by Tess Oliver
I released my breath. “Dude, what the hell have you done?” I walked closer.
He lifted the rag. Blood smeared his entire face and one eye was swollen shut. “Do I still have a nose?”
I was relieved to find that he was coherent. “Can’t see it underneath all the blood, but I think it’s still there.”
“So that’s where all this blood is coming from.”
“Come on, buddy, we need to get you cleaned up and out of here.” I lowered my hand and he reached for it. His knuckles were swollen and bleeding. I pulled on him, but he grabbed his chest and yelled out in pain.
“Jeez, Dray, what the hell did you do? We need to get you to a doctor.”
“No more doctors.” He sipped the air for breath. “It’s just a couple of broken ribs. I can’t pay my medical bills as it is.”
I stooped down low so he could get his arm around my shoulder.
Tank poked his head into the office. “Do you need some help?”
“Nah, I’ve got him,” I said. We shuffled past him and everyone in the place stopped their workout to watch us leave.
“Bunch of pussies,” Dray muttered as we made the arduous journey across the cement floor.
“Dray, I don’t want you back here until you’re all healed up,” Tank yelled as we finally reached the door.
Dray fell into the front seat with a yell that rivaled Tarzan, but in this part of the city screams and yells were usually ignored.
I climbed inside and looked at him. “I think you should go to the emergency room.”
“No, I told you I can’t afford it.” He turned to his side and curled up into a ball. “I’m fine as long as I don’t move, or eat . . . or breathe. Just take me to the boat.”
“Yeah, that’s not going to happen. You can sleep on the couch in the back office at Freefall. That way Cassie and I can keep an eye on you.”
He groaned. “No, not Cassie. She’s just going to lecture me, and I don’t want her to see me all fucked up like this.”
“Too bad, Bro. It’s Freefall or the hospital.”
He tucked deeper into the ball. “O.K. whatever. You don’t happen to have any morphine at the shop?”
I laughed. “Not last time I looked. Sorry.”
“How about a gun? I only need one bullet.”
“Sorry, I don’t have that either.” I looked down at him scrunched up in the fetal position and it reminded me of one bad night when we were sixteen and his dad had gone psycho. Dray rode his skateboard over to our house in the pouring rain. Nana had made him his favorite peanut butter and banana sandwich, but he didn’t take one bite of it. Later he dried off and crawled onto my bed, tucked himself into a tight ball, and cried himself to sleep.
“Dray, I really feel like this is my fault. If I hadn’t stopped you from hitting that idiot at the car show, this wouldn’t have happened.” Last night, I’d convinced myself that I’d done the right thing, even when I’d seen that Dray’s room was empty. Now the decision felt like a lead weight in my stomach.
“Nah, Nix, it wasn’t you. I just needed to blow off some steam.”
“I know. I should’ve just let you hit the guy.”
“Well, that’s true, but don’t beat yourself up about it. You were just trying to keep me from killing him.” He held his breath and scrunched his swollen face in pain as he sat up. He swayed forward, and I stuck my arm out to keep him from smacking the dashboard.
The traffic was lighter going back through town, but I was going to be late for my one o’clock. I leaned over and rummaged through the glove box. “I think there’s some aspirin in here from when I had my wisdom teeth out.” My fingers felt the bottle and I pulled it out. “They might be expired, but they’ll still be better than nothing.”
He took hold of the bottle, but the child proof cap was too much for his swollen fingers. I opened it for him and poured a couple into his palm. He grimaced as he swallowed them back. He rested his head back and closed his eyes. “What kind of lousy dentist hands out aspirin for wisdom teeth removal?” he asked.
“The stronger stuff was making me puke, so I had to take aspirin.”
“Wuss,” he said. “So, I went by my parent’s place last night after the car show just to make sure the old man hadn’t buried my mom in the back yard yet.” He joked about it, but his parents were a black subject to him. “My mom’s leaving my dad.”
I faced him. “You’re kidding?”
“Nope. Can you fucking believe it? After all these years of putting up with the asshole, she finally worked up the courage to leave him. I told her it would have been nice if she’d done it while I was a kid. Then I wouldn’t be so screwed up.” He chuckled but then grabbed hold of his ribs. “She’s moving to Florida with her sister. She told me to be a good son and keep an eye on him.” He shook his head. “I told her I’ll be as good a son as he was a dad. The bastard can rot in hell for all I care.” He reached down, lowered the seatback, and closed his eyes.
I stared down at him. He was a mess, and now the night of insanity made perfect sense.
Cassie looked up from her book and her expression was exactly what I would’ve expected from someone who loved Dray without condition. She slipped around the counter and stuck her shoulder under his other arm. With some effort and a lot of agonized sound effects from our victim, we managed to get Dray to the sofa in the office. I helped get his legs up on the cushions while Cassie dashed off to get a wet towel and a glass of water. My common sense told me I should have hauled his ass into the ER, but Dray was not my kid and I had no say over it. The truth was he couldn’t afford to get hurt anymore, physically, mentally, or financially.
Cassie brought back a warm towel and the glass of water and then pulled a chair up next to Dray. “Here, drink this. You smell like booze, so you’re probably dehydrated.” She helped him lift his head, and he drank the water down like a dry sponge.
“Thanks,” he said hoarsely, “and thanks for not lecturing me on the dangers of fighting.”
“Oh, you haven’t dodged my lecture, Sweetie. I’m just waiting until you’re more coherent. I don’t want you to miss one word of my rant.”
He lowered his head with a moan.
Cassie pushed her glasses up on the bridge of her nose and looked up at me. “Your one o’clock went over the coffee shop. He should be back soon.”
“Was he pissed?”
“No, he was cool about it.” She leaned over and pressed the cloth gently against Dray’s face to clean up the dried blood. “Oh my gosh, he looks like he’s been through a wood chopper.” There was a hitch in her voice.
Dray opened his one good eye and stared up at her. Even in his tortured state, he caught the sound and I was glad. It was about time he realized that the only thing he needed to straighten out his life was sitting right in front of him.
CHAPTER 12
Scotlyn
I’d had to pretend nonchalance all the way to the tattoo shop when in reality my stomach was churning with nerves and excitement. Lincoln had been late getting back from his meeting, and I’d had to act like it was no big deal to me either way. But, truthfully, I’d been ready to throw his favorite pair of leather loafers in the pool.
He’d texted me that he was almost home and for me to be ready to go. I ran into the bathroom and frowned at my reflection. The door mark had morphed into a black and blue bruise. Make-up only made it look worse. I was stuck going to see Nix with a giant door print on my face. I patted the notepad in my pocket and ran downstairs to meet Lincoln in the driveway.
The blazing white heat of tension rolled off of him in waves as I slipped into the front seat. He glanced at me and then shook his head. “I can’t believe you bruised your face like that.”
I shut the door. He gripped the steering wheel as if it might have flown away from his hands if he didn’t hold on tightly. He drove like a madman through town, and my earlier elation of seeing Nix was replaced with the terror of a wild, suicidal ride through the mayhem of L.A.
He braked at the last second and swept around other cars as if he was driving an obstacle course.
I’d held my breath for so long, I was nearly dizzy from it. As usual, Lincoln was so absorbed in his own problems, he hadn’t noticed my fear. Some of the impatient anger that had built up while I waited for him to pick me up resurfaced, and I reached forward and smacked my palm against his dashboard.
He startled out of his self-absorbed tantrum and looked at me. “Sorry.” He slowed the car some but not enough to calm my nerves. By the time we’d reached Freefall, I nearly fell in my hurry to get out of the Porsche.
“God, you’re clumsy today,” he sneered as we reached the door.
Nix seemed to sense my distress the second I walked inside. His face tightened as I slid past him to the back room.
“Oh, I want you to finish this tattoo in two more sessions instead of three,” Lincoln commanded and then answered his phone.
Nix walked into the back with his fists in a ball and his jaw clenched tightly. I was confused by his anger and then I saw that he was looking at my bruise
“Did he do that?” he asked through gritted teeth.
I moved forward and grabbed his arm. The muscle in his forearm was taut and hard. I shook my head and then pulled out my paper. I wrote quickly. “Lincoln is not like that. He’s never hit me. I’m clumsy. If you look closely, you’ll see the imprint of the bathroom door on my cheek.”
His fists unfurled and his broad shoulders relaxed.
I wrote again. “Thank you for being so mad.”
He scrubbed his dark hair back with his fingers and sighed. “I’m glad you’re clumsy. I was ready to tear the guy to pieces.”
My pen flew and I longed for my voice. For some reason, I wanted to tell him everything about my life. “I wasn’t always such a clod. I used to dance when I was younger.”
He made no attempt to hide the fact that he was looking at my body. “I could see that. Well, I guess we should get started.”
I sat down on the table while he filled his ink cups. The flowers on the tattoo were pastel pink and lavender, but I noticed a bright pink ink bottle in his tray. I pointed to it.
“That’s hot pink. Do you like that color?”
I nodded and lifted my finger.
“Just one flower?”
I nodded. He always understood everything I was thinking as if he could see into my mind. There were times when he looked at me when it seemed he could see right into my soul. “You look tired,” I wrote.
He nodded. “Yeah, I had a long day. One of my friends was in a fight, and he was hurt pretty bad.”
I lifted my hand way up in the air to show a tall person.
“No, not the big guy. The smaller one, Dray. Although, if I had to face either one down in a dark alley, I’d take the big guy any time. Dray is one of the toughest guys I know.”
“Is he all right?” I wrote.
He lifted his shoulders. “Not sure. My assistant, Cassie, took him home to rest. He lives on the boat with me.”
We sat in the tiny room surrounded by equipment and artwork and ink, and I could have stayed there all night. Nix was tall and broad shouldered, and he took up a lot of the space and I liked that. While he worked, I wrote. There was so much I wanted to talk to him about. My hand flew across the paper. “Your eyes have a unique color to them.”
He smiled. “Yeah, they’re kind of strange, like a tiger’s. And they glow when headlights hit them at night.”
I opened my eyes wide.
“No, I’m just kidding. They don’t. At least I don’t think they do. I’ve never stood in oncoming traffic to find out.” He poured the hot pink ink into a tiny cup. “My mom has the same color.”
I made a wavy water motion with my hand.
“No, she doesn’t live on the boat. She lives in France.”
The pen could not move fast enough on the paper. “My mom studied art in Paris.”
“Really? So she was probably great at it,” he said.
I nodded. “She would take my sister and me to the beach so she could paint, and we would eat cold chicken and bury each other in the sand.”
The gold specks in his eyes sparkled beneath the strong overhead lights. He hesitated before he spoke. “You had a sister too?”
I stared down at the paper. It was the first time I’d written the word sister since I’d lost her. My fingers squeezed the pen as I wrote, slowly. “Olivia.” I rubbed my thumb over the name. I had not written it since the accident. I’d said it in my head many times, but I’d never written it. I held it up.
“I’ll bet she was beautiful like you,” he said.
I smiled and folded the paper and stuck it in the pocket of my jeans. Lincoln’s face, with phone attached, popped into the room, but I didn’t look at him. Nix didn’t look up either. He walked back out.
“He sure keeps a close watch on you.” The irritation in Nix’s voice could not have been plainer.
I wrote. “He senses something.”
He looked up at me from his stool and once again he read my thoughts. And my thoughts were exploding with a need for him to kiss me. “Something?” His tone was deep and low.
I slid the sandal off my foot and stretched my leg over to his. I ran my bare toes up his thigh, and instantly, he drew in a breath. Lincoln stepped back in, and I dropped my foot. Nix pretended to be busy with his tray, but the heat flowing off of him assured me he was not interested in the ink.
“I’m just going to get a coffee,” Lincoln said. I shook my head as he looked at me.
“I’ll take one this time,” Nix said. “Black, no sugar.”
“Hopefully, you’ll be further along when I get back,” Lincoln said sharply.
The front door closed. We were alone.
I could see Nix swallow beneath the collar of his t-shirt. For what seemed like the hundredth time, he rearranged stuff on his tray, and it seemed he had a hard time looking at me.
I’d pushed it too far. I was being way to forward with him, but I couldn’t seem to stop myself. I was not practiced at flirting, and it seemed that I’d been reading his thoughts all wrong. In my state of distress from the car ride, I’d forgotten to take off my sweatshirt. Feeling like a fool for rubbing my foot so suggestively up his leg, I hopped off the table and walked over to the hook on the wall. Now I wanted to get this done and fast.
I unzipped my sweatshirt and slipped it off my shoulders. As I reached up to hang it on the hook, Nix’s stool slid across the floor, and before I could lower my hands, his arms snaked around my waist, and he pulled my back against his hard chest. My head dropped back against his shoulder, and he leaned his mouth down to my neck and kissed it. His arms tightened around me, and it felt as if he had no intention of ever letting me go.
He spun me around roughly and pressed me up against the wall. He pressed his two hands high against the wall on either side of me and leaned his forehead down against mine. His breathing was sharp and uneven. “If I kiss you, I won’t be able to stop, Scotlyn. I won’t be able to stop myself.”
I pushed my face up toward his letting him know that it didn’t matter because I didn’t want him to stop. He dropped his hands and grabbed my waist. His fingers dug into my flesh as he lowered his mouth next to mine. He hesitated for a second, and a tiny sound floated between my lips. I’d heard the same sound before when he’d touched me. Tension radiated from his body like a rubber band stretched to the limit and then his hands slid up from my waist to my arms. He grabbed them hard and brought my face up to meet his. His kiss was like an explosion of need, and he devoured my lips with his mouth and tongue. It didn’t feel like a kiss he’d been contemplating the past few days since we’d met. It felt like a kiss he’d been thinking about for years.
The door to the shop opened, but it was a distant sound, muffled by our breathing and the sound of our heartbeats. His fingers dug into my flesh and his kiss deepened. My knees weakened beneath his grasp. My pulse raced. The aroma of coffee wafted around the h
alf-closed door. Lincoln’s self-assured footsteps pounded the tile floor of the shop causing Nix to deepen the urgency of his kiss and hold me tighter. Then with a gasp he pulled his mouth from mine just as Lincoln reached the room. Nix reached over to a counter and grabbed a paper bag, which he plowed his fist into.
Lincoln’s mouth dropped open and he looked at us. “What the hell is going on? Are you done already?”
Nix lifted the bag. “Panic attack,” he said hoarsely. “Happens a lot after the first time. Then they know it’ll hurt.” He lowered his gaze to mine. The heat of it hadn’t cooled yet. He lifted the bag toward my mouth. “Need more or are you ready?”
Truthfully, I hadn’t gained my composure yet, but it had nothing to do with panic. I nodded weakly and made my way to the table to sit down. Lincoln placed Nix’s coffee on his tray. I couldn’t tell if Lincoln believed the whole scenario or not. He was hard to read, but he was also slow at reading other people.
Then he walked out. Nix and I looked at each other. I lifted my hand to touch his face but a chair slid across the floor and into the room. Lincoln sat down hard on it.
Nix looked back at him. “Look, man, I told you I can’t work with someone hovering around me.”
Lincoln stared at Nix over the brim of the cup as he took a long sip. “I’m not hovering. I’m sitting. Of course, we could always go to a different tattoo shop. They’re on every corner out here in L.A.” Lincoln lifted a cold gaze to me. It was hard to know what was going on in his head. It seemed to me that if he’d had any clue at all that Nix had kissed me, he would have already dragged me out of the shop. This was just a control move to show Nix that he was keeping an eye on him . . . and me.
Fortunately, Lincoln’s phone calls always took precedence over anything else, even me. Twenty minutes after he’d plunked himself down in the chair, he got up and left the room to engage in one of his heated calls.
Nix had been as silent as me through the session, but he finally lowered the tattoo gun with a sigh. “Why the hell do you stay with him?”
I was slightly taken aback by his question. I leaned away from the table and scratched some words across the paper. “There just are that many job openings for a scarred, mute girl without skills. And living on a park bench sucks.”