Nate

My traitorous cock has betrayed me again.

I’m starting to think Godfrey deliberately put this girl under my supervision because he wants me to go fucking nuts. Never, in my entire life have I lusted after a woman. Women were low-hanging fruit for me to pick, sink my teeth into and toss after one bite. Prescott is no different. She’s offering herself to me on a silver platter, with a side of grapes. But with her, I want it.

Why do I want it? Because she’s broken like me.

Why do I need someone broken? Because she understands, never judges, and doesn’t back down.

Broken people do things better; we learned how to make it in life without the missing parts other people have. Because when you’re in the dark, you appreciate everything that shines.

She’s not the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen. She ain’t the cutest or funniest. But she’s shrewd and cunning. A chameleon changing her colors to adjust to the situation she’s been thrown into. I know she’s trying to manipulate me, and to some extent, she’s succeeding.

It’s fun watching her sweat for me, especially because in the outside world, I’d be her slave, polishing her expensive tiles in swim trunks and listening to her ramblings about Tahoe vacations.

Flashbacks of grinding against her like a fucking pervert have me walking around with a crimson red face all day. I’ll never live this shit down.

I go about my usual routine, showing up at work. Thank fuck Mrs. Hathaway’s still in Tahoe, because this dancing monkey is not in the mood to walk around half-naked just for her amusement. My body is humming with quiet rage, and I know exactly what will set it free, but I can’t have it.

Godfrey would kill me if I touch her.

Throwing the Smiths vinyl record onto the gramophone—if there’s one thing I love about this job, it’s Stan Hathaway’s record collection—I start working. Scrubbing, washing, vacuuming and dusting to the sound of Morrissey wording my misery ever so sweetly. My sorry ass would lick every inch of these Italian granite floors if I had to, just to save some money to run out of Cali-fucking-fornia.

I pick up my dirty backpack when I’m done and check my phone out of habit. I have four missed calls. Weird. No one ever calls me, other than the occasional fraud. I frown at my phone and redial the number on the screen, my pulse kicking up. The area code reads San Rafael.

I’m not ready for this phone call, and as the other line clicks alive, I know that my favorite person in the world is now dead.

Fuck, fuck, fuck.

I jump into Stella and call Irvin, telling him he needs to feed Pea and give her her fifteen minutes of bathroom time. I don’t call her Pea, sticking instead with “God’s girl.”

I don’t trust the bastard with her, but I need to drive to San Rafael to identify the body of Frank Donald Dixon. Dead, after four years in a coma.

Because of me.

Because of Hefner.

Because of God.

Because of the Aryan Brotherhood.

They’re still after me.

I show up at the forensic laboratory and a grief counselor immediately greets me. A woman in her mid-thirties, thin with perfectly applied makeup and a haircut from the magazines. She shakes my hand, the grin that graces her face confirms blue blood runs in her veins. She explains that I’ll need to identify him by a photograph. I was his only contact person. Me. How sad is that?

The last time I saw him was the day shit went down, and I dread the idea of seeing how he spent the last few years while I was eating four bangers and trying (yet failing) to stay out of trouble.

She sits me down and shows me a picture, and I nod, my face blank. It’s him, all right. The last person who resembled family in my life is dead. No mom. No dad. No neighbor who showed me the ropes in prison. No one.

If I die on my way back to Stockton, no one will give a rat’s ass. Just like no one gave a rat’s ass about Frank. The grief counselor breaks the self-pity party I’m throwing by rubbing her palm against the back of my hand.

“Hey. I don’t usually do this, but I’m almost done here. Give me ten minutes, and we can grab a drink?”

Everyone wants to fuck Nate Vela, but no one offers a shoulder to cry on.

I stand up, and she scans me up and down, her throat bobbing with a swallow. “Sorry,” I say and pick up my keys and wallet. “Gotta go.”

I spend the ride back home trying to come up with legitimate reasons to wake up tomorrow morning. So that. . .what? I could work a shitty job I hate under the supervision of a woman who pinches my ass and giggles, make minimum wage to try and escape a life I don’t even have so the Aryan Brotherhood wouldn’t kill me? So I could continue on existing, for no reason other than my basic, human instinct to survive?

I’m not even sure why I’m preventing Pea’s escape. She probably has more of a life to live, and she certainly tries harder than I do. I’m just being a greedy bastard, saving my life instead of sparing hers.

Making a booze stop at a bar on the outskirts of Stockton, I come back to the house sauced as fuck. It’s three a.m. Too late to check on her. Even if she’s not asleep, we’re not friends. I can’t cry on her shoulder. Can’t crawl into her lap. Even though she’d want that. Welcome me with open arms.

But she’d do it to save herself, not me.

I stomp my way to my room, kicking my boots against the wall and shouldering past a sleepy Irv, who wobbles his way back from another night shift.

It doesn’t take a genius to see that I’m upset, but he doesn’t care. We’re practically strangers. Two people who share a roof because we can’t afford not to.

Once I fall onto the mattress, I scrub my eyes, fighting the sting.

I wait for her to talk, because she always does whenever she hears me getting into bed. I can feel that she’s awake. She waits for those fifteen minutes with me, longs for them as much as I do.

Oh, fuck. What the hell am I saying? I shouldn’t want shit from her.

But right now, I’m too down to care. Don’t care that I’m breaking for her, playing into her dangerous game, and that Irv is likely to hear us.

“Talk,” I order, staring at my mold-stained popcorn ceiling, wishing it was the wood of a coffin. I need comfort, a distraction, and she’s it. I’m Mrs. Hathaway’s dancing monkey, and Pea? She’s fucking mine. Pea doesn’t answer.

“Goddammit, Prescott. My day was fucking brutal,” I grunt. “Talk.”

Nothing.

“Fucking talk!” I shout, rolling my body to the edge of the bed and slamming my fist to the floor. Irv raps the wall of his room three times. “Shut the fuck up, man. What’re you doing drinking on weekdays?”

“Talk,” I whisper one last time, ignoring Irv, knowing she can hear me. But she doesn’t utter a word. This girl who seemed hell-bent on blabbing when I left her last night is now mute. What’s changed? Has Irv done something to her? No. He knows I’d kill him.

Maybe she’s given up on life too. Great fucking timing, Pea.

Bitch.