Broken and Beautiful Read online

  Broken and Beautiful

  Kendall Ryan

  Lili Valente

  Geneva Lee

  Victoria Ashley

  Lucy Eden

  Skye Warren

  Tia Louise

  Grahame Claire

  M. O’Keefe

  Contents

  We Are All Found Things

  M. O’Keefe

  Mating Theory

  Skye Warren

  Rebel Hearts

  Lili Valente

  Sex Material

  Victoria Ashley

  The Two Week Arrangement

  Kendall Ryan

  It’s Not Over

  Grahame Claire

  One to Take

  Tia Louise

  Everything’s Better With Lisa

  Lucy Eden

  Command Me

  Geneva Lee

  We Are All Found Things

  M. O’Keefe

  Spring

  ~ SPRING ~

  I had the door open to the shop, and the breeze that came through smelled like rain and weed.

  The guys from the garage next door were smoking outside again.

  Which was completely okay with me. Not for the contact high but for the proof that I wasn’t alone way out here on the edge of Camden. This industrial part of North Minneapolis could feel like the far side of the moon.

  I bought this loft space because I needed the room. Shit was taking off for me—work-wise—and I needed my forge and welding equipment in a place bigger than the garage behind my house. And when I took the lease in the New Year, I knew it was a rough neighborhood, but jeez.

  Four break-ins. In less than three months.

  I’ve lost all my copper. My bits of silver. A lot of my steel. The fuckers were smart.

  Thank God most of my equipment was too heavy to steal.

  Anyway, hopefully all that was going to end shortly.

  I was working a custom piece today. A bed frame for some wealthy Game of Thrones uber-fan. It was sharp and gnarly, a little dorky with a whole lot of badass thrown in. Which frankly, was my bread and butter.

  “Hullo?”

  Crap. Was it one already?

  “Hello!” I pulled off my mask and stood up so I could see over the headboard. “Hey! I’m back here!”

  I turned off my propane, shook off my gloves and shrugged out of my leather apron as I jumped around my worktables and equipment toward the front door.

  Overeager? Yes. I was a little scared the dude might run.

  Three other guys had come and gone once they saw the neighborhood.

  A blond man stood in the doorway. Well, he kind of took up the doorway. He was big. Tall and wide. His straight blond hair fell down around his shoulders and I won’t lie—for a second I thought he was that Thor actor.

  But he turned toward me and the face was different. It was sharp. All nose and cheekbones, eyes the white-blue at the center of a propane flame.

  “Are you Rennie Hernandez?” he asked, glancing down at a slip of paper held in his giant hand.

  “I am. Are you Luka Samuelson?”

  He grinned and I had no idea how old he was, but that grin was pure boy. And in contrast with the body and the face and the eyes—the whole package of Luka Samuelson was a little dorky with a whole lot of badass thrown in.

  My bread and butter.

  Some bell rang in the back of my head. And suddenly he seemed familiar not because of his resemblance to a movie star…but something else.

  I’d seen him somewhere before.

  Where?

  I felt interest curl up along all my edges.

  “So, you’re here about the ad,” I said, walking closer to the door.

  I chimed a little when I moved, on account of my necklaces. He heard the noise and glanced up, his sharp eyes tracking over my body, finding the source of the sound.

  His gaze was through. A bit like being pinned to a wall and frisked.

  I was short but strong from my work, and I made a point of never feeling small. Of never being small. I took up all the space and all the air I could—but there was something about this guy that made me feel diminutive. I didn’t like it.

  But I didn’t hate it either.

  “I am,” he said. “The ad said that rent was free as long as I was here every night and kept an eye on the place. Seems a bit too good to be true.”

  “That’s the deal, on account of there have been a few break-ins and I’ve lost a lot of material.”

  “You’re a welder?” He eyes took in all my equipment over my shoulder. The giant wings with the bronze-and-silver filigree hanging from the ceiling.

  “Among other things.”

  The spring sunlight falling through the door behind him lit him up, gave him an aura and made the dust particles floating around his blond hair glitter.

  “Have we met before?” I asked, because it was killing me.

  He blinked and just…shuttered.

  Just closed up. No more boyish smile. No more propane gaze. He was there…but not really. The truth of him, he buried deep under his skin.

  I was familiar with the process because my dad was pretty good at that. So was I, frankly. Being here and then in the next minute…being gone. It was a skill and I respected it.

  I knew what it meant.

  I wouldn’t press.

  But it was going to keep me up at night, wondering who this guy was.

  “No,” he said definitively. “I’ve only been in Minneapolis since the first snowfall.”

  Kind of a weird way of putting it, but okay.

  “Well, anyway,” I said. “I just need someone here to call the cops if they feel like something suspicious is happening. I don’t need a hero with a gun.”

  “I have a rifle. Licensed.”

  Hunters were thick on the ground in Minneapolis. Only to be outnumbered by fisherman.

  “That’s fine.”

  “I promise not to be a hero,” he said, smiling again.

  My gut was pretty ironclad but sometimes my pussy got invested and messed things up in terms of my people-reading skills. So, while I was ready to tell this guy to move right on in to the tiny bedroom upstairs - and perhaps at some point—my vagina, this was far too important to let my hormones weigh in.

  “I work here nearly every day,” I said. “I start early, usually around 5:00 a.m. It’s loud and it’s smelly.”

  “I work with a big game vet in town. My days start around that time too.”

  Well, that was convenient.

  “Do you have references?” I asked, and he pulled a piece of paper out of his back pocket. He wore faded jeans, worn white around the seams, grommets and zipper.

  I tried not to stare.

  “My boss is on there as well as a police officer and one of the clients I do quite a bit of work for. All of them said you could call them.”

  I nodded and tucked the paper into my own back pocket. “Why do you want to live here?”

  “Free rent.” His eyebrows arched. “That’s not enough reason?”

  “Free rent in a shitty neighborhood with some implied threat of danger. You’re not scared?”

  He blinked and it seemed like his entire body settled into itself. God, he was big. So big. And I realized a guy that size with a rifle, who carried himself the way he did, probably wasn’t scared of much.

  “No,” he said. “I’m not scared.”

  That shouldn’t be hot. But it was hot.

  “You want to see the room?” I asked.
>
  He nodded, sending his blond hair swinging, and we went upstairs to the small loft. Between the door to the bathroom and the bedroom was a window that led to a fire escape. I went out there sometimes when the shop got too hot. Or when I was having a tough time with a project or…really, anytime I felt the need to be up and out of things, including my own head.

  I pushed open the door to the bedroom. He ducked his head in and looked around. Futon. Desk. Tiny closet.

  “Why don’t you live here?” he asked.

  “Because I have a house already.”

  “Why not rent somewhere safer?”

  “I don’t know, why don’t I have a million dollars?”

  “Fair point.” Again that boyish, dorky smile and I smiled back. I was not a smiler by nature. I always felt like I was revealing something when I smiled. Some hidden part of me, a secret I didn’t particularly want to share, but somehow couldn’t help.

  But I smiled at this guy, unsure of what I exposed, but keenly aware that I was exposing something.

  For a second we just stood there grinning at each other.

  But then he coughed, breaking the stupid spell I was under and I glanced away, out the window with the view of the garage on the corner and some kids playing road hockey in the alley.

  “The futon and the desk come with the unit,” I told him and opened the door to the bathroom.

  Toilet. Sink. Tiny little shower.

  “Shower might be tight.” As surreptitiously as I could, I glanced over his body again.

  “They usually are,” he said in the manner of a man used to living in a body too big for most things.

  He opened the small cabinet under the sink, saw my tampons, my giant first aid kit, the box of condoms and all the extra rolls of toilet paper. He nodded as if all that made sense and then shut the door and stepped out.

  “Looks fine.”

  Bathroom tour complete.

  I almost told him about the fire escape and the view and how on a good day the smell of the river came by on the wind. And how you could hear the neighborhood moms yelling at their kids to stay out of trouble and come in for dinner. But that was all still mine and as much as I needed someone here, I wasn’t quite ready to share my fire escape.

  So, instead I headed back down the stairs to the first floor. I could feel him right behind me. Taking up so much space. He smelled like spring in Minnesota—pine, ice and mud.

  “We can share the stuff in the kitchen. Coffeemaker, toaster. Microwave and stuff. Everything except my booze.”

  “I don’t drink,” he said.

  “I was joking,” I told him.

  “Oh.”

  “Do you have any questions for me?” I asked because all my nice buzzy attraction was getting weird.

  He asked about the break-ins. The neighborhood.

  I told him the total truth, because there was no point in having him move in only to move out a few days later. He seemed completely unfazed by all of it.

  I showed him the kitchen. The garbage system. I had a thing about composting.

  And that seemed the end of the tour.

  We stood by my old beat-up leather napping couch.

  He was looking up at my wings, tilting his head as if to get a better angle. “Those are amazing. Did you make them?”

  “Part of them. I’ll give you a call in a few days,” I said instead of talking about the wings. See, I had my own keep out signs. “After I talk to your references.”

  He nodded, his hair slipping over his shoulders.

  Seriously, the guy was painfully attractive. I imagined him, just briefly, as a Viking, swinging around an axe. Doing some pillaging.

  “Thank you, Rennie,” he said with lovely politeness. We shook hands, my calloused, blistered hand swallowed up by his calloused blistered hand and I felt myself grow shy for just a moment.

  Which was not at all my style.

  He left and I closed the door behind him. From my back pocket I pulled out his references and called them all.

  “He stays at my house,” his boss said with the kind of Minnesota accent that indicated she’d never left the state. “Well, the tiny apartment over my garage. My kids love him. Our clients love him. He’s just a real good guy.”

  “Great to hear,” I told her.

  “He’s quiet. A bit intense sometimes. Awkward. But I think that’s just how he was raised.”

  “Raised?” I asked, the skin on my neck prickling.

  She was silent for a moment. And all my spidey senses tingled.

  “Do you—” She cut herself off.

  “Do I what?” I asked, when the silence stretched on.

  “Nothing.” She laughed, awkwardly. “Nothing at all.”

  The rest of his references gave Luka glowing recommendations so I decided not to wait another day—like he was some guy I met at a bar, and I was trying to play it cool. I called him a few hours after I met him and told him he could move in next week.

  All night long it bothered me, this sense that I knew Luka. And all night I told myself I was imagining things. That we’d had a little chemistry and he looked like a very famous movie star—those two things were working against me. Making me think there was a memory when there wasn’t.

  But at three in the morning I woke up with a gasp. I pitched forward in bed, my hand over my heart.

  The Mountain Man from Minnesota.

  I grabbed my phone and Google confirmed it.

  Luka Samuelson was The Mountain Man From Minnesota.

  Summer

  ~ SUMMER ~

  Too hot. Too freaking hot to do anything.

  I’d come in after sunset, thinking the day would have cooled down enough for me to finish some work on the statue for the Walker Center Sculpture Park. That’s right, I was going in with the spoon and cherry. But I looked at my forge and my welding equipment and thought fuck no.

  Instead I walked to the fridge and grabbed a cold beer.

  It was hot here, it was hot at home. It was hot everywhere. Except maybe the fire escape. It was high up out of the concrete and if there was a chance of finding a breeze—it would be there.

  But all I did was look at the stairs.

  Luka had been home when I came in; he came to stand out on the second floor landing when he heard the alarm go off.

  “Hullo,” he’d said when he saw me.

  “Hello,” I’d said. “Is it gonna bother you if I work?”

  “Nope.” And then he went back to his room.

  The day he moved in, I almost said something. I almost said;

  You’re the Mountain Man From Minnesota. You saved that girl. Your dad—

  But then he looked up at me, his backpack over his back, his rifle case in hand, and those blue eyes must have seen what I was about to do. Must have seen this moment I was pushing us into and he stood up straight and he…closed up.

  Just like the day he applied for the job.

  Just like Dad when I asked about Mom.

  Just like me anytime anyone asked me…anything.

  His entire body said No. Don’t. And his eyes all but begged me to pretend I didn’t know.

  So, that was what I’d been doing. Pretending I didn’t know who he was.

  Which was cool. I respected that. He didn’t owe me his pain. He was a tenant, and so far a great one. No more burglaries. He called the cops once, but that was all.

  Over the past few months we’d settled into a routine, Luka and me. He was doing some night classes, and if he was home while I was working, sometimes he’d come downstairs and study at one of the stools at the bar in the kitchen. He never told me what classes he was taking and I didn’t pry.

  A few times he helped me bring in new materials, something that went a whole lot faster if he was around. Once or twice he just stretched out on the couch and read while I worked.

  We didn’t talk much.

  But somehow the silence we lived in downstairs was comfortable. And intimate. He made me tea, brought it to me in my
favorite mug. The one with the unicorn on it. Sometimes we’d split a pizza or pierogis from the Polish place down the street.

  All without saying anything about his past. All without saying much at all.

  But upstairs felt so much like his domain. If he didn’t come down, I didn’t go up. Like we’d drawn lines when he moved in and I didn’t even use the bathroom upstairs much anymore.

  But God, I wanted to drink this beer on my fire escape.

  Was that so wrong?

  Fuck no, I decided. It was my goddamned building. He was probably sleeping anyway—the guy worked harder than me, and that was saying something.

  I mean the chances he was on the fire escape were pretty small.

  Which, really, was the only reason I grabbed another beer and headed up. As soundlessly as I could, I climbed the stairs and then out the window in the hallway between his bedroom and the bathroom onto the fire escape.

  The second I stood on the metal landing, the city and its neon landscape spread out in front of me, it was cooler.

  Thank God. I closed my eyes and let the breeze blow my hair across my face. I let it flirt with my shirt, pressing it against my breasts. I stood there for a long time, letting the breeze do its good work.

  “Hey.”

  I screamed and jumped.

  “Sorry! I’m so sorry.”

  I looked back to find Luka sitting on the steps above me. He was shrouded in shadow, only revealed by the glitter of his eyes and flashing white of his teeth. When he turned his head, I saw that he’d pulled his white-blond hair up in one of those messy man-buns, that had no business looking good. Not at all.

  But God, it did.

  “I didn’t mean to startle you,” he said, his face dark, his voice quiet.

  “It’s all right. I thought you were sleeping.” Crap. This little bubble we were in made of heat and night was somehow made smaller by mentioning him sleeping.

  “Too hot,” he said and I could hear in his voice that he was smiling.