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  North Shore - chapter 1

  Chapter One

  Charles

  “Only you would get dramatically fired from a cushy job on a cruise ship.”

  Mere’s low voice was music to my ears after months of intermittent cell phone access. Taking a job as an entertainment dancer on a cruise had sounded like a dream until literal cabin fever had set in.

  It had been one of many many reasons I’d finally had enough. Unfortunately, my version of “enough” had led to me being bounced off the boat after I’d quit dancing mid-performance during one of the evening cabaret shows. Then I’d threatened to throw the entertainment manager overboard if he kept trying to forcibly shove me back onto the stage.

  Apparently, threats were grounds for an insta-firing. Insta-firing with a side of “pay your own way home”.

  “Untrue,” I grunted, dragging my enormous steamer trunk from the back of my Uber. Over a hundred bucks to get to Staten Island from JFK, and the assface driver could not even be bothered to help me remove my belongings. “Plenty of people got fired during the six months I was on the cruise. It sucked, Mere. They were borderline abusive. I just couldn’t take it anymore.”

  “I’m sorry, babe. I was just trying to make…”

  The rest of her sentence faded to a warble as my phone slipped from where I’d tried to balance it between my shoulder and cheek. I watched, almost in slow motion, as it fell on a slant against the curb. And shattered.

  I inhaled sharply, closed my eyes, and tried not to roar my frustration so the entire block could hear. That was my thing—the thing that had started driving Landon crazy after we’d moved to this quiet street off Forest Avenue. I was so fucking loud that people could hear me out on the street even with our windows down. The people in the houses around us could hear me through the thin walls of each narrow house. It was one of Landon’s least favorite things about me. Never mind the fact that I was usually yelling because of his passive aggressive bullshit.

  My frustration turned to the kind of anger that also felt like regret.

  This was an omen.

  My whole trip home had been an omen. Everything from the fact that a storm had delayed the flight from the Bahamas, I’d been later bumped from that same flight due to overbooking, then I’d been saddled between a family of screaming kids once finally on a plane, proceeded to get a shitty Uber driver after landing, and now… this.

  The worst part was that I hadn’t called Landon yet, so he wasn’t expecting me. I’d called Caleb after being fired and sobbed into the phone as he calmed me down. Spoke to Ashton at the airport while losing myself in overpriced margaritas. Texted with Steph while waiting forever on a layover and asking her intrusive questions about Angel’s dick, but… no Landon.

  If I was honest with myself, I’d been afraid to tell him about how I’d hit a breaking point with my managers. He’d assume I was being dramatic, I’d get mad, and I didn’t need his disappointed coldness or annoyed shouting turning me into me a nervous wreck while I was traveling.

  “You done?”

  I ripped my gaze from my broken cell phone to the Uber driver giving me the side eye out his window.

  “Yo, if you would have fucking helped me, I wouldn’t have broken my phone.”

  The dude kept staring at me, chewing gum, and looking unimpressed. “Bro, I have a cast on. I can’t lift all that shit.”

  How had I missed that he was injured? I couldn’t even put blame on people properly. Snarling to myself, I dragged my duffel bag out of the bag, tossing it with the rest of my crap on the sidewalk, and waved him away. He peeled out like he was escaping a fire, which—maybe he was. I was the walking talking embodiment of a major disaster area.

  I grabbed my phone, shoved it in my backpack, and started the arduous task of dragging my belongings up the narrow stairs. It sucked. Everything about it sucked. It was one and a half flights, but narrow as hell, and the carpet made it weirdly slippery under my flip-flops. Also, the walk-up to our floor in the two-family-house was sweltering. It was May, but felt a lot more like the middle of August. The early spring heatwave that had driven half of my friend group into serious, or broadened, relationships had seemingly come back just to torment me.

  “Fuck life and suitcases and Carnival Cruise Line.”

  My breath was coming out in rough pants by the time I had half my bags lining the top few stairs, the other three still down on the sidewalk. I was so done with life that part of me did not care if I went outside to find them gone. If they wanted my assortment of costumes and hideous cruise uniforms, they were welcome to it. If I ever danced another manufactured piece of easily digestible crap again, it would be too soon.

  Sighing, I shook myself and prepared to face my boyfriend’s questions and potential wrath at me losing yet another job. There was music blasting from the inside of the apartment, which was good since Landon was home but annoying because I was not prepared for the shitty stereo system he’d insisted on putting in our bedroom. It was 90s era, and should have stayed there.

  After fumbling with my backpack to find the keys, I let myself in and was instantly hit by a ferocious blast of hot air. Oh my God, he had every window open and no AC on. Cheap bastard had gone full-on old man thrifster in my absence. I bet he still cooked in the dark over paranoia about the electricity bill. The one time he’d returned from a weekend trip to find me home with the AC blasting and lights on in, oh gosh, two rooms, he’d shouted for an hour. As if he was even the one who paid the bills on a regular basis…

  The memory made my stomach flip in the bad way. The bracing for it way. The way that made me stop and wonder why I’d come here instead of to Caleb’s place, like he’d suggested as soon as I’d called. I took a deep breath, closed my eyes, and then pasted on a smile.

  “Landon, I’m home,” I sang, making my voice go into the high falsetto the musical director had commanded. “Surprise!”

  There was no response, but I wasn’t shocked. Knowing him, he’d worked out in this blazing heat and was now blasting this trash electronic music as he showered.

  I dropped my backpack and walked through the dining room (which I’d converted into a dance space and was now a… random Landon gym storage space, apparently), through the large kitchen, and into our open bedroom. I’d expected to find it a disgusting mess after Landon being left to his own devices for six months, but instead I found a spectacle I could only stare at.

  Two people were pressed together. On my bed. On the AmeriSleep mattress I’d worked overtime at three jobs to pay for, just so I could have something that wouldn’t further exacerbate my insomnia and screwed up back.

  Landon was sitting up on his knees, only wearing underwear and a sleeveless shirt, as a ripped man with tattoos covering the dark golden stretch of his back pressed against him from behind. They were grinding against each other and kissing as they knelt together on the bed.

  It wasn’t real. It couldn’t be. Because, Landon? He looked like he was ready to get on his hands and knees and get fucked, but he didn’t bottom. He’d told me so even after I’d informed him I preferred to bottom, anyway. He’d made a federal case about it as if the very notion bothered him, and it was lucky that I was unlikely to try. He definitely never made these needy begging sounds while making out. He didn’t even kiss me very much. He was… never…

  “I can feel you through your jeans,” he panted between kisses. “I need that big dick in me.”

  Everything went still and quiet around me. Things started to move in slow motion—one of those big hands pressed against the back of Landon’s neck and shoved him facefirst down to the bed. I saw the tattooed man’s lips move but I couldn’t hear what he was saying. I couldn’t even hear the music. I couldn’t process anything except: I finally caugh
t you, you piece of shit. It echoed in the back of my mind in increasing volume.

  A savage breath tore out of me, and I whirled on Landon’s monstrous sound system. It looked like a stack of eighty car stereos with two ugly-ass speakers on either side, and oh wait. Now it was on the fucking floor.

  I put my foot through one speaker, then the other, and was so hellbent on trashing this radio that I didn’t register the voices behind me.

  “What the fuck is this drama?”

  “Jesus, Charles, what the hell are you doing here?”

  Snarling, I grabbed one of the speakers and spun around. The tattooed guy was hopping up and down in an attempt to fix his tight jeans, big dark eyes flicking between me and Landon in confusion. And Landon—he was still standing there in his underwear. And he looked mad. He. Looked. Mad.

  “I live here, you motherfucker!”

  Tattoos froze with his hands on his T-shirt, and cringed hard. He shot a dirty look at Landon, but I didn’t care that he’d apparently been tricked too. Because he hadn’t been tricked like I’d been tricked.

  “You’re not supposed to be back until next month,” Landon said, voice strained. “I had no idea you would be here tonight.”

  “What—” I blinked at him, not comprehending. “What?”

  “Charles.” Landon’s voice lowered. “Don’t make a scene. After Luis leaves—”

  “Fuck Luis.”

  My heart slammed into my chest, and I let that speaker fly. Landon ducked, falling sideways on the bed, before scrambling to his feet again. It didn’t matter that he was caught. That I finally knew what I’d suspected for almost two years—he was cheating on me. He’d been cheating on me. In our own bed. I’d suspected it for ages. Honestly, since the beginning. Too many gut feelings and unexplainable events that had built up to an undeniable but unspoken truth, and now… it was out in the open.

  And it didn’t matter, because he didn’t care. I was still, somehow, the dramatic one. The irrational one. It was my fault for not calling to give him a heads up. I’d ruined his fun. I was making a scene.

  Tears blurred my vision, and that made me angrier. A wave of heat swept through me until everything once again started to fade. Luis was a blur in my peripheral vision and so was the door leading to the kitchen. I could see nothing but Landon—my boyfriend. My live-in nightmare.

  “I fucking knew it,” I whispered. “All that time—you said I was being paranoid. You said I was making shit up and being paranoid. You made me feel like I was crazy.”

  “Because you are fucking crazy,” Landon exploded. “You expected me to wait around celibate for eight months? That’s not even reasonable, Charles. You are never reasonable. You go on your trips and your adventures, you work for twenty hours a day, you have all of these friends, and yet you’re shocked when you come back and find me elsewhere?”

  I shook my head, unable to process the barrage of accusations. Too much work. Too many friends. Too much… travel? What? He was the one who went away for random weekends with groups of suspicious looking white men.

  “So, all this time…”

  Landon’s cheek clenched. He shot a look at Luis, who was still a muscular blur to the right, before glaring at me again. “Like I said, Charles. You’ve never been reasonable. Or realistic. You just expect and want and never think, do you? It’s about what you want and never about anyone else’s needs.”

  I’d heard these words before from him. But I’d never truly thought he’d also been talking about his ability to remain faithful. All these years, and I’d been waiting for definitive proof, and it turned out he’d been confessing all along.

  “You promised,” I whispered. “You told me if I waited, you’d wait too.”

  Incredulity spread over him. Pure genuine incredulity.

  “We had that fucking conversation when we were drunk, baby. God, you thought I was serious? Jesus fucking Christ, Charles. I don’t even know what to say.”

  A pitying expression crossed his face. I wanted to crack in half from mortification and the bloody explosion of my heartbreak, but I grabbed the other speaker instead. I cocked it back, fully intending to smash it over his head, but Tattoos was suddenly behind me. He crushed his strong sweaty chest against my shredded tank top with one big hand wrapped around my arm. I strained against him, but even though I was stronger than I looked, my sculpted dancer’s body was practically a twig compared to his.

  “Oye, lindo,” Tattoos whispered in my ear. “Calm yourself.”

  I tensed, eyes wide and fixed on Landon. His face was changing now. From incredulous back to angry, his blue eyes flipping between me and Tattoos. Tattoos’ hands on me. The lack of space between our bodies. The way Tattoos was rumbling in my ear, his lips brushing the sensitive ridges in a way that usually drove me out of my skin.

  Oh my God. Even now, Landon hated to see anyone else touch me. Even the man he’d been writhing against only a moment ago. After he’d just called me an idiot for expecting him to wait.

  Tears welled in my eyes even as a hysterical laugh burst out of my mouth, because what was this? What was any of this? How could I have kept doing this for so long?

  “Charles,” Landon said, voice low and serious, as he moved closer. “We need to talk about this. Just wait for Luis to leave.”

  Tattoos guided my arm down, causing me to drop the speaker, but he didn’t let me go.

  “We don’t need to talk about shit,” I said between rasping breaths. “You need to get the fuck out of my apartment because I am done.”

  Landon stopped walking a few inches away from me. “This is our—“

  “This is my apartment, you broke no-credit having bitch,” I choked through my tears. “My lease. My bank account that’s auto-drafted for rent, utilities, and the fucking cable. So, you can get the fuck out with your metro card and your fucking fifteen-pound dumbbells.”

  Luis’ chest shook against me, and he snorted back a laugh, but the rage that took over Landon was swift as a viper. By now, the signs were easy to recognize. His eyes turned to granite, his face a mask of disgust. The kind of disgust that led to him knocking the shit out of me.

  His arm jerked up, but Luis went from restraining me to nudging me out of the way. He stood toe-to-toe with Landon, shoulders back and chin up.

  Landon stared at me, red faced and enraged even as he hissed, “Leave, Luis.”

  “Mmm.” Luis cocked his head. “Nah. You heard the man—you leave.”

  Landon’s eyes bugged out of his head. He was breathing hard, the way he did before a rage blackout, but I noticed he suddenly had self-control when it came to a guy like Luis. A guy who’d relaxed onto the balls of his feet as if he was ready to dole out a casually thorough ass whooping.

  “You don’t have shit to do with this,” Landon sneered. “So get the fuck—“

  “Leave,” I shouted so loud, it probably echoed in the streets outside. “Or I’ll call the cops and tell them about your side job.”

  It was the wrong thing to say. I felt the blow even before he swung, muscle memory causing me to rear back and put my arms up to cover my face, but it never came. I sucked in deep gasping breaths, tears streaming down my face, and could barely make out the sight of Luis propelling Landon out the door.

  “—wait outside while he packs your shit before you get yourself good and fucked up.”

  That rumbling voice said other words, words that would probably give me a clue about where Landon was going, what they were doing, and whether I needed to find my baseball bat in the mess he’d made of my bedroom, but I didn’t move.

  Instead, I sat next to the broken stereo and sobbed.

  North Shore - ch 2

  Chapter Two

  Luis

  Landon was easily the dumbest person I’d ever met, and I’d met some dumb motherfuckers in my lifetime. I’d half dragged his ass down the stairs because he’d found his bravado somewhere in the crack of his ass and had tried to fight me at the last minute. Now, he was limping
around throwing his man’s bags all over the sidewalk.

  The dude had a lot of luggage.

  “You look like an angry naked toddler,” I said. “Literally like those tighty whities are your diaper, and this is a tantrum.”

  “Fuck you.”

  Landon turned on me again, red faced and looking like he really wanted to hit me. It was the same way he’d looked at his boyfriend. I had no doubts this guy had a temper on him, and it didn’t sit quite right with me. Not when he was apparently so quick to throw hands that his man reflexively covered his face.

  “You remind me of another blond headed bully I knew back in the Bronx,” I said. “He got the shit kicked out of him too eventually.”

  “You don’t have a fucking thing to do with this,” Landon hissed, getting in my face. “He was not supposed to be back until—”

  “My guy, that’s his apartment! The fuck? Are you dumb?” I looked up at the sky, and the brewing storm clouds in the distance. “Your trifling ass never even mentioned you had a boyfriend.”

  “Like it would have mattered,” he said scathingly.

  “You bet your narrow white ass it would have mattered,” I countered. “I don’t get in mess or break up relationships. I didn’t even want to fuck a neighbor, my dude. Since I moved in, you had to beg me in like thirty-seven Grindr messages before I walked up those stairs.”

  “You dropped your pants really fast, though.”

  It was unbelievable that this piece of shit had just sent his boyfriend, the boyfriend he was obviously using, into a meltdown, and was still trying to talk shit to me.

  “I’d have dropped them faster for your man.” I smirked my filthiest smirk and winked for good measure. “What’s his name? Charles? You’re all right, but he’s fucking beautiful. Has a nice culo on him too.”

  Landon went red and started to speak but before he could, the sound of a screen slamming up echoed on the quiet street. I ducked out of the way just as clothes began to rain down from the windows on the second floor of the house—an array of boxers, jeans, T-shirts, and flannel. When a weighted down gym bag narrowly missed nailing Landon, I retreated to the street. This was some Waiting to Exhale type of shit.