9. Weston

I want to break something. And since I can’t break that douche’s face if I want to keep living here, Jackson remains off-limits. But so help me—if he touches her…

I drop my bag inside the door and stalk to the kitchen. I don’t need a drink, but goddammit, I sure as hell want one. I want to drink away every detail of this cursed fucking day, until I can’t remember Renee or Jackson or any of the people intent on making my life a billion times harder than it has to be.

As I’m about to plop my ass on the couch, the couch moves.

“What the—” I yank the blanket off to find that it’s not the couch moving; it’s Hunter Mariano.

I smack my best friend with a pillow.

“What the fuck?” he moans. He’s wearing two-thousand-dollar loafers which are caked with mud—and he’s wearing them on my sofa. As I stand there trying to decide which limb of his I want to rip off first, he swings his feet down to leave a pair of muddy footprints on my rug.

“What are you doing here?” I grit out.

“Came to visit my best friend.” He rubs his eyes with the heels of his hands then looks up at me. “Wow. You look like hell.”

“Thanks, asshole. You look a lot like death yourself.”

“Yeah, well, I’m hungover. What’s your excuse?” He stands and stretches. When he’s finished, he sighs, smiles sleepily, and looks at me. “You need a drink.”

He walks to the bar near the fireplace, picks up a bottle of scotch, and swigs straight from it sans cup. Then he pours me a glass and hands it over.

Son of a bitch. My best friend is a pain in my ass more often than not. But he always knows when to press a cup of something strong into my hand.

“What are you doing here?” I sigh as I sink onto the armchair and he resumes his sprawl on the couch.

Hunter and I played pee wee hockey together. We played high school and college together, too, until he blew out his knee. I went onto the pros and he graduated with a business degree, then got some fancy MBA in finance something or other. It all seemed like a bunch of Monopoly money bullshit to me at the time, but now, he couldn’t care less about destroying bespoke calfskin leather loafers in mud, so I guess it’s safe to say he’s doing alright for himself.

“Bad day, buddy?” he asks as he continues sipping from the bottle of scotch.

“Ran into Jackass in the hallway.”

Hunter’s face twists into a grimace. He was almost as mad as I was when the “relationship” between Jackson and my sister fell apart. Though “fell apart” is a pretty fucking generous way of phrasing what Jackson did to Molly.

“I fucking hate that guy. Think he’s still out there? I wouldn’t mind kicking his ass.” He sets the bottle on the table, cracks his knuckles, and starts to stand.

“Simmer down, Rocky.” I laugh, pushing him back down on the couch. “Even when you still played, no one was scared of you throwing a punch. I was always the one covering your ass when you started mouthing off to dudes twice your size. Besides, he’s probably cowering in his apartment by now.”

He flicks his brown hair back with a jerk of his head and shoots a heated scowl at the door. “I should’ve beat his ass stupid when I had the chance.”

“I handled it back then. You know that.”

That doesn’t satisfy him, though. My best friend is a few inches shorter than me and fifty pounds lighter now that he’s no longer an athlete, but you know what they say about the size of the fight in the dog—and Hunter has more fight in him than most.

It doesn”t help Jackson’s case that Hunter has loved my sister Molly since we were all kids. When everything happened between Molly and Jackass, Hunter was in Japan. He flew home as soon as he heard, but the damage was already done by then.

“I know you did. It’s not the same as me handling it myself.”

“I know, man. I know.”

He sighs and nips at the bottle again. “Hey, you seen that actress next door recently? I used to run into her all the time. Not so much lately.”

I shake my head and drink from the tumbler to hide my face from Hunter. “No. She’s off making a movie, apparently. A friend of hers is squatting in her place.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. Real stalker type.” Even as I say it, my gut clenches, because never before has a stalkersounded so delicious. “Dumped a box of lingerie in the hallway when she moved in, just so I would see it. Now, she’s working at the arena for the team so she can be close to me.”

He cackles. “Paranoia is a bitch, isn’t it?”

“I’m not paranoid. She shows up here out of nowhere, practically shoves her underwear in my face, just happens to always be leaving at the same time I do, then gets some job at the rink? Come on. What about that doesn’t scream ‘stalker’?”

“Is she hot?”

“What?”

“Is. She. Hot?

“What does that matter?”

“She is then. She definitely is.” He laughs again. I call him Hyena Hunter when he starts guffawing like this. His lips pull back to bare his teeth and he chuckles for minutes on end. It’s infuriating.

“That doesn’t matter.”

“Oh my!” he cries out in a melodramatic falsetto. “Westie has a crush!”

“I don’t have a fucking crush.” I shake my head. “She’s an annoyance. A gnat. She’s—no, you know what? No. I’m not letting you get me worked up like this.”

Grunting, I head to the kitchen. Not because I’m hungry, but because I don’t want to get mud all over my unit if I start bouncing Hunter’s head off all the furniture.

But I’m still simmering as I yank the door open to the refrigerator and look inside. It’s stocked with all the usual—beers, vegetables, meat for grilling on my balcony. None of it holds the usual magical appeal to snap me out of this funk. Neither does anything in the pantry. Even my secret stash of 3 Musketeers kept in a box marked OFFSEASON ONLYdoesn’t look tempting.

“All I’m saying is that she’s under your skin. Maybe you like her.” I turn around to see Hunter has followed me into the kitchen, where he’s leaning cockily against the island. Knowing when to shut up has never been one of his skills.

“Yeah, because I fall in love with all my stalkers.”

As soon as the sarcastic words are out of my mouth, he slaps his hands together and grins in self-congratulations. “You’re the one talking about falling in love with her. All I said was you like her. You’re the onewhojumped straight to love.” He laughs and I ignore him again as I crack open a beer. “So when can I meet the future Mrs. Scott?”

“Screw you. I’m ordering food. And you ain’t getting shit.” I pull out my cell and order up dinner, then brush past him to wait for it while the view of the setting sun is still nice.

Hunter joins me a moment later, slumping into the second of the two chairs I keep out here. We’re quiet for a while. In the distance, the sun sets over the spires of downtown Los Angeles. It’s beautiful in the way that only California sunsets can be. Tangerine orange shot through with lavender. And in the cracks between those two colors is the most vibrant red.

Red like cherries.

“Tell me about the girl,” he says at last, just as I finish my beer. “I need a more complete picture.”

“She’s off-limits, Hunt.”

He nods and chuckles. “Of course she is.”

Those words stick with me for the rest of the night, until I’m lying in my bed with the white noise machine going and the blackout curtains blocking out the moon. She’s off-limits to Hunter, to Jackson, to all of them.

Until I can figure out a way to make Renee quit, I’ll be damned if anyone but me is going to lay a finger on her.

Princess P is mine.