Текст книги "Before We Fall"

Автор книги: Courtney Cole

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He stares at me, his gaze unreadable. “Such as?”

I stare at him, appraising him. “You’re jaded. And dark. And something has hurt you badly, something in your past. You think you’re all alone and you’re tired of everything.”

Dominic breathes sharply, not taking his eyes off of mine. “You think you can see all that?”

I nod slowly, not breaking our gaze. “I know that I can. Want to talk about it?”

Dominic chuckles now, a humorless laugh. “Hell, no. Like I said, I don’t need to see shit about myself in the tabloids. They publish enough lies about me. I don’t need to give them truths to work with. Nice try, though.”

I can feel heat from his body emanating from him and I scoot a bit closer.

“Sorry,” I tell him when he glances at me. “I’m freaking cold. And you’re warm.”

“Fine,” he answers, lifting his arm to wrap it around my shoulders. “But no pictures. I don’t want this on any form of social media. Trust me, you don’t either. They’ll hound you for weeks.”

I roll my eyes. “I know that might be what you’re used to, but taking a picture with you is the last thing on my mind at this point. All I can care about is not losing my fingers and toes to hypothermia.”

“Has anyone told ever you that you’re a bit melodramatic?” Dominic asks dryly, although his arm does tighten a bit around my shoulders.

I chuckle, but don’t reply. I enjoy sitting with him for several minutes before the silence starts to gnaw at me.

“Okay. This quiet is killing me. You might not want to talk,” I tell him. “But I’m going to distract myself. Let’s play Twenty Questions.”

Dominic rolls his eyes, then closes them. “Go for it.”

“Did you have a good childhood?”

He doesn’t open his eyes. “No comment.”

I chew on my lip. “Okay. Have you ever had a crush on a costar?”

I look at him, but he still doesn’t open his eyes. “No comment,” he answers again.

I hesitate, dying to ask him something, but terrified to do it. But in typical Jacey Vincent fashion, I barge ahead and do it anyway. “That girl you were with at the party… was that Emma?”

He completely tenses up, I can see every muscle freeze as he opens his eyes and stares at me. “How do you know about Emma?”

The look on his face is almost frightening in its intensity. “Your sister mentioned her the night we met,” I answer slowly. “You were smacked in the head, so you probably don’t remember.”

I watch a myriad of things cross his face—confusion, sadness, pain, and something else dark that I can’t identify—before he finally shakes his head. “No. And I have no other fucking comment.”

The mood around us has turned as dark as Dominic’s expression, and I’m not sure what to do about it. His reaction is fascinating, but I’m sure not going to press him for more, not if the mere mention of the girl turns his mood so black. So instead I change the subject.

“What’s it like being Sin Kinkaide’s brother?”

He stares at me drolly now, the ugliness gone from his eyes. “You should ask him what it’s like to be my brother.”

I shake my head, amused by his arrogance. “I would, but I’m trapped in here with you, not him. And you’re not cooperating in this game.”

Dominic smiles slowly. “You’re very astute, Princess. That’s because I don’t want to play. Unless I get to ask you the questions. That would be more fun.”

I shrug. “Fine. Shoot. You ask me, I’ll answer.”

He stares at me. “Are you high maintenance?”

I smile. “That’s an easy one. No.”

“Do you dream in color?”

I roll my eyes. “You’re not even trying now. I think everyone dreams in color. I’ve never heard of anyone dreaming in black and white. In fact, I had the weirdest dream the other night, and it was in full color. I dreamed that it was raining, but that the raindrops turned into pink rose petals. And then when I looked at the ground, it was covered in a foot of petals, just like snow.”

Dominic raises an eyebrow. “So, you romanticize precipitation. Interesting.”

I smile. “I romanticize everything. That’s just me.”

Dominic shakes his head. “That’ll probably get you into trouble.”

I stare at him. “I think I already told you. It’s my nature to like trouble. I’m trying not to, but it goes against my grain. Next question.”

“Why did you get between me and Cris? You could’ve been seriously hurt… even more than you were.”

Dominic is staring at me now with interest, genuine curiosity in his eyes. I shake my head.

“Because I’m a human being,” I answer. “I think anyone would step in and try to keep two people from killing each other. It’s the decent thing to do.”

“Are you decent?” Dominic’s lip twitches.

I smile. “Sometimes.”

“Why did you and your last boyfriend break up? Was he trouble?”

Holy shit. His abrupt change of direction sends a knife through my gut, because the answer to that question is ugly.

Jared was definitely trouble and he killed someone I love.

But I don’t say that. Instead, I murmur, “No comment.”

Dominic rolls his eyes. “Then this game isn’t so fun. Why don’t you just tell me about your childhood or some shit?”

So I do. Anything to get what Jared did out of my head… To not think of those images. The crumpled truck, the blood spatters, the screams when Maddy came to the accident scene.

I talk myself blue in the face to get that shit out of my head.

I tell Dom about my childhood and what it was like growing up with Gabe and my suck-ass parents. I tell him about Brand and how he’s always been like my brother. I tell him how I used to work in the summers for my best friend, Maddy, but then she married my brother and moved to Connecticut. When I pause to take a breath, Dom has his eyes open again, staring at me.

“That big blond guy is like your brother?” he asks doubtfully. “That’s a strange sibling relationship.”

His tone is weird and I narrow my eyes. “What are you implying?”

He shrugs. “Nothing. I just sense some incest there, is all.”

I literally shudder. “That’s fucking gross. Brand taught me to ride a bike.”

Dom just looks at me. “All I know is that the way that guy looks at you is far from brotherly. I know what I know.”

A weird feeling passes through me, because I have been ignoring that new look in Brand’s eye. I keep hoping that I’ll never see it again, but deep down, I know that I will. And deep down, I know that Dom is right.

“Well, it’s nice of you to notice,” I tell him snippily. “But you don’t know what you don’t know. And you’re wrong.”

“I’m rarely wrong,” he answers arrogantly. I can see that he really believes that.

“Does everyone around you always tell you what you want to hear?” I demand. “Do they tell you that you’re a genius, that you’re perfect, and that you’re never wrong?”

“They don’t have to tell me,” he smirks.

Because he already knows. I gag a little and roll my eyes.

“Have they ever told you that you’re arrogant?”

He nods, the corner of his mouth twitching a bit. “That might have been mentioned,” he admits. I can tell that he doesn’t care.

I settle more fully into the crook of his arm, enjoying the way his woodsy scent envelops me, even in the cold air.

“What’s it like to film a movie?” I ask conversationally, changing the subject.

I have to talk about something or I’ll go out of my mind. I could swear the cooler has gotten smaller since we’ve been trapped in here. Dominic closes his eyes again and his fingers rest against my side. I don’t think he even notices, but I certainly do.

“It’s fine,” he tells me. “I’m not much of a people person, but even though millions of people see me onscreen, it doesn’t seem like that when we’re filming.”

“So you’re an introvert?” I ask with interest.

He nods without opening his eyes. “Most definitely. My brothers got the extrovert genes.”

“Ah, yes. The badass rockers. They definitely seem to love the limelight. Is that it… two brothers and one sister?”

“Yeah,” he nods. “That’s it.”

“You’re lucky,” I tell him. “All I have is Gabe.”

“And he’s the only one who counts because your parents are worthless?” Dominic asks with interest, repeating my words from earlier. It’s the first time he actually seems interested.

“So you were listening!” I nudge him. And he smiles. A real smile, the first time I’ve seen it on him. I decide that it’s well worth the wait. His smile almost warms the room up all by itself, like the heavens opened up and the light shone down on us through the clouds.

“I couldn’t help but listen,” he tells me, his eyes almost warm. “You weren’t going to shut up and I can’t go anywhere.”

I giggle and he smiles, and for a second we seem like friends.

“Why exactly are your parents worthless?” he asks after a minute. I’m surprised that he would go out of his way to ask, so even though it makes me uncomfortable, I answer.

“My mom never really wanted to be a mom and she’s not good at it. When she and my dad got divorced, she took it as an opportunity to do whatever she wants to do. She has a new boyfriend every week. I rarely hear from my dad. He always thought it was enough to just send my mom a child-support check.”

A stab of pain slices through me as I admit it out loud. It’s like announcing to the world, Hey, there’s something so wrong with me that my parents don’t care if I’m alive. But Dominic doesn’t seem to see it that way.

“Their loss,” he shrugs. “That’s what I tell myself whenever I hear a bad review or someone totally disses me. It’s their loss. Not yours.”

“If you really believe that, then I admire you,” I tell him. “I guess I’ve got thinner skin than that.”

“Well, there’s your first mistake,” he answers. “You’ve got to grow some thick skin. Or some balls.”

“I’ve got balls,” I announce. “They’re made of steel.”

Dominic laughs. “Really? This I’ve got to see.”

In a flurry of sudden movement, his arm snakes around my waist, finding its way to my crotch. With one hand on my back holding me in place, he strokes me with the other, just for a second. The heat from his palm melds with the heat between my legs, and a million needles shoot down into my legs, weakening my knees.

I gasp and my eyes meet his, and I’m frozen as my heart pounds and my fingers shake.

“It appears that you don’t, in fact, have balls,” he tells me quietly, without removing his hand from my crotch.

“It was a figure of speech,” I croak needlessly, although of course he knows that. “You can move your hand now.”

“Oh, can I?” His voice is velvet, smooth as butter.

Instead of moving it away, his fingers move against me and my nerve endings burst into flame, spreading a fire from my crotch to my thighs to my chest.

Why aren’t I moving away from him?

The simple answer is: I don’t want to. I should want to… Dominic Kinkaide is an asshole most of the time. But holy shit, he’s a sexy asshole. And to be quite honest, I don’t think I could move to save my life. It’s like I’m suspended here, dangling from the tips of his fingers.

He lowers his head and his lips graze my ear.

“Still want me to move? Because I know an excellent way to keep warm.”

My breath hitches again, at the intimacy in his tone, at the warmth of his lips, at the way my heart has taken off in my chest. I open my mouth to say something and nothing comes out.

Dominic moves his fingers again, rubbing me on the outside of my pants, urging me toward a precipice that I’m not sure I want to climb toward. Not with him. Yet I can’t move away. I gulp.

“You want to,” he says knowingly. “You’re wet. I can feel it through your clothes.”

Very purposefully, just like he does everything else, he holds his fingers up like a trophy, his eyes glued to mine. As I watch in astonishment, he raises them to his nose and inhales them.

“Are you feeling warm yet?”

I watch his lips as he speaks the words, husky and low. His lips are full yet manly, and suddenly I ache to lean over and press mine to his, to touch them in any way that I can.

But I don’t.

Because I’m not a girl who gets used. Not anymore.

“No, not at all.”

But Dominic takes that as a challenge. He’s not used to hearing the word no and he’s not about to start now. I see that in his dark eyes a scant moment before he dips his head and consumes my mouth.

I say consume instead of kiss, because that’s what he does.

He consumes me.

His lips are fiery and hot and he kisses me with a fierceness that touches a secret part of me, moist, hot, firm, sexy. I want to inhale him, to suck him down. I vaguely feel his hands on my back, his warmth emanating through my clothes, his hardness pushing into my softness.

I’m breathless when he pulls away.

“What about now?”

For the life of me, I’m afraid to answer that. Instead I pull away, just a bit, just enough that there is some space between us, but I can still absorb his warmth. As my teeth chatter, both from the cold and from the sudden absence of his lips, I answer.

“I’m good.”

He laughs, a husky, low, naughty sound.

“Oh, I’m sure of that.”

And just like that, I’m drawn back in… in toward his sexy smile, his arrogant gaze, and his knowing smirk. He’s bad for me. Very bad for me. I’ve got to remember that.

He will decimate you, I tell myself.

But my problem is, every time I look into his dark eyes and see the mysterious things that lurk there, I forget that. I forget everything that is supposed to matter.

Chapter Ten

Dominic

Burying my hand in Jacey’s crotch makes my balls swell and my dick harden.

It’s true.

The idea that she’s good turns my thoughts to a place I shouldn’t be thinking about. It makes me want to find out how good she actually is.

Jacey stares at me in fascination, and for some reason I want to bask in that look, to lay in it for hours, to soak it in. Mainly because she’s not looking at me that way because of who I am; she’s looking at me because of how I’m making her feel. Her eyes are wide and innocent and soft.

I like that.

“Let’s get warm, Jacey,” I suggest, my meaning very clear as my hand slides to her thigh, where my fingers dig into her leg, kneading it.

“No,” she stammers. “I can’t. I—”

Suddenly the cooler door opens, bringing with it a rush of warm air. The humidity of it hits me in the face and I raise my head (and my hand) in surprise.

“What the hell?” Joe barks, his harsh voice a sharp interruption as he sticks his gray head in and glares at us, as if we chose to be stuck in here. “Get out of there. We’ve been hunting for you.”

Jacey’s startled brown eyes meet mine, then she looks at Joe.

“Sorry, Joe,” she tells him as she scrambles to her feet. “We got locked in. Thank you for rescuing us.”

He stares at her, then at me. “There better not be any funny business going on under this roof,” he finally says. “There’s a time and a place for that—and it’s not here and now.”

Jacey’s cheeks flush bright red, and for a split second I think about what would have happened if Joe had shown up a few minutes earlier and found me with my hand buried between Jacey’s legs.

I’m pretty sure he would’ve considered that “funny business,” although it was far from funny. Far from funny. Somehow, being locked in that tiny room with her made me lower my guard. I forgot, for a minute, who she is and who I am. Who we are in relation to each other—and the answer to that is nothing. We’re nothing to each other.

We follow Joe out and I keep my eyes glued to his plaid-covered back, my resolve returning. I can feel Jacey staring at me, but I don’t return the look. She almost sucked me in back there, with her soft eyes and her laugh that seems genuine.

That’s not gonna happen, though. Fuck that. I steel myself against it, against her, pissed at myself for my moment of weakness. I don’t get involved with people. Jesus.

“Your ride’s here,” Joe tells Jacey, turning a bit to look at her. “If it weren’t for that big dude coming in to look for you, you’d have been stuck in here all night. You’re lucky.”

Lucky. As we follow him through the gym and then say good-bye and head out to the parking lot, I don’t know if lucky is what I feel, even if I am pissed with myself for momentarily lowering my guard.

As I watch Jacey approach that big-ass truck of her “almost-brother’s,” I can’t help but marvel at how different she is from everyone else I know.

Yet at the same time, she’s the same. Because she greets the blond hulk with a kiss on the cheek, and as she turns her head and I look into her eyes, I see that I was right. The guy is seriously into her, and she knows it.

And still she lets him haul her around, using him for what he can give her.

Typical woman.

I sigh and open my car door, and for the briefest of seconds I know that something isn’t right. There’s a shadow in my car, something in the dark that shouldn’t be… but I don’t have time to really register that before Kira materializes in front of me as the streetlight overhead shines on her face.

Startled, I take a quick step back, my heart pounding. Kira’s perched in my driver’s seat, her legs curled under her as she grins widely up at me.

“What the fuck?” I manage to get out as I stare down at her in the dark, calming myself and pretending that she didn’t just startle the shit out of me. “What are you doing here?”

She’s wearing a thigh-length trench coat, cinched at the middle. Her cleavage is spilling from the top. From the mischievous look in her eyes, I have a feeling the coat might be the only thing she’s wearing. As she unfolds herself from the car, the belt comes loose, and I get a glimpse of tan skin and nothing else.

I was right.

She leaps from the seat and presses herself against me, wrapping her arms around my neck, her skin smelling like coconut and perfume.

“What took you so long?” she whines. “I was dying of boredom out here. I wanted to surprise you, but damn. I was running out of patience. You know I don’t have much in the first place.”

Her curvy body folds into me and my body reacts, hardening again. The girl is wearing almost nothing, after all, and I’m only human. Skin is skin and tits are tits, no matter who is wearing them. But as I look over Kira’s shoulder, I find Jacey staring at us through her passenger window, and her expression is indefinable.

Hurt? Anger? Disgust? Annoyance?

I don’t know. I also don’t know why I care.

But I must, in some way or form, because my dick softens and I’m staring after the truck as it drives away with Jacey inside.

“What’s wrong?” Kira asks suddenly, pulling away, noticing the change down below. She grabs at me, cupping my balls, kneading them, but I’m not into it and my dick stays limp.

I shake my head. “I don’t know. I’m just tired. Not in the mood, I guess.”

She raises a perfectly waxed eyebrow. “Since when are you not in the mood to be groped in a public parking lot? I’m naked under this jacket, you know. This is all for you, Dominic.”

I know. For a minute, that knowledge, the knowledge that I can have Kira any time I want, weighs on me. It takes the excitement out of what might’ve been a fun situation. Now, if it’d been Jacey here in my car… I quickly put that out of my mind and shrug.

“I’m sorry, Kira. I’m tired and not in the mood. I’ll take a rain check.”

And with that, I get into my car, leaving Kira standing alone. I roll my window down.

“You’d better get going,” I advise her, ignoring her surprised (and pissed) expression. “This isn’t a good neighborhood.”

I roll the window back up, stifling her sputtering indignation. I watch her climb into her car and wait for her to start it up before I drive from the parking lot, immune to her irritation. There’s one thing about me. I don’t lie and I don’t pussyfoot around. I’m not in the mood for Kira and I’m not going to lie about it.

I rev the engine, enjoying the way it vibrates my foot through the accelerator pedal. The vibration hums in my leg and the Porsche makes short work of the roads leading to Sin’s house. For once, his massive house is quiet. I’m relieved as I slip through the halls, thinking that for the first time ever, I’m the only one here aside from the staff. However, as I walk past the main living room, I hear giggling and I pause in the darkened doorway.

Of course I’m not alone. What was I thinking?

Sin raises his head from where he’s lounging with two women in a mess of tangled arms and legs and bare skin. One is somehow dangling around his shoulders, and the other has her head in his lap. The room smells like sex, but for some reason he’s still got his pants on. For that, I’m thankful.

“Hey, bro,” he greets me, his hair standing up in spikes. “Look. Two girls—one for each of us.” He waves his hand as if he’s bestowing the greatest gift on me, then examines the two girls. He nods at the brunette draped over his shoulders. “You can go with him.”

Her face brightens at the prospect, but before she can answer, I shake my head quickly. “No, I’m good. I’m tired. But thanks anyway.”

Before I walk away, I see Sin’s index finger, the one with the thick silver ring on it, the one with the horns, disappear into the depths of the brunette’s pussy. She throws her head back and moans and I can see that she has already forgotten about the idea of being with me.

Good. I turn my back on the whole thing without a backward glance. Normally, I enjoy watching. But not while my fucking brother is involved.

Jesus.

I seriously might have to get my place. I don’t know if I can take ninety days here.

I pad upstairs and down the hall, where I collapse onto my bed and stare at the ceiling. Try as I might to clear my mind, all I can do is think about one thing.

Jacey.

I’m not sure what it is about her that fascinates me so much, whether it’s the fact that she doesn’t give a shit who I am or whether it’s the fact that she doesn’t try to hide who she is. She’s an open book.

You ask, I’ll answer, she’d said. Yet I know that there’s a lot to her that I don’t even know to ask about. Plus, she’s not so self-involved that she demands that you listen to her talk about herself. And she doesn’t care if you take her or leave her.

I flip on the stereo and turn it up to drown out my thoughts. Hard rock screams at me, thumping and loud. But it doesn’t really help.

Instead, I just picture Jacey’s tight ass wrapping itself around a stripper’s pole to the music. No, she would probably never do such a thing in real life. But this is why a man’s fantasies are so good. In my head, she’ll do whatever I want her to do. And my imagination is vivid.

After a minute, there’s loud banging on my door. “Turn that fucking shit off! You know I hate Jagged Edge. You know they fucked with me last year at Lollapalooza.”

I roll my eyes. “Go fuck something, Sin,” I call back.

He bangs one more time on my door, then he’s gone, and all there is the bass thumping the walls, leaving me free to think about Jacey again.

I slip my hand into my pants as I think about the way her pussy smelled, the way she folded around me, warm and soft, as I fingered her through her clothes. I picture the astonished and embarrassed look on her face when Joe barged in and I can’t help but laugh.

Maybe one of the things I like about her is that she seems innocent at the same time as she seems wild and unrestrained. She has an almost childlike gullibility that seems so different from the people I’m used to.

But one thing is for sure. If she is distracting me this much, I’ve got to stop thinking about her, because I’m never going to get close to anyone again. Fuck that. I’ll never give anyone that kind of power over me.

Never.

Again.

I pull my hand out of my pants and roll over, closing my eyes, letting the music surround me as I get lost in the raging beat.

I think one last conscious thought before I slip away into the oblivion of sleep.

Fuck you, Emma.

Days pass at the gym and I slip into a routine, one day running into the next as I try to serve out my fucking sentence and get the hell out of this place.

Each day, I stay a respectable distance from Jacey. I’m civil, but not friendly. I’m detached, but I still watch her from a distance. I never acknowledge what happened in the cooler… our conversation or the intimate way I’d touched her… and the way she’d let me.

She fascinates the hell out of me because I can’t help but want to figure her out. She’s contradictory, and something about that pulls me to her. But I can’t let her know that.

She seems hurt at first when I ignore her, but then she cools toward me. She makes a point of not looking at me, and whenever she can help it she avoids being in the same room with me. That’s the way it ought to be.

Today, I head toward Joe’s office and stop outside the door when I hear him on the phone.

“Yeah, I know what I owe. It’s my accountant’s fault. He told me what to pay and I paid it. I don’t do my own taxes. What kind of fool does that?” There’s a pause and a sigh. “Yeah, I understand. One way or the other, you’ll have it by the first.”

The phone slams onto his desk and I’m still for a moment.

No wonder Joe has been crabby lately. He’s having tax trouble. I file that away in my head and round the corner, entering his office like I didn’t just hear his conversation.

“What?” he demands, swirling in his chair to stare at me.

“I just needed to get the clipboard for the weights,” I tell him, grabbing it from its hook and heading toward the door.

“Kinkaide!” he barks and I pause. “You going back to California over the weekend?” he demands.

I nod. “Just for the weekend. My lawyers finally got it arranged. I’ve got to get some filming in so the studio doesn’t fire me.”

“Not my problem,” Joe answers. “Just make sure you’re not late to work on Monday.”

So much for being nice. I nod wordlessly and head back toward the locker-room scales.

Jacey looks up from where she’s talking to a couple of the boys, Jake and Tig. It’s the first time she’s made eye contact with me in a couple of days, and even though at first her expression is cool, her brow furrows at she stares at me.

“You okay?” she asks. “You look pissed.”

I nod.

“I’m fine,” I answer, just as cool.

Jacey stares at me for a minute longer before she returns her attention to the boys, turning her body away from me.

As she moves, I can’t help but notice her slender shoulders and her tight-ass top, stretched tautly across her tits. It’s impossible not to notice, and Tig can’t restrain himself. I notice him continually glancing down before he yanks his gaze back up to her face. His cheeks flush red, even though no one but me notices.

When Jacey walks away a few minutes later, I follow her.

“You might not want to wear that shit here,” I mention to her. I know my tone isn’t friendly, but I can’t help it. She’s being ridiculous dressing like that in a gym for troubled teen boys.

She raises an eyebrow. “What shit?”

I motion toward her with my hand. “Tight tops, short shorts. Look around you and remember where you’re at. You’re surrounded by teenage boys who get a hard-on in a stiff breeze. Surely you don’t need attention so badly that you need to use these kids to get it.”

Heat flares into her cheeks and they turn bright red as she glares at me.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” she demands. “You’re so hot and cold. You haven’t bothered to talk to me for days, and now, even though I haven’t done shit to you, you don’t hesitate to snap my head off for no reason. Why the hell do you care what I wear?”

I feel a small twinge of guilt. She’s right. It’s not my business. But somewhere, in a deep down place that I don’t want to acknowledge, I hate the fact that these kids are ogling her. I know what they’re doing in their beds at night while they’re thinking about her.

I hate that thought. I hate that in my head, she’s mine to play with, mine to discard, mine to balance in the palm of my hand… just like I did in the cooler last week. In my head, she’s an option… an option I can choose at any moment, but an option I’d be smart to ignore.

“Well?” Jacey stares at me. “Why do you care?”

“I don’t,” I shrug. “I just don’t want any of them to say something inappropriate to you and then get into trouble. You’re inviting the wrong kind of attention, Jacey. It’s not fair to them.”

She narrows her eyes. “Oh, it’s all about them for you now, right? I can tell that by the way you never talk to any of them. You think they’re beneath you—just like your view on the rest of the world. You need to get over yourself.”

She stomps off and I stare at her tight ass as she does.

“She’s got a temper,” Jake observes from where he’s changing his shirt nearby. “I like it.”

I stare at him, a hard and level gaze. “Don’t even think about it. You’re jailbait for her.”

The kid rolls his eyes. “You’ve gotta lighten up, man. I was just making an observation. Jacey’s badass.”

He grabs his bag and ducks out of the room, and I notice something. Jacey’s cell phone is lying on the bench where she was sitting as she was talking to Jake. I know it’s hers by the pink flowered case.

I walk over and grab it, sliding it into my pocket. Something about it makes me smile. Pink flowers. Like her pink gun. Jake was right. Jacey’s pretty badass. Yet she has a softer side. And she’s all woman, sexy as hell.

She’s a puzzle… and one I get more fascinated with every day. The more I think about it, the more I know what I have to do.

I just need to get to know her. If I give her a chance, she’ll disappoint me, like everyone else. And then my fascination will be over and I can go about life as normal, as the jaded asshole that I am.

But a little while later, after I’ve finished weighing the rest of the boys and set off to find her, I discover that she’s already gone.

“Her boyfriend already picked her up,” Joe tells me when I ask. “You’re outta luck.”

Her boyfriend/surrogate brother. I roll my eyes and feel oddly disappointed.

“I have her phone,” I explain to Joe. “She left it in the locker room. I don’t suppose you have her address, do you? I know she lives in Calumet Heights somewhere. I could drop it by her house on my way home. I doubt she’ll want to be without it.”

“Yeah, I can get it for you. You should let her worry about it, in my opinion. Then she’d be more careful with her stuff. But if you want to…”

His voice trails off as he hunts for her file, then scribbles the address on a sticky note.

“Don’t share that with the boys,” he says needlessly.

As if I would. I nod and leave, and within a few minutes the nose of my car is turned in the direction of Calumet Heights.