Chapter 8: Scandalous: Chapter 7

FUNNY FELIX WAS A SHIT show.

Much to no one’s surprise.

Actually that wasn’t entirely fair to the person dressed in a feline-looking teddy bear whatever-the-fuck costume standing in the center of a circle made out of screaming kids, dancing for them like a trained monkey.

I guess the party was okay for everyone who wasn’t in my immediate circle. For all the parents who were smiling wide, holding hands—even the fucking divorcees were being civilized for the sake of their children—watching the fruit of their loins getting their faces painted and twirling with a bunch of clowns, AKA Felix’s Little Helpers. It was creepy, but when you thought about it—when you really, truly put some thought into it—a lot of the stuff grown-ups found intimidating were kids’ favorite things. Because kids, unlike their parents, watch the world sans the tainted lens of preconception and intolerance.

Kids are not racist.

Kids are not judgmental.

Kids don’t care that your car costs twice the annual salary of the average American.

Kids are fun.

Kids are pure.

But I’m not.

I was a biracial man in a white world, so I knew exactly how Luna was feeling. Just like Luna, I didn’t physically stand out, not even in the WASP-y town of Todos Santos. I wasn’t even dark-skinned. My mother was German, my dad African American. My skin color was diluted, watered-down. Still, it was there. It was there in my height and my soft lips and my curly hair (when I let it grow, which was fucking never.) It was there when people made jokes about big dicks and basketball. It was there when I’d tried to apply for odd jobs while I was supporting myself in college. It was there, but others pretended that it wasn’t.

There’s something to be said about us biracial people. Society fucked us good in all holes and angles. I was too black to be fully accepted in the white, rich town I went to high school in (football scholarship), and too white to be accepted in the black community in San Diego where I grew up.

It’s not that I didn’t have friends, because I had many. It’s the identity I’d been lacking. The tribe. That puzzle into which I’d fit.

Luna was both different and similar to me in that sense.

She was beautiful and exotic, a rare diamond who was likely to suffer less from prejudice because times had changed. She drew people to her and fuck, she looked so normal, until she opened her mouth and nothing came out. Until an unsuspecting mother asked her name, and my daughter looked away and tears prickled her eyes, because she’d been spoken to by a stranger.

Until the mother’s kid called Luna a freak.

“She doesn’t speak English, Ma. She doesn’t even speak Spanish. The freak doesn’t speak at all.”

What did I say? A shit show.

My mother was there to squeeze my shoulder, pleading with her eyes for me not to kick the kid’s head to the ground and shove his face in the dirt and make him eat it. The party took place on the beach, out of all places, and the heat was slowly slaying the cupcakes, face paint, and my nerves.

“What kind of fucked-up kid says something like that, anyway? They’re four.” I dragged a hand over my head. Luna was sitting with Sonya under a tree a few feet from us, trying to calm down from the incident. They were sharing an apple. Since Little Miss Busy on Saturdays was too important to accompany Luna and me, I figured I’d take an arsenal of people as moral support and to keep me company. My parents, Darius and Trisha, tagged along, and Sonya managed to stop by at the very last minute, even though she was supposed to watch her son in some sports competition I couldn’t even remember.

“They’re four, they’re privileged, and they’re blunt. You grew up with the nastiest kids in the country. Why this behavior still surprises you, I have no idea.” My mother ironed my shirt down with her hand. She’d come a long way from Trish who worked at Walmart part-time since I’d hit the corporate jackpot. Wearing designer everything and not apologizing for it, she now looked like the women she didn’t even have the honor of serving, because they’d never set foot in that store. I loved that we were now part of a club that never really accepted us. It was ironic, in the Groucho Marx kind of way.

My dad was the only black male member of the Todos Santos Country Club.

Luna went to school with Toby Rowland’s daughter, the rich bastard who’d broken my ankle in high school to steal the captain of the football team title from me.

We were blending, meshing, stealing everything that wasn’t offered to us.

And. I. Fucking. Thrived. On. It.

“Time to wrap this shit up. I’ve officially reached the end of my patience.” I shook my head and let out a sigh when Luna refused to budge from under the tree and join the other kids in a dance, even when Sonya encouraged her, no doubt promising to never leave her side. Luna was especially trying in social events. I’d spent the first year after her mother disappeared at home with her, before finally caving in to life. I wanted to share the world with her. She was mine. My blood, my DNA, my cells, my eyes, my fucking being. Still, I wished she’d be more accepting of the outside world, and that it would be more accepting of her.

My parents exchanged worried looks, frowning. They’d been a tremendous help with raising Luna ever since I’d moved from Chicago, where I’d managed an FHH branch, back to Todos Santos, selling a healthy percentage of my stocks to Jordan Van Der Zee, along with a piece of my soul in the process.

“Why don’t you go ahead and get some rest?” My mother rubbed my cheek, forcing a smile on her sweet face. “Dad and I will take Luna back to our place for a sleepover. She’s been dying to help Dar build that spaceship for weeks.”

The spaceship.

My dad was a dreamer. An inventor. He built shit that never worked. He wasn’t really building a spacecraft, obviously. What he was building was a healthy relationship with my daughter, using empty batteries, carton boxes, superglue, and old matches that had gotten soaked in the rain and were no longer usable. He was building what I couldn’t even set the fucking ground for. A healthy, fun relationship with my daughter.

Or the awkward looks she was getting.

Or shouldering the burden that came with being different.

It bothered me because those differences were the things that people would blame me for if her mother ever came back into her life. Luna’s differences were what Val would exploit. So yeah, it made me resent them.

“You don’t have to do it,” I said, not really arguing with her. I could use the night off. I wasn’t even going to call Sonya or Amanda. Straight to fucking bed for me. Maybe watch a stupid action movie and order greasy food I’d never allow myself to eat on a weekday. My six times a week strength training didn’t go well with junk food, but sometimes even grown ass men allow themselves a little pity party.

“Please.” Mom jerked me into a hug. She was so much smaller than my six foot four body, it was funny to think I’d come out of her. It was also funny because Trish Rexroth was one of the most gracious people I knew and I was a Shithead with a capital S. “We love Luna and want to spend every chance we have making her happy. And anyway, I was planning on baking that apple pie, and your dad’s sugar level is sky-high. She’ll be doing him a favor eating the majority of it. Right, Dar?” She turned to my dad, who was arguing—legit quarreling—with a four-year-old boy over what the face paint they’d been using on the kids was made of.

I smirked. “Okay.”

I said my goodbyes to Luna, my parents, and Sonya and climbed into my black Tesla. I called a Korean Barbecue place on my way home, ordering every other dish on the menu, and drove in circles for a while, enjoying a different type of silence. Not loaded with words or tension, but loneliness and selfishness, two things you learn to crave as a parent. If someone would ask me quietly, on their last breath, if I wanted to be a father, and I knew my admission would never leave their mouth, I’d say the truth. I’d say, no. Because it was too hard, too heartbreaking, and too fucking all-consuming to be Luna Rexroth’s dad.

And still.

And still. I loved my daughter hopelessly, desperately, urgently. Which only made my inability to help her all the more soul-crushing. The idea that she’d given up on people, or maybe even worse—on her life, before it even started infuriated me. I wanted to show her that the world was a beautiful, frightening place worth experiencing. That peasants could be crowned kings if they worked hard enough, and how her daddy was living proof of that.

There was a wooded reservoir squashed between Orange County limits and Todos Santos which I’d especially loved as a teenager. It was a little on the wild side. Large, remote, and a total money pit to local councils. No district wanted to deal with it, especially as it used to be the city hall of Todos Santos before it got all fancy and relocated to a downtown zip code with enough fountains and swans to be mistaken for Monaco. Since it was technically not a part of any city, it got neglected and forgotten. But only by the adults.

A lot of kids came to the reservoir to have sex, get drunk, and generally be assholes, which was most teenagers’ favorite pastimes. Back when we were in high school and Vicious’ parents were at home—which was rare—we’d meet there for our weekly fights, in which we’d defied each other.

I decided to drive there on a whim, knowing the Korean place took a lifetime to get their takeout orders made—especially one as large as mine. A trip down memory lane would remind me I hadn’t always been this old, this bitter, this fucked-up.

I drove by the old benches, the lighthouse standing in the lake, sandwiched between the hiking trails. I rolled my window down, inhaling the perfume of nature. Freedom. Youth. Pure air. A small smirk curved on my face, and I almost relished the feel of it.

Almost.

The person to wipe the smile off was the last I was expecting to see, even though it made perfect sense for her to be there.

Edie Van Der Zee.

I heard her before I saw her, and even when I did see her, it was through bushes and fog, shadowed by the night. In fact, I only recognized her because her wild, wavy blonde, out-of-catalog hair was cascading down her bare shoulders and because of that throaty, hoarse laugh. She was wearing a loose ROXY top, little shorts, and her unlaced Dr. Martens. She looked so much like a kid I wanted to punch myself in the balls for imagining her writhing under me while I’d pounded into Amanda the other night. Edie’s legs were still curveless, two straight toothpicks. Not very different from Luna’s.

You’re fucking disturbed.

She stood in front of two guys and a girl who were sharing a bench, sitting on the back of it, because they were such fucking rebels. Not.

I only wanted to slow down so I could hear what they were laughing about, but ended up stopping completely behind a wall of wild bushes when I realized my black car blended perfectly with the night. This was the point where I should have probably acknowledged that I’d crossed a hard line of some sort. I was stalking my employee, my teenage employee, late in the evening. But I chose to dismiss the level of creepiness I was exhibiting by pointing out to myself that A—I hadn’t actively sought her out, I’d happened to bump into her. And B—if she was in some kind of trouble and I turned my back on her, I’d never forgive myself.

Far-fucking-fetched, but I’ll take it.

One of the guys, who was wearing a hoodie in the middle of the summer and deserved to die a slow death for this alone, stood up and sauntered over to one of the reservoir’s most iconic symbols—the old town’s city hall. It was deserted, decaying, and made out of sandstone. Big, boasting of empty rooms, and last time I was there fifteen years ago, every one of them had been occupied with a couple or a threesome getting lucky on dirty mattresses or sofas that had been dragged into the place and were probably contaminated. My teeth clenched as he threw his arm over Edie’s shoulder, hooking her by the neck and jerking her toward him for a forehead kiss.

“C’mon, Gidget. We haven’t fucked in forever and all the new girls at the beach are too vanilla,” the tool said as they zig-zagged toward the entrance. Gidget? And why did his choice of words grate on my every nerve? I used the word fuck as a verb, adverb, noun, and a simple decoration in every other sentence. If I could marry it, I most likely would. Yet I hated that it left his mouth, and hated it even more that it was directed at her. Mostly, I loathed that the tool was wearing a hoodie so I couldn’t even see the goddamn face I was about to smash with my fist.

“Wait, let me get a blunt from Wade,” Edie’s husky voice murmured and she jogged in the other direction, toward the losers on the bench. Was she really going to screw some asshole in an abandoned building? I wasn’t buying it. Then again, what the hell did I know about this chick? Oh, right. She was a pickpocketing, self-centered liar who’d ditched my daughter’s party to hang out with pot-smoking idiots. And she was a teenager. Of course, she was going to fuck him in an abandoned bastion. And, of course, she wasn’t vanilla.

My dick stirred in my pants and I did the unthinkable, cupping it with my fist and squeezing hard. My way of saying it was never going to happen. She wasn’t even my type. Too small, too blonde, too sweet-looking, though at this point, I knew she was nothing like her looks. Girl had some serious baggage.

In my desperate plea not to jerk off, I failed to remember my headlights were still on. Her friends on the bench craned their necks to see what—or who—was lurking behind the bushes. I needed to do something. That something was to get the fuck out of there.

Then again, I was always the bastard who did stupid shit, preferably with the most poisonous woman in his locale. Why stop now?

Instead of U-turning and leaving, I hit the accelerator, my car speeding silently—justifying its 170k price tag—and slammed the brakes when Edie’s ass was directly in front of my window, mere feet from the doors to the city hall.

“Van Der Zee,” I roared. She whipped her head around so fast I thought her spine was going to snap. I leaned sideways and popped the passenger door open.

“Get in the car.”

Her mouth fell open and for a second, I wanted nothing more than to shove my tongue into it. Instead, I pushed the door open wider, growling.

“Now.”

The tool she was about to spread her legs for was now directly in front of me. He had a neck tattoo, droopy green eyes, and a lip ring. He looked like a fucking Blink182 reject. Only taller. And probably more muscular. Not as big as I was, but certainly the kind to pocket enough panties to open a Victoria’s Secret store. My kind.

He waltzed over to my car and parked his elbows on my fucking windowsill like he owned it. Ballsy. He was going to say goodbye to those balls if he wasn’t careful.

“And may I ask who the fuck you are?” He lit a blunt coolly, puffing the stream of smoke directly into my face. He was playing the game I’d mastered when I was eighteen. The one where you push until something snaps. But I was thirty-three now and could crush his neck, and future, without blinking. I tried to remind myself that I didn’t want to do any of those things to him. That he was just a hoodie-shelled teenager. A peacock trying to fart some extra pretty feathers to impress his lady friend.

“I’m her boss. Who the fuck are you?”

“Her steady dick.” He cocked his head sideways, smirking. “And I don’t like competition outside of the ocean. So I suggest you take a hike.” He tapped the blunt with his forefinger, sprinkling ashes into my car. Onto my leather seat.

Bad play.

I heard Edie’s soft giggle behind him, and maybe it was because she’d bailed on Luna’s party, and maybe it was simply because I was done restraining my inner asshole when it came to her, but I was already deep in ruthless mode, ready to kick it up a notch and become a total cunt. I threw the car into park, opened the door, and stormed outside, rounding the front of my vehicle before cupping her elbow.

“If you don’t get in the car right now, you’ll see exactly what happens when the countdown ends,” I whispered into her hair, my lips accidentally brushing the shell of her ear. My cock jerked in my pants and I groaned. She twisted her head to watch me, bewildered.

“Why in the world would I do anything for you outside of working hours, Rexroth?”

“Because you told me you had important business today and therefore couldn’t attend my girl’s party when you were, in fact, going to pork a goddamn meathead in a rat-ridden abandoned building. I swear, Edie. If you don’t get in right this second, your father gets a Sunday visit from his business partner tomorrow morning, and I’ll tell him all about your thieving ways and peculiar sexual escapades.”

Threatening to rat out an eighteen-year-old to her parents was some sort of rock bottom, surely. At the same time, she didn’t need this. Smoking pot and fucking in a public place. Make no mistake, I’d done exactly that at her age. Oh, well. I never said I was above being a fucking hypocrite.

“Hey, now, old man. Chill your calcium-deprived bones and stop treating her like crap, or I’ll have to kick your ass.” Blondie Dudebro got in my face, and I was going to end the night in a police station. I shoved him once before Edie thrust her body between us, pushing us both in opposite directions.

“Hey, hey, hey, stop it!”

“You don’t need another Jordan, Gidget. Tell him to fuck off.” The kid pointed at me, his lips twisting in disgust. She shook her head, her flat palms on his chest, walking him backwards toward the bench. Her other friends were staring with their mouths open so wide you could practically see what they’d had for lunch. They stood up from the bench but didn’t get any closer. Fucking cowards.

“It’s not like that, Bane. Look, I’ll explain later. See you tomorrow at the beach.” She turned her back to me, pressing her lips to his. Their mouths brushed in a familiarity I’d never had with a woman because I’d never stuck with someone for longer than two weeks, and I watched, my teeth slamming into each other.

“Enough of this shit. Time to go.” I practically threw Edie’s ass to the passenger seat before rounding to my side of the car and buckling up. I started the engine, trying to wrap my head around my reaction to this surreal encounter and figuring out where in the fuck I was going to take her.

“Where do you live?” I threw the car into drive. She didn’t answer, staring out the window, harboring unshed tears in her eyes. My car slid through the dirt road leading out of the reservoir, the noiseless electric engine making our silence particularly unbearable. I choked the steering wheel, feeling my nostrils flare.

She wasn’t going to answer. Not before I explained my behavior.

“You’re my business partner’s daughter, Edie. I can’t let you run around smoking pot and fucking tattooed boys. I can overlook it when I’m not around you, but if I bump into you in the middle of the night in a deserted place, I’m sure as hell gonna act on it.”

“Please.” She sniffed, clinging to her cool with everything she had in her. “Never bullshit a bullshitter. You can spare me your stupid explanation. You don’t give a damn about Jordan Van Der Zee, and you sure don’t care about his daughter. This was an act of power, Rexroth. You were pissed I didn’t go to Luna’s party, and you decided to retaliate. But know this—I did go somewhere today. Somewhere important. Just because I made it back in time to hang out with friends doesn’t mean I ditched Luna.”

Edie was partly right. I was pissed with her choosing to hang out with her friends over spending time with my daughter. What was possibly worse was that the other reason I’d dragged her away from her weekend hangout was because I was infatuated with her ass. Or at least, with the idea of tapping it. Of course, that would guarantee Jordan would somehow find a way to kick me off the board, out of the company, and essentially ruin my entire career. Not to mention I wouldn’t be able to look at myself in the mirror after fucking a teenager, legal or not.

“Where do you live?” I repeated my question, ignoring the valid points she’d made. She huffed and dug inside the black backpack in her hand, reaching for her cell phone.

“Hey.” I snatched the device from her hand, my eyes still on the road. “I’m talking to you.”

“Yeah, well, that hardly means I’m listening,” she muttered.

“The fuck is your problem, kid?” I asked.

“You’re my problem. My father is my problem. The world is my problem. Let me out,” she demanded, unhooking my fingers from her phone and retrieving it. The escalated tension in the vehicle made me lose focus on the road.

“In the middle of nowhere?” I chuckled. “Yeah, no.”

“Trent.”

I shook my head. I’d take her to my penthouse if need be. I had two guest rooms that were unused all year round. She could crash there and I’d deliver her ass to her parents first thing in the morning. It was a complicated solution, but one where she was safe and not fucking Blondie Dudebro.

“Let me go.”

I scrubbed my chin thoughtfully, ignoring her as I stared at the road.

Then she did it.

The crazy girl opened the door of my moving vehicle and jumped out into a bush.

I smashed the brake pedal and bolted out, rushing toward her. She was lying inside a scrub, supine. Her arms were stretched like a snow angel, and she was laughing at the moon with tears in her eyes like the lost kid she was.

Not chuckling, not smiling, but full-blown laughing.

If it was a cry for help, I chose not to listen. I chose to ignore what she was obviously going through, because we were all trying to stay afloat in this pond of misery, and helping her out came with the price of sinking further down. I pulled her up by the waist, ignoring how intimate it felt. Disregarding how her body matched mine like two pieces of a puzzle, against all fucking odds. My hand was on her lower back again, my knee between her thighs, and she was firm and athletic everywhere, but her face was soft and tender, like an Edgar Degas painting.

Our eyes fought a silent war. Her baby blues glittered brighter under the full, fat moon. I knew that if we held this position for a few more seconds, I was likely to do something I’d regret. Make the kind of mistake that could ruin a lot of lives. So I leaned toward her face to whisper to her that I was sorry for tonight. For everything, really. For being a jackass, and a hypocrite, and an asshole.

I slid in her direction, only to realize that she parted her lips, waiting for…fuck, a kiss?

I’m in. I knew the feeling, because I’d been in this position more times than I could count. She was giving me the green light, the okay, the consent to touch her. Her hips rolled toward my groin very lightly, and a low, leisured growl glided between my lips.

What an interesting turn of events. Edie Van Der Zee wants me to dick her hard.

Five years ago, I would have given her what she wanted, consequences be damned.

Tonight, though, I had too much to lose.

“Edie,” my lips moved on her temple, “is there a reason why you’re humping my leg? Thought you were mad at me for clam-jamming your ass tonight.”

She was no longer on the verge of crying, but now I had a much bigger problem to deal with, and it was pointed directly at her pussy, hard and swollen and ready to give her what she so obviously wanted.

“Why did you clam-jam me, Rexroth?” she breathed, almost into my lips, and she smelled of vanilla and woman. Not like a girl. It made standing like this, with her practically straddling one of my thighs, slightly less dreadful.

“You already know why.”

“I’m starting to think I missed out on an important detail.” Her hips rolled forward in a wave-like motion, hitting my erection once, and slightly, and so fucking teasingly, it was the last nail in the age gap debate coffin. This woman knew what she was doing. She knew how to work her body, work a man’s body, and it killed me that fucking Bane—what kind of name was that? Was he a Vicious knockoff?—knew all the secrets to her silky, sun-kissed flesh and scarlet lips and probably very sweet pussy.

I stepped away from her, leaning on the still-running car with a smirk.

“I’m sorry, sweetheart. I don’t do children.”

She moved closer to me, her inner thigh pressing against the side of my leg. She smiled, her grin dazzling with white teeth—one of them crooked and slightly chipped and imperfectly sexy—and purred, “Don’t make promises that will make you feel like a pervert when you break them.”

“I won’t break them,” I deadpanned, but I still let her press her small, perky, braless—shit, braless—tits against my lower pecs. The notion that I could slam her against my hood and fuck her from behind was too much. Or maybe I could spread her and eat her out before I fucked her in the middle of the reservoir. She would let me, and that was the worst thing about our situation. Edie would let me do that to her, and not because she was a naïve girl with daddy issues.

But because she’d come here to fuck, and I was a willing body to her. Nothing less, nothing more.

“Interesting,” she said, bending her knees and grinding against me, clasping my whole thigh between her legs. Her bare skin scraped along my denim, her puckered, hard nipple brushing my forearm. I didn’t move. Just stared at her like she was a fucking health hazard, hoping she would stop or take my dick in her mouth and put me out of my misery. “You know what my favorite word is?” she hissed, clenching my thigh, feeling warm and damp.

Fuck? I wanted to retort. Because I’d gladly give you some synonyms, facts, and hard examples of how to do it.

But I was too fascinated with the direction she was taking this—us—to interrupt her little speech. She had a point. That much was for sure. For the first time since we’d met, I let her express herself and speak her mind. Not only because she was rubbing her sleek pussy all over my thigh and I didn’t want to break the spell, but also because she needed it. Kid jumped out of a moving car five minutes ago to make a point.

Not a kid, I reminded myself. A woman, Trent. A woman.

“Sonder.” The word rolled between her luscious lips like an illicit proposition. She took my hand and pressed it against the swell of her ass, on the border between her thigh and cheek. Her warm flesh made the dull ache in the pit of my stomach disappear somehow, and the weirdest thing about it was that I hadn’t even noticed that it was there before. I didn’t squeeze nor withdraw my palm. My mind was racing, knowing this shouldn’t be happening, and again, I fired excuses at myself.

It was nothing.

We weren’t actually doing shit.

We weren’t kissing, or making out, or fucking, or sucking each other off. We were barely touching, even though it felt heavier and dense, even more than being completely naked in a room with a woman who already had a condom ready in her mouth.

“Sonder is the realization that each passerby has a life as vivid and complex as your own. I have a feeling you think you’re the only one to know hardship, Rexroth. It doesn’t sit well with me. Not at all.”

“Tough luck, sweetheart, because you’re working under me, and that’s the only thing you’ll do in that compromising position.” I dragged my hand from her ass to my pocket, making a teasing stop at her hipbone, brushing it with my thumb. She pushed into my touch and I denied her, not only to stay in control of my hands, but also because seeing her burning for me was a visual that could very likely set what few morals I had on fire.

“We’ve started on the wrong foot.” She ignored the gesture, but her goose bumps gave away her reaction. Her nipples were so erect they looked sore, in need of relief. “I apologize for mugging your mother. Can you apologize for bullying me? We can put all of this behind us. Start fresh. I’d like that.” Her voice was honest and soft, genuine.

But what Edie hadn’t realized was that the day I would stop giving her shit would be the day we’d be indifferent toward one another, because there was no way we could communicate inappropriately on any other level other than taunting. And hating. And despising one another.

Unfortunately for her, she was too much fun to loathe. I wasn’t ready to part ways with what we were, even if the relationship we were developing looked and smelled and felt like an incurable disease.

So, instead of being a grown-up and accepting her truth, I stopped her little lap dance by spinning and plastering her against my car. My hand was on her throat, which bobbed with a swallow, telling me that she was feeling the rush, the excitement of being at my mercy.

Fuck, Edie. You have no idea how merciless I could be.

I put as much weight on her as possible, enough for it to be intimidating, yet not painful. She could feel my erection, the ridges of my abs, my flexed pecs, and the way my sweat glued my shirt and skin together. I leaned into her mouth, knowing how much she wanted to be kissed, knowing I would never, ever give it to her.

“The only thing I’d ever apologize for is not getting to you sooner tonight. If I ever catch you spreading these legs for that tool, here or anywhere else, it’d be the end. Of you, of him, of everyone involved. As long as you hang out with my daughter—and that is what I expect you to do every Tuesday when she arrives at work with me—you’ll be celibate. You can grind yourself against the showerhead while you think about my cock inside of you, and you can play with your clit wishing it was my mouth, but no more fucking Bane, understood?”

She laughed and slid away from my touch and into the car, slamming her door in my face.

I walked around and resumed our drive, watching as she programmed her address into my navigator without answering me.

That was fine. I didn’t need her words. I needed her to understand.

Her jaw ticked, telling me that the message was received. Good.