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CHAPTER FIFTY
*Lace*
Istay perfectly still, waiting until Vee is completely comatose before slowly wiggling my way out from under him. Mind racing a mile a minute, I swipe my cell phone off the bedside table, flick on the flashlight, and start scanning everywhere in the room where he stepped and touched. Sure enough, the trail of blood is everywhere. Boot marks, fingerprints, smudges from his clothes on the bed.
I rush to the en suite bathroom and do a very quick personal cleanup before tiptoeing out of the bedroom. Whoever was guarding the door earlier is no longer there. The web of light coming from under the regular bathroom door lets me know he is taking a quick break. I quickly pad to the kitchen and rummage through everything, collecting all the necessary cleaning supplies. Then, I sneak out the front door, jog down to the lot, and circle around to where they all park their bikes.
I unravel the closest hose and shove the end into the cleaning bucket, studying what few bikes remain while it fills. Chaz, Kio… and Vee. The other five bikes are gone. My mind cycles through how I feel about that — unpacks how severely my heart will shatter upon finding out which HFL man Vee “tried to save.”
But it doesn’t matter which reel plays in my thoughts — which man — the pit sinking in my stomach weighs me down regardless. Of course, Baylor is the most likely, since they were paired together tonight. Deducing that certainly doesn’t assuage my worries at all, though. If anything, it makes me feel even more nauseous.
Bucket full, I pour a generous amount of the special homemade cleaner the guys always keep on hand in the condo, dunk in the rag, and swirl the concoction together, dragging the bucket closer to the Ape. His bike is pitch black. All of them are. But just because the blood is seemingly invisible against the swarthy paint, doesn’t make it any less there; especially with how thoroughly covered Vee is.
Step by step, I clean his baby. Piece by piece. Nook by nook. With the utmost care and precision. When done, I empty the murky water into the nearest storm drain. Then, I do it all over again. And again. Until my muscles ache and the water runs completely clear. From there, I follow the path all the way to the front door, dumping the special mix on any bloody boot prints and scrubbing the concrete on all fours when needed.
Just as I reach the front door, a hand emerges from the shadows and curls around the knob to open it for me. My weary focus lifts, seeking out the owner. Strikingly angled black eyes meet mine. Kio pushes the door wide, steps out of the way, and gestures me inside.
Neither of us say anything while I scrub the bucket clean and rinse the rag a dozen or more times, arms shaking. He leans against the counter beside me, watching. Thinking. The silence sets me on edge more than his thoughtful watchfulness. Even if Kio is the most silent of the bunch and I should be accustomed to it by now.
“How much did you see?” I whisper, blowing a strand of hair out of my face.
“All of it.”
“How much did you hear?” I ask, voice even lower, wondering if Vee and I got too loud in the heat of passion.
“Enough.” Kio nibbles on the inside of his bottom lip. I can sense he is worried Vee might have hurt me, and he wants to ask, but either his pride or empathy stops him. I blend yet another fresh bucket of cleaning mix, snatch the thoroughly rinsed rag, walk past him, and begin taking care of the boot prints and marks everywhere inside, too. Like hell if I know if it does any good, but I do it anyway, and I do it damn well.
When I get to the bed where Vee is passed out cold, the rag bunches in my tightened fist. Cleaning and moving the beast of a man seems like it will be an impossible feat. I rush to the en suite bathroom, toss the dirty rag into the sink, grab a new one, dampen it, then ease down next to Vee. Slowly and with a feather-light touch, I pick up one hand at a time and clean each finger and thumb, the backs, and the palms, only stopping to rinse the rag before coming back to do his face and neck. Then, I carefully remove his boots, socks, and jeans.
When all the clothes he was wearing aside from his boxer briefs are in a pile on the bed, the light pad of footsteps approaches, and warm breath feathers over my hair.
“I want him to be able to wake up to the illusion of whatever happened having not happened at all,” I breathe out, the words catching in my throat. Kio turns me around, eyes scanning the blood on my face up close. He curls the sticky hair around my ear. “Whatever happened, it screwed with his mind, Kio. It fucked him up. A-and I know his response is an accumulation of other things he has done — that this is bigger than tonight. I get that. I… I’m not asking what happened. But he is hurting.” I clench my free hand over my chest.
Kio nods slowly. Then he steps around me toward the bed and starts popping off all the corners of the fitted sheet. My heart nearly explodes. I jog to the bathroom door, toss the dirty rag into the sink, then meet Kio at the bed. By the time I get there, he has everything bundled around Vee’s body, ready for the magic trick.
I reach over, curve my hands over Vee’s arm to his back. Eyes meeting with my partner in crime, we both give a sharp nod. Kio pulls on the sheets, and I roll Vee to his belly. Vee snorts and mumbles something, and my heart rate ratchets wildly, hands darting away from his body. But he simply adjusts and is out cold again.
Kio hugs the large, mixed bundle of clothes and bedding and walks out of the bedroom. I follow, making sure to rush forward and pass him in order to open the laundry closet and get the machine ready as quickly as possible.
As soon as the wash is going, I grab some light pajamas, stuff them into my stocked, mesh shower caddy, give Kio a smile of thanks, and head out toward the gulf. I could take a shower in the bathroom, but I ache for a bit of… me. My normal. Sand and salt water.
Halfway across the desolate street, a strong hand slips into mine. Kio joins me on my trek to the star-studded beach. After depositing my caddy at the sea oat boundary, we work off our shoes and socks. I untie my sneakers and slip out of them. Kio unstraps the velcro on his motorcycle boots and tugs them off.
He steps forward, the tips of his bare feet meeting the tips of mine. Our eyes lock; his are as dark as the sky and just as fierce as usual, yet soft all the same. His fingers come to the hem of my shirt, and he slowly takes it off, tossing it toward the patch of sea oats. While I wiggle out of my bottoms, he reaches behind his black hair, grips the yoke of his shirt, and pulls it over his head in one smooth move. He then takes my hand, walks me to the shore, and eases me down where the water licks the sand.
“Be right back,” he says before dashing up the sandy shore, scooping up our bundle of clothes, and disappearing toward the road. Probably to add the soiled items to the wash before the cycle gets too far along.
When he returns, he goes straight into the water about calf deep. The amazing falcon tattoo across his upper back and shoulders is visible in all its glory under the moonlight. A majestic sight I see very, very rarely.
He plucks out the hair tie that was keeping his long hair in a neat bun at his neck, stuffs it into my mesh caddy hanging from his forearm, and waves at me over his shoulder, encouraging me to follow. Admittedly, this will be the first time a partner has ever joined my nightly beach excursion. These briny cleansings are usually so much more than just bathing to me.
I hop up and splash into the cool water, thankful the cold front nipping at my skin hasn’t been around long enough yet to make the water too chilly. The temperature is just right. Kio sticks close to the shore, unscripted. The two of us plop down where, when sitting, the water comes up to about our belly buttons. He still has his boxers on, but I am completely nude. Nevertheless, he wedges my caddy between his legs and begins to methodically scoop palmfuls of water and pour them over my hair.
My gaze slips toward him, and his slips toward mine. I close my eyes and tilt my head back, inhaling deeply and exhaling nice and slow while he cups the back of my head and lays me down until all my hair is floating in the agitating water. Continuing to keep my eyes closed, I relish the feel of his fingers working shampoo into my hair and the trickle of salty water and suds running down my neck and shoulders while he quietly bathes me.
After guiding me upright, he grabs a rag out of the caddy, dips it into the gulf, and carefully wipes the blood smudges off my face. His eyes trace a line from my chin and down the front of my body, pausing wherever he likes, without shame. He dips the rag, twists it, then wets it again. This time his hand moves down to my hip under the lap of water, and he scrubs away the bloody fingernail marks he must have noticed when we were on the shore. Once I am sufficiently clean and everything is packed in the caddy, he hustles to place the mesh bag on the shore, lest it float away, then returns to me.
We sit in comfortable silence for quite a while. Occasionally, he looks at me, the number of questions in his eyes matching the number of stars in the sky. But he never asks a single one.
Instead, Kio lifts a lithe finger and traces the seam of my stockings tattoo along the outside of my thigh and under the water down to my foot. “I have always really liked your tattoos. Sometimes, you get so used to seeing the same design and it loses grandeur after a while. Not with yours, though,” he shares, finger stopping on my shin and tapping lightly.
“Thank you.” I give him a small smile.
“Why the beach tonight, when you have a full en suite bathroom up in the condo?” He asks one of his millions of questions after all.
I have the answer to this one memorized. “The showers at Tit for Tat gross me out, but sometimes, I just really want to clean off before calling it a night. Tried the beach once years ago; been doing it ever since. Salt water has a lot of benefits, you know.”
The rumble of a very loud, very unmistakable motorcycle breaks through even the waves. Without thought, our immediate reaction is to launch up and head back to the condo. Kio jogs ahead, picks up a large, fluffy bundle, and holds it out to me. When he went to add our dirty clothes to the laundry, he grabbed the bath robe. The clean clothes I had stuffed in my caddy were mistakenly assumed to be dirty as well. We wrap up, me in the robe and him in a regular towel, grab all our belongings, then sprint toward the condo at a break-neck pace.
Whoever arrived is still parking around back when Kio and I enter the front. He shoos me into the bathroom. The front door creaks, and all the tension that had disappeared into the gulf finds its way right back to us. He runs a light finger over my cheek and around my jaw, squeezes my shoulder, then walks out of the bathroom.
