Chapter 2
CHAPTER TWO
VIVIAN
If someone had told me years ago that I’d want my ex-husband dead, I would’ve guessed I’d mistakenly taken some old pain meds for a broken arm, not my daily probiotic pill.
It would’ve been a hellish hallucination.
David was the popular running back for our high school football team, and I was the quiet yearbook photographer. He loved posing for my camera, and I fell madly in love with him. I felt like the luckiest girl when I married him.
But that’s the problem with falling madly in love.
After the love is ripped away, it only leaves you mad. Enraged about a bitter betrayal. Furious that you ever trusted someone. So broken, you’re left picking up the pieces of your former happy self.
And you know what makes me laugh-cry at night?
I’m not an angry person.
Anger fits me like an itchy wool sweater when I’m soft cotton. I’m gentle and warm. I look for the positive, for hope, for joy. I love making people smile, then capturing the moment so they can remember it forever.
But god, I’m tempted to kill my ex now.
I want to pop him like a zit on the ass of humanity and let the healing begin. I’m so over the glaring blemish he’s made of my life.
What’s even more tempting in this moment?
My big, sweet friend who wants to help me.
Dear god, his huge, inked hand cradles my entire cheek. His touch is warm and sends shivers down my spine. Sweet shivers. Pussy quivers, my friend calls them.
I thought I knew perfection in this world of digital, flawless filters and idealized images.
But then I met Jace Ryan.
In the flesh.
Like this…
“Viv,” he calls me out of my haze, gently pressing his forehead to mine. “Viv, did you hear me? I said let me help you.”
Like a steamy mirage in the arid desert of my life, I want to reach out and touch Jace’s granite, whiskered jaw.
He can’t be real.
He’s the manly illusion of everything you need. His soaring height blocks the searing sun. His hulking muscles offer a respite from danger. His skin is cool, chiseled, tan marble adorned in black ink. His smile is so inviting; he’s the sparkling oasis your scorched body needs.
He’s the rescue you’ve been searching for.
In photography, they teach us about angles and symmetry, and Jace is textbook perfection—the subject of masculine beauty.
Thick waves of brown hair, lovingly kissed by the sun. Eyes so blue, the ocean is jealous. Skin so smooth, bronze is taking notes. A face a Greek god would want to steal.
And his body?
It’s the kind you shouldn’t see naked because it would ruin all others for you. I’ve never seen it, but I know perfection when it’s hiding in plain sight, right in front of me.
But it’s not the outside that makes someone beautiful. I should know. My ex-husband is a model. A shell that’s as hard and hollow as a mannequin.
It’s Jace’s heart that’s breathtaking.
I know underneath his flawless, inked flesh, his heart is dark red like everyone else’s, but his beats so tender and sweet, his blue eyes radiate its warmth. They make me blink back tears at the sight of him.
That’s why hearing him now…
It’s not the Jace I know.
“Kill him?” I’m shocked. “You’d kill my ex-husband for me?”
My heart’s pounding as hard as my skull. Constant crying gives me headaches.
“I mean it, Viv.” He pulls back, kneeling before me. “I’ll kill him. I’ll do anything to protect you.”
“But you’re not mean like that, Jace. You wouldn’t hurt a flea.”
That’s not true.
I’ve seen Jace go from calmly reading an alien romance book one minute to seizing a male customer in a choke hold the next. Why? The man had told his wife she was fat.
I’ve watched Jace stoically eye a rowdy group of frat boys in the store before he leaped, holding two of them in a wall choke until they apologized for being rude.
I’ve admired him, confidently resisting the taunts of assholes trying to goad him because of his soaring size. Then, I’ve beamed, watching him bounce their skulls off the edge of Vale’s desk for harassing her.
Jace is a paradox.
He won’t start a fight, but he’ll end it, winning every time.
But kill someone for me?
His giant hand is so warm, holding my wet cheek. It’s making my body tingle while his cobalt eyes freeze with his correction.
“No, I won’t hurt a flea; it’d be a waste of my rage. But I will kill anyone who hurts you, Viv, so let me. Because for as long as I’ve known you, your husband has made your life hell.”
And Jace’s friendship has been my heaven.
Sometimes, you don’t know how bad things are until you see how good they could be.
I don’t need to be married to Jace, to kiss him, to even touch him, to know that every moment I spend with him is special. It’s how it’s supposed to be when you’re with a good man.
Even if that good man is just your friend.
Your friend, who happens to be the sexiest male specimen you’ve ever seen.
Christ on a cracker. Jace, finally touching me, feels like a gift, wrapped in a velvet bow. One that I want him to tie around my wrists, and bind over my head before he buries his beautiful face between my thighs and…
Stop it, Viv!
Focus on your hot mess of a life, not your hot friend.
“I’m fine,” I lie.
“You’re crying.” He grits out. “You’re always hiding your tears. And I’m not telling you to be ashamed of them, but when is it enough? When do you stop suffering and start saving yourself? And let me help you?”
“I don’t want you involved in my mess.”
“Too late.”
“Jace, it’s my problem.”
“And I’m the solution. It’s what friends do.”
We both know we’ve become way more than that.
With the way Jace looks at me. With the way his smile sends wet tingles down my body to places dark and desperate. With the way I notice him adjusting his pants around me while his nostrils flare.
This tension between us is so erotic, I’m embarrassed. It’s so intense, I’m intimidated. It’s like, if we unleash this attraction, it would overwhelm us. We’d be lost in a wave of desire.
So why not dive into Jace? When God knows I’m wet and want to?
Technically, yes, I’m divorced.
But I’m not free to be with him.
I’ve confused the hell out of him this past year because when we met, I was separated and about to be divorced. Jace and I were almost free to explore this passion, this yearning, then inexplicably, I told him and everyone that I’d reconciled with my husband.
Not true.
My marriage was legally over, but so was my life.
Now, other than my work and my bestie girlfriend, Jace is the one good thing in my life—the dawn over my dark day.
I love making him smile.
Some days, I’ll surprise Jace with his favorite basil white chocolate macarons from the French bakery on Meeting Street. When I can find them, I’ll bring him an out-of-print photobook to peruse while he sits on his stool.
He tries to make me happy too.
Every day, he leaves a cup of hibiscus tea, sweetened with my favorite Tupelo honey, by the door of my studio. Every night I work late, he safely escorts me home.
Never touching. Always talking. Often laughing. Then he leaves me with a smile before it falls when I open the door to my house.
“You’re so sweet, Jace. Thank you.” My lashes blink, wet with tears. “But I can take care of myself.”
“Trapped isn’t care, Viv. It’s a cage.” His trimmed beard can’t hide the angry tick in his jaw. “What does he have on you? What’s so bad that you think it’ll ruin you?”
Tears brim again. The shaking starts. The shame spirals. The pit of my stomach twists. “Jace, please.” My throat tightens. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Then don’t talk. Just let me tell you…” He’s never stayed this close to me.
Barely touching. Totally consuming. “There’s nothing you can ever say or do that’ll make me stop caring for you, Viv.
Nothing. I mean it. You don’t know everything about me either.
I’m flawed and fucked up. I have shit I hide too. ”
I know.
Jace is in a secret society, a fight club, or something illegal.
Discretion is essential to my job. People expose their most vulnerable parts to me, trusting that I’ll reveal them in the best light. And I do.
Secrets are safe with me.
Because I hide them too.
So whatever Jace and his brother Grant, who works here as well, are up to with the brigade of hot, hulking, inked men who disappear to the third floor, hiding behind a locked black door—yes, photographers see everything—it’s fine with me.
Whatever it is.
It can’t be wrong if a man as right as Jace is involved.
“You’re not flawed.” I cup his hand on my cheek. “You’re my friend, and I value us too much to fuck it up with my problems. I got this. I promise.”
“Come on, Viv.” He doesn’t believe me, making me swoon with his sexy grin.
“What’s so bad? You’re sharing passwords on your streaming channel?
You cut a tag off a mattress? You defaced President Andrew Jackson on a twenty-dollar bill; don’t blame you.
He was a racist fuck. Whatever it is, we work in a sex shop, remember?
I know you take vibrators home, and you know I test male masturbators in the bathroom. Hit me with it.”
My smile is instant. It always is with Jace. I can’t resist joking. “Do some masturbators suck?”
His eyes twinkle, devilish. “Some suck, vibrate, thrust, and rotate. And one time, I got stuck in one.”
“Stuck!” Laughter bursts through my tears. “How? I mean…” Shit, don’t ask about his dick, Viv. It’s a huge, hidden no-no. “Never mind. I get the idea.”
“The idea?” He cocks a brow. “No, how about a vacuum hose. It kept sucking and tugging, and I kept growing and swelling until I was sealed into the damn thing like a lead pipe in curing concrete. The pressure was so bad, I thought my dick would explode.”
Okay, he’s going there, and I’m dying to know, giggling. “How’d you get it out?”
“Had to text Grant to come to the bathroom to help with my erectile emergency.” He laughs. “Because trust me, nothing will deflate a dick faster than your older brother laughing at it with a masturbator hanging from it.”
“Did it break it? I mean—”
Whoops. What? Can dicks break? And why am I asking, worried about my friend’s penis? I bet it’s huge. And do I secretly want it to work for me one day?
In horny-lady la-la land, sure. All miserable, man-craving women hope for a hot, hung hunk.
But I truly care for Jace.
I cherish him, actually. He has no idea how I survived this past year because of him. He’s so special to me, I don’t want to tell him. I don’t want to burst the perfect bubble of our friendship.
He smiles, holding up his hand. “It didn’t break. Me and Rosie Palm, my OG masturbator, are just fine now. Thanks for asking.” His tone softens. “So you see. I won’t judge. There’s nothing you can’t tell me.”
There is.
There’s something that’s made my life so small. My anxiety so bad. My depression so difficult to manage. I don’t know what’s worse—the betrayal or the violation.
They call it revenge porn.
But it’s worse than revenge. It’s trauma that doesn’t end. It’s violence without an assault. It’s a demon haunting you for the rest of your life.
Years ago, when I was exploring my sexuality with my husband, I was willing to try things. I was curious and felt safe with him. We were each other’s first, or so I had thought. I’ve since found out horrific things about David.
So I let him throw a party. I let him invite friends over. We talked about what we wanted to try. But I never consented to being filmed. I never thought one private, intimate night of sex would be used as a public weapon to destroy the rest of my life.
The image he stole of me appears every hour in my mind. Like a mocking jailer, clanking his keys over the bars, trapping me. Like a social death sentence that I don’t deserve.
“Jace, I…”
I blink back more tears. They won’t stop falling. I swear I cry so much my jaw hurts, my eyeballs ache, exhaustion weighs on my bones.
I can’t look at this beautiful person. My sweet friend. The one man I can trust. And tell him how I hide a scarlet letter.
Jace deserves a woman without a past. Without a curse. Without ammunition aimed at her mind, life, career, and her family’s name—everything will be destroyed if David releases that video.
Charleston is like so many ironically holy cities. The powerful here live to persecute. They have no compassion, only cruel conviction. Their damnation destroys while they “bless your heart.”
“I just need your friendship, okay?” I try to smile. “Even if I don’t tell you what it is, please don’t take it away. You mean so much to me.” I swallow. “You’re all I have.”
“Viv…”
He tilts his head, brushing his thumb over the tear trailing down my cheek, making my breath hitch when it shouldn’t. I shouldn’t harbor these feelings I can’t afford to have for him.
“I meant it last year, and I mean it now,” he vows. “I’m not going anywhere. I’ve been your friend since the day of the sex swing. Remember?”