“Hmm. Pity party. Thanks for the invite, Jesse, but I’m busy tonight.”

“You’re an asshole.” I sighed.

“Tell me something I don’t know.”

“Sean Connery wore a toupee in all his James Bond movies,” I said.

Bane laughed. “The fuck?”

“You told me to tell you something you don’t know. I bet you didn’t know that.”

He shook his head, his shoulders shaking with laughter now, his whole body radiating happiness like the sun. He motioned for me with his hand. “Come on. I’ll buy you that smoothie.”

“You own the place.” That was my second eye roll in a minute. I was starting to sound like old Jesse again, sassing like there was no tomorrow.

Bane threw the glass door to Café Diem open and stepped in without even checking if I followed. His jerk tactic worked, because after a brief pause, I did. I didn’t know what it was about Bane that made talking to him so easy. I knew what he wanted to do. He wanted to throw me back into the cruel arms of the world. A world I resented, but at the same time, so terribly missed. And, for some reason, despite the paralyzing fear of it, I was letting him.

Everybody was watching.

It wasn’t a figure of speech. Literally, every single person stared.

It’s like the residents of Todos Santos had waited for me to step out of hiding so they could see if I really was a monster. If I’d gained fifty pounds, or become anorexic. If I was on suicide watch, or just plain old crazy. If I’d shaved my head, torn off my skin, and lost my striking all-American girl features.

The rumors were endless, and they wanted at least some of them to be true.

Bane slowed his pace, walking in line with me. His expression was pissed yet bored, a combination that dared anyone to say something about us. About me. I had a feeling that he wanted to make an example out of someone, but no one took the bait. I felt my face so hot with embarrassment I thought I would ignite, but at the same time, I didn’t not want to be there. I needed to face the world at some point, and today was as good a day as any, especially when I had the protection of Bane Protsenko at my side.

Bane sauntered over behind the counter, and I leaned against the champagne-hued wooden counter, watching him. He washed his hands quietly, then dropped a banana, strawberries, and cantaloupe into a blender while I hopped onto a stool, burying my face inside my hoodie. People stared at him as if he were the Messiah, blazing into town on his donkey wearing a glittery thong. He lifted his head up from the tall glass he’d poured my smoothie into and barked, “Next person to gawk gets fired. Customers included. How ’bout them apples?”

I nearly laughed. Nearly. But it felt like betraying the new Jesse.

The new Jesse didn’t make friends, and she sure as hell wasn’t going to break bread with Roman ‘Bane’ Protsenko, the most infamous bad boy in Todos Santos, just because he was showing mild interest in her. Bane jerked his head to a corner table, nestled between the glass walls overlooking the ocean.

“Go ahead. I’ll be there in a sec.”

There was nothing I wanted less than making the journey there on my own, but I couldn’t chicken out of it. I followed his instructions, assuming he was making himself a smoothie, too. When he arrived at our table, he slid the smoothie toward me and set a glass on the table for himself, plopping down on the chair opposite to mine. The stench was unmistakable. Vodka.

“To good friends and bad decisions,” he saluted with his drink, tipping his chin down.

“Vodka in the middle of the day?” I arched an eyebrow, my brain skipping down memory lane as I remembered it was Dad’s favorite drink.

“Who are you, the fun police?” He mimicked my curved brow. “If so, you’d probably get suspended for reading smut.”

“I wish I could Men in Black you and erase your memory of that paragraph.” I stabbed my smoothie with the straw. It was lumpy as hell.

“Men in Black ain’t a verb.”

“Who are you, the grammar police? If so, you’d probably get jail time for saying ain’t.”

Bane chuckled, giving me his glorious profile. I bet he was used to getting what he wanted when he flaunted that cut-stone jaw and ungodly tall figure. I also bet the old Jesse would have given him her heart and her panties, had she been single. Hell, the new one was half-tempted to do it, too.

“I’m Russian, too, you know,” I said out of nowhere, bringing the pink straw to my lips and tasting the smoothie. Bane raised one questioning eyebrow, but didn’t say anything.

“Yeah.” I cleared my throat, dropping my gaze to the vodka. “My dad came here with his family after the Soviet Union fell. Most of them are in Chicago, though. I don’t speak Russian or anything. Pam said it would be useless since I’d never go there.”