Текст книги "Burn It Up"

Автор книги: Cara McKenna

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Текущая страница: 23 (всего у книги 24 страниц)

“Hey.” Casey touched her arm, rubbing it softly, up and down. “It’s okay. You were fifteen. We’re all sociopaths at that age.”

She shook her head. “Yes, but my actions killed somebody, Casey.”

“If you want to blame yourself, you have to blame the whole goddamn town, too—the sort of culture you guys all lived in. People don’t just end their lives because their marriages fall apart. She had problems of her own, I promise you.”

“It’s hard to see it that way.”

“You can argue it all you want, but I could just as easily argue that your preacher seduced you. You have to cut yourself some slack. You were a kid, wrapped up with what sounds like some seriously messed-up adults. He was the one who should have known better. He was the authority figure, and three times your age, too.”

She heaved a sigh, the noise catching on sobs.

“Anyhow, we could argue about it all afternoon, but I don’t want to. Just tell me how you got from fifteen to twenty-two, and here.”

“I was sixteen by then,” she corrected, and blew her nose.

“Hey, you want a beer?”

She glanced up with raw eyes, frowning, unsure. Alcohol had never given her trouble like heroin had. She’d always hated the taste of it.

Casey didn’t wait for her answer. He disappeared and she heard the noises in the kitchen, and when he returned, he had the necks of two bottles pinched between his fingers. But he stopped on the threshold, frowning, and promptly turned around like he’d changed his mind. When he next appeared he held two clinking glasses, whiskey on ice to judge by the amber color.

“Cheers,” he said, forcing a tumbler into Abilene’s hand.

“To what?”

“To everybody messing everything up, all the time. Everybody.” He tapped her glass with his. “Now, go on. You’re sixteen.”

“I was sixteen . . . My parents were talking about sending me away to a boarding school or maybe even this Christian place, a religious mental ward basically, because I hadn’t stopped crying in days. I heard them talking about it. I’d just gotten my first car that summer, and I packed a load of clothes in the middle of the night, and I drove away. I had some money I’d saved from babysitting. I got the ID in Fort Worth, and I stayed there for a little while . . . I won’t lie, the next few years weren’t good.”

“How so?”

“I had a tenth-grade education, and I didn’t want to use my real name, since I didn’t know if my parents were looking for me. I sort of doubted they were. There was never an Amber Alert or anything.”

Casey frowned, heart twisting. “Really?”

She shook her head. “Knowing my dad, he would’ve been relieved to have me gone. When I say he was tough, and hard, I don’t just mean strict. I mean, like, after that, I was dead to him. I’d humiliated them. I looked myself up once, a few months after I left. There were local news stories. They said that I’d gone to live with relatives, but nothing about where. There was even a quote of my mom saying how, like, their daughter felt terrible for what had happened and needed a chance at a fresh start, in a new community. Like they were respecting my privacy or something.”

“That’s so incredibly shitty.”

She made a tell me about it face and sipped her drink, wincing at the sting. She hadn’t tasted liquor in ages. Not since before she’d met James. Not since Lime. She set the glass on the edge of the dresser, done with it.

“So what was really happening?” Casey prompted.

“I was all over, crashing on people’s couches. Working menial jobs sometimes. But . . .” She took a deep breath. “But it was easier for me to rely on men. And I don’t mean I was selling my body. I mean I’d date older guys, the types who’d take care of me, let me stay with them, lend me money.” Sugar daddies was the term, but she refused to speak it aloud.

“Some of them treated me fine. Maybe they were a little creepy, with me being so young, but they didn’t exploit me any more than I was expecting or willing to be exploited, you know? Others weren’t so good. I got smacked around a little.”

Heat flared in Casey’s eyes.

“I left those guys as quick as I could. I’d spent so much time feeling controlled by my father, I only wanted that stuff on my terms. With guys I felt like I had some control over.”

“Sure,” he said, looking a touch nauseous. “So how did you wind up in Nevada? And with Ware?”

“Things took a bad turn when I moved to Arizona with a guy. We fell apart, and I wound up dating a friend of his. That was a bad scene, and I was in a bad way. I felt like I didn’t belong anywhere. Like there was no home for me to run back to. I even wrote to my mother one time, about two years after I’d left, and asked if I could come and see her—just her. She told me no. That my dad was having heart issues and he couldn’t handle it if he found out. She also told me my grandma had passed away. I loved my grandma, so much. I took her last name—my mom’s maiden name—when I ran away.”

“Price.”

She nodded. “And she lived in Abilene.”

“Gotcha.”

“It broke my heart, hearing she’d passed. And worrying maybe the stress I’d caused everyone might’ve had something to do with it. After that letter, I just had to accept, I had no home to go back to. Nobody. This was about three years ago. I went into a really dark place, and I started to just . . . drift. I worked on and off, and I . . . I tried heroin, then. For the first time. And not the last.”

Casey’s fist squeezed his glass—she could tell from the way his knuckles blanched. He’d not expected drugs, she thought. The possibility had never crossed his mind, and she wasn’t surprised. Junkies weren’t meant to be shy, or liable to blush at cuss words, or indeed chubby. She didn’t fit the bill.

All he said was, “Jesus.”

“It was bad. It was really bad. It started slow. I worked and used and mostly functioned for a year and a half. I wound up in Lime, through somebody who knew somebody, who knew somebody.”

“That’s where you met Ware?”

She nodded. “But not how you might be picturing. He saved me, actually. He was probably the only man who ever saved me, without wanting anything out of it for himself—sex or some hero complex or any other thing.”

“Oh.”

“He was tough. He got me sober, and we did wind up sleeping together, obviously, but it was different from before. I wanted him—out of gratitude, I think. For what he’d done for me, not for what I could get from him, going forward. He wanted me back, even if he was never truly comfortable with it. He broke it off before I knew I was pregnant, and I took it real bad. I made it ugly, and he made it ugly right back. I tossed out some real low blows, and he dealt a few of his own. I’d never seen him that angry before, and it scared me. Enough to be too afraid to tell him about the baby. The way we left it, and the way he’d met me . . . I was afraid he’d try to get her taken away, or take her himself. And once I was involved with all of you guys, I was terrified he’d tell you about me. About the kind of person I was.” She looked to the car seat and her daughter.

“So it was more than just fearing for your safety.”

She nodded, gaze falling to her hands. “It was self-preservation. Which makes me feel all the more awful. I’m . . .” She looked up, met his eyes with tears stinging her own. “I’m so sorry. I let you get so close, to me and to her. I never should have, not with so many secrets. You deserved to know who you were getting involved with, but I was too scared of losing you to say.”

“You deserved to know things about me, as well.”

After a pause, she said, “I’ve been thinking a lot about what you told me, these past couple days. About who you used to be.” She paused when the baby fussed, and rose to free her from the seat in the hopes of settling her. She sat back down, bouncing her gently.

“After everything I’ve just said, it might sound ridiculous, me saying that I’m trying to do good now. That since I found out I was pregnant, the worst thing I’ve done is lie—which for me is an improvement, sadly. But I really am trying. I just want to work, and make enough to support myself and the baby. No more secrets, no more dependence. I want a fresh start, more than anything. To believe that whatever new life I make for myself is an honest one. A genuine one . . .” Thoughts were forming. Solidifying, and she spoke them as they came. “And I think you want that, too. To put your old life behind you.”

“I do want that,” he said softly. “A fresh start. A respectable life. It took me way too long to regret what I’ve done. It took what you said for it to register . . . and it took the fire at the ranch, and losing Don, for it to really hit home. Now that it has, I . . . Christ, I feel sick. I think about what I used to do and I feel like I could throw up.”

She believed him. There was pain on his face, so real and so sharp it stabbed her in the heart.

“We want the same thing,” she said, realizing it as she heard herself speak. “But when you were honest with me, I turned my back on you.”

“Not without good cause.”

She shook her head. Something had come loose in her chest, like a clog finally washing free, letting things flow. She could breathe for the first time in days. She could feel air in her lungs, and blood moving through her body, as though her decision had shut her system down, protested by every cell in her body.

“Neither of us can fix what we’ve done in our pasts,” she said. “But neither of us gets to move on, either, not until somebody knows what we’ve done and chooses to forgive us. Chooses to believe we’re capable of doing better, going forward.”

He nodded, and now his own eyes were welling. He sipped his drink, sniffed softly, held his tongue. There was fear in those shining blue eyes, and hope as well.

“I forgive you,” she said, and leaned close to put her hand to his face—on his soft skin and scratchy beard. “Whatever you did before you met me, that was another life. And I don’t want to punish you for it. I only want to see what comes next. What you make of this life.”

He covered her hand with his. “That means a lot.” Other thoughts hid behind his lips, and he seemed poised to share them, mouth opening and closing. When he did speak, it was only to say, “For what it’s worth, I forgive you, too.”

She felt her chin crumple, and tears rolled fat and heavy down her cheeks to land on the baby’s leg. She choked out, “It’s worth way more than you know.”

“Put the baby down a second.”

She moved Mercy back to her seat, and as she sat once more, Casey set his glass on the windowsill and pulled her against him, cradling her head, rubbing her back. He let her cry for long minutes, until her bucking shoulders went still and her breathing deepened. He seemed calmer himself. Stronger, if still uncertain.

“From now on,” Casey said, sitting up straight to catch her gaze, “whatever we are—friends, or colleagues, or any other thing—we go forward accepting each other’s mistakes with our eyes wide-open, okay?”

She nodded, dabbed at her nose.

“I won’t ever hold anything you just told me against you.”

“I won’t, either.”

“All I care about is what comes next. And if you need something from me, know that you can ask for it, and I’ll give you whatever you need, because I care. Not because I think you need saving, and not because I want something from you. Just because I think you deserve a fair shot at this new life of yours, okay?”

“I’ve never doubted that.”

“I want you to know,” he said slowly, carefully, as though handpicking each word, “that nothing’s different about how I feel for you. After hearing everything you’ve been through. I’m still crazy about you, no matter what you did when you were fifteen, no matter what happened to you in Lime or any other place.”

Her chest felt funny. Light and . . . and porous. Like a sponge, thirsty to sop it all up. “Really?”

“Yeah, really.”

Was that even possible? She’d never been able to forgive herself for her mistakes, or stop feeling dirty about her past. It had been impossible to imagine someone else managing it. Certainly not a guy. “The filth of your sins is a mark that will never wash off,” her father had told her. “No decent man will ever want you now.”

She’d ached so badly for him to be wrong, though for years her choices had fulfilled that prophecy. But looking at Casey now, in the wake of what he’d just said, and knowing how it had felt, every time they’d come together . . . A good man had wanted her, and still did, in spite of all those sins. Not a perfect man, but a good one. It seemed all but impossible. A miracle.

“I don’t understand how you can know all that stuff and still see me the same.”

“I can’t see you the same, no. I can see way deeper than I did before, knowing all that. But I feel the same, I promise you. I got absolutely no attachment to a girl’s innocence, or her being perfect, or ladylike, or any other thing. All I’ve ever cared about is how somebody makes me feel, and you make me feel like I want to do better. Be better. And I can honestly say, no woman’s ever made me want those things before. You and Mercy,” he said with a smile, hooking his thumb in the baby’s direction, “you guys accomplished the impossible. Must be the blue eyes or something.”

“Must be.” She felt shy, but behind that, elated. And confused about where she stood, but also hopeful, and undeniably free of so much pain and guilt and—

“I still care about you,” he said firmly. “I still want you. Now, you don’t need to tell me tomorrow or next week or even next year that you know how you feel, where you stand, but if you ever decide that maybe you still feel that way for me . . .”

Her smile faltered, trembling under the weight of everything she felt. “I won’t tell you tomorrow,” she said.

“And that’s fine. Like I said—”

“I can tell you right now.”

He stared at her for a long moment, blinked once, twice. And then he exploded her brain.

“Marry me,” he said.

“What?”

“Marry me, Abilene or Allison or whatever the fuck I should call you. Tomorrow or in five years—I don’t care when, just say you will.”

She couldn’t say that. Couldn’t say that or any other thing—she was too shocked.

“Nothing’s going to change how I feel about you. Not your secrets or me going crazy, not anything. I’ll ask you again one year from now, if you want.”

“I think maybe you should.” If only because she might need that long to be sure she wasn’t dreaming.

“I will, then. In the meantime, keep thinking about that house. Imagine every last thing about it, because someday you and me are going to find that exact place and make it just how you want.”

Her shock softened in a breath, so touched by those words, and to realize that this man knew her better than anyone else on the planet.

“I can tell you my answer now,” she blurted. “It’s yes.”

He nodded, looking bewildered but pleased. “Okay, good. That’ll take the edge off the suspense.”

“Good,” she agreed.

A pause. “What kind of a ring do you want?”

“God, I don’t know. Something simple. Something silver. I don’t need a diamond.”

“How do you want me to propose?” he asked. “A year from now?”

“Exactly like this.”

“You sure? Because this is pretty sloppy and messed up, and I’m starting to think I should have just kept my mouth shut.”

“Nothing about you and me has ever looked quite like it was supposed to.”

“That’s true enough.”

“So I don’t care how you propose. I don’t even care if you ever do. I only want to be with you again, for real. To see if this can work.”

“C’mere.”

She let him tip the both of them onto their sides, facing, legs locking. She toyed with the buttons of his shirt and his palm was warm on her waist. And his eyes were there, right there.

“Move in with me,” he said.

She nodded. That much, she could promise. “Okay.”

“My apartment’s not your dream house, but we could make it into something special, something for now. Make a home out of it.”

“You okay with curtains?”

“I fucking love curtains.”

She laughed, rubbed his chest. “Good. It’s not a home without curtains.”

“It’s not a home at all, yet. But it will be, if you’ll show me what that looks like.”

“Gladly.” And she kissed him, slow and soft, watching a smile bloom on those lips as she pulled away.

“It’s going to be a long, rough spring,” he whispered. “With everything that’s just happened, and with everything that’s going to be changing around the bar. But let’s make our place somewhere calm to escape to at the end of the day, okay?”

“I’d like that.”

“And we’ll throw ourselves a little party, just you and me and Mercy. It doesn’t feel like a time to celebrate, but it seems like we ought to do something to mark the fact that I’ve got a future, and that you’re in control of things with your ex. A lot’s fucked-up right now, but those are two good things. Too good to just let go by.”

“I’d like that, too.”

He brought his face close, rubbing their noses together, brushing his mouth softly against hers. “Maybe it doesn’t need saying, or maybe I should have said it before I fucking proposed, but I love you. You and the baby, both. You need to know that.”

She pursed her quivering lips and nodded. “You didn’t need to say. You’ve told me a hundred times, with your actions.”

“Well, now I’m telling you out loud.”

She swallowed, found her breath. “I love you, too.” Every ounce of him. Every cuss, every awful mistake. People were made of both light and dark, and you didn’t get to love the good without first forgiving the bad. She knew that now.

“How about we get the cars packed back up?” he asked. “Seeing as how you’ve decided to move, yet again.”

She smiled, wide and pure and open. “We can do that.”

“All right, then.” He stood from the bed and offered a hand, pulling her to her feet. “Let’s get you home, honey.”

Start at the beginning of the scorching-hot Desert Dogs series by Cara McKenna.

LAY IT DOWN

Available in print and e-book from Signet Eclipse.

The motel was on the so-called good side of the tracks, the western side, closer to the mountains. The bad side was where most of the locals lived, and it was also home to the grimier businesses—the quarry, some limping little retail operations, Benji’s, a couple garages, the dump, the dueling liquor stores. The nice side boasted the tech company and its employees’ homes, a half-decent grocery store, the Sheriff’s Department, and the Volunteer Firefighters’ headquarters. Alex had been a member of the latter, once upon a simpler time.

Vince was burning up inside as he and his impromptu date strolled down Station Street, headed for the tracks.

He was used to girls acting coy when he hit on them. Or scandalized. Or downright eager. He wasn’t accustomed to this woman’s reaction, though. He didn’t even have the right word for it. A weary sort of . . . unimpressed. Goddamn if it didn’t make his pulse throb.

She asked him questions about the businesses they passed, then let his arm go to snap a couple photos of the dilapidated Fortuity Depot station, and stare up into the night sky.

“Jesus, you guys get a lot of stars.”

“Benefit of living in a one-traffic-light town.” For now, anyhow. In a couple years, Fortuity would be twenty-four-hour neon pollution.

“You know there’s going to be an eclipse around here in a few months?” she asked. “A full solar eclipse.”

“I don’t exactly keep current with astronomy.”

“Someone on Sunnyside’s marketing team mentioned it. I’m hoping they’ll like my work and want to bring me back to photograph it for them. To use in promotional materials, since the casino’s named the Eclipse.” She messed with some setting on her camera, aimed it skyward, and set it beeping and whirring, capturing the stars.

Vince was distracted by other natural phenomena, such as the shape of her ass and the smell of that perfume. He wondered if she had a tripod and if that camera had a video setting. He wondered what he had to offer God to bargain his way into this woman’s bed tonight. He’d been feeling way too much this week. Maybe he could at least wake up tomorrow clearheaded, with sexual frustration checked off the list.

They crossed the tracks, turned onto Railroad Avenue, and headed for the Gold Nugget Motor Lodge’s well-lit lot. It was yet another local business that probably wouldn’t survive to see the casino’s ribbon-cutting. They were doing well now, most of the spaces filled with out-of-towners’ cars—folks here on development business. But once the resort opened, economy chains would follow, to catch the workaday tourists’ dollars. The Nugget would likely sell up, get turned into some name-brand outfit, get a major face-lift. Good for the owners, maybe, but it made Vince’s chest hurt, imagining everything anodyne, everything with a familiar logo slapped on it, the profits bound for someplace far from Fortuity.

Goddamn, since when had he turned so sentimental? He really did need to get laid.

Outside of room six, his companion’s key jingled as she got the door unlocked.

Just that noise focused his energy, the fate of the world seeming to hang on whatever was going to happen between them now. He felt his blood pumping hot and saw that sensation echoed by the pulse ticking along her throat. He could just about smell the curiosity on her. Same as he could smell that perfume, those flowers that wouldn’t last a day in this desert.

She turned in the threshold and Vince laid his forearm along the jamb, leaning close. She froze, but the interest coming off her was hot. She wasn’t scared of him, but there was a hesitance there . . . She was scared of what she felt. What she wanted. She wasn’t used to putting impulse ahead of consequence, he bet. He could tell from how she spoke, how she dressed. Impulsive wasn’t in her repertoire.

Welcome to Fortuity.

Vince stooped, bringing his lips to her hairline. Fuck, she smelled good.

“Thanks for the walk,” she said softly.

“Ask me in.”

He felt her exhalation on his neck, a tight, anxious huff. “I’m not sure.”

“Bet you are,” he breathed.

“It’s been a really long, shitty day.”

“All the more reason to end it on a high note.”

She laughed, the sound winding him even tighter. “You’re shameless.”

“Shame’s a useless emotion.”

“I’m going to ask you one question; then I’ll decide. Deal?”

“Shoot.”

She looked up and held his stare. “What’s my name?”

Fu-u-u-uck. “Uh . . .”

Her brows rose. “You don’t remember, do you?”

“No. No, I do not.” But he’d memorized her backside, in that skirt. Ought to count for something. “Jog my memory?”

She shook her head with an irritated sigh and stepped inside. “Good night, Vince. Thanks for the company. Sorry it had to end here.”

He grabbed her hand. “Oh, hey—come on, now. That’s not fair.”

“I was down for maybe being your random one-night stand, but not an anonymous one.” Her fingers wriggled free. Her voice had risen, cool tones lost to something far hotter. “I wasn’t feeling real choosy tonight myself, but I do have some standards.”

“When you live in a town this small, you don’t get much practice at memorizing new names.”

“All the same, maybe work on that before you try to fuck me again. Sound like a plan?” She wasn’t shouting, but every measured word hit him like a slap. He kinda liked it.

He nodded. “Sure. Sorry.”

“Good.” Her feathers were smoothing, but just this taste of her temper, just the pink staining her throat and cheeks . . . shit. The ache knotted deep in Vince’s belly felt more urgent than ever.

“You still up for a ride, Sunday?”

She blew out a tired breath. “I don’t know. Show up and find out, I guess.”

“Will do.” He took a couple steps back, paused with one foot still on the concrete. “Like I said—sorry.”

She shut the door on him. A lock clicked and the lights came on, but the curtain swept shut before he could steal a peek at Kim’s bed—

Kim. “Kim!” He went to the window, rapping the glass. “It’s Kim, right?”

The curtain swished aside, framing her. She mouthed her muted reply clearly. “Too. Late.”

“Shit.”

She shut him out.

He knew when he’d fucked his chances, and he also knew the line between flirtation and harassment. But as he started across the lot, blood pumping so much mischief, he couldn’t help himself. He turned on his heel and strode back toward room six, hopped onto the walkway and knocked.

Her shadow darkened the curtain as she passed, and when she opened the door, she kept the chain lock on. “What?”

“So, Kim.” He hooked his finger around the chain, toying. “You’ll tell me when it’s time, right?”

She blinked wearily. “Time?”

“Whenever it’s cool for me to try to fuck you again.”

Her eyes rolled up. “Go away, Vince.”

He smiled. “Whenever you’re ready, just say the word. Can’t wait for the chance. Till then . . .” He held his palms up, miming deference, and took a step backward.

“Yes, you’ll be needing those,” she returned. “It’s going to be a long wait.”

“See you Sunday. Five a.m.”

“Five a.m.?”

“Sunrise, sweetheart. Dress in layers. No heels. I’ll find you a helmet. Oh and wear that perfume—that shit drives me up a goddamn wall.”

And off he went, giving her no chance to argue. He felt the heat of her glare on his back. It felt as good as a curious hand on his dick, and he smiled to himself. The door thumped shut, and he could hear her voice through the thin wood.

“Son of a bitch.”

The smile became a grin as he aimed himself downtown. “To be continued, sweetheart.”

•   •   •

Kim fell asleep in a foul and frustrated mood, and awoke in a matching one. Vince’s come-on echoed in her memory.

Ask me in.

The nerve. It hadn’t even been a question, had it? More a command.

Fuck him.

And fuck the part of her that had been half a breath from doing just as he’d suggested.

She packed her camera bag gruffly, stuffing lens wipes and memory cards into the pockets as if they’d insulted her.

Had it been an incidental come-on? Maybe King Roughneck hit on anything with breasts if it stood still long enough, his attention as impersonal as buckshot sprayed in the general vicinity of animate females. Or had he read something in her body language or eye contact, some chemical invitation . . . ? Read the far-too-personal truth in signals lost even to her. That she wanted him. In her body, if not her logical brain.

Kim sighed, no clue which possibility annoyed her more.

She’d slept like crap, restless to the last cell. Coffee was needed. Stat.

At the energetically named Wild Horse Diner, kitty-corner from Benji’s on Station Street, she climbed out of her rental car. The formerly silver Jetta was dusted to the finish of a cinnamon doughnut. It locked with an obedient bloop, and she carried her purse and camera bag through the open front door.

She had her pick of seats, snagging a booth at the end. When the waitress swung by, she ordered an omelet, and coffee was delivered as she was buffing her glasses on a napkin.

“Thank you. God knows I need this.”

“Sightseeing?” the young brunette asked.

“Yeah, you could say that.” Kim smiled, not feeling like soliciting yet another stranger’s opinions about Sunnyside’s casino project, nor indeed feeling as though she were somehow their representative. She’d been grilled not only by Vince, but by the motel’s front desk woman, a drugstore clerk, the gas station attendant. People had questions about the development, probably good ones, but she had zero answers. Sunnyside was as tight-lipped as . . . as . . . as some gross, chauvinistic simile a man like Vince might come up with.

Damn. There she went again, remembering him. Vince . . . Whoever. Gris . . . Grim . . . Grenier? Grossier. He’d probably forgotten her name already. Again. God help her if he actually showed up, the next morning. If he did, she’d go along for the photo ops, solely.

The company was paying her for five days’ work and travel. In truth, way more time than she needed—she’d already have hundreds of usable shots by that evening. But she’d stay the full five, and not only for the money.

She wasn’t in a rush to head home. Fortuity might be rough, the assignment not exactly a gold mine—she’d grossly underbid for it, desperate for a change of scenery, some breathing room—but at least here she didn’t have to confront the awkwardness waiting back home. Her stuff still in Ryan’s apartment, and the man himself. A man whom, on paper, she’d had no good reason to dump. But hearts weren’t made of paper, were they?

Plus, when have I ever felt sure about a guy? She slumped at the thought. Maybe she was holding out for something that wasn’t ever coming, waiting to feel that mythical lightning strike, that sizzle. What if that glittery expectation was all bull, cooked up by the same sickos who’d invented Valentine’s Day and Brazilian waxing?

She opened her camera bag and propped the Nikon against her thigh, turning it on. She cycled backward past the black night sky, the train tracks and station ghostly in the streetlight. Then came a punch in the stomach.

That man. His flash-lit face was jarring and stark.

He’d turned his head slightly, and she could see the tip of that ridiculous neck tattoo curling from behind his ear like an evil sideburn, black like all the other work he’d had done on his arms. None of it scandalized her. Sleeves were as common as eyeglasses in Portland, though Vince was no skinny hipster. His bike was no doubt the kind that came with excessive horsepower and earsplitting, look-at-me decibel levels.

She clicked to the next image on the card. Studied that matchstick pinched between his full lips, the ones she’d managed to capture sans evil smirk, surely a rare sight. She’d surprised him on that first shot, his eyes still wide. The flash bleached his retinas pure white, hazel irises lit up—striated near-green, the color of lake water and rimmed in gray, a gold corona around his tight pupil. Nice lashes, dark as his hair and stubble. Nice brows, though one had a bald spot, the gully likely framing a scar the flash had blown out. The man probably had a hundred scars—and a dumb, macho story to explain each and every one.

When a man came built like Vince Grossier, it told you one of two things: Either his job was backbreaking, or he made violent love to his weight bench every morning. She had her money on the former, given the local economy and those dusty jeans of his. But no matter the cause, the effect was the same. All that muscle added up to a man who lived through his body.