Only from his hips up, but something about the V and the veins all pulling your eyes further down had me hypnotized. Drunk or not.
I never thought of Vic as hot. He was clearly my boss and only my boss. He had OCD, woke up before the sun, and was cutthroat beyond belief. Nothing about him had me fanning myself.
Grimm was a whole different animal.
I got ready, dolled up, and cute; seeing an ex was something that required your best foot forward. LA’s standards of beauty made that seem like a red carpet not just your average polish. Ex-boyfriends needed to know how much they made a mistake messing up in the first place.
My chunky striped sweater was tucked into the front of my skinny jeans with some booties as my go-to. I was feeling myself more today with my tousled curls perfectly cascading. I needed this to feel a kind of strength that would keep me from leaning into his smell, those clear blue eyes, and toned muscles that I adored on him.
Oscar was a traditional beauty with his sharp jaw, short blonde hair, and a look right off a billboard for Armani Exchange. He was exactly what you pictured when you thought of LA—a Richie-Rich type, with a name after an award.
Seriously.
He sent me a pin location that popped up in my maps when I clicked it as I sat behind the wheel of my Mercedes. Company car. Secretaries were paid well at the Clave, but not so well that we could afford the same benefits of life as the four men we worked for.
The pin was to the Venice Boardwalk, as if I needed direction. We had a spot tucked away between a pottery house and a head shop that served fish tacos, called Frank’s.
Oscar was manipulative at best.
He knew Frank’s was a soft spot and held good memories, so why not use that to his advantage.
I would have preferred that Grimm and Oscar trade bodies, then you would have the appropriate warning before a guy like him broke your heart. Instead Oscar looked like a wholesome guy with a decent head on his shoulders. Don’t get me wrong, he could be manipulative, savage, unfaithful, no morals, and a decent liar too.
Forgiving him was always my problem.
There was something about a man with horrible attributes that made you feel the right kind of special to fix them.
Damn hero complex.
Being the reason someone changes means you didn’t love them for who they were in the first place. Thank god you can throw a rock and hit as many therapists as aspiring actors.
Pulling into a free spot along the curb, I couldn’t help but picture Grimm half naked in my mind again—all wet, glistening, with his tattoos screaming. He was the opposite of my type, yet he excited me the most.
There was something about him that dug into me and kept my focus hostage.
Oscar wasn’t even there yet, and this was his idea. Let’s add selfishness and disregarding of other people’s time to his growing list of negative qualities.
Nothing I didn’t know already.
I snagged a table and ordered another screwdriver while I waited. I had time to search Instagram for Grimm.
Did it make me a bad person to be waiting on one guy and searching for another? Probably by some Bible thumper means, but this was LA. Standards and rules were different here.
Oscar strutted in, shooting smiles at the people staring and trying to place him in their heads.
Yes, he was that guy from that TV show that was blowing up and on billboards all down the strip.
Sadly, I was used to this too. The stares, the flirting, the selfie requests, the famous dad questions, and the overlooking of the very average me sitting and waiting on the sidelines of his few moments of fame.
This was typical too.
Frank’s wasn’t super popular, big enough to go unseen, and him making it famous would kill any shot he had at fucking me ever again. He was well aware of this unspoken rule between us.
After a few girls fluffed his ego, he came towards me, with his arms out, expecting me to hug him, when he closed me against his chest anyways. “Forgive me yet, baby?”
Actively trying not to cringe into myself, I let him bear hug me from behind and whisper his not so sympathetic tone into my ear.
He moved around me, dropping to the stool across the bar-style tables and waiting for me to answer. After realizing I wasn’t going to, he said, “Come on, babe. You can’t stay mad at me forever. Come on, look at this pout.”
Oscar had the world’s most compelling pout I had ever seen. He perfected looking guilt-free and upstanding with one easy crinkle of the brows and his mouth turning down.
“Last time we were together, you invited me to a bar… then made out with someone else!”
That was what he wanted to be forgiven for… making out with someone else in a dark hallway of a club and being caught by me, while I looked for a bathroom.
He didn’t deserve to be forgiven at all.
“That was a mistake. I apologized.”
That was right. It was a mistake—one I had made by even letting him be my “boyfriend” in the first place.
Staring at him from across the table, I mentally fought myself whether or not he was worth even the effort of getting naked for. His body was perfect, but could I really ignore his vile attitude for a quickie?
My mind went back to Grimm. Now he was worth the effort. He was also my boss now, so that was beyond the boundaries of secretary duties.
I was staring right at Oscar, but for some reason I just couldn’t swallow down the bullshit he was force-feeding me. He wanted to be absolved for something he wasn’t sorry for, and it made me not sorry for neglecting to forgive him.
Realizing how much I wasn’t even interested in using his body as a sex toy, I stood up from the stool with a disappointed look attached to my face. “You know what? I gotta go. I can’t do this with you.”
“Okay, then go.” His voice was icy now.
Guess I did enough to piss him off to let me leave without forgiving him.
If my life was going to be completely turned upside down, then I was going to purge myself of everything I didn’t need to save from the fire.
GRIMM
Everything is bullshit.
Wanting Abigail when I didn’t know her.
Jessica being told to stay in my room.
Having a secret meeting at midnight when we were already forced to spend three days at the estate.
The hidden hallway wedged behind the bookcase leading into the secret study only triggered by removing Dante’s Inferno was the only way in. Everything the Clave did was soaked in alternative meanings and metaphors, like Dante’s Inferno being the Hell we fear.
Did they hear Shakespeare? Hell is empty because all the devils are here.
Guess not.
The Clave was deaf to anything they didn’t want to hear. All they wanted to know is that we were focused, doing our jobs, and running the LA office the way they wanted. They wanted us to live and breathe the title of being the four horsemen of the anti-apocalypse.
Easier said than done.
We were death, famine, war, and chaos.
We were also humans with human needs, wants, and desires, but we were expected to handle those, to push them to the back.
We all had our own vices keeping us going enough to focus until we turned thirty-five and had more say.
Disposable girlfriends.
Alcoholism.
Adrenaline.
Pills.
Forcing someone in a box only big enough for them to breathe stale air means they grasp at anything else to help fill the void where oxygen should be. It’s shocking how long someone can last right on the edge of living and dying. That was us, on the edge, and sometimes we tipped closer to one or the other.