Fan Service

Chapter 15

15

“Do you wanna get a drink?” Alex said when they finally got off the Ferris wheel. Alcohol seemed like the best antidote for the volume of shared trauma they’d just exchanged. “There’s a beer garden thing on the other side of the field.”

“Yes, please,” Devin said, following her eagerly.

They made their way through the throngs of families and clusters of rowdy friends strung out on sugar and grease.

At the taped-off entrance to the beer garden, a volunteer checked their IDs before giving them wristbands for the “twenty-one plus” area.

Devin was oddly quiet as they made their way across the hay-strewn dirt, passing crowded wooden picnic tables and several games of cornhole to get to the pop-up bar.

“You okay?” Alex asked.

“Fine,” Devin said, staring out into the crowd, looking lost.

So, Alex’s plan to put distance between them had worked, just not on her side.

She’d believed that if she revealed to Devin the truth about exactly how he’d hurt her, she could stop thinking about him naked. Instead, she’d accidentally given herself closure. She finally had the full story from both sides.

After Devin revealed what had happened with his parents, his voice saturated with hurt even all these years later, he was more human to her now than he’d ever been.

At seventeen, she’d wanted him to trust her with his secret pain, and now she had it for real. Alex thought she had changed so much from that starstruck teenager, but just like back then, his confession made her feel tender and protective toward him. He was still the asshole who had insulted her, but he was also sensitive and wounded and trying so, so hard to keep it together.

Devin thought no one wanted to see his “gross weakness.” Alex couldn’t tell him that she found his aura of tragedy hot.

She ordered two pints of whatever light beer the place had on tap and received foam-topped plastic cups. She’d just passed Devin his when a commotion from the back corner grabbed her attention. Snickers and hollering carried over on the wind. Maybe it was conditioning after a lifetime of being bullied, but the combination of sounds made her blood run cold.

Alex went up on her tiptoes, craning her neck to try to see. “What’s going on over there?”

Devin followed her gaze. “Looks like some kind of dunk tank.”

“Oh god.” She rushed through the crowd, stepping around people, while Devin trailed her.

Seth had said something a few weeks back about wanting to volunteer at the fair. When Alex told him Rowen had already roped her into face painting, he’d mentioned he might do the dunk tank.

“No skills required,” he’d said, with that easy smile.

Again, maybe it was trauma speaking, but Alex would never have signed up to be a fish in a barrel for this town.

She and Devin made their way to a cluster of people standing in a semicircle. The air over here smelled different. Worse. Of sweat and spilled beer and too many kinds of cologne mingling. Alex’s stomach swooped.

Immediately she clocked Pete Calabasas in the center of the group, holding court. Of course if there was an opportunity to harass someone, Pete would be there with bells on. He had a beer in one hand—complete with a koozie that he must have brought from home—and a softball in the other. Beside him were the same two cronies from the bar.

Despite herself, Alex got a little dizzy, thinking about them following her, closing in like jackals. She tore her gaze away to find Seth behind the bars of the dunk-tank cage in a swimsuit and T-shirt.

He’d clearly been in the tank at least once, and if the forced cheerfulness he’d pasted on his face was anything to go by—more. It was chilly out here, the sun now lost behind a pack of clouds.

It wasn’t just Pete talking trash. Various spectators had joined in, their taunting voices loud and sloppy from the open bar. Pete and the other guys were goofing around with the ball, tossing it to one another, intentionally aiming at the cage rather than the target. Even though the ball was bigger than the gaps in the metal bars on the cage, the crack of the impact still made a sickening rattle that shook the attached seat.

“Hey!” a pimple-faced college kid acting as attendant yelled. “Watch it.”

Pete waved him off, yelling an excuse about how his aim got worse after a few beers.

The next time he pulled back his arm to throw, Seth flinched.

All the meatheads cracked up, hanging on one another as beer sloshed in their plastic cups.

“What’s going on?” Devin asked from beside her. “Why are they singing Lady Gaga at the guy with the Buddy Holly glasses?”

Alex opened her mouth to explain homophobia, but Devin was narrowing his gaze, his lip curling in disgust.

“Wait a second, is this, like, a gay thing? Are those guys harassing that dude because he’s gay? Because that’s fucked up.”

“Yeah,” Alex said, rushing forward as the ball smacked the target and Seth went under. “It is.”

This time the fall made Seth lose his glasses. He fumbled blindly for them in the water, his long hair plastered to his forehead.

Of course the shitheads loved that.

Why on earth he hadn’t taken them off beforehand, Alex didn’t know. The glasses sank to the bottom like a stone, and Seth had to open his eyes under the gross water, groping, trying to find them while the crowd roared their approval, mob mentality making them unambiguously cruel. The whole structure of this town bred attitudes of superiority, the haves and the have-nots.

People weren’t outright shouting slurs here, so they probably thought they were just being funny. Giving the guy a hard time.

When Seth finally climbed out, waterlogged and dripping, Alex rushed forward to speak to him, positioning herself with her back to the assembled dickwads, as if she could block him from their view with her body.

“Oh hey,” Seth said, breathing heavily from the time underwater. He tried to offer her a smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “You stop by to watch?”

“Seth, don’t go back up there.” Alex caught his goose bump–covered arm. “Those guys are jerks and they’re harassing you. You don’t have to sit there and listen just because you signed up to volunteer.”

“It’s for charity,” he said, shrugging miserably. “I’ve had worse.”

Seth was underestimating Pete Calabasas’s capacity for cruelty. The look in that jerk’s eyes wasn’t half as mean or booze-foggy as when he’d followed Alex out into the parking lot. She couldn’t stand by and watch Seth, who’d called her his friend, on the receiving end of that kind of darkness.

“Let me take the rest of the shift,” she offered desperately, even as she could feel a shudder coming on at the prospect of putting herself directly in the line of fire. “There’s nothing these jabronies can say that I haven’t already heard a million times.”

Seth paused on the stairs. Alex could tell he didn’t want to give up.

“No, I can’t let you do that.” He was going blue in the lips. The water must be freezing. “You don’t even have a bathing suit on,” Seth protested, wrapping his arms across his skinny chest.

“So? I’ll just wear this.” She plucked at the paint-spattered bib of her overalls. “It’s not like they’re precious.”

“Excuse us a second.” Devin pulled Alex aside by the crisscross of fabric at her back.

“Are you some kind of masochist?” he whispered furiously.

“No?” At least, not on purpose.

A muscle in his jaw jumped. “Well, then let the nice man finish his own shift.”

Devin didn’t understand. This wasn’t bad press coverage that would pass with the news cycle. Alex was living proof that towns as small as Tompkins had long memories. She didn’t want Seth to have to walk around his hometown scared and shut down the way she did.

Alex shoved past Devin to explain the switch to the attendant.

The guy shrugged at the end of her rambling. “I don’t care who gets in the tank as long as it’s not me.”

“See?” Alex told Seth. “This guy says it’s fine.”

When he still looked on the fence about letting her take the literal fall, Alex had no choice but to pull out the big guns. “Please?” She reached for Seth’s hand. “Since we’re friends?”

Seth laughed a little, his shaking shoulders sprinkling water droplets on the rapidly muddying ground.

“Leave it to you to turn that into a threat.” But he stepped back. “You’re sure?”

Alex sighed with relief. “Totally. Give me the chance to pay you back for half a year of being a withholding bitch.”

“You weren’t—”

“I was,” Alex cut him off. She’d been so busy trying to protect herself from this town that she’d failed to see that not everyone here was out to get her.

“Maybe a little,” Seth conceded, his eyes flicking over to where his boyfriend, Matt, was waiting, anxiously wringing a towel between his hands.

Alex gave his arm a light shove. “Please get out of here.”

Seth gave her a grin, shaking his head a little as he started walking backward. “You’ve always been a sucker for an underdog.”

Her eyes found Devin. You have no idea.

Alex toed off her sneakers and then reached down to peel off her socks.

When the crowd caught wind of what was happening, their faces lit up like it was Christmas morning.

“Oh, Alex, aren’t you sweet, taking over for your little friend,” Pete singsonged. “And it’s not even my birthday.”

Here we fucking go.

She was halfway up the ladder when the whispering started.

All of a sudden someone shouted, “She can’t go in like that.”

What the hell?

“There’s metal buckles on those overalls and she could pierce the tank,” Pete’s friend, the tall one—Chip, she was pretty sure—said.

The attendant went white. “Okay, hold up. I cannot have an insurance claim on my hands. This rental costs like eight thousand bucks.”

Alex threw up her hands. “What do you expect me to do?”

“She could take the overalls off,” Pete yelled back. “You’ve got a T-shirt on under there, right?”

Alex closed her eyes. Yeah. A white T-shirt.

“Absolutely not.” The next thing she knew Devin had his arms around her waist, hauling her off the ladder and placing her gently on the ground behind him. His eyes flashed, but not silver. His hands curled into fists, blunt tipped and human.

“It’s fine,” Alex said. “So they see my bra and underwear. It’s not that different from a bathing suit.”

“Like hell it isn’t.” Apparently even his human voice could hit a register that sounded closer to thunder than human speech.

Devin wheeled on the attendant. “Tell them to go fuck themselves.”

“Uh. No, thanks?” The guy held up his hands. “There are many of them and one of you.”

“It’s fine,” Alex said again. She’d done plenty of unpleasant shit in her life. She reached for the metal snap at her left shoulder.

The crowd whooped.

Pete started clapping. “This game just turned into a wet T-shirt contest!”

“Wait.” Devin reached for Alex’s wrist. “I’ll go in.”

“What?” She froze. “Why?”

It was one thing for Devin to offer to be her fake friend; another for him to donate money to the community center when he, admittedly, had plenty. But for him to endure public ridicule? For her? No way.

Maybe he thought this was a chance to bolster his command over his werewolf senses. He must have forgotten it was the new moon.

“This won’t work as an endurance test.”

His nostrils flared. “It’s not a test.”

“If you’re doing this because you feel sorry for me because of what happened when I was seventeen—”

“Alex.” He exhaled, exasperated. “I don’t feel sorry for you. You’ve been busting my balls for a week. I think we’re even.”

She lowered her voice. “Those guys are gonna be assholes to you.”

“I’m gonna let you in on a little secret.” Devin leaned down and kissed the top of her head in a way clearly designed to shut her up. “You can’t out-asshole an asshole, baby.”

And with that, he reached both hands behind his head and yanked off his shirt.

For a moment Alex’s head was just static.

How many times had she seen those abs? A thousand? Ten thousand?

Alex couldn’t tear her eyes away from the shadows underneath his collarbones, the slopes of his pecs, the divot of his belly button, the sharp V of his hip bones.

She swallowed, her throat suddenly parched.

“I couldn’t be a hero for you when you were seventeen. Let me give it a shot now.” He unbuttoned and then unzipped his jeans.

Holy shit.

“Besides,” he said, low, right against her ear, “if anyone here gets to see you in your fucking underwear, it’s gonna be me.”

Alex shivered.

By the time she closed her mouth, she was watching his perfect ass inside black boxer briefs climb the stairs.

Pete and his crew did not enjoy this substitution. They grumbled among themselves and debated abandoning the game. Devin didn’t make for an easy target in the same way Alex and Seth had, but then Pete’s eyes lasered in on her again.

“You’re that actor, right? From that show she used to be obsessed with when we were kids.” He turned to his short friend—by process of elimination, Greg. “Remember, she wore that ugly-ass T-shirt all the time?”

The guy shrugged. Alex was Pete’s favorite target, and he wasn’t gonna give up the chance to make her suffer, not if he thought he could use Devin to get to her.

“What are you doing here, man? Lawson’s not the caliber of pussy you fly all the way across the country for.”

Alex’s cheeks heated. She shouldn’t have bothered trying to push Devin away. Pete Calabasas was about to list every flaw she had for him and the gathered crowd.

Devin just stared him down. “That’s rich, considering how hard you were bending over backward for an excuse to see her nipples.”

Probably-Chip burst out laughing, punching Pete on the arm.

Pete’s nostrils flared. “She’s a loser,” he declared. “She scoops dog poop for a living.”

“Oh, and you’re so much better, right?” Devin leaned forward, his elbows on his knees. “I bet you’ve got a big job. Corner office. But wait a second. What’s that koozie say, man? ‘Calabasas and Son’? That you? The son? Because having Daddy hand you a job on a silver platter is way more impressive.”

Pete chucked the ball and missed, half a foot wide of the target.

“Uh-oh. You getting mad, bud?” Devin grinned, sitting back and widening his legs a little, drawing attention to his bulge.

Which, okay, was extremely immature, but also…fuck. Hot.

It wasn’t that she’d never stood up to Pete before, but he saw Devin as an equal, maybe even his better. It wasn’t fair, but Devin’s blows landed in ways Alex’s never could.

“Everyone in town hates her.” The vehemence in Pete’s tone was almost chilling. “She doesn’t have a single friend here.”

A much larger crowd had gathered since Devin got in the booth. Presumably because word had spread that someone famous was over here in his underwear.

“Yeah, see, I don’t think that’s true.” Devin shook his head. “Because I’m up here taking your weak heat on her behalf, but as soon as your henchmen saw all these nice people”—he waved at his audience—“gathered round to laugh at you, they abandoned your goofy ass for the bar.”

Pete turned in a circle, glaring in the direction of his cowardly friends, who had indeed turned traitor.

He chucked the ball again, this time landing even farther from the target.

The crowd snickered.

“Yeah, well. Alex Lawson is a vegan!” Pete spat desperately.

Devin blinked. “Seriously? That’s it? That’s the best you’ve got. The woman likes to eat vegetables? She cares too much about animals and the environment? Her cholesterol’s better than yours and you don’t like it?” He huffed out an exhale. “Time to put down the ball, tiger. You’re embarrassing yourself.”

Pete Calabasas’s face turned an alarming shade of puce.

“Who the fuck are you anyway? Some old has-been.”

Devin laughed. “Yeah, dude, I’m old as hell. But I’m pretty sure that woman over there, the one with the koozie that matches yours…Is she with you?”

“That’s my wife.” Pete’s eyes flashed.

“That’s your wife?” Devin raised his eyebrows. “Okay, well, please let her know it’s totally fine that she’s been using her cell phone to take photos of me in my underwear for the last ten minutes.” He waved. “No, don’t worry about it, sweetheart. You’re good. Enjoy.”

“I’m gonna kick your ass.” Pete dropped the ball and rushed toward the cage, rattling the bars.

Devin grinned. “Oh, you’re gonna kick my ass? In front of all these people.” He made a tsking sound. “That’s assault, my man. I don’t care how much money your daddy has; you do so much as raise that scrawny little arm in my direction, and my stone-cold-killer bitch of a lawyer is gonna tear you a new asshole.”

Alex wasn’t the first person in the crowd to start cheering, but she was in fact the loudest.

Devin looked over at the attendant, who was holding an overflowing bucket of cash donations from spectators who had apparently been waiting their whole life to see Pete Calabasas publicly dressed down.

“We’re good here, right?”

The kid nodded.

Devin jumped down, landing with an animal grace that betrayed the fact that even at the new moon, he wasn’t quite human.

He came to stand in front of Alex, and with a shit-eating grin he put his hands on his hips, fully preening. “Well. How’d I do?”

She shook her head in wonder. “You made every bad thing anyone’s ever said about me seem ridiculous.”

“Alex,” he said softly. “That stuff is ridiculous.”

“I owe you one.” This town would never look at her the same way.

“One what?” Devin was looking at her lips.

Alex swayed toward him a little. “Whatever you want.”

“Yeah?” He brushed her cheek with his thumb and then let the pad linger at the corner of her mouth. “You sure about that?”

Alex nodded. Fuck. Devin Ashwood was a lesson she’d never learn.