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Sadly, it wouldn’t always be that way, but on that pier, in the sunshine, none of us had any way of knowing the horror that lay ahead, its gaping maw ready to scoop us up when we least expected.
‘We’ll have to watch out for him,’ I teased, tilting my head towards Dornan’s youngest son, Jason, as he rode the Ferris wheel with John’s daughter, Juliette.
Beside me, leaning against the railing that flanked the pier, the man I was secretly in love with shook his head. ‘Don’t even,’ he murmured, rubbing his stubbled chin with his palm.
I started to laugh, until I saw John wasn’t laughing. Or smiling at all. I gestured to the two teenagers as they rode in a carriage high atop the Santa Monica coastline. ‘They’re kids. You can’t seriously be worried about him.’
John’s eyes cut through me, making me wonder if I should be worried.
‘John,’ I tried again, ‘he’s a kid. He’s sixteen years old.’
John’s knuckles turned white as he gripped the railing feverishly. ‘He’s not a kid. He’s Dornan’s kid.’
I rolled my eyes. ‘He didn’t even know Dornan until a few months ago.’
‘Yeah, but he’s still Dornan’s blood. Still Emilio’s blood.’
I shrugged. ‘She’s not that much younger than I was when Emilio came for my family.’ And left with me as a consolation prize.
John appeared pained. ‘Jesus Christ, Ana,’ he said, his words like bullets, forceful and cold, metallic. This was oureternal impasse, our universal hesitation. We were in love. We wanted to run away, to flee Los Angeles and the eventual death it promised us.
But he wouldn’t leave with Dornan’s son, Jason.
I wouldn’t leave without him.
And so we were stuck.
‘Will you miss him?’ John asked me.
My heart squeezed painfully. ‘I’m not leaving Jason, John.’
He shook his head, his eyes glued to his daughter as she laughed and pointed out things to her crush. ‘Not Jason. Dornan.’
Oh.
Dornan Ross, the man who’d been my lover for almost ten years, since the day he collected me from a dirty motel in San Diego and claimed me as his own. From the instant he’d stopped his drug kingpin father from selling me as a sex slave to cover my father’s impossible debt.
John Portland had been Dornan’s best friend for longer than I’d known either of them – twenty years or more, I’d guess. I knew they’d met as teenagers, formed a fast friendship, a friendship that soon became a brotherhood of bikers called the Gypsy Brothers, a club that John had presided over since its inception.
I smoothed down my tank top, painfully aware that we were out in the open, an afternoon ice-cream date with his daughter and the stray I’d taken in. Dornan’s son Jason, the one he’d been unaware of for sixteen years, emerged from the fairground ride with Juliette, stepping back onto the pier, two teenagers in love, even if they didn’t know it yet. It was a rare day for any of us to be out, but the weather was so beautiful,John had collected us all in his beat-up car and brought us out into the sunshine for some fudge sundaes and a chance to dip our toes in the cold water.
It wasn’t a typical outing, to say the least. On a day like today, I’d normally be working for my boss, Emilio, cooking his books and making sure his hefty cartel profits were funnelled into all the right places. Or, if I got a day off – rare for a Saturday – I’d inevitably be on my back, or my knees, or my stomach, with Dornan. But today was Emilio’s birthday, and he insisted on a great big family celebration – one that none of us were invited to. I was surprised Dornan hadn’t insisted on taking Jason to the family event, but I think he worried about how unstable Jason might be in a large gathering of the people who’d inadvertently caused his mother to die.
Yes, I was sleeping with two men. I was in love with one of them, and I was terrified of the other. When I first arrived in California ten years ago I’d loved Dornan, but now I loathed him. I was ready to leave him, or kill him, or both. Anything to get away.
But the world kept spinning, and the cartel kept trading, and I kept my feet on the ground, too scared to make a run for freedom lest a bullet find its way between my shoulder blades.
‘Can we go feel the water?’ Juliette asked her father.
‘Sure,’ John shrugged, his face lighting up for his daughter like she was the sun. And she was, to him. That made me fall for him even more than I already had, to see the love he had for his daughter. Without thinking, I reached out and placed my hand on Jason’s shoulder. He was only sixteen, but already well taller than me, and the picture of his father – all olive skin and deep brown eyes, a product of their Italian heritage.
Jase flinched when I touched him; I pulled my hand away and smiled instead. I didn’t want to apologise and bring attention to how jumpy he was, so I left it. Juliette grabbed his hand – the contrast between them night and day, what with her bamboo green eyes and straw blonde hair – and pulled him towards the beach. He didn’t flinch when she touched him, and that’s how I knew it was already love in bloom.
I realised I’d been daydreaming and turned my attention back to John. He was just as stunning as the day I’d met him, but age had weathered him in a way that only made him more attractive to me. He was barely forty, but the lines around his eyes told a story of far more trauma than a man his age should have seen.
I loved his hands. Rough palms from the mechanical work he did, but smooth on top. Rough fingers that spread me open and worshipped me, not missing an inch of my flesh; smooth on top, for those times when he’d brush a knuckle along my cheek or put my hand on his as I travelled on the back of his motorcycle.
Dornan’s hands didn’t have an ounce of smoothness; they were rough and big and good for holding over my mouth while he fucked me until I screamed. I won’t pretend that I didn’t like it. I lived for his brutal touch. I was addicted to it.
