year-old counterparts aren’t even half as respected in my mind as he is.
It pisses my guys off that I’m taking leave and putting a teen in charge, but fuck them if they think they can dictate how I run my place.
Jess and Laine have planned for us to leave as soon as Alex and Jules’ baby is out and safe, and seeing as Alex started the text tree about an hour ago – it’s happening, it’s happening, it’s happening!! – and continues to send updates every three and a half minutes, I figure we’ll be setting off in a matter of days.
So I finalize orders, delegate jobs, and make sure my business won’t burn to the ground in my absence
.
Nerves have sat low in my belly since the moment Laine announced this road trip was going ahead. I was scared to have her so far away, then fucking terrified when she asked me to come.
Color me fucking surprised when she invited me along.
Never in a million years did I suspect she’d ask. I was so sure it was too much, but here we are. I spent this week cleaning my filthy house while searching for boardshorts and flip flops, and now we just need to wait out Jules’ timebomb.
Shit’s about to get real for a lot of people.
Gravel crunches outside my garage bay doors, but without standing and walking out of my office, I can’t see my visitors. I should’ve closed the doors already, because I have places to be and zero intention to help anyone tonight.
Maybe I can get to my appointment, then wrangle an invitation for dinner with Kane and the girls.
I might even try the hand clapping thing.
Tossing my pen down, I stand with a grunt and stretch my back until joints pop with a satisfying click. Fuck this office stuff – I’m not made for desk work.
Taking a long swallow of the cola on my desk and tossing the empty can in the trash, I walk out of my office with my keys in hand and a plan to shuffle this person aside with a fast ‘come back tomorrow.’
“Ang?” Or not. “Hey, where are you?”
“Office.” I brush a hand through my hair and glance down at my grease-stained clothes. She’s seen me at work a billion times before, and yet, I worry she’ll think I’m a hick that needs to shower. “Laine?” I close the door and smile when I catch sight of her walking forward and studying my garage – or more accurately, the classic car in the third slip. Not watching where she’s going, I’m ashamed of myself when I stop right in her path and wait her out.
Ashamed… but unwilling to step aside.
“Oh, shit!” Slamming against my chest and jumping back, she clutches at my arms and blows hair out of her eyes. “Jesus, Ang. I almost wet myself.”
Chuckling, I study her as she takes a step back and looks me up and down the way I hoped she wouldn’t.
She grins at the grease stains on my belly where I leaned over the hood of a car, then she stops on my eyes and flashes a fantastic fucking smile. “You’re all sweaty after a big day.” She casts a glance around my tidied garage. “It’s stinkin’ hot in here, even with the bays open.”
“I better buy those fans before we go away.”
“Uh-huh.” Wandering away, she gives me a fine view of tight, white jean shorts and long tan legs ready for the beach. “You’ve got a smudge of grease on your nose, by the way.”
Fuck.
I drag my stained shirt up and scrub my nose while she stops to lean against the Chev. She rests her arms on the open hood and grins. “Now I can see your belly button. You’re killing me with the teasing material, Alesi.”
“Fuck.” I drop my shirt and throw my head back to stare at the ceiling. “It’s been a long ass day. Are you here specifically to torment me, or…?”
She snickers. “Sorry. I came because Jules is in labor, and I felt like I needed a baby buddy.”
“A baby buddy?”
“Yeah, Jess and Kane are sitting on the couch at home and staring at their phones, and though they didn’t tell me to get lost, I felt it was awkward the longer I sat on Kane’s lap. He can’t tell us apart yet, so my joke turned awkward after a while.”
“You sat in his fucking lap? Why? Why would you do that?” Images of him and Jess play through my mind. He doesn’t not touch. His hands would have been all over Laine before he figured it out.
“Jesus, I was kidding.” Laughing, she pushes off the car and steps forward to close the gap between us. “I wasn’t in his lap; she was. But I felt like the third wheel, so I decided to make myself scarce. Do you mind? If you have plans somewhere else, I can go.”
“No.” I take a step forward and push a hand into my hair. “I don’t mind, but I do have an appointment in,” I check my watch, “eleven minutes ago.”
She snorts. “Oops. You’re gonna be in trouble.”
“She won’t get mad, but she sure as shit won’t wait around for me, either.”
“She?” Laine’s brows shoot high on her forehead. “Did I interrupt a date? Because I can get lost real fast and pretend we never spoke of this.”
“Not a date, a haircut. I booked in with Caitlin, since we’re going away and I haven’t had a haircut in forever. It’s time to stop looking like a bum.”
Snickering, she stretches her neck as though to study the bun at the back of my neck. “How much are you chopping off? I might have to cut a bitch if she buzzes you clean. I mean, you can do whatever you want – ya know, considering they let guys out of the kitchen these days – but damn, you’ve had long hair since forever, it might hurt my soul to see it gone.”
“Not buzzing, but I was thinking maybe bringing it shorter. It’s a pain in the ass having it long, and hot as hell in the summer. I’ve been meaning to do it for ages, but I’ve been too lazy.”
She taps her bottom lip and gives a contemplative nod. “She won’t wait for you? It’s only a minute across to her studio. I’ll come if you want, and we can hang out. Maybe I’ll talk her into frosted tips a’la Justin Timberlake when he was still dating Britney.”
“No.” Don’t smile. Don’t smile! “She won’t wait. She and her girlfriends are going out tonight, apparently. She’s always been a little… testy.” I scratch the stubble on my jaw and add that to my to-do list.
Clean the fuck up and stop looking homeless.
Pulling the keys from my pocket, I push my office door open again and flip the lights on. Laine follows me into the messy room, filling it with the scent of fruity shampoo that battles against the constant odor of oil and rubber.
“Caitlin doesn’t wait for anyone, but I’ll shoot her a text soon and book in again for tomorrow or Saturday.”
“I can do it.” She looks up at me through long lashes and nods at my desk. “Take a seat and lemme at a pair of scissors. I’ll do it up right.”
“Really?” Narrowing my eyes, I drop into my desk chair and palm the scissors before she finds them. “You know how to cut hair?”
“Yeah, I mean it’s just,” she uses her fingers and makes ‘snip, snip’ sounds. “I’ll do it good, I promise. No way in hell would I make you look bad.”
“O…kay.” I uncover the scissors and nudge them forward just half an inch. “You promise not to fuck it up? Like you just said, I’ve had this hair since forever. I’ll maybe cry if you make it weird.”
“Promise. You can trust me.” Setting her purse and keys down, she studies my office and whips a used towel from beneath a tower of paperwork. It teeters precariously, and with her legs braced and her hands raised in surrender – or telekinesis – she waits for the pile to settle.
Turning victoriously, she grins and walks a seductive track around my desk, stopping behind my chair until warmth radiates from her body and settles against my back.
This was a bad idea.
With gentle hands that make me swallow the lump in my throat, she fixes the towel around my shoulders and presses her palms against my traps. “Do you trust me?”
“To cut my hair?” I swallow and maneuver the corner of the towel to cover my crotch. “No.”
Snorting, her breath tickles the back of my ear until my eyes drift closed at the unintentional seduction. This was a terrible fucking idea. “You got a comb?”
“No.”
“It’s okay.” Completely unaffected by our nearness, she steps to her purse and fishes around in the bottom. Pulling out a gray comb and her flashing cell, she drops them on the corner of my desk near my arm, before she steps out of my office and comes back a minute later with a spray bottle I normally keep soap in. “It’s just water.” She shakes it. “Maybe a little soap left behind, but it won’t hurt your hair.” Stopping behind me, she pulls the tie from my hair and glances down as her phone vibrates. Mine does the sa
me, since we’re both in the same chat, but she doesn’t open hers. She just reads the ‘six cm’s!’ on the screen, then turns back to me and starts running her comb through my hair. “Are you scared?”
I sit back in my chair and consider myself stuck. Laine Lenaghan is cutting my hair today, whether I like it or not. “Scared of what? My haircut?”
I feel her shrug in the air, but more pressing is the hand she rests on my neck as she uses the other to move the comb. “That. Alex and Jules’ baby. Our trip. Life in general… life is kinda scary.”
“I’m not scared of you messing up my hair. Not really. It can always be fixed.”
“And our trip?”
“Is going to be something else.”
“Yeah…” Her belly presses against my back and sets my heart to a wild gallop. Can she feel that? “A week away from my brother, away from everyone else, away from everything we know. It’ll be like a new beginning.” Without warning, she takes the scissors and makes the first cut.
Jesus, we should’ve talked length.
“Um…” I swallow and pretend I’m okay. It can be fixed. It can be fixed. It can be fixed. “It’ll be weird to be away. I haven’t gone on vacation in a long time, so it’ll be strange to not have to rush out of the house each morning because I’m running late for work.” Another snip results in long locks landing on my dirty concrete floor.
“To your shoulders?” She pulls my hair forward so her hands are in my peripherals. “We should discuss this before I go too far.”
“Yeah… maybe to my shoulders. Somewhere between shoulder and jaw would be okay.”
She lets out a soft whistle and goes to work hacking at my hair. “It’s been long since high school, so I might jump out of my skin tomorrow when I forget what you’ve done and I don’t recognize you.” And yet, snip, snip, snip.
“I’ll shave and tidy up tonight, too.”
“Really?” Leaning around me, her blue eyes sparkle with humor. “Geez, you’re really working it, huh? Trying to impress a girl?”
