Nate

I need to step out of this mess before she assassinates me in a way a whole army of crazy Nazis tried and hadn’t succeeded. She’s going to ruin me. . .and I’m going to let her.

No. This stops here.

I don’t know this girl. I sure as fuck don’t need this girl. This girl, other than being the proud owner of a magic, sleek pussy I tend to respond to like it belongs to Aphrodite herself, is nothing to me. Nothing. She’ll pull the trigger on me without even batting an eye. She’ll fuck her way to freedom even if it were under the bodies of other men. Like Irv, or Stan Hathaway, or even fucking Camden Archer himself. She’ll stop at nothing to get her life back, and I can’t blame her.

But I can end this.

It’s her problem, not mine. Her tragedy, not mine. I’ve got my own fucking sad story to torture the ears of the average folk with. And that shit about a kid? I may be tanked, but I saw her face twitching when she answered.

Where are you hiding your spawn, little Pea, and who the fuck takes care of them?

Stumbling out of the basement, still thoroughly drunk, I take a wide step over a naked girl on the floor who is masturbating using an empty beer bottle in front of a cheering crowd. Jesus fuck, what kind of people does Irv hang out with these days?

I trudge straight to the stereo that’s whining “Hey” by The Pixies and pull the plug out of the outlet, holding the cord in my hand like a lasso, and point it at Irv, who is sprawled out on our sofa, getting a blow job from a woman in a mini-skirt, who looks to be pushing fifty and has a pink hair curler stuck to her skull.

“Everybody get the fuck out. Party’s over.”

Irv bolts up to his feet, flicking his lit joint onto the hole-filled carpet and staring me down like people expect him to. This shuts up everybody in the room instantly, which is unfortunate, because I have an angry, strong woman in my basement, who just got screwed six ways from Sunday and could very well be screaming her little lungs out.

“Calm your hot ass down, dawg. Who the fuck are you to decide?” he spits. I’m so mad at him for spilling my name in her ears, I’m about to cut his ugly ass face in front of all these people.

“I’m your motherfucking roommate, and when needed, I’ll also be your goddamn boss.” I take a step in his direction towering over him by at least six inches. “I never agreed to have people over. Fold this shit down before I strangle you alive. I already got a rope.” I squeeze the cord in my fist for emphasis and raise it to his eye level. “Now, dummy.”

Ten minutes later, the house is empty. It’s just me, him and Prescott downstairs. I walked out on her before even zipping up. Hell, my boxers are still damp with the cum I didn’t have time to wipe off. Trying to swallow my embarrassment down—I shouldn’t care what she thinks of me, she was begging to be fucked and I gave her what she wanted—I throw my pillow over my face and squeeze it, half-wishing I’d suffocate myself to death.

Pea.

Thinking about her gets me so hard I feel my pulse pounding in my dick. I’m tenting like a thirteen-year-old Boy Scout just reeling her name in my head. Sex has fucking broken her, but tonight, there was no mistaking she felt whole, even if for a second.

What is it about this girl that’s so different?

She’s “street” without being a hooker.

Smart without being pretentious.

Knows her fucking literature, but also how to recognize bad-blended coke from miles away, all at the same time.

No. That’s not it. She’s got fight, and she wants to live. She’s actively chasing life, while I let mine slip between my fingers.

She’s life, and I’m death.

Prescott Burlington-Smyth is everything I want to be. A storm moving out of a shit situation at the speed of light, not looking back to spare a glance at the casualties of her actions.

How did her pussy feel? Good. Like I remember other pussies I’ve driven into feeling. Tight and warm like a fuzzy blanket, a shot of heroin to a shivering junkie. But nothing special. It doesn’t glitter. It doesn’t spew one hundred dollar bills and it won’t bring world peace. It doesn’t feel any different than the last nameless chick I fucked, all those years ago. And still, she’s the only woman to make me hard. The only fucking one.

I hate her.

I want her.

I need to forget her.

That stupid Pixies song keeps playing in my head, so long after I turned it off, on repeat as I roll in bed.

We’re chained. We’re chained. We’re chained.

The following day, I arrive at Mrs. H’s Blackhawk mansion. I dread that she’s going to be there, but still comply with her craziness. The minute I walk into her house, I disappear into the bathroom and change into a pair of Speedos. Her favorite pair. She’d bought them for me as an Easter gift. Tends to leave a larger tip when I wear them.

I’ve been thinking all night, and finally came up with a plan.

I’m going to make a fast buck, let Silver Spoon go and take off myself, all while keeping my distance from her.

I’ll save her life, but I’ll keep her out of mine.

I need to get the hell out of here. If that means compromising my dignity, so be it. It’s not like it was worth a damn, anyway. The Aryan Brotherhood is after me. Godfrey has either let them loose or wasn’t powerful enough to keep them off my back. And even if he is capable of keeping my ass afloat, once he hears I screwed Prescott with enough ferocity to move a goddamn mountain, I’m going to sleep with the fishes. And Prescott. . .she’d tell him in a heartbeat. If she goes down, she’ll make damn sure I’m going with her. I have no illusions why she fucked me. She wanted leverage to get me to help her. Guess what? I fucked my way straight into her plan.

“Oh, Nate!” Mrs. Hathaway rushes from the second floor down to the foyer, her pale blue babydoll loosely wrapped around her figure. “Tahoe was amazing! I couldn’t stop thinking about how much you would’ve loved it. Wow. Speedos. What’s the occasion? Have you missed me too?”

Hardly.

Literally. I’ve been occupied with trying to get rid of a persistent little blonde that keeps popping into my mind again and again, making me hard as fuck. In my head, she dangles her ass from side to side with that taunting smile. Pea wanted me to tap that ass and I did. What can I say? It’s common courtesy to give your guests what they want. Only now she consumes half my brain, filling it with filthy thoughts.

The other half is trying to figure out how to fix this mess.

“What would you like me to do today, Mrs. H?” My jaw grinds so hard, my teeth almost turn into sand.

“Me,” she jokes on a wink, before nudging her shoulder into my chest and moving forward to her couch, her thin fingers hugging a coffee mug. “For Christ’s sake, Nate, loosen up. You can start with watering the plants and mulching the flowerbeds. Eddie’s on vacation. Again. I swear that man goes on vacations more than I do,” she says about her landscaper. I’m only too happy to get out of the house. It’s a beautiful day. I can plug my ear buds in and let the lyrics of Morrissey and Robert Smith dissolve into my soul like morphine.

I turn and leave, trying not to hate her for degrading the shit out of me. Out of Eddie. Out of everyone. I bet she was a broke ass waitress before she married Stan. She seems hell bent on taunting people with her money, she’s bound to revenge some fucked-up trauma from her past.

“Nate, darling!” Her tenor chases me down the wide hall. “Make sure you bend down real low when you clean the graveled path between the flowerbeds. Your ass is lovely when you squat!”

I water the plants with the hose, glancing sideways to the neighboring houses. I wonder which one of them belongs to Prescott’s parents. Why? Why do I give a flying fuck which of these houses is the Burlington-Smyth’s? So what? So I could crawl into her window and look through the shit in her baby pink room? Sniff her underwear when no one’s watching? Rub one out and spill my baby juice on her Hello Kitty sheets? Or maybe so I could punch her stupid dad in the face five hundred times for handing his daughter over to Godfrey and his crew.

I still haven’t recovered from that story.

Thinking about it and drowning a small plot of purple flowers in the process, I ignore Mrs. Hathaway, who ambushes me from behind. Shit, I don’t want to deal with her crap right now.

“What’s gotten into you, Nate? You’re acting all weird. I think the coneflowers have enough water for the whole summer. Why don’t you move on to the next flowerbed?”

I drop my gaze to the hose and aim it like a gun at another defenseless flowerbed. “Just wondering who can afford those big-ass houses. Stan’s the owner of an accounting firm, but what do your other neighbors do for a living?”

What did you ask that for, you stupid fuck?Now she’ll think I’m trying to milk her for data so I can break into their houses, when in reality, the only crime I’d like to commit is to feast on the pussy that belongs to the son of an English kingpin. But Mrs. H is always in the mood for humoring me. Her hand finds my back. She rubs it in circular movements as we both stare ahead at the sea of lavish mansions from her front porch.

“Well, let’s see. Those are the Simpsons. We play tennis with them every weekend. They’re old money,” she snorts. “Texan oil. Then the Cruz family, right over there.” Her index finger travels in the direction of another manor. “Lawyers. Best in the country. They can get you out of anything, if you can afford it. Easy-T over there is a rapper. The Greenspans own publishing houses in San Francisco, and the Browns are in real estate. And those,” she says and points to a Spanish colonial villa, boasting a lush tropical garden and iron gates, “are the Burlington-Smyths. Surprised the electricity is still running. The house belongs to Godfrey Archer now. An English lord or duke or. . . Ah, I have no idea who that man is, other than the fact that he’s my husband’s client. Shady business, either way.”

I give a small, indifferent nod. So that’s how Godfrey got me this job. Everything’s connected, calculated and intentional. “Howard Burlington-Smyth was the mayor of Manor Hill. But not anymore.”

My stomach knots just from hearing his name. My silence prompts her to continue.

“I don’t know the whole story—you know how it is, the more gated the community is, the deeper the secrets are buried—but word in Blackhawk Plaza is that the mother of the family is suffering from schizophrenia and has been MIA for the past decade. I always thought that Howard was a widower. Raising his two kids alone earned him some serious points when he ran for mayor. But this was before. . .” She trails off, her hand sliding lower, massaging the two ridges of my back.

“Before what?” I almost snap. She gives me a onceover before continuing slowly.

“Before the scandal. He was involved in a shady, under-the-desk deal gone wrong, and he had to sell his house to the English guy.”

Normally she could tell me that she was attacked by four grizzly bears on her way back from the tennis court and I’d shrug it off and not even offer her a Band-Aid. I look like I have a dog in this fight. Mrs. Hathaway’s gaze scrutinizes me, trying to peel away my layers of aloofness. After a stretched silence, she finally says, “Why are you interested in the Burlington-Smyths, Nate?”

“I ain’t. Just making small talk. Isn’t that what you rich people do?”

That seems to pacify her, and she sucks in a breath.

“So now the Burlington-Smyths live in a house that doesn’t belong to them, and Howard throws favors around to keep that expensive roof over his head. I think that’s what got him kicked out of his position in the first place. They say”—she drops her voice down to a whisper, despite the fact that we’re all alone in her colossal property—“he was involved in drug trafficking. Knows people at the border checkpoint. I personally don’t believe it. He seems like a decent man, then again,” she says with a shake of her head. “His daughter ran out of the state a few years ago and his son, Preston…no one’s seen him in years. So there’s no telling what goes on in that family.”

I rub the back of my neck, trying to peel away my reaction to her story. We barely know each other, but I guess I figured that Prescott lived the kind of charmed life I couldn’t even dream about, because I didn’t fully fathom life’s potential. Sheltered. Wealthy. Whole. I catch glimpses of this kind of life here and there. When I mow Mrs. H’s lawn and watch stick-thin women in sundresses walking their poodles, pushing flashy strollers. Cooing and drinking iced coffees and talking on the phone about their fucking family vacations. Life’s a casual thing for them. They don’t even realize that one day, they’ll be dead. They know, but they don’t realize it. There’s a difference. Rich people think money can buy their way out of the darkness. They’re wrong. We come from darkness and go back to it when we’re done. Nobody lives forever, and everybody’s grave is equally as dark.

I know that, and surprisingly, Prescott knows that too.

All this time, Pea was like me. The shattered pieces of her broken family are hiding in piles upon fucking piles of secrets and hearsay that have her whole neighborhood just dying to dig up the shards.

“Sucks to be a Burlington-Smyth,” I grunt. What the fuck? I’m one step away from growing a fucking vagina. So what if Prescott had a shitty life? I bet it’s still a lot less shitty than mine. Besides, I’ve already decided that I’m going to spare her life. No need to buy her fucking flowers to make up for the awful men she had to deal with.

Mrs. H creeps closer, brushing my arm as her eyes drop down to my package, squeezed into rubber Speedos. My balls are sweating like they’re in a sauna. They’ve been tingling for Pea’s attention for days now. I wonder what it’d take to get her to suck on them.

“I can tell you a lot about this neighborhood if you’re interested, Nate,” she says. I guess she’s talking to me, but she’s still staring at my junk. “The Browns have a bastard child and the Simpsons are divorcing. You can stick around when you’re done. I’ll open a bottle of chardonnay.”

“Thanks for the offer, but I got plans.” I turn my back to her and point the hose at a mound of flowers.

I do have plans. And they’re starting to look crazier and crazier with every tick of the clock.

Tick, tock.

Am I switching teams?

Tick, tock.

Playing right into Prescott’s scheme.

That night, I send Irv to give Pea her food and fifteen minutes of bathroom time. But not before warning him for twenty minutes about the importance of not being a total cunt. I also kindly ask him not to volunteer anymore crucial information about me, such as my last name, license plate, social security number or favorite porn star.

Though deep down, I know it’s too late. She’s on to me. She knows my name and would be able to piece together a pretty accurate picture to the cops.

An ex-inmate from San Dimas named Nate, tattoos covering only the left side of his body.

Yeah, not many of those walking around in the world.

Then again, for the sake of my conscience, I can’t, correction—won’t—hand her back to Godfrey after everything that he’s done. And if she’s a mother on top of everything, I ain’t gonna be responsible for her kid becoming an orphan.

I’m going to let her walk away and make it on my own, without her fifty grand. I have a feeling doing this together would only throw us into a deeper pool of shit. Besides, she’s small and blonde and on fucking heeled boots. She’d only slow me down.

There’s no way I’m going down there again. She’s been manipulating this whole house, reigning it with her sweet pussy and philosophical quotes. I have some thinking to do, and going down there means I’ll be handing my dick the key to this out of control train wreck.

Even though I send Irv to take care of her, while trying to read American Scream in bed, I still strain my ears to hear them. I hear every curse that leaves his lips as he talks to her and every sarcastic comeback she throws back at him. I keep telling myself I’m eavesdropping because I want to make sure he doesn’t hit her again, but it’s not the truth. Not the whole truth, anyway. The whole truth is that I’d like to hear if she asks about me. She doesn’t.

When her time runs out, she goes back to the basement and doesn’t try striking up a conversation. It’s been thirteen days since she got here. Not too many more to go before they’ll come and take her. She knows it. But she has no idea that I’ve made up my mind.

They’re not touching this girl again. I won’t let that happen.

If Prescott Burlington-Smyth dies—it won’t be on my watch.