All three are right here, just outside the exit, each leaning against the wall with their heads turned my way.
Waiting.
They knew I would come.
Arsen kicks off first, stepping right in front of me. He dips his chin the slightest bit, and somehow, I know what he wants.
I close my eyes.
Arsen and Beretta have been sparring for the last thirty minutes, neither pausing for air nor slowing their pace, clearly capable of going at it for much longer.
Ransom drops in the seat beside me, tossing his gloves to the floor with a bit of a pout.
“What’s the matter, are you sad you’re not getting your turn?” I tease, sticking my bottom lip out.
He surprises me when he jerks forward, ready to bite at it, but I pull back in surprise. My eyes must widen because his sudden grin is boastful. With a low laugh, we face the boys again.
Both drip with sweat, their broad smiles matching as they laugh and circle the makeshift ring. It’s nothing more than a few mismatched, scuffed-up mats they dragged from the garage, rolled out over the sunburned grass and threw some quick tape onto to help keep them together. They’re old, but they serve their purpose nicely.
Beretta bends at the knees, bringing himself lower as he spins, but Arsen whips around the opposite way, having expected his friend’s tricks, and is now pressed to Beretta’s back.
Arsen quickly hooks his elbows around Beretta’s and tugs his arms backward, trapping Beretta’s between his own back and Arsen’s abdomen.
Arsen rushes them forward, pinning Beretta’s chest to the side wall of the garage, and he holds him there, his chest to his back.
I grin, waiting for what comes next, unsure of what Beretta will attempt in order to get free, but neither of them moves, and then Arsen’s hold loosens.
The moment his movements become lax, Beretta spins. First, it’s only his shoulders and his upper torso, his abs constricting and showing their strength as he does. His lower half comes next, and then they’re chest to chest.
Arsen doesn’t back away, and Beretta doesn’t force him to. They stay right where they are, eye to eye, grin to grin, and... I mean—
“Done?” Ransom’s quick shout makes my eyes snap toward him.
I quickly look back to the others, but the boys are already headed this way, both reaching out to tap their knuckles together.
“You’re getting faster,” Beretta recognizes with appreciation.
Arsen’s smirk is all too cocky, but he keeps it to himself, turning away as he drinks from his refilled water bottle.
I take a moment to glance around the yard, the entire perimeter lined with cactus plants of some sort, all different shapes and sizes. Some have large chunks broken off, others are cut clear across the tips in what seems like random fashion.
Beretta drops beside me. “Looks a lot different than your back yard, huh, Trouble?”
My eyes flick to his, but there’s no mockery or anger there, only an easy grin on his lips, so I nod. “We don’t even have real grass, let alone plants.”
“No shit, turf or what?”
I shrug. “I guess, and a whole bunch of rock and cement.”
“And a fat-ass pool.”
I nod. Of course he knows this, you can see it from the beach below, just like Cali’s.
“You ever tried it?” he asks.
“Tried what?”
His forehead wrinkles with amusement. “Cactus.”
“I don’t exactly have a green thumb.”
The boys chuckle and I glance around.
“Take that as a no.” He smiles, finishing off his water. “Stay here a couple more hours, and you will.”
“So, this is your home, then?”
Nobody offered the information when we got here, and it didn’t make a difference, so I didn’t bother to ask. That, and I wasn’t sure they’d tell me anyway. Especially since I assumed we were trespassing on someone’s land when we passed the large home at its front and followed through to the back of a property line; where they had to get out to lift and move a metal gate by hand in order for Arsen to drive his car up to the house.
Beretta looks out over the land, where row after row of orange trees cover every inch of the dirt seen from this angle, and then toward the off-white house tucked about twenty feet from the garage we’re parked in front of.
The screens on the windows are faded from the sun, the security gate rusted at the edges. There’s some sort of tractor and on its opposite side, another identical house.
He shakes his head.
“Nope. It’s not my home.” He looks to his friends, then back to me.
A shadow covers his eyes, and he glances away, so I allow myself to drop farther against the wicker chair and admit what I’m thinking, as he did.
Only to myself, because saying it out loud will come off as crying rich girl syndrome, where nothing is ever enough, and always wanting more is the norm.
I don’t want more, though, what I’m getting is plenty enough.
Still... I feel the same.
My house is not my home; it’s temporary.
The difference is, I won’t grow to find mine.
I’ll be placed inside it.
“Can I ask a question?”
“No.”
“Yes.”
Ransom and Beretta look to each other, and Arsen chuckles, laying back on the mats with his arms folded behind his head.
“What’s with the whole ‘close your eyes’ thing?” I pick up my watered-down smoothie, stick my straw between my teeth and wait.
And wait.
The boys don’t say a word, just meet one another’s gazes from where they sit on the mats for a shared, unspoken secret.
My brows lift. “Seriously?”
Beretta clears his throat, cuts a quick glance toward Arsen, and then rolls from his ass onto all fours. He crawls across the mat to where I’m now sitting on the open tailgate of the broken-down truck turned couch/bed.
He looks so ridiculous that I’m laughing before he’s even made it a foot closer.
“Why do we ask you to close your eyes...” His hands find my ankles and he uncrosses them, and nudges my legs open a little.
I fall back, catching myself with my hands. I’m on the verge of growing uneasy, but the others begin to laugh as he slips between my thighs, and somehow, my nerves are lulled.
He’s not touching me, but he’s damn close.
“We tell you to close your eyes...” Beretta lets his body fall flush with mine, his hazel eyes testing me with a tantalizing gleam. “Because everything is amped in the dark. Your want, your need, your... willingness. In the dark, you can be whoever you want to be. No fear. No judgment.”
My left brow quirks high, and he chuckles, rolling off of me and sitting beside me.
I push up. “So, it’s all about sex?”
All three of their heads snap my way and I laugh.
“What? I’m curious.”
Ransom pins me with a fixed expression. “Why?”
“Why not? I’ve played your game three times now. Do I not have the right to ask?”
“Do you need an excuse to ask what you want to know?”
“Do you need to sound so condescending when you ask such a question?”
“Do we need to put you two in time-out, alone, in the dark?”