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  TRUE NORTH

  Bad Idea: Volume III

  A Novel

  N I C O L E F R E N C H

  Raglan Press

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or rendered fictitiously. Any resemblance to real people or events is purely coincidental.

  Copyright 2018 Raglan Press

  All rights reserved.

  This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite eBook retailer and purchase your own copy.

  eBook Edition

  Dedication

  To C. You’re my true north.

  Table of Contents

  Part I: The Bitter and the Sweet

  Part II: Valió la pena

  PART I: The Bitter and the Sweet

  CHAPTER ONE

  August 2004

  Nico

  I’m kissing her. I’m kissing her again, and I don’t have to feel bad or guilty about the way she feels in my arms or the way I want to do a lot more than just kiss her right here in the middle of JFK. I don’t have to feel bad about any of it because finally––finally––I’m here, and she’s here, and I get to be with my girl for good. No one is leaving. No one is with someone else. It’s just us, and for fuckin’ once we get a real shot. And sweet fuck does she taste good.

  Her tongue dips around mine as her legs wind tightly around my waist. I groan as I get a solid two handfuls of her ass, which I’ve been dreaming about all summer. While I waited for my girl to heal after the year from fuckin’ hell she had last year. While we talked on the phone so long I thought I was going to burn my ear off. While we breathed, hot and heavy, late at night, listening to each other lose control from three thousand miles away. Just the memories of that make me feel like I’m about to lose control now. I need to get my girl alone, like yesterday.

  “Layla?”

  Her lips break from mine, and I growl. I actually growl, like I’m a dog, and someone is trying to take away my bone. Or, you know, boner. Same difference right about now.

  “Who the fuck is that?” I ask, seeking her mouth all over again.

  But she’s done for now. Layla sighs, rolls her big blue eyes, and drops her feet to the ground. She tries to step away, but I’m not having it. So she tugs on a handful of her dark hair, which, if I’m not mistaken, looks even shinier than it was before. Her pale skin is just a little sun kissed. Damn. Three months of enjoying the California sun has done my baby good.

  “Surprise,” she says weakly. “Nico, this is my mother, Cheryl.”

  Her…mother?

  My hands fly off Layla’s ass like I’m touching a hot plate. Shit. Shit. This wasn’t the impression I was looking to make when I met her parents for the first time. I already know I’m not really the type of guy they probably want to see her with. Older, tatted up, and with a record to boot. I’m a long shot from the kind of guy they want in family pictures. Her father’s a doctor, for fuck’s sake, and I’ve seen her grandparents’ mansion in Pasadena. Not exactly the one-bedroom apartment I grew up in, shared between me, my mom, and three other kids.

  But Layla doesn’t see any of that. She doesn’t care about where I come from; she never did. And she’s the only one whose opinion I give a shit about anyway.

  So I straighten up and turn to her mother, glad that my skin color hides my flush.

  “Hi, Mrs. Barros, how you doin’? It’s nice to finally meet you.”

  “Cheryl, please.”

  I tip the brim of my Yankees hat. I feel like an idiot when I do it––who the fuck am I, an old timey cowboy? John fuckin’ Wayne? Should I just go all out and say “Howdy, ma’am?” Have a little hoedown in the middle of JFK arrivals?

  Layla giggles, like she can sense what I’m thinking. And she probably can, too. She knows me better than anybody. I roll my eyes, but I have to grin. Whatever. It’s polite, right?

  But then my smile falls when I catch the look on Cheryl’s face. A dark-blonde brow arches over one of her bright blue eyes––the same eyes she shares with her daughter. She’s imperious. And currently very suspicious.

  You wouldn’t know that Cheryl and Layla are related unless they told you. I’ve never met her dad, but Layla probably has the coloring of her Brazilian father––dark-brown, almost black hair, deep-set eyes that get circles when she’s tired, full pink lips that I would like to go back to sucking on, thank you very fuckin’ much. But Cheryl Barros definitely gave her daughter those eyes the color of a bluebird sky, sharp as a kitchen knife. And right now, I’ve got two pairs of them zeroed in on me.

  Bam. Gutted. Just like that.

  “You must be Nico,” she says evenly.

  She says it like she knows me. And to be fair, she probably does. Cheryl and I have only spoken once, but it was one of the most intense conversations I’ve ever had. Imagine calling your girl’s mom for the first time, and you tell her that her daughter is basically in pieces––not because you did anything, but because you found her that way. After I moved to LA for a year and her dad left her and Cheryl for Brazil, Layla spiraled all last year. In her vulnerability, she was taken advantage of by the worst possible person. Giancarlo––fuck, I don’t even like thinking that piece of shit’s name, let alone saying it––was a monster if I ever met one, the kind of dude who cuts a woman down to make himself feel stronger. The kind of guy who takes his anger out on her face in the end.

  A pang of guilt shoots through me. I’ll never forgive myself for what happened, knowing that if I had just stayed in New York, Layla wouldn’t have gotten wrapped up with that abusive motherfucker. It’s a memory I’ll never shake: Layla crushed under a much larger man, with blood all over both of them while he used her beautiful face like a punching bag. If I hadn’t gotten there when I did…

  I shudder, same way I do whenever the memory reappears. No. I’m not going to go there. Returning to that day is the quickest way to bring me to The Dark Place, as I’ve come to know it. The place where harder Nico lives, a Nico who knows himself for the asshole he can really be, the Nico I’ve been working really fuckin’ hard to keep buried for the last several years.

  Layla gives a hopeful smile. Her face shines with that light that only my girl has. It lightens me too.

  Not today, asshole, I tell myself. Maybe not ever again.

  Cheryl holds out her hand, palm down, like she’s expecting me to kiss it or something. Should I? I start to lean down, but end up standing up straight. Going from John Wayne to Prince Charming is a little much, don’t you think? Instead, I shake it a little, accepting her light squeeze before she pulls away, looking like she wants hands sanitizer.

  Okay, yeah. My hands aren’t exactly clean. Thirty minutes ago, I was doing pushups on concrete with a hundred other FDNY cadets, and there are still smudges of dirt on my palms. Well, sorry, lady. I wasn’t planning on touching anyone else but your daughter, and I’m pretty sure she doesn’t mind if I came straight for her instead of washing up first.

  “Mom’s here to help me find an apartment,” Layla says as she takes my hand. See? I knew she wouldn’t care about the dirt.

  I turn to her. “You’re not living at the dorms this year?”

  For whatever reason, Layla and I haven’t spoken much about her living situation. We talked every day this summer, when we could get the spare moments to do it. But we’ve both been crazy busy. I’m at the academy five days a week, usually from sunup to sundown, and then I’ve been doing securit
y again at AJ’s, the nightclub where I used to work. The extra cash helps supplement the shitty probationary salary I get as a new recruit with the FDNY. Layla took a couple more language classes to keep up her Spanish and Portuguese requirements for her degree, and I know she’s been working a lot at a local women’s services center too. So when we did talk, it wasn’t about monotonous shit like apartment hunting or bills. It was usually what we did that day for a few brief moments before we both fell asleep. Just enough time to reassure her that I was still here, waiting for the day she was coming back.

  I didn’t really think about what would happen when she did.

  Layla shakes her head. “Jamie and Quinn are still rooming together, so Shama and I decided to find a place off campus…”

  She drifts off, but I know where she’s going. Up until the end of last year, Quinn was Layla’s best friend, her roommate through the first three years of college. But their friendship was tested when Layla’s life fell apart, and Quinn couldn’t handle it. Bitch. Layla’s better off without her.

  “Okay,” I say. “So we need to find you an apartment. You know, you could just stay with me––”

  I can’t quite cut myself off in time before I realize what I’m saying. While I’d like nothing more than to wake up and fall asleep with Layla right next to me every day––I probably like that idea too much, if we’re being honest––all I have to offer is a pullout couch in the living room of a crowded apartment uptown. My old place is currently occupied by me, my brother Gabe, my sister Maggie, and her daughter. I’m on the couch until the academy’s done and I can even start to think about finding a new place of my own. What kind of offer is that?

  I frown to myself. It’s just another reminder of how little I actually have to offer someone like Layla. She says she doesn’t care, but I do wonder every now and then if she really knows what that means.

  “Do you have a car?” Cheryl interrupts my brooding before Layla can respond. “Or do we need a taxi? We have an appointment with a realtor at six, and we need to drop Layla’s bags at the hotel.”

  Her toe taps on the linoleum floor so loudly I can hear it over the crowd.

  “Ah, no,” I admit, feeling suddenly weird about it even though most people in New York don’t have cars. “We’ll have to get a cab.”

  “All right.” Cheryl looks me up and down. She dressed casually in short white pants and a striped shirt, but the woman has a presence that would intimidate my sergeant. I don’t know why Layla ever described her mother as meek––this lady is anything but. “I suppose we can drop you in the city on your way home.”

  “Mom,” Layla starts, but I cut in anyway.

  “That’s all right, Mrs. Barros,” I say. “I’m happy to help out. You’ll need a local anyway to make sure you don’t get scammed by the brokers.”

  I wink, even though I don’t really know what the fuck I’m talking about. I’ve only had one apartment here in New York, and it was a rent-controlled lease passed to me from K.C.’s cousin. I don’t know the first thing about hunting for an apartment in the city, even though I’m about to learn myself. But right now, there isn’t a thing that could stop me from being by Layla’s side. Definitely not a little white lie.

  Cheryl opens her mouth, surprised, then closes it again. If I’m not mistaken, there’s a little quirk of lips before she looks away.

  “Well, let’s go,” she says and turns abruptly toward baggage claim.

  I pick up Layla’s carry-on and heave it over my shoulder, then sling my other arm around her waist so I can sneak another kiss. She stops walking and returns it, with a lot more tongue than I was initially planning, but hey, I’m not going to argue. Fuck me, she tastes good. Like vanilla and some kind of fruit and maybe some kind of soda she was drinking on the plane. But mostly she just tastes like Layla. She tastes like home.

  “Damn,” I whisper when we break again. We have got to find a room.

  “Yeah,” Layla whispers, keeping her nose to mine.

  It’s still there: that magnetic pull that always made us feel like we couldn’t get close enough. Fuck the fact that we’re in the middle of an airport. Fuck the fact that her mother is ten feet away, watching me carefully. I’d take Layla right here if she said the word. I’d take her for the rest of my life.

  “Come on,” Layla says, finally stepping away and tugging me forward. “She’s right. We do need to get going.”

  I just nod and follow her through the crowd. But I don’t let go of her hand. Not now. Not ever.

  ~

  CHAPTER TWO

  Layla

  Nico waits in the hotel lobby while Mom and I check into our room and change. He looked like it was physically painful to stay behind, and I get it. Those brief kisses in the airport were not enough. Not even close. I’d been waiting for that moment all summer, and the complete and utter rightness of being in his arms again was enough to banish the shadows I’ve been fighting for the last year. It was enough to make me feel unafraid for the first time in so, so long.

  At least for a moment.

  I run a brush through my hair, checking my face still for bruises. It’s a habit, considering it took nearly a month for all of the damage that Giancarlo inflicted to disappear. Three months ago, Nico yanked my ex-boyfriend off me, but only after I’d been kidnapped and viciously assaulted. It took me weeks to walk without a limp from my sprained ankle. I had stitches in my eyebrow for two, and a thin white line still runs through my brow line. Mom wanted to have a surgeon clean it up, but I told her no. I’m not sure I ever want to forget what happened completely. I want to keep it as a reminder. Of what, I’m not sure. But I’ll figure it out at some point.

  I blink in the mirror, and for a second, I see his face. Not Nico’s. Giancarlo’s. Long, lean, with deep shadows under his dark eyes and a mop of thick black hair. The Wayfarer glasses that were cracked by Nico’s fists before I was carried out of that room. The complete and utter hatred seething through his pain.

  It’s a face that still haunts me, that wakes me up at night. I grip the edge of the counter, wondering again why I chose to return to the city where my attacker still roams free. His trial isn’t for a few more weeks, and though I won’t have to stand as a witness, I know that my statement will be read aloud. Nico thinks they’ll ask for a plea bargain, but he’s hoping for maximum penalty. I just want it to be over. I just want to move on. But if he’s acquitted, I’m not sure I can.

  “Layla? Are you ready?”

  Mom pokes her head into the bathroom and checks me over. It’s a look I’ve been getting since she helped me off the plane, when it finally registered what kind of hell her daughter had been dealing with all year. She had gotten medical privileges to meet me at the gate, like I was an unaccompanied minor. They wheeled me off the plane in a wheelchair, even though I could actually walk, and when she saw me that first time, I genuinely thought my mother was going to pass out.

  She’s calm now, but flashes of fear and shock still cross her face every so often. She hasn’t said anything because I was so adamant, but I think she’s as nervous about me coming back here as I am. There were hints all summer, mild suggestions that I might want to stay in Pasadena, maybe even transfer to UCLA to finish my degree. It’s why she insisted on coming with me to find an apartment this time. It’s why, I suspect, she won’t leave until she knows for sure when I’m returning to Pasadena.

  But I had to come back. I don’t want to be the kind of person who runs away when things are scary or hard. And, like my therapist says, facing your demons is as important as understanding them. New York feels like a city full of demons to me right now, but it didn’t always. For a short period of time, it felt like home, more than the house I grew up in. Maybe it can feel that way again.

  Plus, there’s him. Nico. If the events of last year forced me to confront the reasons why I would allow myself to be abused in the first place, they also forced me to realize the other truth in my life: that Nico is where I belong. It was his de
ep voice that spurred me on this summer, whispering sweet statements of faith and sex and longing and love. He believes in me when I’m not sure I can. He assures me, again and again, that I’m stronger than I feel.

  If you had asked me two years ago if I believed in soul mates, I would have said no. But here is a person toward whom, from the start, every cell in my body seemed drawn. I just don’t make sense without him. And I don’t want to, either.

  The thought reins in my fears. He’s here. I’m here. Together, we can move forward.

  “Yep,” I call out. “I’m ready.”

  ~

  Nico’s sitting in a chair in the lobby when we arrive, chatting up a little kid who spotted the big FDNY letters displayed across his broad chest. I used to think he looked hot in his FedEx uniform, but that thing had nothing on the FDNY gear. The plain navy t-shirt hugs his biceps in a way that should be illegal, and it was really hard not to stare at his ass pretty much the entire time he was leading us to the taxi line at JFK.

  The thing is, he’s completely unaware of the effect he has on people. He takes off his hat and sets in on the kid’s head, making him giggle, and Nico laughs right along with him. His smile lights up the room, but he’s oblivious to at least five women, including the kid’s mother, and likely a few men who are outright ogling him. I don’t even blame them. The man is impossibly gorgeous.

  “See you, buddy,” he says, clapping a hand on the kid’s head as Mom and I approach. He stands up, all smiles for me while he fixes his hat. “So, where are we headed?”

  My mother looks him up and down. She isn’t a talker––while my dad was full of lectures and opinions, Mom always sat next to him, watching. Her eyes are the quickest things about her. Her expression is veiled, but I can see hints of appreciation there. Great. My mom thinks Nico is hot too.