His brow furrowed. “Why didn’t you take Booger with you to college?”
“I didn’t want to be the weird girl who still sleeps with teddy bears,” I quickly replied.
Then something occurred to me, “How’d you know I’m in college?”
“Some of your bins were stacked with thick school books. I assumed that you were a college
girl,” he quickly answered.
“You seem to assume a lot.”
He looked me in the eyes. “Was I wrong?”
“No.” I sulked.
“Explain to me one more thing,” he said, his eyes unyielding. “Why did you tell Rocco all
that stuff about yourself?”
“I was trying to form a bond between us so that he wouldn’t want to kill me anymore,” I
admitted with embarrassment.
He laughed. “Where did you get that from?”
“TV—I think.”
A moment of quiet came, and we dangled our feet into the warm water. He smelled like shaving
cream—I took a long breath, and I carefully started to gawk at him from my peripheral. When his
hand pressed against the ground to slightly readjust his seating, the muscles of his forearm
tightly shifted with him. I also noticed a marking peeking out below the sleeve of his T-shirt.
Without warning, he turned his head and caught me staring. “What?”
Words briefly escaped me.
Like an idiot, I reached past his chest and touched the skin of his arm. This seemed to have
caught him off guard. He didn’t pull away, but he didn’t move an inch either.
“Is that a tattoo?” I asked shyly.
He finally understood and lifted up his sleeve. There was a cross tattooed on his bicep.
“You have a scar in the middle of the cross,” I remarked.
He watched my expression before he explained, “Bullet wound.”
I tried to hide my shock. “Did the tattoo come before or after the … bullet?”
“After,” he replied, never taking his eyes off my face. He seemed to debate something before
pulling down on the collar of his shirt. On the middle of his upper chest, was another cross,
with another mark—bullet wound—in the middle.
“This one came close,” he explained, his voice guarded.
I took my time with this new information.
“You mark the spots where you’ve been shot,” I quietly surmised and glanced up to read his
face. “Why?”
His lips thinned. “Reminds me to be thankful that I’m alive.”
“You need to be reminded?”
“Some days are easier than others,” he said darkly.
“Does it happen a lot … you getting shot at?” I struggled. I was trying to collect rational
thoughts and push out the horrifying images that were crowding my brain.
“On occasion,” he answered with caution. “But the bullets rarely reach their target.”
I kept his eyes. “By target you mean you?”
He forced a smile. “Do you want to know how many of these crosses I have?”
“There are more?” My voice was shaking.
“Three more.” He lifted up his shirt and showed me the cross tattooed on his stomach. “I have
another one on my leg and on my back.”
The door to the pool house opened all of a sudden, and I jumped. Carly walked out, carrying a
stack of papers. She was wearing a cute sundress, her silky black hair falling down her back.
With her olive skin and her petite frame, she looked like a porcelain doll, almost breakable.
She threw a disapproving glance in our direction as she pursued her path on the other side of
the pool and went into the house without a word, banging the door behind her.
I was suddenly conscious that I was leaning into Cameron and that Cameron’s girlfriend had
caught me staring at her boyfriend’s stomach. My cheeks burned up.
“You’re blushing,” Cameron said, laughing.
“I don’t think your girlfriend likes me very much,” I said, trying to mentally tone down the
color that was rising up my cheeks.
His eyes widened. “My what?”
“Your girlfriend, Carly,” I clarified.
“Oh! Right! Carly, my … girlfriend!”
He burst out laughing.
“I can’t wait to tell her that. It might actually make her feel better, or at least make her
laugh a bit.”
He finally settled down and shook his head in amazement.
“Carly’s not my girlfriend,” he explained. “Actually, you should probably not tell anyone
else about your theory, or I’ll need another cross to hide the new bullet wound.”
I tried to stay indifferent about this stirring news.
While I pulled myself together, Cameron told me that Carly lived in the pool house. As the only
girl, he explained, she needed her privacy.
“Well, she used to be the only girl here,” he added with a wink.
“Does she work for you then?” I blurted.
“Where did you get that from?”
I recounted for him my first meeting with Carly and her argument with Rocco about working for
Cameron, the boss.
He sighed, clearly displeased.
“Yes, Carly works for me,” he answered dejectedly.
“What does she do?”
“She’s a whiz with numbers. She keeps track of all the money, coming in and going out.”