99 Percent Mine

Tom laughs at whatever I look like. “Don’t get growly.”

“I can’t help it. People take advantage of you. Even us.” Us means the twins.

You guys don’t take advantage of me.” He’s braced back now with his palms flat on the porch, endless legs splayed out. I lean back too, just to feel how our bodies compare. My hand is positively Chihuahua-sized next to his Valeska paw. My boot is halfway down his shin. I turn my head. My shoulder? It’s an upturned mug sitting beside a basketball.

I’m not a particularly petite woman, but he makes me feel like I’m soft. Little and light. A princess. I frown, sit up, and force myself back into a geometric shape.

“Aldo wanted to bump your house for a bigger, easier job. I said it couldn’t wait any longer. If you guys have changed your mind about renovating, I’m kinda screwed,” he says, barely joking. “I took most of the crew with me.”

“Don’t worry, we’re all good. Make the place beautiful and get me out of here.” He took the crew? I cannot imagine him making that kind of power move. I look at his brute frame in my peripheral vision, and maybe I can. “Take it from me, it’s weird not being on a payroll.” I nudge his shoulder with mine, resisting the urge to rest against him. “Thanks for choosing us over him.”

“Well, thank you. For, ah, employing me.”

“Oh, I’m your boss now?” Just as a dopamine surge fills me and I think of so many sleazy, funny responses that I could go with, the image of Megan’s face makes me bite my lip shut. Teasing him is my Olympic sport, and I can only compete once every four years. But he’s going to be her husband soon. “Think of us as business partners.”

He gives me a strange look. “Are you okay?”

“Sure, I’m fine.”

He gets to his feet. “I was bracing myself for a classic Darcy zinger. How did you manage to resist?” He holds a hand down and pulls me up so easily I momentarily leave the ground.

I sigh. Another of life’s pleasures is over. “I officially retire. For obvious reasons.”

I climb a couple of steps to be closer to his eye level. Patty is still tootling around in the garden. “Hurry it up,” I tell her, hugging my arms around my waist. “I’m getting cold.”

“What’s that?” Tom’s noticed the reddened mark on my wrist. He can always sniff out danger.

“Just a reaction to my new perfume.”

Tom reaches for my arm but stops when an inch separates our skin. He opens his hand over the mark and measures it. He’s pissed. Outraged. Mouth open from the sheer audacity. I’m surprised the sky doesn’t unfurl into black thunderclouds, crackling with lightning. “Who did it?”

“Don’t fuss.” I wrap my forearm behind my back and put more marshmallows into my mouth. Through the white sugar foam I say, “Looks worse than it is.” What a horrible sentence.

“Who did it?” He repeats it, his eyes supernatural orange. He looks back at the street. He’s going to hunt that black car down. He’s going to tear out Vince’s throat.

How does no one else ever notice this beast inside him?

“No, not that guy. Another fucking idiot at work. He knows to not do it again.”

I’ve already got my follow-up retort locked and loaded: I can take care of myself. He knows it. We stare like we hate each other.

I can feel the energy in him shimmering. He’s got thoughts and opinions, but he’s swallowing them, and they taste awful. He’s probably thinking about what he’d do to anyone who put a mark on Megan. He’d lick up blood.

“If he needs reminding, let me know,” he manages at last. He’s twisting away from me now, putting distance between us. This is something he doesn’t like about me. My dark, messy lifestyle scares the shit out of him.

I’m struggling with my temper too, for a different reason. I wouldn’t mind betting Megan’s too simple to realize what she has. She’s at home embalming herself, bleaching her cuticles and lubricating her follicles or whatever it is that well-groomed women do. She’s an aesthetician after all, and no one can trust a slovenly beauty therapist. I bet she’s staring at her own face in the mirror.

Meanwhile, her fiancé is like an apple pie on a windowsill, and this world is full of sugar addicts like me. It’s her goddamn carelessness that has always gotten me.

If he were mine . . . I can’t let myself think it.

My jaw aches from not blurting everything out. “Let’s go in.”

Valeska shakes the snow from his fur. I shake the snow from mine. He holds up an ancient key ring. “Check it out.”

“Well, that’s a blast from the past.”

It’s a key ring given to Tom by Loretta when we were kids; it’s Garfield, wearing earphones, with Odie next to him, mouth open in a bark. Printed is: SILENCE IS GOLDEN! That was Loretta’s nickname for Tom: Golden. I was Sweetness, and Jamie was Salty.