I grin and nod.
On the outside, I maintain my composure. On the inside, I’m freaking the fuck out. I’ve been trying for weeks to get Willa to fucking agree to this and all it took was a game of cards and some goddamn bantering about fucking her to get the job done. Had I known it would have been so easy, I would have done this the day I got the damn email.
I watch as Willa pushes her chair back and gets to her feet, rubbing her eyes tiredly. Glancing at the time on my phone, I suck my teeth before I turn my attention back to her. I didn’t realize it was already half past midnight, but I guess the saying is true—time flies when you’re having fun. Or scheming schemes; however it goes.
“Are you going to tell Dexter?” she asks, before covering her yawn with a closed fist.
I glare at her. “Why the fuck would I tell him about this?”
“Cause he wants your dick,” she replies with a smirk. I clench my jaw almost instantly—I’m sick and tired of her pointing that out to me. A lot of people want my dick, but I’m not into guys and I’ve told him that a thousand times already.
“Just you and me on this one, kid,” I say through gritted teeth. “And if you tell him about this, then one of us won’t be making it back.”
Willa shakes her head and rolls her eyes. She always thinks my threats are idle and never takes me seriously.
The problem with that is that I’ve felt an urge building inside of me as of late and she’s been in the crosshairs of that feeling without even knowing it.
Great thoughts to rub one out to, if I do say so myself.
“I’ll be back tomorrow night. Get some sleep because I’m not doing all of this goddamn driving alone.”
Willa pats my head on the way past me and I cringe. She’s going to learn one day soon that of the two of us, I’m the one in charge.
No matter how high up in the air she likes to stick her fucking nose around me.
Bitch.
Two
Nocturnal Animals
Willa
Aftyn is such a pain in the ass. He thinks he’s the most amazing thing to grace the face of the Earth, but I always manage to hold my own against him.
Arrogant would be a good way to describe him, though I’m sure that’s something he inherited more than learned. His momma never gave two shits about him—she always kept harping on him that he looked like ‘that no good son of a bitch that left me as quickly as he found me.’
Aftyn likes to pretend that it doesn’t bother him, but I’m not entirely sure that’s true. Especially since he’s threatened, begged, and then threatened me again to drive him to Arizona.
I yawn again, using the back of my hand to rub the tired feeling from my eyes.
I don’t get why he can’t give Dexter a damn chance either.
I know the thought irritates him to no end, but considering he’s always trying to play grab ass with someone who doesn’t want him—namely me—you’d think he throw a bone at someone that does.
In every sense of the word.
Of course, from what I understand, those Meyer men always want what they can’t have and they don’t give in so easily to the ones that worship the ground they walk on.
I wonder if his father is a dick too.
I roll my eyes at the thought as I stop at the red light. He has to be if his son is, cause he sure as fuck didn’t get it from his momma.
He probably looks like a lot like him, I tell myself as the light finally turns green.
Aftyn is a tall guy—about six foot. Has messy, jet black hair, a pair of narrow, mischievous blue eyes that I swear hide the devil in them sometimes, and when he grins, it takes up half of his face.
I never do recall seeing his momma smile much. Not around him, anyway, but I do know he doesn’t look a goddamn thing like her.
Or didn’t, I correct myself with a chuckle. It’s easy to forget sometimes that she died a few years ago only because we don’t talk about it.
He didn’t cry, if anything I don’t think I’ve ever seen him happier than he was that day. Whatever was left inside of him that could be identified as moral shattered into teeny, tiny pieces and I picked them up as best as I could.
Lucky for him, when my granddaddy died, he left everything he ever owned to me since he wasn’t on speaking terms with my father when he got sick. I used a lot of that to set up Aftyn comfortably in a fancy loft apartment over in Tribeca.
Sometimes, when the celebrities blow into town for that damn film festival, we’ll sit in one of the windows of his place that looks down over the main road below and watch them mill around.
I grunt as I pull my SUV into the spot outside of my home. It’s going to be over two thousand fucking miles just to get to the Arizona state line itself, and God knows how much further once we reach that.
Cracking my neck, I remove the keys from the ignition and grab my purse from the passenger seat. Once I’ve stepped out of my new ride, I press the alarm button and begin to search inside my purse as I head up my walkway.
Where the fuck are my house keys?
“You were gone for a long time.”
I startle and swallow down a scream. I let out a relieved, yet annoyed, sigh when Dexter makes his way over from around the side of my house and slips his hands into his pockets.
In a way, I feel bad for the little fucker.
He’s not short by any means, maybe an inch or two shorter than Aftyn, but he’s so damn gaunt looking these days that I wonder if he ever has enough to eat. Considering he lives in the same goddamn neighborhood that I do—a few doors down, no less—I would assume so.
Though something tells me that in order to keep up appearances for the Stepfords, as I call them, he cuts out necessities.
Like food.
“Come inside,” I tell him tiredly after I finally retrieve the keys and slip them into the lock.
He scuffs his foot against the lawn, eyes on the ground, then nods when I reach over and give him a gentle tug.
Dexter is a really good-looking guy in his own ‘needs saving from shit he doesn’t know is bad for him’ kind of a way. He’s got hickory-brown hair that he always does his best to keep nice and neat. Sometimes I’m worried he’s going to comb it all off, but I assume that he thinks if he looks presentable enough, maybe Aftyn will notice him the way he wants. His eyes are the color of rusty pennies, but it’s my favorite thing about him. I’ve never seen eyes like his before and sometimes I lose myself staring into them.
It makes us both blush because I shouldn’t be so damn easily captivated by a feature, but it’s hard not to be.
“Were you… um,” his voice trails off nervously as he walks in behind me and closes the door.
I smile at him over my shoulder. “Yeah. We were just playing cards though, honey.”
His cheeks redden slightly, and he shrugs. “Oh, I don’t really care. I just know that when you’re gone for a long time, you’re usually with him.”
“Well, don’t worry about it, Dex,” I tell him, giving his arm a gentle squeeze. “That fucker has nothing I want so there’s no competition from me, okay?”
He clears his throat and nods before he finally lifts his eyes from the floor and glances toward the kitchen.