Surviving Ice

by K. A. Tucker

  Forgetting my personal woes, I make my way to her bedroom to find her crouching over her dresser, trying to lift it back to its upright position.

  “That’s heavy. Let me help you with—”

  “I’m fine!” she snaps, but her voice doesn’t carry its normal sharpness. It’s shaky and higher pitched. When I step closer, she hides her face behind a curtain of hair, turning away from me.

  That’s when I know.

  She doesn’t resist me when I scoop her up and settle onto the foam mattress—still basically intact—with her in my arms. She rests her head against my chest and my shirt grows damp with her tears, her entire little body shaking as she cries. But she barely makes a sound.

  Ivy’s hard shell has finally cracked.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  IVY

  I didn’t cry the night of the robbery.

  I didn’t shed a single tear at the funeral.

  And now I can’t seem to stop.

  I wasn’t even doing anything particularly nostalgic. Tossing Ned’s underwear and socks into a trash bag. Dumping his buttondown shirts and jeans into a box for Goodwill. Deciding what to do with his white wedding day suit that he’s kept all these years, insisting that he’d be buried in it when his time came, because the day he married Jun was the happiest day of his life, and he wanted to relive it for all eternity. His day came too early and forty pounds too heavy, unfortunately.

  Then I started to think about how maybe none of this would have happened if he just hadn’t been gambling, and how I can’t believe I didn’t know about this mess with him and that guy Sullivan trying to take Black Rabbit from him. It was happening right under my nose and I didn’t have a clue, too busy poking fun at him for being old, while I lived in his house and ate his food and worked out of his shop.

  And then the tears started to roll and wouldn’t stop, no matter how furiously I wiped at them.

  I hate letting anyone see me cry, but I don’t have it in me—physically or emotionally—to push Sebastian away right now, and if I stop lying to myself for a minute, I’ll admit that it feels good to have him just hold me.

  It actually helps.

  “Thanks,” I mutter, wiping my cheeks. I pull away from my little nest against his chest and cringe, streaks of black mascara and eyeliner smeared all over the front of his white T-shirt. I can only imagine what my face looks like.

  He doesn’t even flinch, though, his jaw working against itself, taut. The short beard that’s normally so well kept shows signs of disarray, like he didn’t have time to trim and edge it today.

  “You look like you didn’t sleep last night,” I say.

  “I didn’t. But I’ll be fine.”

  What kind of errands would keep him up all night?

  “Don’t look so worried.” He sighs and stretches his long legs out in front of him. We’re practically sitting on the floor, him on my mattress; me, on him. The muscles in his arms are cording, probably after holding me in this position for so long.

  I try to move, to relieve him of that, but he squeezes, trapping me.

  “I don’t want to talk about it,” I warn him.

  “Neither do I,” he fires back with a smirk. “But do you feel a bit better now?”

  I nod slowly, because I do.

  He opens his mouth but hesitates. “I told you about those three good friends I lost in the war?”

  “Yeah.” The ones he watched die.

  His Adam’s apple bobs with a hard swallow. “It doesn’t really sink in for a while. Weeks, sometimes months.”

  Is that what this is? Is it finally sinking in? I thought it already had, back in the shop the day I finished Bobby’s tattoo. It would make sense, this utterly wretched sadness taking over. But then there’s that news from Bobby today.

  I fill Sebastian in on everything I learned before he got there. He simply listens, his thumb rubbing back and forth over my thigh casually. Affectionately.

  “What do you think it means?” Can Sebastian hear the shake in my voice? The twinge of fear?

  He sighs, pushing my hair off my face, his gaze drifting along my features. “I think it means your uncle got involved with people you want nothing to do with.”

  “I just wish I could remember something useful about that night. I keep hoping I’m just going to be hit with a detail that I somehow overlooked. Something that will help catch them.”

  “You can’t put that pressure on yourself. You aren’t responsible for what happened. It had nothing to do with you.”

  “But what if they come back? What if—”

  He cuts my question off with a deep kiss, surprising me. With a slow roll, I suddenly find myself lying on the mattress, with Sebastian’s arm crooked beneath my neck and his mouth on my neck, his scruff scratching my skin but in the most seductive way—half ticklish, half torturous.

  “I won’t let anything happen to you. Just listen to me next time.” His voice is low and gravelly, much like last night. I can feel him growing hard against my thigh.

  And I’m overcome with relief that he’s not mad at me anymore. That I haven’t completely screwed everything up with him today, being so mule-headed.

  “Because you’re a ninja?” My fingers tug at his soft T-shirt until it bunches in my hands.

  I catch the smirk on his face as he lifts himself up enough to pull it over his head, uncovering that body I’ve come to love so much. “No, because I know how to keep people alive.”

  “Don’t forget that I’m not paying you.”

  His smirk widens into a full smile, watching me as I slide my own shirt up over my head. “Don’t worry, I haven’t.” He’s already zoned in on the front clasp of my bra. He pushes the button and the material springs off.

  He’s resting on an elbow now, peering down at my bare upper half, his index finger trailing over my arm. “What do these mean?”

  “A lot of things.”

  Dark eyes flash to me. “Like what?”

  “Like . . .” Do I want to tell him? I’ve been asked that question by many people before, including Amber, and I’ve never given the complete truth to anyone.

  He looms over me, waiting.

  “Like that one there.” I nod to the one he has his finger on—a classic weight scale with a tiny woman perched on one side, raised high while the empty side hangs low. “It means I’m nobody’s burden. I can take care of myself.”

  A flicker of softness catches his eyes. “That’s important to you, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah. And this one”—I tap the mask that Ian did for me last year in Ireland—“is my mask, that I like to wear to keep people from seeing how I’m feeling.”

  “And this one?” One by one, I describe each and every piece of ink on my arm. It’s been a seven-year process beginning on my eighteenth birthday. Well planned out, each component my own design that I handed to a trusted artist—there are very few of them—to etch into my skin.

  Each piece deeply personal to me.

  “This one?” Sebastian’s strong, large hands sweep over the beautiful woodland fairy that dances along my rib cage on my right side.

  “That’s Iridessa, my fairy godmother. Ned used to tell me that she’d watch over me while I was sleeping. For years, I believed him.” That was one of my first pieces. Ned did it for me.

  Sebastian’s long fingers trail along the bramble of ivy and sharp thorns that runs along my pelvis. “And this?”

  That anyone who wants past it is going to have to work for it and accept a few wounds. “What do you think it means?” I say instead.

  His hand slides past it, down the front of my leggings and into my panties. “That it doesn’t apply to me.”

  Completely unabashed by how wet I am right now, I close my eyes and turn toward Sebastian, finding a corner of that thick, strong neck of his to lay my mouth on, tasting just a hint of salt on his skin. I love the taste of Sebastian, I decide, as I fumble over his belt buckle and zipper, quickly unfastening them so I can wrap my fist around hi
m.

  I groan in protest when his hand suddenly disappears, but I soon realize it’s only so he can pull my leggings down, over my hips and thighs. I help him, kicking my legs until they work their way down to my boots. They won’t get past those.

  “I’m stuck,” I whisper.

  “Are you?” He lifts his head to assess the situation, smiling a touch, before his gaze rakes over me and his hand lands between my legs once again.

  I reach up to pull his face back to mine, but he’s already on the move, leaving a wet, ticklish trail across my nipples and down the center of my body with his tongue and his scratchy beard, all the way down until my thighs are resting on his shoulders and his hot breath is skating over me. Torturing me.

  I lift my pelvis until I feel his mouth against me. He’s smiling, I can tell. I don’t care if he knows how much I want this. I am needy right now.

  And with the first swipe of his tongue, I know that this isn’t going to take long at all.

  The doorbell rings.

  Sebastian pulls away.

  “Ignore it,” I growl, reaching to pull his face back down.

  He complies, his hands squeezing my thighs tight. I weave my fingers around the back of his head, relaxing as he keeps going.

  Until my phone begins to ring. It’s Fez’s ringtone. He’s outside, with the truck.

  I forgot about the truck.

  “Dammit,” I curse. “Stop. This isn’t going to happen now.” Fez is doing me a huge favor, but he’s not the most patient guy out there. He’ll leave.

  Sebastian lays a few kisses on the insides of my thighs and then climbs off the bed, tucking that impressive dick that I pulled out back into his pants. “I’ll be down . . . in a minute.” He leaves me to get dressed and ducks into the bathroom. To pee, to wash me off his face, to jerk off. Probably all three.

  And I want to be in there to help him.

  Throwing my clothes on, I storm down the stairs and throw open the door, chanting to myself, “Fez is helping me, Fez is helping me, Fez is . . .” so I don’t bite his head off the second I see him like the frustrated bitch I now am.

  “Yo! I’m turning gray out here!” Fez exclaims.

  “Sorry. Got caught up with something,” I mumble.

  “We’re ready. Called up my homies, figured you could use the halp.” True to his word, the cube van is parked outside and open. Joker and Weazy are tossing the trash bags already on the curb in.

  “Seriously?” Suddenly, I can deal with Fez’s weird obsession with slang. Three extra sets of hands and this place may be all cleaned up by tonight. “This is huge. I don’t know what to say.” I back up and let all three of them in.

  “That face, though.” Fez cringes at me and the black mascara that I’m sure is streaking across my cheeks. “Channeling your inner Cruella de Vil?”

  “Shut up.” He deserved it for that one.

  Weazy and Joker step into the kitchen and let out a low whistle.

  “It’s better than it was,” I say, reaching for another full trash bag to pass to them.

  “Then it must have been a fucking wreck because damn . . . half the places in Mission look better than this,” Joker says, scratching his shaved head.

  “Well, then I guess I’m lucky to have you three to help me, right?” I toss the broom to Fez. “Here. You’re good with one of these, right?” I give him a wink to soften the blow, as the guys start throwing jeers at him.

  Sebastian’s heavy footfalls down the stairs quiet them.

  “Oh, I see how it is. ‘Got caught up’?” Fez stares at me.

  I just shrug. I don’t need to answer to any of these guys. “Hey, guys, this is Sebastian. Sebastian, these are the guys. You already know Fez.”

  “The bro with the sick work, yeah.” Fez reaches out with a fist and, to my surprise, Sebastian responds with one of his own. If Fez knew that the “bro with the sick work” was really an ex–Navy SEAL and bodyguard, he’d have a full-on man crush in under ten minutes. And then trail Sebastian around, driving him nuts.

  “Dude, I thought she wasn’t into dick?” I hear Weazy whisper to Joker from behind me.

  “Seriously? She’s just not into yours.”

  I shake my head at Sebastian, but he’s smirking. Speaking of dick . . . I drop my gaze.

  Yeah, I know what he was doing in the bathroom.

  “What time is dinner?” Sebastian asks from the edge of my bed at Dakota’s, kicking off his shoes.

  “Dakota should be home in an hour.” I dry my hands at the bathroom sink and peer over to get a good look at him. He looks like hell. “You need to sleep.”

  He rubs the back of his neck. “I’ll be fine.”

  “Seriously, you were up all night, weren’t you? You can lie down for an hour.” I will, too, gladly. Beside him . . .

  On top of him . . .

  I guess we’ll see. Maybe I should actually let him sleep.

  He sighs, but he’s smiling. “I was trained to stay awake for a lot longer than twenty-four hours.”

  “Oh, yeah?” I wander over to help him lift his T-shirt off his body. It’s covered in drywall dust and dirt from hours of cleaning up. He could probably use a shower. Something else I’d like to try out with him, but maybe later. “What else were you trained to do?”

  He eases back onto the bed, the springs creaking under his weight, to give me a good look at my work. It’s healing nicely. “All kinds of things,” he murmurs through a giant yawn.

  I duck back into the bathroom to clean the smeared makeup off my face and brush my teeth, then decide that I really do need to hop into the shower to wash the day’s grime from my skin, with or without him. Ideally, with him.

  “Hey, did you want to . . .” My voice drifts off. Sebastian is stretched out on his back, his arm beneath his head, snoring softly.

  After my shower, I tiptoe to the other side and ease onto the bed in my towel, expecting him to wake up with the dip of the mattress. I mean, he was a Navy SEAL. Don’t they sleep light?

  He doesn’t so much as twitch; he’s out cold, his normally taut jaw relaxed, his features almost boyish. So I simply lie there and watch him sleep for more than an hour as I fail at drifting off myself, until I hear the front door creak open and Dakota’s welcoming hum.

  I duck out to the living room and let Sebastian rest.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  SEBASTIAN

  I wake with a start, my body jerking enough to shake the bed.

  A soft moan beside me instantly brings me back to reality. I laid down in Ivy’s bed. It was close to four in the afternoon. I was going to just grab an hour, at most.

  I glance at the window. It’s dark out now, the streetlight casting a dim light into the bedroom.

  It’s . . . Holy shit. I’ve been asleep for almost eleven hours? I can’t remember the last time I slept this long without drugging myself with Ambien. And to not even stir when Ivy came around . . . No one’s ever been able to step into a room without my waking up before.

  “You’re alive,” Ivy mumbles, tucked under the covers, her eyes still closed, her jet-black hair fanning across the pillow. “You missed dinner. I thought you might have died in your sleep.”

  I can’t help but smile. “And you willingly crawled into bed with a corpse?”

  “Corpses are quiet, and I was tired.”

  “Did you even try to wake me?”

  “Of course I did . . .” The words drag out in that tired, half-asleep way. “Then I stripped you down and took nude pictures of you with me, then with Dakota and with the bearded lady. Going to ask Fez to post them all over the Internet in the morning. You and Gerti are going to be famous.”

  I frown. She seems coherent but she’s not making any sense. “Gerti?”

  “The bearded lady from the circus. Dakota’s dinner guest tonight.”

  “You’re kidding, right?” She says it all so deadpan, I’m beginning to wonder.

  She sighs. “Not about the beard.”

  I smile.
But check my belt buckle all the same. “You’re cute when you’re half-asleep.”

  “Half-asleep and naked,” she points out.

  Just the thought of Ivy naked stirs my blood. Yesterday at the house, having to stop partway through was torture for me. By the looks she cast my way all afternoon, I left her just as frustrated. And then I fell asleep the moment we got here.

  I reach under the bedsheet to find nothing but her warm flesh beneath. She rolls onto her back, letting the sheet fall away.

  To entice me, I’m sure.

  It works.

  Ivy peers up at me through hazy, satisfied eyes. “I still can’t believe you slept that long. You must have been a shitty SEAL.”

  “The worst.” I place a kiss on her forehead, and another one on the tip of her nose. “I’m going to duck out now.”

  “Now? It’s five in the morning.”

  “Do me a favor and stay put. I’ll call you.” When she doesn’t agree, I press. “I mean it, Ivy.”

  “Fine,” she grumbles, rolling away from me, curling into her sheet.

  The doorbell makes a low buzzing sound when I press the button. I wait, and a few minutes later I hear the footfalls coming from the other side. Whoever it is, they walk on their heels.

  The door to the small pink house flies open and a disheveled woman appears, midway through pulling a short pink silk robe over her rumpled boxers and a white tank top—no bra, her small tits sagging in different directions. A waft of incense floats out the door with her movements.

  I guess eight-thirty in the morning is a little early to be paying house calls. “Hi, is Dylan around?” I ask.

  She looks me up and down, tucking her yellow-blond hair behind an ear and then folding her arms self-consciously over her chest. “Who are you?”

  “My name’s John. I was in Afghanistan with him.” I know enough about the Marine Corps to get by. I just hope she doesn’t know enough to ask too many questions.

  “How’d you get this address?” she asks, her eyes pinched with suspicion.

  This must be the cheating girlfriend that Dylan was talking about in the video. She’s not particularly friendly, but that could just be the situation. Either way, she may have useful information about her ex. “Dylan gave it to me awhile back. Told me to stop by when I was in town again. I tried emailing him but never got an answer, so I figured I’d just surprise him.” I have no idea how long Royce was living here, but thanks to Bentley’s recon, I do know that he wasn’t living here when he died.