Bounty by Aubrey St. Clair Page B

phone no problem. Probably get her to invite me to her home, bug it, get my hands on her laptop.
    There’s no need to have sex with her to accomplish my goals.
    But with her tight lips pressing against my tip, wet and ready for me, with her moaning my name… how can I say no? I’d be lying if… I’d be lying.
    Her face swims before my mind’s eye, tears in the corners of her eyes. How would she look at me, if she knew I was only here to arrest her father?
    I pull back.
    “April…” I say, and she turns around, and yeah, that’s the face.
    Heartbroken.
    But if I fuck her over as well as fucking her, it’s just… it would be fucked up. My gut twists at the thought. I can’t examine those feelings too closely but I know I’ll feel like a sack of shit if I tap that booty today, and tap her phone tomorrow. I just will. Not because I’ve never done it before, but April is different somehow. Naïve. Or maybe it’s because I have feelings for her. Actual feelings. Shit .
    My breath leaves me in one whoosh.
    “I’m sorry,” I say, and pull further back, tucking myself back in, painful as it is.
    “Oh,” she says, and straightens up, pulling her panties back into proper alignment. “God, no, I’m sorry, I’m an idiot –“
    “Don’t be, it’s my –“
    “So embarrassing –“
    “No, you were —“
    “I misunderstood,” she says, putting up her hands. She steps back into her pants, hitching them up around her hips. Wincing. At what I imagine must be the aftermath of arousal, at least in part. I know my balls are gonna be blue. But I’m sure she also feels some level of embarrassment at being rejected. “I’m sorry that I… I appreciate you, um, clarifying. Rather than taking advantage.”
    You’re a sack of shit Liam. Lying to her, and she’s thanking me? I don’t know what she thinks — that I’m just not into her? Yet I’m a good guy for not fucking her anyway?
    She said I was good people.
    She couldn’t be more wrong.
    “It’s really not a problem. Please don’t feel bad,” I say. I don’t normally try to talk women out of having sex with me, so I’m not sure how. I want to tell her that she shouldn’t get involved with me. That I’m bad news and only going to hurt her. “It’s not you at all. It’s me, I’m just –”
    “Oh, God . Please spare me.” She buttons up her shirt with furiously efficient motions, starts righting things on the table, keeping her hands busy. “Please just leave.”
    I wish I could explain.
    “April…”
    “It’s fine, but please just go now.” She still doesn’t look up at me.
    I linger a moment more.
    She turns her back on me and starts slamming wood blocks into place, putting on work gloves, grabbing a face mask and a power drill. Fiddling with the different bits.
    “I was on a good roll, and I’d like to keep working. Thanks for the materials, Liam, it was a good idea.”
    A dismissal.
    I watch her hunched shoulders and the back of her mussed up ponytail, the little dangling straps of her goggles flying as she checks back and forth between different pieces of her power sander.
    I guess that’s my cue to go.
    “I’m sorry.”
    I leave.

10

April
    I feel utterly pathetic .
    Tears blur my vision as I work the materials, build out my clocks. Stained glass pieces, wood, and curling black iron. A whole new line, more colorful, but less ostentatious in shape and size. The cage Liam brought me really was the perfect catalyst to make this come together.
    Liam.
    Twice in a row, I’ve been desperate for this guy, who I know is trouble, and twice he’s shot me down. This has got to end.
    My dad would know just the right thing to say to snap me out of this. He’s always been a great listener, always knows how to urge me towards being true to myself. I want to confess to him everything about Alan (which seems almost ages ago already, and it’s only been a little more than a week), that he was right all along.
    He never liked Alan all that