“How about Friday night?” he asks hesitantly.

“Sure. That will work.”

We’re silent for a moment and I start to relax into Beck’s embrace, feeling sated and drowsy. I wonder what it would be like to take an afternoon nap with Beck. Just be naked and lazy in his arms.

“Sela?” Beck says after a cough that clears his throat. His voice is tense and hesitant.

“Yeah?”

“JT wants to get together with you and me for dinner on Saturday. I kind of accepted, but I totally understand if you don’t want to go. I can make up an excuse or something.”

There’s no stopping the white-hot flash of rage that turns my blood to lava, and for an instant, I can’t even speak because the feeling is so painful it robs me of words.

“I know you don’t like him,” Beck rushes onward. “He hasn’t given you any room to, so I’m totally cool if you say no. It’s just…he’s still my business partner, and assuming he gets his shit together, I’m going to have to do functions with him and I hope you’re by my side at them. You’re going to run into him, and I thought…well, maybe you could get to know a little of the JT that I happen to like when he’s on his A-game.”

I take a deep breath in, let it out. Another in, let it out. I try to think calming thoughts and banish the red haze of fury from my vision.

“You’re awful quiet,” he says softly. “I’m taking this is going to be a no to the invitation.”

I think about the red tattoo on Beck’s back…a permanent part of him that I’ve decided to live with. I think of JT, the living embodiment of what that tattoo represents to me, and my choice to just live with what he’s done. Can I seriously be around the man who brutalized me? Can I look him in the eye and have a polite conversation?

Will I ever be able to be in the same room with him and not lust with murder?

I don’t know. It’s unfathomable to me.

But I do know one thing.

I’m committing myself to Beck, and that means I’ve got to accept JT is in his life until such time as he screws up that privilege. Knowing JT, that will happen. A zebra doesn’t change his stripes, I remind myself, and while he might be putting on a superlative effort to snow Beck at this moment, I know it’s only a matter of time before he falls back onto his old, treacherous ways.

So I swallow my pride and my anger and my thirst for justice once again.

I do this all for Beck.

I commit myself even further to him when I say, “Sure. I might not like him very much, but I’ll have dinner with him if that’s what you want.”

Chapter 22

Beck

“I’m a little ashamed,” I say casually as we cruise through Sela’s neighborhood. We hadn’t talked much since heading out of San Francisco about forty-five minutes ago, the rush hour being hair-raising enough to require my full attention while Sela dug her nails into the supple leather of the passenger seat.

“Ashamed of what?” she asks, turning her head against the seat rest to look at me.

I spare just a moment to glance at her, but what a moment it is. Her hair is loose and flowing over her shoulders, and I ache to reach out to touch it because I know how soft it is. One of my favorite things now is Sela falling asleep on top of me and her hair resting like a silk blanket on my chest.

“That I didn’t even know that you’re from Belle Haven…practically my old stomping grounds,” I tell her with a laugh as I put my eyes back on the road.

“Well, not really your old stomping grounds,” she corrects me primly. “Belle Haven isn’t exactly the hotbed of lifestyles of the rich and famous.”

“Smartass,” I grumble. “I just meant that you were minutes from me when I went to Stanford. We could have passed each other on the street at some point or even been at the same party together and never known it. Did you ever go to a lot of parties at Stanford?”

“No,” she says softly as she gazes out the windows. “I wasn’t much of a party girl.”

The neighborhood of Belle Haven, located in Menlo Park, is no more than a couple of miles from Stanford in Palo Alto. It’s a neighborhood that’s had a very bad rap for years and years, and Sela’s right…my family wouldn’t be caught dead here once upon a time. But it’s gotten better over the last five or so years, particularly with Facebook opening a campus here and pumping money into community programs. The violent crime rate has dropped drastically, which made it a good choice now for lower-income families.

Still, it’s a far cry from where I grew up. My parents would be absolutely horrified to know I was involved with a woman from—gasp—the wrong side of the tracks. Imagining the looks on their faces actually gives me a warm, tingly feeling inside.

“It’s that one right there,” Sela says as she points to a tiny bungalow done in a light gray siding with a flat roof and a yellow porch light burning brightly. Even though it’s already dark, there’s plenty of light from the streetlamp, so I can see the lot is the size of a postage stamp with only ten feet or so in on either side of the house. Still, the yard is tidy with pretty bushes around the foundation and the drought-brown grass neatly edged at the sidewalk that runs adjacent to the road.

I park parallel on the street, as the short driveway has a white work truck and a small black car behind hit. Turning off the ignition, I say, “The family homestead. It’s nice.”

“Not a palace like you’re used to,” she says with a quirk to her lips.

Such beautiful lips.

So I lean over and give her a kiss. “I may have grown up in a monstrosity of a house, but it wasn’t ever a home. Our condo…that’s more of a home to me than I’ve ever lived in, and part of that is because you’re there.”

Sela’s eyes fill with tenderness, a new look I’m liking on her face. The cool, aloof woman is warming up in ways I never imagined.

She reaches out, grabs my hand resting casually between us, and squeezes it. “You’re too sweet to me.”

“You make it easy,” I assure her, actually enjoying the fact that these words of affection come easy to me.

Maybe I was built for relationships but just never found the right one. While Sela always maintains something in reserve that is still unknown to me, I’ve seen enough glimpses inside to know she could possibly be “the one.” She’s definitely worth the effort, and I hope that she’ll fully open up to me one day. I’ve no doubt that something in her past keeps a part of her locked up tight from me, and that was evidenced by last week when she lied to me. Even thinking about it now, my shoulders tense up. I wasn’t kidding with Sela…I don’t abide by liars. I hate dishonesty and secrets and ulterior motives. I have reason to, and it’s probably the only thing that could tear me away from her.