Near and Far (Lost & Found 2)

“Garth!”

“Fine. Unless he’s expecting it to pay off in fellatio.” He nudged me. “Better?”

“No, not better. I’d prefer you to not mention Rowen, another guy, and . . . sexual favors in the same sentence ever again.” That feeling, like my blood was heating, hit me again. I wasn’t used to that sensation, but it had happened for the second time in two weeks. I didn’t like feeling like a ball of instinct, but I couldn’t control it. My body had declared war on my brain.

“I’m not trying to upset you, Jess. I’m trying to get you to pull your head out of your ass. I know you see the world as this place full of unicorns and rainbows and shit, but that’s not reality. The world’s mostly a nasty place with nasty people. Don’t let your skewed view of it keep you from seeing a snake for what it really is.” Garth paused for a few moments, and thank god he did, because he was saying a whole hell of a lot that took time to process. “Rowen loves the hell out of you, and I can see how much you love her. Part of loving someone is letting them do their own thing and trusting them. And part of loving someone is protecting them from the dark places and people.” Garth clapped his hand over my shoulder. “So protect her from that piece of shit.”

Garth thankfully gave me some space after dropping that mind-bender on me. He marched back to the fire, and I tried, failed, and tried again to work out what he’d just said. After a few minutes, I let out a long sigh and headed back. That wasn’t something I’d work out in one night. That was something I’d need time to figure out. His advice went contrary to what I believed, but it made a hell of a lot of sense, too. Part of the job description in loving someone was protecting them. I knew that. I’d lived that. But had I, like Garth suggested, been blinded by a certain someone Rowen needed protecting from? Was Jax the kind of person she needed to be sheltered from?

Part of me said yes. Another part said no. I was pretty sure the intense internal battle would rip me in half if I didn’t shelve the issue for a few hours. Either way, one thing was certain: I would pay a lot more attention. No more head up my ass where Jax was concerned.

Garth was sprawled on the ground on his pack, looking like he was hoping to squeeze in a nap, but I wasn’t letting him sleep when he’d just gone and wound me up. I didn’t want to talk about Jax anymore, but I wanted to talk about something. Talking was a great stress reliever for me, not to mention my favorite pastime.

“I saw Josie yesterday,” I began, hoping to lure Garth in. Josie, Garth, and I had been inseparable until . . . well, until my best friend and my girlfriend slept together when I was out of town. “She stopped by to say hi to Jo.”

“Good for Josie.” Garth lowered his hat farther over his face, his voice sharp.

“We all used to be friends. Why are you still so pissed at her? If anyone should still be pissed, it would be me.”

He huffed. “Sorry, some of us don’t follow that ‘love and light’ bullshit.”

“And maybe some of us should . . .” I muttered as I dropped down to the ground.

Garth sat up suddenly, leveling me with a look. “Listen to me and listen to me good. I might have screwed her, but she f**ked me. She f**ked me up good, Walker.” His voice was as dark as his last name. I couldn’t often get a real emotional response from Garth, but that was one of the few times. “I don’t want to think about Josie, and I sure as shit don’t want to talk about her.” Garth paused long enough to recompose himself. When he spoke again, all the emotion was gone. “I want to talk about that hot piece of ass you’ve got running around your house helping out your mom. Now that is a woman who looks like she knows the difference between screwing a guy and f**king him over, you know? You getting a little side action while Rowen’s out of town?” He was back to his usual Garth self.

“Some of us believe in monogamy. Being faithful.”

“Some of pretend to believe in it, but none of us really want to live that bullshit.”

“Ever tried it?” I asked, tossing a few more pieces of wood into the fire.

“And ruin the good thing I’ve got going?” Garth extended his arms wide. “Why would I want to do that?”

“Because you have few redeeming qualities other than your dark charm and looks. And you’re not getting any younger.”

Garth replied with his middle finger. “Jess, Rowen’s a solid girl. About as solid as I’ve ever met, and one of the few who’d even make me consider settling down, but we’re twenty.”

“So?”

Garth’s eyes widened like I’d just gone mad. “You’re telling me you’re good with knowing your dick will never get up close and personal with another girl again? You’re ready to throw away all of the fine conquests in your future for one girl?”

“Something tells me you think I’m the crazy one, but if you’d step into my boots for a second, you’d see that you are.”

Garth made a face. “Whatever, Spineless.”

“Whatever, Heartless.” I leaned into the pack behind me. Maybe talking with Garth Black wasn’t what I needed. Hoping to focus my attention on identifying constellations, I stared at the night sky for so long I was sure Garth was asleep.

“Just so you know, if you need a partner to kick city boy’s ass into next year, I’m your man,” Garth said over the dimming fire. “No one messes with my best friend.”

“Best friend, eh?” I glanced over at him. He was still curled up, eyes closed and expressionless. Showing physical emotion was toxic to Garth.

“You’re my only friend, Jess. You win the best title by default.”

Chapter Eight

GIVEN THE HEALTH food madness rampant in America, a doughnut shop whose specialty was a bacon maple bar should not have been thriving. Especially in Seattle, where people rode bikes to work and ate kale chips for dinner. We should have had hoards of picketers out front preaching about how Mojo Doughnuts was clogging arteries in the Greater Seattle area and spreading diabetes like it was going out of style. I would have thought the whole food extremists would have burnt the place to the ground before allowing their children to enter a building where, no kidding, I got a sugar high just from sniffing the air.

But Mojo Doughnut was alive and well—it was Seattle’s dirty little secret.

Alex had hooked me up with the job. She’d worked at Mojo through high school, and when she saw me filling out applications for the million and a half coffee shops in town, she uttered a Hell, no, ripped the stack into pieces, and basically dragged my butt to Mojo. She didn’t ask the boss, she told the boss that I was working there. The boss, Sid, hadn’t argued. He didn’t even bat an eye. He told me I was starting that night.

Sid was a cool enough guy, I suppose. He was one of those rich Seattle people who paid a lot of money to look like they lived out of a tent. He lived in one of those modern condos down on the water and drove a brand new Volvo. He wore a lot of hemp, smoked a lot of pot, and his dreads were longer than my hair by a solid six inches. For a guy who sold close to four thousand doughnuts every day, he looked like he’d never eaten one. He wasn’t scrawny, but if he lost ten pounds, he would have been.

Despite the I’m-homeless exterior and the fact he smelled like pot masked with patchouli, the guy was like damn catnip to women. Thankfully, not my kind of catnip. Even if I didn’t have Jesse, if that was the brand of dude I was attracted to, I would have needed an exorcism.

Too bad my roommate didn’t have the same opinion. Neither she nor Sid advertised their relationship—they were basically one relationship ring above fuck-buddies—but they sure as hell didn’t do much to hide it, either.

As Alex, whose eyes were focused on Sid’s closed office door, could confirm. I didn’t mind working the late nights at Mojo, but I did mind closing with Sid and Alex. I shouldn’t have to worry about feeling like a third-wheel at work . . .

Alex sashayed up to a life-size cardboard cutout. “Oh, Chewy, make wild Wookie love to me.” Wrapping her leg around it, she gyrated against the cardboard to the beat of the disco music in the background.

I groaned and cleaned out the display cases of the remaining doughnuts. Whatever we didn’t sell that day got tossed out. Every doughnut was made fresh that day.

“Chewbacca? Really?” I scanned the room that was as eclectic and strange as the doughnut selection. “You’ve got Luke. Han. Hell, even Vader”—I pointed at a few of the other Star Wars cutouts staggered around the room—“and you choose Chewy as your main squeeze?”

Alex couldn’t have looked more offended. She draped her arm around the cutout that was a good foot taller than her and gave me a Your point? look.

“He doesn’t even talk. He . . . roar-growls . . . or something like that.” I’d seen Star Wars once and, after working at Mojo, I knew I’d never, ever want to watch it again. Sid was a hardcore movie paraphernalia collector—his favorite being Star Wars. I felt like I was living Star Wars thirty hours a week.

“He doesn’t have to. His eyes say it all.”

“Sure, they do.”

Alex flounced by me, her outfit concocted of so many metals rings, grommets, and snaps she was a one-woman orchestra every time she moved. “You’re lucky you make such kickass huevos rancheros or else you’d have earned the silent treatment after dissing my Chewy.”

“Lucky me.” I didn’t hide my sarcasm.

When Alex kept heading for Sid’s office door, I grabbed the remaining doughnuts double-time. Even with the disco music streaming through the place, I’d learned the hard way that I didn’t want to be inside the same building when they got it on. I’d even tried earplugs, but I’d come to accept that they only way to save my innocent(ish) ears from that “earful” was to shove out the back door and wait in the alley until they came to their screeching, cursing end.

Alex had just closed the door when I snagged the garbage with one hand and the box of leftover doughnuts with the other. My pace quickened when I heard a growl coming from behind Sid’s door. I couldn’t tell if it was Sid or Alex. Scary.

Once I made it to the back door, I kicked it open and hustled into the alley. I made sure to prop open the door with a crumbling brick to keep from getting locked out. I sucked in a breath of the cool, rain-soaked air and felt excitement bubble up. I’d be breathing different air tomorrow night. We’d just had the last day of the quarter, which meant spring break was in session. If I could have caught a bus right after my classes, I would have. Unfortunately, the earliest bus to Montana wasn’t scheduled to leave until the butt crack of dawn the next day.

Jesse. Willow Springs. One whole week. If there was a heaven, I was about to find it.

Snapping out of my daydreams, I heaved the bag of garbage into the dumpster. I was about to toss the box of doughnuts in when a strange and surprised sound came from inside the dumpster. A strange and surprised human sound.

o;Garth!”

“Fine. Unless he’s expecting it to pay off in fellatio.” He nudged me. “Better?”

“No, not better. I’d prefer you to not mention Rowen, another guy, and . . . sexual favors in the same sentence ever again.” That feeling, like my blood was heating, hit me again. I wasn’t used to that sensation, but it had happened for the second time in two weeks. I didn’t like feeling like a ball of instinct, but I couldn’t control it. My body had declared war on my brain.

“I’m not trying to upset you, Jess. I’m trying to get you to pull your head out of your ass. I know you see the world as this place full of unicorns and rainbows and shit, but that’s not reality. The world’s mostly a nasty place with nasty people. Don’t let your skewed view of it keep you from seeing a snake for what it really is.” Garth paused for a few moments, and thank god he did, because he was saying a whole hell of a lot that took time to process. “Rowen loves the hell out of you, and I can see how much you love her. Part of loving someone is letting them do their own thing and trusting them. And part of loving someone is protecting them from the dark places and people.” Garth clapped his hand over my shoulder. “So protect her from that piece of shit.”

Garth thankfully gave me some space after dropping that mind-bender on me. He marched back to the fire, and I tried, failed, and tried again to work out what he’d just said. After a few minutes, I let out a long sigh and headed back. That wasn’t something I’d work out in one night. That was something I’d need time to figure out. His advice went contrary to what I believed, but it made a hell of a lot of sense, too. Part of the job description in loving someone was protecting them. I knew that. I’d lived that. But had I, like Garth suggested, been blinded by a certain someone Rowen needed protecting from? Was Jax the kind of person she needed to be sheltered from?

Part of me said yes. Another part said no. I was pretty sure the intense internal battle would rip me in half if I didn’t shelve the issue for a few hours. Either way, one thing was certain: I would pay a lot more attention. No more head up my ass where Jax was concerned.

Garth was sprawled on the ground on his pack, looking like he was hoping to squeeze in a nap, but I wasn’t letting him sleep when he’d just gone and wound me up. I didn’t want to talk about Jax anymore, but I wanted to talk about something. Talking was a great stress reliever for me, not to mention my favorite pastime.

“I saw Josie yesterday,” I began, hoping to lure Garth in. Josie, Garth, and I had been inseparable until . . . well, until my best friend and my girlfriend slept together when I was out of town. “She stopped by to say hi to Jo.”

“Good for Josie.” Garth lowered his hat farther over his face, his voice sharp.

“We all used to be friends. Why are you still so pissed at her? If anyone should still be pissed, it would be me.”

He huffed. “Sorry, some of us don’t follow that ‘love and light’ bullshit.”

“And maybe some of us should . . .” I muttered as I dropped down to the ground.

Garth sat up suddenly, leveling me with a look. “Listen to me and listen to me good. I might have screwed her, but she f**ked me. She f**ked me up good, Walker.” His voice was as dark as his last name. I couldn’t often get a real emotional response from Garth, but that was one of the few times. “I don’t want to think about Josie, and I sure as shit don’t want to talk about her.” Garth paused long enough to recompose himself. When he spoke again, all the emotion was gone. “I want to talk about that hot piece of ass you’ve got running around your house helping out your mom. Now that is a woman who looks like she knows the difference between screwing a guy and f**king him over, you know? You getting a little side action while Rowen’s out of town?” He was back to his usual Garth self.

“Some of us believe in monogamy. Being faithful.”

“Some of pretend to believe in it, but none of us really want to live that bullshit.”

“Ever tried it?” I asked, tossing a few more pieces of wood into the fire.

“And ruin the good thing I’ve got going?” Garth extended his arms wide. “Why would I want to do that?”

“Because you have few redeeming qualities other than your dark charm and looks. And you’re not getting any younger.”

Garth replied with his middle finger. “Jess, Rowen’s a solid girl. About as solid as I’ve ever met, and one of the few who’d even make me consider settling down, but we’re twenty.”

“So?”

Garth’s eyes widened like I’d just gone mad. “You’re telling me you’re good with knowing your dick will never get up close and personal with another girl again? You’re ready to throw away all of the fine conquests in your future for one girl?”

“Something tells me you think I’m the crazy one, but if you’d step into my boots for a second, you’d see that you are.”

Garth made a face. “Whatever, Spineless.”

“Whatever, Heartless.” I leaned into the pack behind me. Maybe talking with Garth Black wasn’t what I needed. Hoping to focus my attention on identifying constellations, I stared at the night sky for so long I was sure Garth was asleep.

“Just so you know, if you need a partner to kick city boy’s ass into next year, I’m your man,” Garth said over the dimming fire. “No one messes with my best friend.”

“Best friend, eh?” I glanced over at him. He was still curled up, eyes closed and expressionless. Showing physical emotion was toxic to Garth.

“You’re my only friend, Jess. You win the best title by default.”

Chapter Eight

GIVEN THE HEALTH food madness rampant in America, a doughnut shop whose specialty was a bacon maple bar should not have been thriving. Especially in Seattle, where people rode bikes to work and ate kale chips for dinner. We should have had hoards of picketers out front preaching about how Mojo Doughnuts was clogging arteries in the Greater Seattle area and spreading diabetes like it was going out of style. I would have thought the whole food extremists would have burnt the place to the ground before allowing their children to enter a building where, no kidding, I got a sugar high just from sniffing the air.

But Mojo Doughnut was alive and well—it was Seattle’s dirty little secret.

Alex had hooked me up with the job. She’d worked at Mojo through high school, and when she saw me filling out applications for the million and a half coffee shops in town, she uttered a Hell, no, ripped the stack into pieces, and basically dragged my butt to Mojo. She didn’t ask the boss, she told the boss that I was working there. The boss, Sid, hadn’t argued. He didn’t even bat an eye. He told me I was starting that night.

Sid was a cool enough guy, I suppose. He was one of those rich Seattle people who paid a lot of money to look like they lived out of a tent. He lived in one of those modern condos down on the water and drove a brand new Volvo. He wore a lot of hemp, smoked a lot of pot, and his dreads were longer than my hair by a solid six inches. For a guy who sold close to four thousand doughnuts every day, he looked like he’d never eaten one. He wasn’t scrawny, but if he lost ten pounds, he would have been.

Despite the I’m-homeless exterior and the fact he smelled like pot masked with patchouli, the guy was like damn catnip to women. Thankfully, not my kind of catnip. Even if I didn’t have Jesse, if that was the brand of dude I was attracted to, I would have needed an exorcism.

Too bad my roommate didn’t have the same opinion. Neither she nor Sid advertised their relationship—they were basically one relationship ring above fuck-buddies—but they sure as hell didn’t do much to hide it, either.

As Alex, whose eyes were focused on Sid’s closed office door, could confirm. I didn’t mind working the late nights at Mojo, but I did mind closing with Sid and Alex. I shouldn’t have to worry about feeling like a third-wheel at work . . .

Alex sashayed up to a life-size cardboard cutout. “Oh, Chewy, make wild Wookie love to me.” Wrapping her leg around it, she gyrated against the cardboard to the beat of the disco music in the background.

I groaned and cleaned out the display cases of the remaining doughnuts. Whatever we didn’t sell that day got tossed out. Every doughnut was made fresh that day.

“Chewbacca? Really?” I scanned the room that was as eclectic and strange as the doughnut selection. “You’ve got Luke. Han. Hell, even Vader”—I pointed at a few of the other Star Wars cutouts staggered around the room—“and you choose Chewy as your main squeeze?”

Alex couldn’t have looked more offended. She draped her arm around the cutout that was a good foot taller than her and gave me a Your point? look.

“He doesn’t even talk. He . . . roar-growls . . . or something like that.” I’d seen Star Wars once and, after working at Mojo, I knew I’d never, ever want to watch it again. Sid was a hardcore movie paraphernalia collector—his favorite being Star Wars. I felt like I was living Star Wars thirty hours a week.

“He doesn’t have to. His eyes say it all.”

“Sure, they do.”

Alex flounced by me, her outfit concocted of so many metals rings, grommets, and snaps she was a one-woman orchestra every time she moved. “You’re lucky you make such kickass huevos rancheros or else you’d have earned the silent treatment after dissing my Chewy.”

“Lucky me.” I didn’t hide my sarcasm.

When Alex kept heading for Sid’s office door, I grabbed the remaining doughnuts double-time. Even with the disco music streaming through the place, I’d learned the hard way that I didn’t want to be inside the same building when they got it on. I’d even tried earplugs, but I’d come to accept that they only way to save my innocent(ish) ears from that “earful” was to shove out the back door and wait in the alley until they came to their screeching, cursing end.

Alex had just closed the door when I snagged the garbage with one hand and the box of leftover doughnuts with the other. My pace quickened when I heard a growl coming from behind Sid’s door. I couldn’t tell if it was Sid or Alex. Scary.

Once I made it to the back door, I kicked it open and hustled into the alley. I made sure to prop open the door with a crumbling brick to keep from getting locked out. I sucked in a breath of the cool, rain-soaked air and felt excitement bubble up. I’d be breathing different air tomorrow night. We’d just had the last day of the quarter, which meant spring break was in session. If I could have caught a bus right after my classes, I would have. Unfortunately, the earliest bus to Montana wasn’t scheduled to leave until the butt crack of dawn the next day.

Jesse. Willow Springs. One whole week. If there was a heaven, I was about to find it.

Snapping out of my daydreams, I heaved the bag of garbage into the dumpster. I was about to toss the box of doughnuts in when a strange and surprised sound came from inside the dumpster. A strange and surprised human sound.