66. Weston

A day spent with a woman like Renee is a good day. She’s fun and funny and I can forget about the weirdness this morning.

Or try to, anyway.

But my mind is clinging to something and I can’t make it let go.

I don’t know why she lied to me about why she was walking in the apartment when I went for water, but I saw her shut the door. She said something about checking that the power was on in the hall, but it was bullshit.

I just can’t figure out why.

I tell myself it doesn’t matter. Truly, it doesn’t. Especially not while she’s doing the whole Suzie Homemaker thing, making dinner for us in Sutton’s apartment in a checkered apron with old school country music on the sound system. It’s easy to slip into this fantasy.

As she’s stirring something in the skillet, I move to stand behind her, curl my arms around her waist, and kiss the side of her throat. She leans her head back against my shoulder and tilts her head to give me better access to the long line of her neck.

She continues stirring some sort of red sauce with bits of vegetables in it. “The noodles are done and I’ve already made the salad. It’s in the fridge.”

“Mhmm.” I kiss her neck again.

She reaches up to cup the back of my head and moans low in her chest. “If you don’t stop, the food is going to get cold and… ohhh.”

I cup her breast and give the nipple a light pinch. She arches her back and mewls deliciously.

When I finally let her go, she sighs in frustration. I chuckle to myself as I walk to sit at the table. It’d be so easy to clear all the cutlery with one sweep of my arm and throw her on her back in its place. It’d be so easy to spread her legs apart, fit my cock inside her, finish what I started.

But I think I’d rather her be waiting for me, wanting me while she eats. Anticipation always makes it better.

“Better replenish our energy first,” I explain when she gives me her pleading bedroom eyes.

“Alright. Fine. If you would rather eat pasta and salad than me, whatever.” She shrugs nonchalantly.

Even in an old ratty sweatshirt and running shorts with an apron on top, she is temptation itself.

I pull her to me and kiss her hard and she straddles my lap. And then a second later, she’s gone. Still struggling to catch her breath, body taut and wired, but standing out of my reach.

“You tease!” I growl.

If I could move, I would haul her back to me—but right now, I want to look at her, at the flush of her cheeks, the swell of her breasts. She’s gorgeous all the time, but even more so when she’s turned on.

Giggling, she turns away from me and dances back into the kitchen. When she brings the food out to the table, she’s cool, composed. I force myself to play along, although my cock is humming with need.

We eat and chat about nothing important and I am happy like I haven’t been in a long time. I don’t even remember the last time I was so… content, like the world is spinning the right way.

“You want to stay here tonight or go to my place?” My place has booze—wine for her, whisky for me—and a much bigger bed than the one she sleeps in.

“Your place is fine.”

I grin. “Alright. Let’s clean this up and I’ll go boot Hunter out if he’s still around.”

Her smile lights up the whole place. “Sounds good to me. I’m going to shower then I’ll be over, okay?”

I nod. “Cool.” I pull her close for a see-you-soon kiss and then release her quickly or I’ll never get out of here.

She lets me go and I head for the door. When I open it, I look back at her. “Twenty minutes. Or I’m coming after you.”

With a laugh, she pulls her lower lip between her teeth. “Sounds like that could be fun.”

Grinning like a doofus, I walk over to my apartment, all thoughts of Renee’s mismatched stories from the power outage gone from my mind.

But when I open the door, I lunge back. What the fuck?

My place is trashed.

A copy of my Firebirds contract that I kept in the desk is strewn across the floor like snowflakes. The wall art is missing, the frames smashed and bent. Everywhere I look, there is a mess of some sort.

“What the fuck?”

I pick up a picture of me, Mom, and Molly. Well, half of it—the other half flutters to the floor as soon as I pick it up, with a ragged tear through the center. My TV is hanging sideways like whoever did this tried to take it off the wall to steal it and couldn’t manage it.

“Fuck!”

The guest room door opens and Hunter walks out, naked and rubbing his eyes. He stops when he sees the living room. “Holy shit. You have a tantrum or something?”

I look at him in disbelief. “You seriously didn’t hear anything?”

“Nah, man. I got drunk and crashed.” He picks up a broken planter that my sister bought because my place was too sterile. “Aww, man, they got Fred the Fern.” He holds up the plant in his hand. “I don’t think he’s going to make it.”

Fred the fucking Fern. The plant used to sit in the corner beside the hockey stick Wayne Gretzky signed for me when I was seven. Hunter has one just like it.

But of course, mine’s missing.

When I look around for all the shit that should be there that isn’t, my guts twist. Every one of the things that are missing—the painting, the stick, a watch I wore on one of our dates, a hockey jersey—are all pieces that Renee commented on.

I don’t want to suspect her, don’t even know why I’m thinking about it this way, but in my mind’s eye, I can hear her say how much money the hockey stick would bring in if I ever sold it. How collectors would go wild. She’d even looked up the value.

I feel sick. Nauseated. Pissed off in a way I haven’t been in years.

I have to do something. I pull out my phone and call the cops. It’s not really a 911 situation since the perpetrator isn’t currently robbing me, so I sit on hold until someone picks up.

“Detective Shorz.”

“This is Weston Scott. I need to report a robbery.” My voice is calm, steady, and I’m holding it together when what I really want to do is kick ass. Although I don’t know whose.

“Weston Scott? No shit! I was at the game the other night. You’re having a hell of a year.”

I want to remind him that I do my job when I’m supposed to; he should, too. Instead, I nod. “Thanks, man, but I need this robbery thing taken care of ASAP.”

“Yup. I’ll get right over there. Weston Scott! I’ll be damned.”

I give him the address and hang up, looking at my place as Renee walks in the door.

“Oh, fuck! What happened?” She walks toward me, stepping over a pile of broken glass from a frame where my college jersey used to hang on the wall.

“Somebody fucking robbed me, that’s what the fuck happened.” I stare at her and she seems honestly shocked by it.

But I’ve been played before.

I was wrong to assume that a pretty face and an innocent face were one and the same. I won’t let Renee do to me what Eva did.

She walks closer to me and lays her hand on my shoulder. “At least no one was hurt.”

“Pretty fucking ballsy to rob me while I’m right across the hall and I have company sleeping in my guest room.” So ballsy I can’t fucking believe it.

Hunter shrugs. “It’s L.A., Westie. City’s full of psychos.”

I sigh and rake my hand through my hair. “Who the fuck…?”

But I suspect I already know.

It takes forever for the cops to arrive. Detective Shorz is barely keeping it together. His inner fanboy wants to geek out and ask me for autographs, but the fingerprint crew he bought with him takes the job a little more seriously. They get to work while Shorz asks me questions and scribbles down the answers in a cigarette-stained notepad.

“Who has access to your place?”

I nod to Hunter. “Him, her, me. No one else has been here in a while.”

“Copy that. We’ll need prints from all of you.”

He asks me a few more questions and then I take him for a walkthrough while Hunter goes to put on clothes. The jersey was hanging in my closet. The watch was on my dresser. The hockey stick was in the corner of the living room. The art was hanging on a wall.

All of it very, very valuable.

All of it gone.

My gut clenches again. My dresser drawers are open and the clothes thrown around like whoever it was knows that I keep spare cash in my drawer. It isn’t much—just a couple grand—but again, the same three people know.

I’m about to walk back out to the living room when Shorz stops me with a hand on my shoulder. He drops his voice low and leans in close enough for me to feel like I’m smoking a cigarette of my own. “Hey… you trust those two?”

I’ve known Hunter all my life. If he needs something, he knows all he has to do is ask. There’s no reason for him to steal from me. Besides, he makes good money on his own. Financial wizardry or whatever. He doesn’t need to pawn my damn jerseys.

Renee is the wildcard. But I’m going to investigate that on my own terms.

So I nod, despite my gut feeling. “Yeah. I trust them.”

“Alrighty. We’ll get the prints run. Check some pawn shops.” He shakes his head. “That Gretzky stick is probably worth some coin. Watch the online sites. I’ll get back to you as soon as I know anything.”

I nod because what else can I do? The wheels of justice move slow as fucking molasses.

He glances at me one more time. “I would just say this: watch your back, man. Someone knew what to take. Knew you would be busy. Also, there’s no forced entry. The lock wasn’t jimmied or broken. I’m just going to say that it’s someone familiar with you and your habits and your place.” He cocks his head and watches me.

I turn my face away. For a putz, he’s got a pretty perceptive look in his eye. “Yeah, thanks,” I mutter.

I hate this feeling. This gut-churning nausea. I’ve been here before, in this exact situation, although last time involved one more bullet in the leg than I have right now.

I head down the hall. Renee is wiping ink from her fingers with a towelette the fingerprint guy gave her.

There’s a layer of black fingerprinting dust on most of the surfaces in my house. On the wall. The tables. The picture frame that was broken on the floor. It all needs to be cleaned and Hunter and Renee are starting.

Hunter is busy scooping potting soil back into Fred the Fern’s pot and Renee has a spray bottle and a rag. She’s wiping the fingerprint dust off the furniture as she straightens fallen things and picks up pieces of my scattered contract.

As she adds one sheet to the stack already in her arms, I stop her. “Let me see that.” I hold out my hand and she passes the stack to me. “My contract. Why…?”

Something occurs to me. I stomp over to the desk where it was stashed, open the drawer, and—yep. “Son of a fucking bitch.”

The solid gold pen I’d used to sign my first deal is missing.

If my stuff wasn’t already destroyed, I’d do it myself. I worked so hard for what I have. Practiced until the blisters on my ankles and my feet made walking impossible, until my muscles ached so bad I couldn’t lift myself out of the ice bath and almost got hypothermia.

And someone just waltzed in here and ripped it all away from me.

I take the spray bottle from Renee and set it on the table. “Look, I’m not fit for company tonight. Why don’t you go back to your place and I’ll see you tomorrow?”

Hurt flashes in her eyes, but she nods. “Okay. If you want.” She reaches onto her tiptoes to kiss my cheek. “I’ll call you later.”

I nod and watch her go before I turn on Hunter. “Did you have anybody here last night?”

He shakes his head. “No. I told you: I got drunk, crashed in the guest room. Didn’t wake up until about six. Heard some commotion in the hall, though. Your girlfriend was talking to somebody.”

“Who?”

He shrugs. “I don’t know; I didn’t look out. I just heard them.”

I nod, because doesn’t that just fucking figure? My fucking house gets robbed and he’s sleeping like a baby in the guestroom. I’m knee deep in a what the fuck, déjà vu kind of moment I wish would end.

She never explained why she was in the hallway. No way in fuck did she go out to check on the building. And who the fuck did Hunter hear her talking to?

A guy. The guy, if I had to guess.

The guy who broke into my house and stole my shit.

I want to give her the benefit of the doubt, but the doubt is huge. Too fucking big to overcome.

What I need to do is let the police handle the investigation. Until then, I’ll keep my distance. I can do that. I can stay away until I know for sure whether or not she’s in on the theft. And if she is… well, I don’t know what I’ll do.

But it isn’t going to be pretty.