“Body and moves like that, she’ll cash in quick. Put her on Friday and Saturdays, and she’ll make enough.” Her tits are huge. Totally fuckable. “She up for the private shit?”
Private shit meaning down for sex in the private rooms out back.
Saint nods. “Says she is. Wants to graduate without any loans. Wanna give her a road test?”
“No, he doesn’t,” King says, slapping my shoulder. “We got important shit to do.”
“We do?” I ask. “Because my dick’s saying the important shit I got to do is up there flashing her cunt at me.”
Saint laughs. “I’ll get her number. Tell you when she’s in.”
We step out onto the sidewalk, and immediately I see my ex Samantha standing by my bike.
“Fuck me,” I mutter.
“I’ll give you a minute,” King says.
I shake my head. “Nah. Whatever she has to say, I’m not interested.”
“Hey, Tyler,” she says, as I approach her. “Saw the bike and knew you must be around somewhere.”
“Great. Now fuck off.”
She runs her fingertips down my arm. “You haven’t returned my calls.”
“Because I got nothing to say to you.” I straddle my bike.
“I need help,” she says, and there’s the vulnerability that made me once think she was my everything.
“Yeah, you do. So go get some.”
“Mike left me. Kicked me out. I don’t have anywhere to go. Can I come back? To the house. To you?”
For about a year after she left, I kept waiting for her to show up and say something like this to me. I’d make her pay, for a little while, just because I’m a big believer in helping karma pay its dues. Then I’d let her come home.
But now . . .
“We’re hiring at the strip club.”
Her mouth opens, then closes. But I see the flash in her eyes. I used to like feisty and fiery. But for all my talk of the woman on the pole, an image of Iris pops into my head. She’s the only one I really want. Everything else is just distraction.
“You can’t mean that,” she gasps.
I shrug. “Those tits I bought you would look great up on that stage.”
Slashes of pink hit her cheekbones. “Fuck you, Tyler.”
King laughs as she marches down the street. “You cool?”
“Her excuse for screwing my neighbor while I was in Afghanistan is because she was lonely. And, you know, I think I could have gotten my head around that. But she carried on fucking him when I came home because I wasn’t myself. Said she couldn’t deal with all my shit and needed an outlet. Wouldn’t fucking trust her as far as I could throw her.”
“Tell me about it. I was screwing Skylar while she was plotting with Cue Ball to take out my family.”
I think back to the scenes in the Pines when King killed her. The resignation in Skylar’s body language. She knew she was going to die. But her words to King felt . . . honest.
“You had feelings for her?”
King flashes an angry look my way, then breathes deeply. “Why are we talking about our feelings?”
I shrug. “We don’t have to.” I climb on my bike.
“Fine. Feelings enough that putting a bullet in her wasn’t easy.”
I remember what she said, as she sat on her knees looking up at King. I wanted to be your queen, but you never really saw me.
And King looked at her for a moment . . . just one second where he touched his hand to her cheek, brushed his thumb over her lip. “Instead, you became a pawn,” he said. Then put a bullet through her brain.
There’s a truck outside the diner across the street from our bikes. There’s a Totenkopf sticker on the back, the sign of Hitler’s SS.
“You see the neo-Nazi symbol on the truck back there?” King asks.
I reach for my phone. “Yeah, fucking white supremacists in town is not a good sign. Just sending Vex the plate. Ballsy move showing up here.”
When I look up again, I see a guy step outside the diner and immediately recognize him. I turn to face King. “Saw him last night at the docks. Had some girl tied up in his truck. She got out. Ran to Saint and me. Saint took her to some place after.”
“Abuse?” King asks.
“Trafficker vibes.”
I glance back at the patio outside the diner and see he’s now bothering a woman.
And my heart stops beating in my chest when I realize it’s Iris.
8
IRIS
The guy doesn’t even need to sit down at my table before I already know I’m out on him. Regular dudes who cosplay in army camo annoy me. I’m being presumptuous, I know. The guy could have three purple hearts for all I know. But he has the look of a guy who’d raid the capital for kicks and doesn’t have the confident stride of someone who’d served.
He lopes over. Lopes.
I feel like yelling at him to stand up straight. Yup, not a military bone in his body.
“So, how about it?” he asks. “Would you girls like to take a drive up the coast with us?”
I place my cinnamon roll down, rub the crumbs from my fingers, and shake my head. Kasey and I were supposed to be having a quiet breakfast before taking a walk down the Shore. While I want to tell him to fuck off, I’ve played this game enough times to know the path of least resistance is to play nice. “We already have plans.”
“How about you give me your number so we can make plans for a different day?” he says. He’s not utterly offensive in the looks department. Nice blue eyes. But his rockabilly slicked-back hair and close shave make me realize my preferences these days run to scruffy bikers with hair for days.
Kasey glances up at him. “We said no.”
“What she said was you had plans today. I didn’t hear a no.” The dude’s buddy chuckles. I don’t know why they think this approach is going to work.
“No,” I say.
The guy grins, then runs his tongue over his upper teeth. It’s unattractive. “Well, I think the two of you should—”
“Be allowed to finish their food in peace.” I know the voice, and when I turn, Spark is blocking the sun. I only see him in shadow. His hair is down, and he’s wearing aviator sunglasses that make him look as hot as they do intimidating.
I don’t know where he came from, but I’m glad to see King is with him. There are four of the other men, but King and Spark look menacing.
Sleazy guy stands. “We’re talking. No harm in that.”
Spark looks down at me, and I give him an infinitesimally small shake of my head. “These women don’t want to talk to you.”
The guy has the audacity to scoff. “Why? Because they belong to you?”
King steps forward. “Let’s just say, as a goodwill gesture, you get in your Nazi-mobile and drive on back to whatever hole your racist ass crawled out of, and I won’t shoot you dead where you stand.”
Sleazy guy tips his head in Spark’s direction. “Your boy cost me last night.”
“Pity you can’t get pussy without traumatizing the fuck out of them first,” Spark says.
And suddenly, I’m glad he’s here. Their conversation is scaring me.