The Dark Light of Day (The Dark Light of Day 1)

“What if you don’t like what you see?”

“I don’t know how to explain this to you to make you understand. You’re beautiful, baby. Inside and out. I know this without having to see you with your clothes off.”

“You’re beautiful.” God, I said such dumb shit around him sometimes.

“Not on the inside I’m not.” His eyes grew serious. “I’m not stupid. I know it’s a dark place in there. ”

“Walking with a friend in the dark is better than walking alone in the light.” I said.

“What’s that from?” Jake asked.

“Hellen Keller. It makes me think of us.”

He smiled. “Yeah, I like it. It works.” He held me tighter. “You’re under my skin, Bee. I really don’t care what’s under your clothes.” Jake thought for a moment. “Scratch that. I’d be pretty pissed if it turns out you have a dick.”

I burst out laughing.

“No, no dick,” I assured him. He sure knew how to break the tension of a serious conversation.

“So to clarify, you do, in fact, have a vagina?

“Yes, I do.”

“And you do not have a dick?” He was trying not to laugh as he asked.

“Yes, this is the case.”

“You sure? Not even a little dick?”

“Nope. Just standard issue female parts, as far as I know anyway.”

“Then baby, I really don’t see what the problem is here.” He grabbed me by the waist and stood. Picking me up in one quick motion, he lifted me above his shoulders and swung me around in the air. He let me slide back down against his body. When our mouths lined up, he held me in place and pulled me to him for another kiss. With one hand on the back of my head, he opened his mouth to me, deepening it. His tongue danced on mine. I moaned into his mouth as he pulled away and placed me on my feet. “You are going to be the death of me,” he said.

I could have lost myself in those blue eyes. I was pretty sure I already had.

I picked up my camera bag, and we turned toward the parking lot hand-in-hand as a group of people approached us. There were about twelve of them, some familiar. Owen was among them. He led the group with his arm around a small brunette girl wearing itty-bitty white jean shorts and a red bikini top that did nothing to cover her huge breasts. Big Willie Ray was at his side, dragging a cooler on wheels through the sand. Several girls—including Alissa—hung to the back of the crowd.

I tensed when they spotted us.

Alissa was the first to acknowledge us... or the first to acknowledge Jake, at least.

“Hey baby,” she said, eyeing our joined hands skeptically. “Where you been?”

She reached out to put her arms around him, but he stepped back and pulled me in front of him instead. He wrapped both arms around my waist. Alissa looked at him with her jaw open and her eyes wide.

“Home, mostly we’ve just been hanging out at home. Right, baby?” he asked me.

I didn’t get a chance to answer before Alissa interrupted. “She lives with you?”

“Technically, we live together,” he clarified. She looked like she was going to be sick.

Owen left the brunette and strode toward us, stumbling in the loose sand, a beer in his left hand. He had a soft cast on his right hand and wrist. I was glad to see I’d done some lasting damage. Alissa backed away when Owen approached. “You get tired of fucking all the other whores in this town, Dunn? You gotta make a move on my sloppy seconds?” Owen was either looking for a fight or just very, very stupid. I was thinking it was a bit of both.

Jakes clenched his fists. He was ready to fight back, but I’d been fighting my own battles my entire life.

“Nice cast, Owen. Seems like you might be the one who needs a whore now, seeing as how your right hand appears to be out of commission for a while. How’d you hurt yourself, anyway?” I asked.

“Shut up, you fucking freak. Why don’t you take that shirt off and show everyone what you’re hiding under those sleeves? ‘Cause I tell ya, I got a glimpse, and it ain’t fucking pretty under there.” He turned to Jake. “Good luck with that shit, brother. Hope you don’t mind losing your hard on. When she takes that ugly hoodie off, she’s even uglier underneath.”

My face flashed hot. I didn’t think Owen had seen me. When I’d woken up, all my clothes had been intact. He obviously had seen something. All the blood rushed from my face. Jake tightened like a bow being drawn back. His eyes darkened and he reached for the back of his jeans. Before he could make a very huge and very public mistake, I reached over and held my hand over his and the gun.

“Not worth it,” I whispered. I was trying to keep calm when all I really wanted was to set Jake loose on Owen.

Jake looked at me like I was crazy. “It’s worth it to me.”

I shook my head. “Too many people around. Too impulsive.” I was reasoning with him on a level I thought he would understand. What was I going to tell him, that it was wrong to take out his gun and pop Owen right there on the beach?

How do you reason with someone who kills people for a living? All I knew was that I was talking him down from a ledge I didn’t want him to be on.

Jake released the hold on his gun and closed his eyes for a few seconds. He was fighting for control. When he opened his eyes again, he looked down and smiled at me.

Control intact.

“Why are you smiling, motherfucker?” Owen taunted him. “You can’t be too happy about fucking a freak. If you haven’t tapped that yet, you should reconsider now. The shit she’s got going on under there is a cock-blocker, for sure.” Owen winked. “Somehow, it didn’t keep me from getting the job done though.”

Jake squared his shoulders and grabbed me by the waist. He walked me right through Owen’s group of friends. Just as we passed Owen, Jake pushed me to the side and landed a punch squarely across Owen’s jaw. He went down hard. His eyes were still open when he crashed on his back in the sand. Jake didn’t miss a beat. He just kept on walking, grabbing my hand and towing me away from the gawking crowd.

“So, that’s it?” Alissa ran to catch up to us, keeping pace alongside. “You’re just with her now?” She looked me up and down like she smelled something foul.

“Yes, Alissa. I’m with her now.” Jake stopped in his tracks and turned to flash her with a look of pure anger, strong and stern. Alissa looked scared, I could see her shaking. Her mouth was open like she was trying to speak but couldn’t. “You should know that if I find out you’re talking shit about Abby, I’m not above laying you out, too.”

I could still see Alissa in the same spot we’d left her, gawking at us with an open mouth as we rode away on Jake’s bike.

***

The second the door of the apartment closed, Jake turned to me. There was fire in his eyes. “You need to tell me what happened with Owen the night I picked you up by his house. I need to know because I’m about to blow his fucking head off as it is, and I don’t need my imagination making me trigger happy right now.”

I didn’t say anything.

“Did that motherfucker touch you?”

“You believe him? He was just trying to get a rise out of you.”

“Did he fucking touch you?”

“Don’t you trust me?”

“I’ve got trust issues like you wouldn’t believe, baby. But this is about more than what I believe or what I don’t. So, for both our sakes right now, just fucking tell me if that motherfucker touched you.”

“Yes,” I answered quietly. I sat on the floor next to the couch and rested my head on my knees. Jake paced in front of the TV.

“Did you want him to touch you?”

Did he know me at all by now?

“Why are you asking me this? Why do you care if he touched me? Let me remind you that when I first met you, you were being sucked off in a junkyard,” I spat. “By Alissa.”

“Just answer the goddamned question!” he yelled so loud the sliding glass door shook. I flinched as if his words had landed on my face.

“No,” I whispered. “I didn’t want him to.”

“I fucking knew it!” he roared, drawing the gun from the waistband of his jeans. He headed for the front door.

I threw myself in front of him, blocking his exit. “Do you want to know what happened, or not?”

He put his arms around my head on the door, and pressed his chest up against mine, caging me in. “I know all I need to know.”

“You can’t kill Owen,” I said sternly. “They’ll catch you and put you in jail.”

“Never been caught before.”

“There’s always a first time.”

“This is what I do, Bee.”

“Killing Owen isn’t like whatever it is you do at your...job.” I didn’t know what else to call it.

“No, you’re right. It isn’t. It’s more important. Because it’s about you.”

He still wasn’t getting it. “Listen asshole! I don’t want you to go because I don’t want to lose you!”

It was true. I wanted to care about what happened to Owen, but the honest truth was that as little time as we’d spent together, I’d already gotten used to life with Jake in it. I couldn’t afford to lose him. Not now. “Owen turns up dead on the very night that you knocked him out in front of a ton of people, and everyone will know it was you.”