Read Online Downtown Devil: Book 2 in series (Sins in the City) by Cara McKenna - Free Book Online Page B

wanted to ask Mica, as well, to know if the same quality that made him fearless in bed was also the thing that sent him scrambling up cliff faces.
    “I like a challenge, I guess,” said Vaughn. “And the change of scenery. We meet up in the Southwest a lot—Arizona, New Mexico. Hot as hell, but it’s a welcome change of pace—plus, it gets me out of muggy, sweaty Pittsburgh for a week or two. It’s all the differentness that I like, I think. Different colors, different smells. Different sky at night. Different noises.”
    “Sounds nice. I can’t remember the last vacation I took that was anyplace exotic . . . Philly doesn’t count, right?”
    He smiled. “Probably not.”
    “So is that what you and Mica bonded over, way back then?” she asked. “Climbing?”
    He laughed. “Um, eventually. Not right away. We actually hated each other at first, or I hated him, anyhow.”
    “Really?”
    Vaughn nodded. “He was a real cocky little shit when he was sixteen. Obnoxious. He was lucky he didn’t get kicked out of the program for trying to goad the other guys into fights.”
    “Jeez.”
    “I wanted to kick his ass so bad, and I nearly did, our second summer in the program together—I was big for my age; he was crazy skinny.”
    “But you didn’t? Kick his ass?”
    “I started to. It got broken up by one of the counselors. He talked me down.”
    “Oh? What’d he say?”
    Vaughn looked thoughtful for a long moment before going on. “He basically laid it out for me, like, kids like Mica, they’re mean because mean is all they know. Mean is all anybody was to them.”
    “Ah.” Interesting. Mica didn’t seem mean to her at all. He had an edge to him—you could see it in his stare and feel it when he fucked, but he’d not given a clue he might be a jerk of any sort. Of course, this was teenage Mica they were talking about. A man did a lot of growing up in a decade-plus. Thank goodness.
    “The counselor told me fighting meanness with more meanness won’t win anybody anything,” Vaughn said, “so shrug it off, be the bigger man. So when we had to pair up for some survival skills hike, I walked up to him and asked if he’d be my partner. Nobody else would have—everyone was pairing up as quick as they could, praying they didn’t get stuck with him.”
    “Awww.” Clare pouted, feeling bad for teenage Mica.
    “No, not
awww
. I mean, the kid was a serious asshole. But anyway, we paired up, and we found out we were both really into Rainbow Six—this video game that was big at the time. And we ragged on some of the other kids, like you do, that sort of thing. He changed real quick, once I was talking to him guy-to-guy, not trying to prove anything. I don’t think I knew it at the time, but I think maybe I was, like, his first real friend.”
    “Really? He seems so . . . charming.”
    “He can be. And with girls, it’s different. But back then . . . And where he’s from, you’re stuck with the people on your block, for protection. But he never fit in, because he didn’t look like anybody else in that hood. And because he could be such a dick, alienating himself before other people could do the job for him, I think. And, you know, for other reasons.”
    “Other reasons?” The way he’d said it, Clare felt like Vaughn expected her to know what this meant.
    He studied her face, shrugged. “Just . . . He just didn’t fit the mold, is what I’m saying.”
    She felt her brow crease, certain he was hinting at something she was in the dark about, but she let it drop. Getting too nosy about the man with his best friend seemed like the wrong strategy, if she wanted to find herself in bed with him again. “I can understand that,” she offered instead. “Not fitting in.”
    “You get a lot of crap for it?” Vaughn asked. “For how you look? Wait, sorry—that came out wrong. You look great. I just meant—”
    “It’s fine; I know what you meant. And, you know, not really. Not now,