“Good thinking, baby doll,” Tate said, holding out the joint for Jen now.

Without giving Tate the luxury of a look, Jen reached around her shoulder and took the joint from his fingers.

“You said you all live in Miami?” Elias asked from the chair as I went back over and sat on his lap.

Tate let out a long, deep breath and stretched one arm above his head across the back of the couch. “Yeah, Caleb, me, and Jen live in Miami. Those two—” he motioned toward Johanna and Grace “—they wouldn’t survive in Miami.”

Grace’s head fell to one side and she propped her hands on top of Caleb’s bent knees.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” she said. It was the first time I’d actually heard her talk, and I thought her voice was sweet and soothing, much unlike her fire-breathing companion, Jen.

Jen still sat peering into her cell phone.

“You’re too damn white, girl,” Tate said and laughed.

“White? Like Caucasian?” Johanna said with an air of curiosity. Immediately, I got the dumb-girl vibe from that one.

“No,” Tate said and rolled his eyes. “White like a vampire. Don’t get me wrong, Grace, that milky-white skin will give any guy a hard-on in a second, but you know what I mean.”

Jen whirled around at him and punched him in the chest, hard. Tate’s body reacted by jerking forward, his feet raising from the carpet a few inches. He laughed and held one hand over the spot.

“Tha fuck you say that for?” Jen said. “I’m sitting right here.”

Tate was trying not to laugh, but the smile on his face pretty much gave it away.

“Damn, baby, chill the fuck out.” He reached out for her arm, but she snatched it away. “You keep that shit up and I’m going to fuck you up.”

Whoa… I wonder what he meant by that. He definitely didn’t seem the abusive type—Jen wore the championship belt in that category from what I’d seen—but his threat made me wonder.

Tate, with his smile still intact, turned back to us. “No, we just got back from a long drive to Norfolk to pick up my brother.” He motioned at Caleb. “It was just me and Jen on the way up. Didn’t know we’d have a car full on the way back.” Then he pointed at Grace and Johanna again. “These two bobbleheads are friends of Caleb’s. They wanted to get out of Virginia for a while. We had room in my Jeep. You can paint the rest of the picture.”

“Why didn’t you just fly?” I asked.

Tate and Caleb looked at each other and then Tate looked back at me.

But Elias was the one who answered, “Because they couldn’t carry their drugs on the plane.”

A smirk tugged the corners of Tate’s mouth.

Chapter Fourteen Elias

Tate stopped midsmile and pointed at me from across the room, beer dangling from his hand, and said, “You’re not a cop, are you?” I think he knew I was as much a cop as he was.

“Hell no,” I said, shaking my head.

His smile returned and his arm dropped beside him again.

Grace, the brown-haired girl sitting between Caleb’s legs, pushed herself forward on her knees, raising her ass in front of Caleb, and she stretched out her arm toward us. Bray leaned forward on my lap and took the joint from her fingers and then put it to her lips.

Caleb saw an opportunity and smacked Grace before she sat back down. Grace looked back at him with an awry smile. I was having a hard time figuring the two out. I didn’t sense any real emotional attachments between them, but a sexual attachment was unmistakable.

We were all fairly high after the joint made its third pass around the room. Bray and I were warming up to our new friends quicker than either of us expected. Maybe it was the weed, but even Jen began to ease up on Bray some. Every now and then she’d make a nonsarcastic comment to something Bray said, and things were beginning to look up between the two. Though Jen wasn’t about to ease up even a little on Tate, who finally gave up trying to talk to her and zoned out on the couch.

I had no clue as to how much time had passed when I noticed how much Grace and Bray were hitting it off. Bray and I had moved from the chair to the floor at some point, sitting with our backs against the wall. Grace sat beside Bray, and they talked nonstop for a long time while I zoned out like Tate and stared across the room at the television. I wasn’t completely fried, but my mind wandered so much I couldn’t say what I was watching. I saw their lips moving on the screen, but I couldn’t hear a word.

Caleb snapped my mind back into reality when he called for Grace and looked at me with a familiar predatory gaze. Taken aback by it, I paid more attention to what was going on around me. Did I miss something? I had no fucking clue why Caleb looked at me like that, but when Grace got up and went over to sit with him, I got the feeling he was threatened by me when it came to Grace. It was odd. I had barely said two words to her. Bray was the one doing all the talking. I just shut my eyes and leaned the back of my head against the wall and ignored him. I stayed like that, Bray now lying on the floor with her head in my lap, until Jen and Tate arguing woke me up again.

“I’m going to bed,” Jen spat. She pushed Tate away when he tried to slip his arm around her waist. “You can sleep in here.”

Tate laughed and followed her toward the separate bedroom.

“Take your clothes off when you get in there,” Tate said. “I’ll be in there in a minute.”

Jen whirled around and slapped him across the face so hard that I felt the sting. I drew my head back, my eyes widening in a mild display of shock. Bray lifted her head from my lap.

Tate was still smiling, but I noticed his teeth grinding behind the handprint that started to appear on his cheek. He grabbed Jen’s wrists.

“Leave. Me. Alone,” she growled.

Tate let go.

For a second, it looked like a standoff as the two of them stood face-to-face, unblinking, each waiting for the other to make a move. Finally Jen turned around and walked into the bedroom, slamming the door behind her.

Among the seven of us, only Bray and I seemed to find their display concerning.

Tate stretched his arms high above his head and yawned, stretching his whole face. Then he dropped his arms back at his sides and looked at us.

“Crash wherever you want,” he offered. “I’m going to hit the sack.”

“Sure thing,” I said somewhat distantly.

Tate disappeared inside the room with Jen, and before he even got the door closed all the way, Jen’s shouting at him to “Get the fuck out!” among other things, was what I heard.

“I said take off your fucking clothes,” I heard Tate say through the wall.

“Go fuck yourself,” she told him.

Then I heard a loud thwap and felt my eyes widen in my head.

“You fucking want to hit me?!” Tate roared. “Fucking hit me again! Do it!” I could picture him turning the other cheek.

I glanced over at Caleb who sat just as he had been all night between Johanna’s legs and Grace between his. He ran his fingers through Grace’s hair and his other hand brushed against Johanna’s knee.

Thwap!

Jen screamed, and then I felt the floor shake and what sounded like a scuffle. I stood up. It was instinct. Jen may have needed to shut her mouth a long time ago, but I couldn’t stand to know she was being hit on the other side of that door.

“Don’t worry about it,” Caleb said stoically.

I glanced down at him, but then just looked back toward the door. There was definitely some kind of physical fight going on in there. Bray was standing next to me. I was so focused I didn’t even know when she got up from the floor.