Evanescent Ink (Copperline #4)

by Sibylla Matilde

  Raven only shook her head. “You don't know my father.”

  Once again, the tone cut out and began again immediately.

  “I’m right here, Rave,” I promised, and she looked up at me. I reached out and touched the screen to accept the call, quickly setting it to speaker.

  She kept her eyes locked with mine, almost as though she needed that faint connection to give her strength. “Hello?” she finally said, holding the phone between us.

  “I heard from Joe,” the voice through the phone said. Cold and mechanical. Remote and unfeeling. “I'm sorry about your mother.”

  A faint flash in Raven's eyes made me wonder if the man had ever been remotely kind to her. She seemed almost bewildered by his polite sentiment. “Thank you,” she finally said.

  “Do you need money?”

  Her frown returned, riddled with confusion. “Money?”

  “To help with the funeral.”

  “Are you coming?” she asked, taken aback.

  “Why would I?”

  Raven drew back from the phone as though it was a snake. “Because at one time she was your wife,” she retorted. “She was the mother of your children.”

  “Don't get all dramatic now,” her dad sighed. “You know that was all over long ago, and there are things going on at work I can't get away from.”

  What a dick.

  I opened my mouth, not entirely sure what I was going to say, but Raven quickly placed her fingertips over my lips with a shake of her head.

  She released a shaky breath, and asked in a tremulous voice. “How about Alessandria? Is she coming?”

  “I actually encouraged her to, as did Kevin,” he replied.

  “Kevin?” I mouthed.

  “Her husband,” she whispered back to me.

  “She says she can't forgive her,” Raven’s dad continued.

  “Of course she can’t,” Raven scoffed.

  “You weren't there, Ravenna,” he sternly shot back. “Alessandria had to deal with the ridicule and the shame of what your mother did.”

  “Jesus, Dad,” Raven she gasped, “you act like you had nothing to do with it. She was upset because of you, so upset that she cracked.”

  “Why are you taking her side? She never stood up for you.”

  I jerked Raven’s hand from my mouth. “Oh my God, you are an asshole,” I scowled. “You realize her mother just died, and you’re trying to pick a fight.”

  “Who the hell are you? Who is that, Ravenna?”

  “I'm someone who is telling you what a fucker you are. You should be protecting her from jackasses like you. The last thing she needs right now is your shit.”

  “Now wait just one minute—”

  “No,” I interrupted. “If you want to help, call back tomorrow and apologize. Actually help. If you don’t, leave Raven the fuck alone.”

  He started saying something else, but I abruptly ended the call. Then I sheepishly met Raven’s eyes, wondering if I’d overstepped my bounds.

  She was looking at me with a hint of wonder. Her lips had fallen open slightly and her eyes were wide.

  “Sorry,” I said with a wry twist to my mouth. “I hope I didn’t make things worse, but I don’t do well when people start talking to you like—”

  She cut me off with a kiss. Sweet and firm with her hands cradling my jaw as she rose up on her knees. When she drew back, there was a strong glimmer of emotion in her eyes.

  “I don’t know if anyone has ever talked to him like that before,” she whispered, “but I guarantee nobody has ever done it on my behalf. Thank you.”

  “You don’t have to thank me, Rave,” I replied, and pulled her up against my chest.

  We lay like that for a while, in the quiet of the night. Eventually, Raven reached out to start the movie back up, and we finished it as I held her.

  Long after the movie ended, long after we went to her bed and lay in the darkness, I lay awake as she drifted off to sleep in my protective embrace.

  Joe had arranged for a small service at the funeral home in Anaconda on Thursday, allowing enough time to have Margot cremated.

  Truthfully, it was likely for the best that Raven’s dad and sister didn’t show up. Raven didn’t need their shit. I pretty much just felt like clocking her dad right between the eyes for being such a complete fucker. I also had a deep-set desire to knock her sister off her perfect little pedestal. To make her sorry for every shitty thing she’d ever done and said to make Raven feel inadequate.

  A few friends of the family attended, people who had known Margot long ago when she was young. Lacey drove over from Billings.

  And the guys came with their wives and girlfriends. When I had called Justin to check in and let him know I was still alive, I told him what had happened. He shared with the others, and they completely took my Raven under their wings. They allowed her to grieve in her own quiet way, finding little ways to help as life went on around her. Even Justin managed to show some compassion, which kind of surprised the lot of us. We’d never seen him so… serious.

  Through it all, I was right beside her. Holding her and giving her a shoulder to lean on. I stayed with her over those days surrounding the funeral. Sometimes I made slow, sweet love to her. I distracted her with sex like she’d done for me. I took her out of her head and gave her another focus.

  Other times I just held her. I cherished her. I caught her when she fell apart, mourning the loss of her mother. The woman had done nothing for Raven over the years, but, as Raven had said that first day at Warm Springs, was still her mother.

  “She used to dress us alike,” she mused late one night, “like in the same style of dress, but different shades. My sister, always in a light color—pink, lavender, baby blue. She'd put me in a darker shade—dark red like cranberries… deep purple or midnight blue that was almost black. I remember people remarking how clever she was, playing on our differences. The light and the dark.”

  “The yin and the yang,” I added, trailing my fingers down her hip.

  “Exactly,” she murmured sadly with the slightest hint of old bitterness creeping into her voice. “Her methods of garnering attention sorta had undesirable results, though. Alessandria was an angel, fair and sweet in appearance. Innocent. Perfect.” She caught her lower lip in her teeth, toying with her spider bite lip piercing as melancholy filled her eyes. “I was the flip side of the coin, dark and mischievous… a troublemaker. It started with a comment, then another. The idea that I was the bad seed took root and grew until I was the go-to scapegoat. If Alessandria did something wrong, she blamed me… as did most everyone else. She was so lovely. Even when we were little, all the kids wanted to be her friend. Getting me into trouble was one way to do it.”

  “And nobody took your side?”

  She shook her head. “Not even me.”

  I frowned. “What do you mean?”

  “I never stood up for myself. I never denied the accusations. I just shouldered the blame… every time.”

  “Why?”

  “I guess I wanted to be her friend, too.”

  I thought of her, small and alone—so desperate for acceptance—and pulled her a little closer, offering comfort to soothe the deep-set pain of her childhood.

  “My mother would shake her head and say, ‘We should have expected this of Ravenna.’” Disapproval filled her impression of Margot, similarly to the way I remembered the woman. She had looked at Raven in disgust, and that angry protectiveness once again began to burn in my chest. Still to this day, weeks after that encounter, I was appalled at Margot's icy demeanor. “After a while, I thought that's who I was. I started acting out… started my own trouble. If I was going to get blamed for everything anyway, as least I could have a little fun. Besides, Alessandria had sweet and beautiful covered. I didn't stand a chance.”

  As I looked down at her, I could hear the underlying frailty in her words. That little girl still lived inside her. She still felt incredibly unwanted and betrayed and alone. Yet, there also rem
ained the lingering remembrance of how it felt to have her mother look at her girls and call them beautiful.

  “Rave, you are so beautiful,” I told her, grazing my thumb down her cheek and trailing it down to place my palm over her heart. “You’re stunning, with your mask and without it. Even more, as gorgeous as you are, all this on the outside pales in comparison to who you are in here. Here… you’re the most incredible person I’ve ever known.”

  It was there. Right on the tip of my tongue.

  I love you.

  I could have said it then. I wanted to. I needed to.

  Yet, something held me back. Something about the wariness that hit her eyes when those thoughts began to swirl in my head. Like she could read my mind and was mentally pleading with me not to say anything at all. Like those words would shut her down and drive her away.

  So instead, I kissed her. I told her stories of my own, giving her some much-needed distraction. I touched her and tried to show her how much she meant to me with every caress. I held her in my arms every night and brushed the hair from her eyes as she faded off to sleep.

  I did love her. Desperately.

  Even if I didn’t say it.

  Raven sat facing me in my office chair at Ink, her body arching like a cat as I trailed my touch down. Lower. Closer to her center until, oh yeah… there it was.

  Fuck, she was soaking wet.

  I watched my fingers slip inside her, pulling them out to marvel over the glistening arousal. I was hypnotized by the silky wetness and, for a moment, I just stared.

  “Please, Drew,” she whispered in a broken breath. “Fuck me, please.”

  I took hold of her hips and guided her closer, easing her down on my dick. She cried out as I entered her, gripping the edges on the chair until her knuckles went white. Her ivory skin contrasted so beautifully with the ink, and her dark purple hair fell in tangled waves around her shoulders.

  I was lost in the feel of her, the sight of her. Everything about her reached out to me, bleeding into my mind and body until it felt like we were one being. Moving so smoothly, fast and slow and fast again. Her breathy cries echoed through the small space until, with a deep groan, I hit my limit and came, pulling her against my chest in a bruising grip.

  It had been a quiet Thursday afternoon at Ink. Neil left for the day to run some errands in Butte, and Raven and I immediately slipped back to my office. In the past couple weeks since Margot’s funeral, we’d felt even more free to touch and taste. We’d come closer together. We still held back the words, but our actions spoke for us. Every caress bound her to me just a little bit more.

  It was all so easy. Holding her. Touching her and teasing her.

  Loving her.

  With that thought, my arms tightened around her. Having taken us both to release, she still barely moved over me. Faint strokes to prolong the aftershocks of our orgasms. I held her still, choking back the words I suddenly was dying to get out. The urge to clutch her close to me, to never let go, sent a jolt of vulnerability through me.

  The jingle of the bell on the front door sounded in the distance.

  “Damn,” Raven whispered. She pressed a kiss to my temple, and slid off me, faintly whimpering at the loss of contact.

  “Get rid of them,” I muttered.

  She laughed softly, giving me a quick kiss. “That’s no way to run a business.” She straightened her skirt and headed towards the doorway with a flirty wink. “I'll see what I can do, though, Mr. Massey.”

  God, she was perfect. Everything about her, right down to the teal streaks she’d recently added to the purple in her hair. I sat there, dazed by how much she’d come to mean to me, thanking my lucky stars. Of anything that had ever gone right in my life, this was the pinnacle.

  The problem is, when you’re at the top, there’s only one way to go.

  Voices from the front floated back to me, sending a sickening lurch through my gut.

  “Maggie?” Raven sounded calm for the most part, yet there was an underlying tone that belied her composure.

  Fuck.

  “I have to talk to Drew,” I heard Maggie announce. “Right away.”

  Fuck, fuck, fuck.

  “I don’t know that he really wants to talk to you.”

  “He will when he hears what I have to say. I have the most amazing news.”

  Fuck, no.

  Nothing from Maggie would be good news.

  I didn’t want to see her, and part of me wanted to stay right where I was. To let Raven handle her. To send her away.

  Which would have been pretty fucking emasculating, as well as a really shitty thing to do to Raven. I could almost feel her tension reverberating through the halls.

  After tucking myself back into my jeans, I stormed up front and stepped in front of Raven, positioning myself between her and Maggie to shield her from whatever nastiness my ex was about to spew forth.

  “Go away, Maggie.”

  “But Drew—”

  “Raven’s right. I don’t want to talk to you. I’m not interested in anything you have to say.”

  “Not even if I tell you that the Bangin’ Mofos have a shot at playing in concert with the Sinners?”

  Taken aback, I jerked a step away, bumping into Raven. She steadied me with a hand on the waistband of my jeans.

  “What are you talking about?” I asked.

  Maggie smiled coolly. “They’re playing in Missoula next month. Their opening act had to cancel, so I got in touch with the promoters. I sent them some of the demos you guys recorded when you were doing the radio shows, and they want you. They want the Mofos.”

  My mind raced. No way could this be happening.

  Yet Maggie had always had a way of making things happen, of being a driving force for my dreams. “Who wants us?” I asked.

  “The band! The tour promoters are here in town, down at the Oxbow Cafe. They want to meet with you guys right now to go over the details. I told them I’d come get you.”

  Here she was again with the chance of a lifetime, but what would it mean? What strings would Maggie start to pull?

  I turned to glance at Raven who looked back up at me with wary eyes and pale skin. I had no clue how to even process this, no concept of what could result from this sudden turn of events.

  “You have to go,” she whispered. Her voice was cool and solemn. Final.

  My mouth moved, but nothing came out. This was like a dream and a nightmare all in one. Something I’d fantasized about almost since I could remember, but wretched and fatalistic. I didn’t know what to say.

  Raven spoke for me.

  “Really, Drew. This could be an amazing opportunity for you.”

  I turned fully towards her and grasped her by the shoulders and locked onto her violet eyes. “Don’t leave, okay?”

  Raven frowned. “Of course I won’t. I'll stay and watch the shop for you.”

  Fuck. Not what I meant.

  My stomach was tied up in knots. Dread and excitement and agonizing fear ripped through me. “Wait for me, though. Wait for me to come back after I talk to these guys.”

  “It might be a while,” Maggie announced, and I cringed at the tone. She was clearly warning Raven off. “There’s a lot to discuss. They’re talking about the next couple tour stops, too. Denver and Seattle.”

  I didn’t even look at her, just kept my gaze locked on Raven. “I'll be back,” I promised. “Stay here. Really, this time. Don't take off as soon as I'm out of sight like before.”

  She shifted her conflicted gaze to focus on Maggie, catching her lip in her teeth as she looked back up at me. After releasing a slightly shaky breath, she nodded. Silent assent, but it was enough. It was still a promise to stay.

  I pressed a firm kiss to her lips and touched my forehead to hers.

  Then, in a daze, I followed my ex-girlfriend to meet the guys who could put me on stage with my idols.

  Maggie drove to the cafe while I texted the other Mofos to meet us there. The only one who didn’t respon
d was Justin, who was probably in class. Cody and Denny both said they’d come right away.

  As we pulled into the lot, I saw Denny already there climbing out of his truck. He didn’t live far away, but he must have dropped everything to get there that fast.

  His eyes narrowed when he saw Maggie.

  “What the bloody hell?” Denny glanced over at me with a pointed look.

  I replied only with a shrug. I wasn’t thinking about Maggie, about how it looked to show up with her. I was trying to grasp the idea of this opportunity that was falling hard in my lap.

  “Come on, gentlemen,” Maggie clipped. “Let’s not keep them waiting.”

  “Wait a second,” Denny motioned to the entrance to the lot. “Here’s Cody.” He glanced at me. “Did ya hear back from Justin?”

  My phone buzzed as if on cue. I glanced down to quickly scan the text.

  “He’s on his way. He says he'll be here in fifteen minutes.”

  “We'll get started without him,” Maggie announced. She wrapped her arms around one of mine and nudged me towards the door.

  It was easy to spot the execs as soon as we walked in. They screamed LA in a small, down-home place like the Oxbow. Very different from the usual clientele of ranchers, miners, and farmers, their tailored suits and slick appearances stuck out like a sore thumb.

  Maggie led me to the table and released my arm as the men stood.

  “Hello, again,” she said to the men. “Here’s my boys. We’re still waiting on one of them, but…” she motioned to us as she made the introductions, “this the lead guitarist, Drew Massey. As you heard on the demo, he’s incredibly talented. And we have Denny Byrne who does lead vocals. Dublin-born, making him so unique for an American rock band. The big guy in the back is Cody Driscoll who plays the drums.”

  Still practically comatose from surprise, I barely heard the execs’ names. Steve-something and Bob-something, I thought. With everything rushing through my head, I felt like I was under water. My movements seemed lethargic, and voices around me were muted and muffled. I shook hands with the men and sat at the table, barely noticing that Maggie sat on my lap to leave room for the other Mofos. She slipped her arm around my shoulders, just like she always used to do at the Copperline and parties. Like nothing has changed.