50. Bay
FIFTY
bay
“It should be done by next week,” Travis tells me, slamming away at the keyboard of his laptop. “What colors did you want?”
“For what?”
“The app.”
“Oh, black and white is fine, classic.” I don’t want him spending too much time on it. With my back to his bicep and my feet kicked up on my couch, I’m too into Grace and Frankie on Netflix to try to understand what the hell he’s even doing with the logistics of it. All I know is I came up with an idea to make us more money, and Travis took care of the rest. “Will we be able to turn on the app at any given time and turn it off?”
“Yes, and there’ll be a key-in code. Four digits for you to be able to log in and flip on if you run into a possible race on the street. People will receive the notification of a new event and have less than five minutes to place their bets.”
“We need a stupid name for it. That way, if someone loses their phone, no one will think to click on it.”
“Even if they did, it won’t open anything. There will be an error message.”
I smile at the TV screen. “Awesome.”
The concept is easy. Travis is making an app where folks can place bets on any race, and we make money. There’s a two hundred dollar buy-in fee—we’re not in a bougie area here—and wherever there’s a race, you get a notification. You have five minutes to put a bet in, and it’s all random.
“How’re Mae and Ellie?”
“Good.” I take a bite of my peanut butter and jelly sandwich.
“You, uh…excited for California?”
Of course, I needed to tell Trav. Since Levi left Nessa to me, I gave him Travis, but it sounds like he hasn’t gotten around to it, and here we are.
However, I don’t want to talk about it.
“I don’t know if excited would be the word I was lookin’ to use,” I reply honestly. “More like necessary.”
If we end up going. Who the hell knows?
“A lot has changed since I haven’t been around.” He sounds upset, and I crane my head around. Travis was at some nerdy convention thing for one of his physics classes, so we haven’t had much time to talk.
“You better start researching college,” I mutter. “You’ll need to transfer if it ends up going down.”
His blueish-green eyes gawk at me a bit through his gray-rimmed glasses. “You’d want me to come?”
“I always promised I’d take you with me if I left.” In fact, he’d be easier to bring along on the initial trip than Nessa, as asshole as that is to say. “Unless you want to wait until the end of the semester. Get things sorted.” I shove my peanut butter and jelly in his face, I force him to take a bite. “You need to eat, Muncy. You haven’t since you came here.”
He does what I ask and is silent for a moment before he blurts out, “You’re married.”
I inwardly cringe at the way he says it. As if I was marked a whore and people will find out to promptly stone me to death.
And, honestly, even if Travis had been here, things would’ve still ended up the same. I still would’ve fallen for Torin and Reeve’s charm.
“In name only,” I deadpan.
“Bay—”
“I promise you I’m good, Trav. What you’re doing for us is going to get more income coming in, and it’s definitely what we need.”
“Yeah, of course,” he mutters. “Anything for you guys.”
“Don’t sweat me, okay?” I push his glasses up by the bridge of his nose and behind the medium brown hair that curls at the ends. “I’m doing fine. And Levi and I are making small and cautious moves.”
“I don’t want you to make any moves at all,” he retorts softly. “This is all a dangerous game, Bay. I know you’re doing this for the town and your family, but…the revenge, it’s going to eat you alive. It may make you do things you can’t take back.”
“I didn’t say I was less stupid. I know I have the girls to take care of.”
“But who’s taking care of you?”
“Levi, Hot Rod?—”
“But what do we know about Levi’s cousin? Your husband. Is he going to hurt you? Do you know why he married you?”
I shake my head and steer my focus back to the TV. “No. However, he’s been solid.”
“Do the girls know?”
“That I’m married?”
“That you’re leaving South Shore?”
“We’re leaving South Shore?” I freeze at the sweet and anguished sound of Ellie’s voice and the broken question behind it.
My head snaps in her direction, and I find nothing but apprehension and sheer shock at what she just discovered. What Levi and I weren’t going to tell her until we were good and ready.
“Shit,” I mutter as I rise from the couch, but Ellie takes a step back as if she’s scared of my answer. “Ellie, let’s talk?—”
“My friends are here,” she protests as fat tears begin to form in her beautiful blue eyes. “Dad is here.”
I steal two steps closer. He’s in a fucking grave, and it’s not as though we can see him, but I understand where she’s coming from. “Ellie, babe…it’s not safe here for us anymore. I don’t want?—”
“I’m not leaving. You can’t make me, Bay.” She wraps her arms around her Taylor Swift shirt, all innocent and naive, because I’ve tried my damndest to keep her that way. “I have Peter.”
Yeah, fuck, Peter.
I was on board with her having a boyfriend who was going to treat her right, but he doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things or my sisters’ safety. However, I know what I’m asking and how the decision Levi and I made is going to affect her.
This is her home.
And I’d be ripping her from everything she knows and has.
“I know,” I reply softly. “But things are getting worse?—”
“That’s your fault,” she snaps back through knitted eyebrows. “ You’re the problem. Why do we need to suffer because you’re not part of this family.”
I feel as though she just gut-punched me because all the air from my lungs escaped.
In reality, she’s right. I’ve been given a place here.
However, she’s not either.
We’re both fuckin’ strays Dad took in. Not that I’m going to mention it at this particular moment.
“Ellie, I’m sorry—” She spins on her heels, instantly dismissing whatever I was going to say, and starts down the hallway toward her room.
I’d follow, but she wants to be alone. Nothing I say is going to make it right or better, but I still take several steps to follow her.
Until I don’t.
That’s because I hear Travis quiver my name like he just shit his pants and needs backup followed by a click.
Glimpsing over my shoulder, I don’t find my best friend, but Ozzy. Looming behind the couch I was sitting on with a Glock precariously pointed at Travis’s head.
“Oz—what the fuck are you doing?” I leer, through the sudden rapid thudding in my chest. Travis has gone completely still as Ozzy composedly stares at my friend’s forehead like he’s deciding which spot he wants to put a bullet in. “Ozzy…drop it.”
He doesn’t.
My brain quickly sprints, calculates, and tries to figure out how I can get to him before he makes a mistake he can’t take back. Before Ellie might come back in here to give me round two of whatever it is she wants to say to me.
“My sisters are— This is my friend, Travis. We’ve been friends since grade school.”
Still nothing.
Geezus Christ.
I’d get a full psych evaluation on this man for future correspondence, but they may never let him out.
“Ozzy, please .” The quick movement of his gaze on me ceases my next breath, and I fight for my voice to give way. “He’s been around my family for a long time. He’s no threat.”
In one blink, Ozzy’s dark blues go back to Travis’s skull again.
Slowly, I inch forward.
One wrong move and Ozzy may do something he can’t take back. And I’m not going to another fucking funeral.
“He’s going to leave,” I state slowly. “And then we’ll talk about it.”
And I’m going to ream his ass out.
New rule, no guns in the fucking house.
Except mine, because it’s—well, Ozzy bought the house, but I’m on the title, so how does that work? Ozzy hasn’t shown any interest in living here or making himself at home but randomly showing up making tree houses and shit. Legally it’s mine, but it still feels like his.
I’m finally able to wedge my body between Ozzy’s gun and Travis. My heart racing a million beats a second because guns…I might hold the world record on how many I’ve had on me in the last few days, maybe?
Probably not.
But it’s a record for me, nonetheless.
“Go ahead and get out of here, Trav,” I initiate, holding back a comment about how I’ll text or call him later to explain all this. The shorter our conversation, the quicker he can get out.
“Bay—”
“I’m good,” I promise, holding Ozzy’s blank blue eyes. “He’s not going to hurt me.”
Sure about that? We’ve been putting our trust into too many bodies lately.
“Should I call?—”
“No.”
He wants to call Levi, but I don’t need him here. Not for Ozzy anyway, but Ellie is going to be a whole other story.
Ozzy’s eyes follow, what I assume is Travis, along with his gun which I step in the way of again.
His eyes narrow, clearly irritated that I’m blocking his shot, but he doesn’t look at me, and I didn’t ask for him to come in here with it drawn out acting crazy.
It feels like forever and a day before I hear the front door close with a soft click.
“You had no right to do that,” I chide. “My word and what I say should be enough for you to drop the gun.”
Silence.
Shocker.
And I’m not about to stand here all night and wait for him to say something—anything—to either make it right or apologize.
Stepping aside to get the fuck out of here, Ozzy is already standing there, blue eyes incandescent in annoyance and in my way.
That’d make two of us.
“ Move .” Ozzy glowers at me. “What do you have to be pissed about? I wasn’t the one who snuck in here and pointed a gun at my friend. You’re being a dickhead.”
Nothing.
“What are you doing here?”
When he doesn’t answer me this time, I step to the side to get around him again, but Ozzy surprises the hell out of me and steps closer, almost pinning me between him and the back of the couch.
“Speak or forever fuck off, Oz. I was in the middle of something. Something that was going to help Levi and I make more money, and you fucked it up.”
He looks down at me under long eyelashes and sharp cheekbones. Faithful strands of black hair gather up and over one of his eyes.
I want to punch him in the damn face.
“I get it,” I grind out, flexing my fingers into tight balls. “Psychological warfare. You’re tryin’ to make me lose my shit by not talking to me.” I shove him, for several reasons other than he’s pissing me off, but mostly to get him to move. “Whatever you have spun in that fucked-up head, don’t do that or anything else like that again.”
He blinks at me, and I swear to God, he’s so fucking infuriating that I’d rather deal with Levi’s loud-ass mouth than this.
It’s a lot more frustrating, apparently, when someone isn’t giving you a piece of their mind or answers as to why they did what they did.
“We done here?”
Some more staring, silence and another prick at my temper later is when I make the third attempt to move, but Ozzy refuses to make it easy.
I swear the dick moves because he’s in the exact same spot he was before.
“Listen, asshole, I can do whatever I want, with whoever I want, when I want to do it. This is a marriage of convenience. I don’t have to follow any weird-ass, unspoken rules that you haven’t spoke yet. I’m not yours .”
Ozzy’s palms suddenly come out and shove me backward, then again, until my ass hits the furniture, and, if he does it once more, I’m going over.
I hit a nerve.
“What?” I snap through his continuing lack of speech. “Did Torin tell you to watch over me so that I don’t fuck anyone—” His palm seizes my throat and squeezes, cutting off my next words.
I feel him shudder underneath his own touch on my skin. His breathing sporadic and frantic as he bores daggers into my head.
“I don’t read minds, so if you’ve got something to say, say it.” Ozzy growls, deep in his throat, but that’s all I’m given. Bending forward a bit, I leer, “Do it.”
His blues ping-pong between mine, as if he’s searching to see if I’m serious.
My palm falls to his chest, and he suddenly flinches back as if I burned him, stumbling two steps before defensively raising his weapon between us.
I shut my fucking mouth for once.
He doesn’t like to be touched. I know that.
However, he did the other night, and taunting is alright to a degree, just no touching while doing it.
I don’t make another move or say another thing as I watch him calm down. The grip on his gun loosens, but he still doesn’t drop it.
Maybe he thinks I’m going to try again, or he needs it between us because I broke some level or degree of comfort for him.
Regardless, I found a limit, and I don’t want him to get anxious around me. I know how that feels.
“What do you want from me?” I solicit evenly. “I won’t be around forever.”
“No more men.”
I gape at him in disbelief and quickly disregard the gun pointed at me because he’s not going to use it.
It’s for him.
“It’s Travis,” I reply as if that explains everything. “He’s Levi and my?—”
“I said no,” he leers, jaw tight as his blue orbs turn a dark shade, almost black. “No more.”
I demand to keep my retort inside because I’m not arguing.
I’m leaving.
And Ozzy can’t stop who comes with us or who I speak to afterward.
After a few beats, he dips his head and drops the gun, moving for the door before opening and closing it with a careless thud.
Apparently, he wants to keep the circle tight.
I get that.
I really do.