Authors: Jasinda Wilder
“Alexei was assigned to interact directly with us specifically because he can actually behave himself. But he’s still not a man I’d like to meet in a dark alley.”
By this time, the propellers were still and the door was opening, disgorging an exuberant Layla. “Did you see that? Holy shit! I landed a plane, bitches!”
Harris was next, a faint, amused smile on his face. “A plane which needs to be tied off so it doesn’t float away, Miss Campari.”
“Yes sir, right away sir!” Layla barked, with a sharp, dramatic salute. “And why is it whenever we get around other people you call me ‘Miss Campari’, but in private you’ll call me by my first name? I don’t get it.”
Harris’s face immediately wiped itself of expression. “I’ll get the bags.” And then he was back in the fuselage, out of sight.
Layla finished tying the rope around the dock pylon with a knot Harris had obviously shown her, and then straightened and stared after Harris. “Touchy little shit, ain’t he?”
“Wait, that wasn’t your first landing, was it, Layla?” came a familiar voice.
A voice I hadn’t heard in far, far too long.
“Cal?” My voice cracked.
“Yes, it was my first landing,
Calvin
,” Layla asked, her voice a little too formal. “Why do you ask?”
He emerged from the plane, all six foot three of him, blond hair cut short and spiked stiff, mirrored aviator shades on his face, tank top revealing muscled arms, bright pink floral print board shorts. God, my little brother had grown up.
Cal took one glance at Layla, and thought better of whatever he’d been about to say. “Just…that it was great. Great job. Glad those lessons are paying off. Awesome.”
She smirked at him. “Lessons? Oh, I haven’t taken any real lessons. Harris has been teaching me.”
“So…you don’t actually have a pilot’s license?” Cal asked, looking a little green.
“Pilot’s license?” Layla laughed. “Buddy, I barely got my
driver’s
license.”
Harris emerged with a suitcase in each hand. “Don’t worry, Mr. St. Claire. I was in control at all times. Miss Campari is a natural pilot, and very careful. I wouldn’t have allowed her to touch the controls of my aircraft if I didn’t have confidence in her. She just likes to tease you, it would seem.”
“Yeah, well, Layla’s been teasing me since I was fifteen. You’d think I’d be used to it by now.” He turned back to me, and his expression brightened. He rushed over to me, wrapped me up in a bear hug, lifting me clear off the dock. “Jesus, Kyrie. It’s so good to see you. I’ve missed you. I thought maybe you’d fallen off the face of the earth for good, this time.”
“I have, for all intents and purposes.” I slapped his shoulder. “Now put me down, you ogre.”
He set me down, but kept a grip on my shoulders. “You owe me a shitload of explanations.”
I swallowed hard. “I know.”
“I mean, I haven’t seen you in, what, two years? You used to call me once in a while, at least, but then even that stopped. I mean, I get that you’re busy and whatever, and that I’m just your little brother, but—”
“
Cal
,” I snapped. “I said I
know
.”
He eyed me, and I saw that under the smiles and the hugs, he was pissed at me. I really did owe him a lot of explanations. “Sorry. I just—I woke up this morning and Layla was in my room, rifling through my magazines. It’s been a weird day, needless to say.”
“Your
porn
, you mean?” Layla said, with heavy emphasis on the “porn”. She raised an eyebrow at him. “I mean, for real. Who actually buys
Juggs
anymore? And where do you even
get
that shit?” A glance at me. “You know your brother has, like, hundreds of porno mags? Not just
Juggs
, but pretty much every other porno mag there is. Hundreds of them. I’m not kidding.”
I shook my head. “Jesus, Layla. I did
not
need to know that about my brother.”
Cal scratched his forehead with his middle finger. “It’s a collection, and it’s not all mine. My roommate and I have both been collecting for years.”
“Wow, so you both collect nudie mags?” Layla mimed male masturbation. “Do you whack off together too?”
“JESUS, LAYLA!” Cal and I shouted, simultaneously.
She shrugged and endeavored to look innocent. “It’s an honest question.”
I turned to him. “For real, though. Why do you collect porn?”
He pushed past me. “I’m not having this conversation with you, either of you. It’s not happening.” He paused as he passed Valentine. “Mr. Roth. Nice to meet you. I’m Cal.”
“Nice to meet you, Cal. Just call me Roth.” He shook Cal’s hand. “Welcome. Your room is the second on the right after you pass through the kitchen. Make yourself at home; grab a beer from the fridge on your way. I know you have a lot of questions, and I promise you we’ll answer as many as we can without risking your safety. In the meantime, why don’t you collect your bags from Harris? He’s not a butler, so he won’t be carrying your bags for you.”
Cal stalked back to Harris, grabbed his suitcases. “Thanks for the flight, Harris.”
“It was my pleasure, Mr. St. Claire. Although, in the interest of full disclosure, most of that was Layla.”
“Even the jet?”
Harris nodded. “I did the takeoff and landing, but Layla did the level flying.”
“Well…damn. I never noticed.” He glanced at Layla. “You didn’t kill us, so nice flying, I guess.”
She shoved his shoulder. “Go get a beer and decompress, jackass. You wouldn’t be here if we didn’t love you.”
“I know. Like I said, it’s just been a weird day.”
Layla laughed. “Dude, you have no fucking clue what a weird day even is. Wake up on a boat in the South China Sea and go to bed in the Indian Ocean, and then we can talk.”
He just shook his head and made his way up to the house. I heard a distant “holy
shit
” as he made his way through the kitchen and saw the courtyard beyond.
“You shouldn’t push his buttons, Layla,” I said.
She just eyed me. “Have you
met
me? That’s what I do. Buttons are meant to be pushed, and it’s so easy, with him. Seriously, though, Kyrie. You should have seen all the porn. It was a truly awe-inspiring collection, I will say that much.”
“
Juggs
? For real?” I asked.
“
Juggs
. For real. And
Penthouse, Hustler, Playboy…
if it had naked women in it, he had every single extant copy of it.”
I shook my head. “I don’t know, Layla. He’s a guy. Guys do weird things.”
Layla turned to Harris. “Do you collect porn?”
He just stared at her from behind his sunglasses. “The only thing I’ve ever collected is scars, Miss Campari. And the memories that go with them.”
“Well shit, Harris,” Layla said, “way to just take the fun right out of the conversation. Also, that was the most badass comeback I’ve ever heard.”
“I aim to please, Miss Campari.”
She stared at him. “I swear to god, you call me that just because you know it irritates me.”
“Buttons are meant to be pushed,” Harris said.
“I feel like maybe you understand me on a spiritual level, Harry.”
“And I feel like maybe I heard a slight flutter in one of the engines, and if you fly prop planes, you should have a basic understanding of how to fix them.”
“I better not get any grease under my fingernails.”
“Haven’t you heard? Engine grease is the newest thing in beauty care.”
“Wait? Was that a joke?” Layla laughed. “You’d better be careful, Harry, or I might start thinking you’re a human after all.”
“As opposed to what, exactly?”
“Um. A Terminator?”
Harris actually laughed, a smile cracking his features. And even with the black Oakleys hiding his eyes, his features were transformed by the smile. “You haven’t met Thresh yet.
He’s
a real-life Terminator.”
And then, to my intense surprise, Harris helped Layla climb up onto the wing, showed her how to open the cowl over the engine, and pointed at various parts of the engine with a wrench, explaining while Layla watched and listened carefully, asking questions every now and then.
Layla, working on an airplane engine?
Would wonders never cease?
* * *
It was well past midnight. We had a bonfire going on the beach, lighting up a circle of sand and dimming some of the stars directly overhead. Beyond the firelight, however, the night was huge and dark, the moon new, a black circle visible only by its absence, stars scattered overhead in countless millions, a glittering, winking, twinkling, scintillating fall of silver light arcing from horizon to horizon and down to the edge of the sea.
I was drunk.
Valentine was drunk, and I was on his lap, wrapped up in his arms.
Harris was…well, not drunk, but loose. Telling stories, laughing at jokes, sunglasses gone, wearing black board shorts and a white short-sleeve button-down, unbuttoned to show a hard, lean, well-muscled torso with a scattering of dark hair. He had a beer in one hand and a long stick in the other with which he ceaselessly poked at the fire, stirring it, moving the logs around, turning them, prodding the coals.
Cal was on the sand beside Valentine and me, and he too was drunk, and god, he was hysterical. He was, honestly, the life of our little party, making us all laugh with stories of his and his friends’ ridiculous antics as wild college boys cut loose on unsuspecting Chicago. It struck me how little I knew about Cal, about the twenty-one-year-old man he was now. He’d been so young when Dad was killed, and I’d been responsible for him. I took care of him, made his lunches and got him to school and made sure he did his homework, made him dinner when he got home, made sure he had clean clothes. Gave him money when I had some to spare. Dropped him off at the mall with friends, sniffed his breath for pot and alcohol when he got home. But then he graduated at seventeen and got a scholarship to Columbia College, and I’d made sure to keep tabs on him. I’d paid for the tuition his scholarship didn’t cover, and we got together for Christmas and Thanksgiving, visited Mom together.
At least until everything with Valentine happened. And then I’d sort of, as Cal had insinuated, fallen off the face of the earth. Valentine had made sure both Cal and Mom were taken care of, financially, and I’d sent an email to Cal explaining that I’d started dating a guy who was “well off”, as I’d put it. Just to throw him off the scent, I guess. I mean, how do you explain a man like Valentine Roth to a nineteen-year-old kid? And, since then, I’d called Cal every once in a while.
Mom? Not so much. Mom didn’t talk on the phone. Didn’t send or receive letters or email. I’m not sure Mom ever even noticed that I’d stopped visiting. I still felt guilty, though. But…I couldn’t exactly visit her, for her own sake. If I showed up at her hospice, it would have given Vitaly a bullseye to aim for. Harris had people checking in on her, making sure no one bothered her. But that was about all I could do.
I tuned back in to the story Cal was telling that involved his roommate, a two-hundred-pound potbelly pig, and the last day of classes at Columbia last year.
“…And I swear to god, that pig was faster than a damn cheetah! You should have seen the security guard trying to catch it! Funniest thing I’ve ever fucking seen.”
Layla was—I wasn’t really sure
what
she was. She was drinking, but slowly, and I would guess that she’d nursed one drink all night. She was laughing at the stories, but there was something subdued about her. But the thing I noticed most was that she was watching Harris’s every move. Hanging onto his every word. It was weird. Beyond weird. She had very little to say, occasionally offering a comment or cracking a joke, but she was mostly quiet—which was entirely unlike her. At any party, any gathering of people where alcohol was involved, Layla was usually in the thick of it, driving the energy, and typically getting, as she puts it, naked-wasted.
I tried to keep up with Cal’s story, which had morphed from something about the pig prank to an adventure he and his roommate had experienced involving a misplaced bag of pot and an undercover narc. It sounded like the kind of story that was funny now, but wasn’t all that funny while it was happening.
Okay, maybe I was nodding off. I tuned into every fifth word, smiling lazily against Roth’s chest. Layla was sitting in the sand right beside Harris; both of them back in the shadows away from the fire. Just their faces were visible, turned toward each other. Harris was saying something I couldn’t hear, and Layla was nodding and smiling. And shit, that smile? It was…I had to search for a word. Intimate. Private.
My heart melted. God, if Layla and Harris ended up together, things would be just about perfect.
But then something truly odd happened. A patch of shadows near the waterline detached itself from the shifting glint of the ocean and the gleam of starlight and the darkness of night, resolved itself into the shape of a man. Alexei. Tall and broad, hard and lean, a wicked, gnarled scar running down his face from forehead to his chin. He was dressed in shades of gray and black: BDU pants tucked into calf-high combat boots, a short-sleeve gray shirt with a black bulletproof vest, a gray ball cap on his head decorated with a black patch that had “A1S” embroidered in scarlet letters. He had a compact assault rifle hanging barrel-down across his chest, the strap clipped to his vest rather than hanging over his shoulder. He had a pistol at his side, a knife handle in a sheath on his vest, and several other accouterments on his belt I couldn’t identify.