Ocean (Damage Control Book 5)
Read Ocean (Damage Control Book 5) Online
Authors: Jo Raven
(Damage Control #5)
By Jo Raven
OCEAN
(Damage Control, 5)
Jo Raven
Copyright Jo Raven 2016
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the author.
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, events, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
Cover art:
Jo Raven
Photographer:
Paul Henry Serres
Model:
Marc-André Laparé
I thought I was a normal kid once. Do normal kids have to beg door to door for food? Not sure. It wasn’t always that bad, I guess—and then it was. Really fucking bad.
I tried to protect my younger brother from the fallout. Lied to him about how bad things were.
But it wasn’t enough. And when the accident happened, he blamed me, like everyone else.
I’m guilty of many things. He’s right about that, at least. So damn guilty I’m sure everyone knows and will call me out on it.
Except they don’t. Nobody does, except my brother.
Not even Kayla, sexy and sweet and coolest girl ever, who keeps buying me coffee and trying to read my future. But my future isn’t in the goddamn cards, or even in my hands. I don’t see a future. I deny fate, but fate has me pinned like a moth and won’t let me walk away.
Won’t let me escape.
And yeah… you know you’re losing grip when the girl you want reads your palm, and you’re scared to hell of what she’ll see and of the pain you can tell is coming.
**WARNING** 18+ for sexual content, language, and violence.
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PART I
Kayla
“Kay, are you listening to me? This is a matter of life or death!”
“Uh-huh, Allie,” I murmur as I spread my newest deck of Tarot cards on the carpet. I’m trying a Celtic Cross spread, and frankly, I’m lost. Too many cards.
“You’re not listening,” my older sister grumbles.
“Sure I am.”
With Allie, it’s always a matter of life or death, especially when it comes to her boyfriend, Brad—or rather, her fiancé. The one and only since high school, her one teenage love—since then grown to a
full
asshole—and her one big mistake.
According to me, so who cares, right?
“He
said
he spent the night with his buddies, but his friend Josh told me he didn’t show up, and what am I supposed to think? And I can’t call him out on it, because he’ll get mad and—”
“Seriously, Allie…” I stare at my cards, frowning. Are there more person cards or more symbols? Is it important? “How can you be with someone you can’t even confront about that?”
“Because! I’ll seem clingy and paranoid and he hates that, and with the wedding around the corner, it’s the last thing I want. If we put it off again, Mom and Dad will have twin fits.”
And so what?
I want to say but force myself to keep quiet. How she can even consider marrying that idiot is beyond me. I met him a few times, and he made my skin crawl.
Yeah, I know Mom and Dad think the two have to marry after being together for three years and that they want grandkids ASAP.
But hey, what about Allie’s life? Her happiness?
And why doesn’t
she
care about it, either? Am I the only one here asking that question? I mean, she’s studying medicine because my parents want it, and will marry her asshole boyfriend because my parents want it, have two point five kids and buy a house with a white picket fence, and then what?
“Think, Allie.” I rearrange the cards into groups. “Think about what you really want in your life.”
“What are you talking about? This is what I want.”
Moving from Chicago to Milwaukee to be with a loser because he stared at her tits long enough in high school it counted as a date?
“Whatever,” I mutter.
“Like you know any better, Kay?”
Not really. My experience with boys is definitely limited. Not that I’m about to admit it to Allie.
I stare at the card smack in the center of my spread. The Fool. Of course. He keeps popping up in my attempts to read the future in the cards.
Then again, Tarot isn’t meant for reading the future, is it? It’s for reading oneself. Which makes
me
the fool.
Only apparently the Fool signifies the spark that sets everything into motion, and coupled with the card right next to it… The Moon. A veiled path, a hard path that you must tread to reach the light, a path—
“And Wyatt has been acting up again,” Allie cuts through my attempt at concentration, “and Mom is pissed.”
“You mean our little brother insists on hanging out with a girl Mom doesn’t approve of just because she isn’t the right color and the right religion?”
“Kayla,” Allie mutters, “she’s a foreigner, she’s—”
“No, she’s not. She was born here. Not that it matters, especially since, you know, she’s not what our parents want her to be.”
“It doesn’t matter, you’re right, because Wyatt is too young to know—”
“He’s seventeen. He’s not a kid anymore.”
Silence spreads over the phone line, chilly like a winter wind.
Then Allie says, “Why do you always have to be so contrary?”
“I’m not being contrary. It’s the truth.”
“The truth is you don’t want to ever back down from your ideas.”
I sit back on my heels, re-situate the phone at the juncture of my neck and shoulder. “Right. Question is, why should the family origins of his girlfriend bother you, or anyone, for that matter?”
“Dating someone is more serious than hanging out with a friend, Kay.”
“How would you even know? You got engaged to Brad the moment he got in your pants.”
“Why are you being so mean?” Allie whispers.
“Wait, Allie…”
Too late. She’s hung up already.
I sigh as I put down the wireless phone on the carpet and blink. This always happens when I talk to my sister. She means well, but she gets me riled up. We’re just too different. I am too different—from the rest of my family. From the world I grew up in. I never fit in their molds and boxes. Leaving the nest for college felt like breathing fresh air for the first time in my life.
But a call from a member of my family is enough to throw me back through time, to when I felt out of place and so depressed I didn’t know what to do with myself.
I mean, who Wyatt wants to date is his own business, and if we need to talk about it, then we should be able to do so like civilized people.
Talking about otherness in our society without getting caught up in prejudice should be possible. It should be the norm. I mean, hell, this is part of this country, of who we are. And it’s rich that a family like mine with a half-Italian, half-Estonian background should act like this.
Surging to my feet, I pad to the kitchen to grab a glass of juice. It’s Thursday night, and I’ve had a full day at college and then sewing clothes to sell, and I can’t sleep.
While there, I caress in passing the plants lining the sill of the small window, stroking the frilly leaves of a parsley sprout and the long, silky stalks of the onions. I planted them along with tons of other plants when I first moved here. I love watching things grow.
Back home we had a big garden, and my parents had trees and trellises and herbs growing. I loved it as a child. Still love it.
And it’s still there. I’m the one who left.
Opening the fridge, I pour myself a glass of OJ, trying not to think about that—about the things I miss about my family. They piss me off so much sometimes, but I had a happy childhood. Before the doubts hit, and I started feeling like a weed in their rose garden, everything had been perfect.
Even now I sometimes wish I could go back. Back in time, I guess.
The sounds drifting from Amber’s bedroom reach a high pitch. I almost choke on my juice when a very loud moan reaches my ears. Heat climbs up my neck.
I tug the turtleneck of my sweater higher and lean back against the counter. I wiggle my toes in my pink monster slippers and pretend I can’t hear them.
Amber and Jesse Lee. Going at it like bunnies on acid. Not uncommon in our little apartment, and despite having left behind my conservative upbringing, the noise they make always gets me all flustered.
Hey, a girl can’t help herself, okay? Especially since Jesse Lee is kinda hot. Kinda lots of hot. Five chilies.
Okay, not five, if I want to be honest. No, that number is reserved for another boy who works at the same tattoo shop, Damage Control, one with messy blue hair and laughing blue eyes, and a body that looks like it was chiseled from stone and polished to perfection…
But let’s not go there, okay? Because said blue-haired boy isn’t interested in me.
And hey, it’s okay. Even if he was, he is totally not my type. A funny boy, all sunshine and laughter, easy-going and confident. He’s too perfect. Too beautiful. Untouchable. I’m more into broody, tragic types, like the ones in the romance novels I read on my phone on nights I can’t sleep—like tonight.
Besides, I need to figure out my life, and I don’t need more complications.
We could have some fun, though. If he were interested. I’d love to be introduced to his muscular body, do some hands-on mapping of his chest and shoulders, with optional excursions to the areas below his waist.
But he isn’t interested, as I mentioned before. I put my glass in the sink and check my hot pink nails, wiggling my fingers. He hasn’t even let me read his palm yet. Or the cards. And he’s been avoiding me ever since I asked him about it.
I get it, okay? Not everyone is obsessed with palmistry and card reading like I am. I don’t even know why I am so hell-bent on finding out what the future holds. It’s as if knowing will allow me to shape it, and it doesn’t work that way. I
think
.
Dreaming of the future and living it are two different things, and I know that. I know the cards won’t magically show me what I need, what I feel is missing from my life. But I am hunting for clues, okay? Trying to figure myself out, and the fact he refuses flat-out to let me do the same with him… it bothers me.
It’s like a black spot on the sun. It doesn’t fit with who Ocean is. I want to grab Windex and clean it off.
I slide down on the carpet and turn on the TV—loud, to drown out the banging of a headboard against the wall and Amber moaning. It’s the middle of a movie, and there is a group of friends dancing in a night club.
Dancing. Music. That would be nice. I bend over my spread of tarot cards and flip another. The Chariot. What did this one symbolize?
Something about control over one’s emotions. Taking control.
I glance back at the TV, at the people dancing, then lift the card from the carpet. It looks like a sign.
Tomorrow I’ll call Ev and go out, and forget for a while about my family, about my irrational fear of the future and about Ocean.