Page 1 of No More Secrets

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Lucas Carson rolls onto his back and stares at the ceiling fan rotating on low, blades spinning faster than a clock’s second hand melting his waste of a life. As if the Mojave Desert hasn’t already done so.

He takes a mental assessment, digging up the motivation to get out of bed. His head pounds from the six-pack of empty beer bottles on the nightstand. More from the shots of tequila. The crust around his eyes that caked overnight stings. He scrapes it off. His body aches, his right calf especially. He must have tweaked it last night when they were going at it.

He drags his hands down his face, the stubble chafing, and drops an f-bomb into his cupped palms. Faye came knocking after midnight. He shouldn’t have let her in.

She stirs beside him, her body going taut as she stretches her arms overhead and purrs. The sound drips with enough innuendo that Lucas can’t believe it isn’t intentional.

Her eyes slide open, revealing the stunning green that gets him every time she shows up at his door in a skimpy dress, mountain-high heels, and legs that go for miles. She has ten years on his thirty-three, but it doesn’t show anywhere on her. She’s a knockout. And he’s a fool for a no-strings-attached lay.

He sits up in bed. She smiles, catlike. He swings his legs over the side. She reaches for his wrist to keep him close. He pulls his hand away and shoots up from bed, moody about when and how he’s touched.She pouts because he’s slipping away. Body, mind. Interest. Until next time, at least.

“Baby.” Faye’s plea is breathless, heavy with the dregs of sleep.

“Got to get to work,” he says gruffly, clearing his throat of morning phlegm. He grabs the orange Home Depot bucket he uses for trash and slides the empty bottles in with one swipe of his forearm. The noise shatters the morning’s calm.

Faye flops onto her back with an irritated groan. “Lucas,” she whines, now fully awake. She drags the pillow over her face.

He drops the bucket on the floor. The bottles clatter. “You should go. Rafe returns tonight.” Her husband.

She groans into the pillow, then dramatically tosses it onto the floor and rolls to her side, propping up her head. She lets the sheet slide from her shoulders, revealing perfect breasts, thanks to some fancy surgeon in the Valley. “He doesn’t leave again for weeks. Skip work. Spend the day with me.” Her bottom lip pops out.

“Can’t.” He hobbles to the bathroom, stretching his cramped calf.

“She’s lucky.”

“Who?” He lifts the toilet lid and seat she’d put down. They bang against the tank.

“Izzy.”

“Ivy,” he corrects. His seventy-nine-year-old landlady and boss. She owns the four-apartment complex along with the market on the first floor. He works where she tells him, and he’s already running late. He overslept and has the hangover to blame.

“She’s all you care about.”

He grunts and takes a piss without bothering to shut the door.

“‘The simple act of caring is heroic,’” she recites.

Lucas rolls his eyes, no idea what she’s going off about. He flushes the toilet, washes his hands, and splashes cold water onto his face. He leans on the sink and stares at his reflection, rallying the will to clean up and show up. His eyes are bloodshot, the skin around them mottled.He hasn’t cut his hair in months. It falls shapelessly around his head, the cowlick he’s had since birth more pronounced from Faye messing with his hair. He swears she pulled out strands when he was pounding into her. She can’t keep her hands off his head.

I need you.She palmed his face, his neck, begging for the intimacy.

He rubs a hand over his scalp. There’s nothing intimate about them or what they do in the dark.

The switchblade he keeps on the toilet tank demands his attention as it does every morning since the day he arrived here feeling the lowest of lows. He scowls at it, his gaze sliding to the tub. A memory from when he was sixteen of a bathtub like this one filled to the rim with lukewarm water, him in it, fades in and out.

“Edward Albert.” She’s prattling on about whatever from his room.

He’s never heard of him.

“That actor. He was inFalcon Crestand a movie with Goldie Hawn. He won a Golden Globe.” Her tone tells him he should know who this guy is.

Lucas shakes his head, totally uninterested. He turns away from the blade and grabs his toothbrush, smears paste across the worn bristles.

“Baby, I ache. Be a hero and come back to bed.” Her voice goes all singsong on him.

He could crawl back into bed. To hell with his responsibilities.

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