Burn It Up(122)

Plus, when have I ever felt sure about a guy? She slumped at the thought. Maybe she was holding out for something that wasn’t ever coming, waiting to feel that mythical lightning strike, that sizzle. What if that glittery expectation was all bull, cooked up by the same sickos who’d invented Valentine’s Day and Brazilian waxing?

She opened her camera bag and propped the Nikon against her thigh, turning it on. She cycled backward past the black night sky, the train tracks and station ghostly in the streetlight. Then came a punch in the stomach.

That man. His flash-lit face was jarring and stark.

He’d turned his head slightly, and she could see the tip of that ridiculous neck tattoo curling from behind his ear like an evil sideburn, black like all the other work he’d had done on his arms. None of it scandalized her. Sleeves were as common as eyeglasses in Portland, though Vince was no skinny hipster. His bike was no doubt the kind that came with excessive horsepower and earsplitting, look-at-me decibel levels.

She clicked to the next image on the card. Studied that matchstick pinched between his full lips, the ones she’d managed to capture sans evil smirk, surely a rare sight. She’d surprised him on that first shot, his eyes still wide. The flash bleached his retinas pure white, hazel irises lit up—striated near-green, the color of lake water and rimmed in gray, a gold corona around his tight pupil. Nice lashes, dark as his hair and stubble. Nice brows, though one had a bald spot, the gully likely framing a scar the flash had blown out. The man probably had a hundred scars—and a dumb, macho story to explain each and every one.

When a man came built like Vince Grossier, it told you one of two things: Either his job was backbreaking, or he made violent love to his weight bench every morning. She had her money on the former, given the local economy and those dusty jeans of his. But no matter the cause, the effect was the same. All that muscle added up to a man who lived through his body.

The smart man will manipulate you, and the strong one will push you around. Either way, they knew where they wanted you. At least with the guileless, pushy ones, the Vince Grossiers of the world, you saw it coming. There was an honesty in that. It gave you a chance to put up a fight.

She toyed with the camera’s DELETE button. One push of her thumb, and he’d be gone. She pressed and his image shrank, sucked off the screen forever. The second shot filled the void, those brows drawn in surprise and annoyance, eyes narrowed to match. Her thumb hovered.

She jumped as a steaming plate was set before her, stammered her thanks to the waitress, and shut off the camera. Shut it in its bag, like she’d stuffed down her attraction and shut that motel door on him.

Four more days, she reminded herself, spanking the ketchup bottle. Four days to do this job, four days to avoid heading home and facing the fallout with Ryan.

Four days in the desert of northernmost Nevada. In the New Wild West known as Fortuity.

She eyed her camera bag.

Four days to get real good at avoiding Vince Grossier. The rest of her life to get busy forgetting him.