by Maria Luis
The words he spoke now didn’t belong to a man who took lives apathetically.
And that . . . that only made me want to look closer and peer into his soul. Discover anything and everything I could learn about him.
Fingers pinching Sorrow, I positioned it on my thigh so it wouldn’t fall off. “What did you pick for my present?”
With a quick glance in my direction, he revealed the next card that he held in his grasp.
Seven of Disks.
“Failure,” I muttered, staring at the dark illustration with its Roman symbols embedded in what looked like a myriad of black feathers, but which were meant to represent dead vegetation. Forcing a smile, my teeth ground together. “How ironic.”
Asher set Failure atop Sorrow on my leg, his fingers momentarily brushing the fabric of my black skirt. He sat back, arms on the flimsy armrests of his lawn chair. “You wanted to hide, Avery. You wanted to run from your past, and I brought you right back into it. That failure is mine.”
But it wasn’t, not really.
No matter the fact that Nat claimed to know him, she had followed me for years. I’d been in this mess for the long haul, no matter the fact that I hadn’t even realized it all along. And it didn’t help that he’d settled the card on my thigh with it reversed—in Thoth, Seven of Disks came with a darkness that always held light at the end of the tunnel. But if the card was drawn backward, and set down that way, that light was eclipsed. Negligent. The struggle never-ending.
I was so tired of fighting.
I set both Sorrow and Failure on the table, face down.
“Here’s the third card I pulled,” Asher murmured, yanking me from my reverie. “Dominion. I’m no card reader, Avery, and that’s something we both know. YouTube can’t make you a pro, and I pulled cards that I thought resonated, but this . . .” He wiggled it back and forth in his hand. “This is gonna happen.”
Plucking the card from his grasp, I stuck it back on the velvet-lined table, my palm echoing with a thud against the rickety frame. I should leave well enough alone. Accept that maybe he was trying to make amends after being an arrogant prick who thought he could say and do whatever he wanted.
But I couldn’t leave well enough alone.
“What game are you playing at, Lincoln?”
His blue eyes never wavered from my face. “No games.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“And why is that?” he asked, voice low. Behind him, the St. Louis Cathedral bells chimed the new hour, but he didn’t so much as glance back. No, I was the center of his attention, and even though he sat in his chair and I sat in mine, I nevertheless felt crowded by his presence.
“Can we not—”
“We have to.” His hands caught my wrists in a move so quick I barely had time to register it. And then he was tugging me forward until my hands were gripping his knees to stabilize my weight, and my butt was hovering inches off the fabric of my seat. “You don’t know this world, this city, sweetheart, not the way you think you do.” Thumbs caressing the delicate bones of my inner wrists, he met my gaze. “It was my failure that landed you in this mess, and I’ll be damned if I let you get burned because of me.”
“I can handle myself.” Right? I’d done so, well enough this far, at any rate, and if push came to shove, I could carry on for another twelve years—if I wanted to. If Nat didn’t flip the script on me and send her wolves sniffing at my ankles. If my stepfather didn’t think back to our almost-meeting at the police station and wonder, was that her?
So many if’s, but they were all I had.
The man holding my wrists was the biggest if of them all.
His lids fell shut, and I took the moment of solitude to study his features up close in a way that I hadn’t had the chance to before, when we were too busy having sex in the dark. A thin, white scar marked his tan skin just above his left eyebrow. Dark stubble lined the lower half of his face, longer than it’d been when I’d first met him, but not yet a full beard. His scars—
I hated the way I ached for his pain. I wanted to keep my walls in check and my empathy at the bare minimum. I wanted, so very badly, to blame his dangerous life on the choices he’d made and the decisions that he’d set forth out of his own volition, and not as a consequence of anyone else’s influence.
It was easier than facing and accepting the truth, and the truth was that I so desperately wanted to understand the inner workings of his mind. He’d saved me, at the Basement, when he could have so easily thrown me to the wolves. Even when it’d come to uncuffing us in that shack in the middle of nowhere, he’d demanded that I go first.
He wasn’t a good man.
But he had a conscience, I had to believe that.
Once again it seemed like we were tethered together by a string because as I pulled from his grasp and laid one hand over the raised flesh of his scars, his lips parted to murmur, “Ask me what happened to my face.”
10
Lincoln
If Avery truly thought she could take on the likes of Foley, Ambideaux, and Big Hampton, then she’d be dead before she even had the chance to draw a breath to scream.
It was the reason I’d sought her out tonight.
The reason I was willing to share the one moment of my life that I’d vowed to carry to the grave, forever unspoken.
It’s not the only reason.
No, I was a selfish bastard to my core. I craved her, even though I’d been a complete asshole when we’d last seen each other. I craved her, even though logic said she should be the last woman I should ever desire.
I didn’t give a fuck about any of that.
There was something to be said about making amends—I could do that now, even though the ones of my past weren’t so easy, or possible, to erase.
I opened my mouth, heard the words as they left—“Ask me about my face”—and then felt softness land on my cheek. My scarred cheek.
My heart lurched, the damn thing flopping around in my chest like a beached fish desperate for water, for safety, for the familiarity of its everyday reality. Just like that, her gentle touch yanked me from my numb existence, like the flick of a switch, and emotion ricocheted through me.
We’d fucked, me and Avery.
But when was the last time anyone had ever touched me willingly outside of getting naked? When was the last time anyone had ever sought to soothe me or care enough to even try?
Never.
Not in any of the homes I’d lived in growing up.
Not Jason, and sure as hell not Nat.
Not my mother, who couldn’t even bring herself to look at me.
If the Ursulines ever had, I’d been too young to carry the memories along with me into adulthood.
And, Christ, but the reality of my life hit me like a sledgehammer, pummeling my chest, forcing out a breath that echoed in my ears like a foghorn.
Words. I needed to speak, to say something so Avery didn’t think I’d gone mute, but I found myself incapable of doing anything but soaking up the feeling of her hand against the ugliest part of me. I was ruined, as she’d told me when we’d first met, and she touched me now anyway.
Like I was someone worth her time and energy.
Like I wasn’t a monster clothed in human skin.
“Lincoln.”
Fuck, she could have lit a fire and told me to run through it, and I would have stripped naked to go the extra mile and then stood in the middle of the flames. Welcomed the heat. Welcomed the pain. If only I could pretend, if only for a second, that I was a man worth loving.
I blinked my eyes open.
She blinked down at me. “Where did you go?” she whispered, and I didn’t even have to ask what she meant.
My throat constricted with a swallow. “To a place I generally like to pretend doesn’t exist.” In other words, my heart. My soul. Two things I’d thought were dormant until I’d found her in Jackson Square, exactly where we sat now. I reached up, hand circling her wrist, and startled even myself by
settling her palm even more flatly against my cheek.
I waited for the disgust to twist her features, but it never did.
Instead, her hazel eyes went to our hands against my face and didn’t flit away. “Tell me what happened.”
Starting from the beginning wasn’t an option, so I settled with the truths that could be told without landing her in even more hot water. “I worked for Nat’s husband growing up. Jason Ambideaux.”
Her features scrunched. “Like an intern sort of work?”
I wished. Maybe life would have played out differently if I was only one of the kids he hired from the local high schools to plan his social events and schedule his Facebook posts and coordinate his meetings in a fancy little calendar that cost more than my prized Glock 19. “No, not like an intern.”
At the risk of seeing that disgust appear, I added, “I ran drugs for him, Ave. Murdered people.”
Her nails scraped against my cheek, a gut reaction from her, I knew.
I plowed on—there was no other way.
“I told you that I don’t know how many people I’ve killed, but that’s not true. I know every person—their birthdate, their parents, their kids, if they had any.” My chest would remain forever marked by their losses. A tattoo for every kill. Pain for pain, as the Romans would have once put it. My chest was covered, as were my upper arms. I was a walking tombstone, and I’d have it no other way. It was regret and shame that I carried on my shoulders alone, though, and it was the single reason I rarely removed my shirt in front of others.
I didn’t want the questions, the curious glances.
They’d never understand, and it wasn’t in me to try to explain what they would never, ever, comprehend. The ink was my penance alone.
“Jason had this . . . I hate to call him an enemy because it sounds so damn cheesy.”
Avery hooked a foot around her chair and drew it forward, so that it was almost on top of mine, and then lowered herself onto it. She never tried to remove her hand from my face, simply angled her body so she could maintain contact. “He was an enemy,” she said evenly, “just call it like it is.”
My lungs squeezed with a heavy sigh. “Yeah, they were. They hated each other, for reasons that I still don’t know, not then and not now either. Jason had learned something about Foley, though, and he called me in. He had something he wanted me to take care of, and I’d never told him no before. I was always the reliable one.”
Her teeth sank into her bottom lip, and I could practically see the wheels spinning in her head. “Do you like . . .?”
Knowing the answer she wanted, I gave her my truth: “I’m good at it, but I’ve never taken pleasure in seeing someone die.” No, I’d been worse. Indifferent. Resigned. Determined to please a man who wasn’t my father but was the only person who even came close to filling the role. “Except then he’d told me the mark’s identity, and I almost balked.”
“Why?”
I met her gaze, and unraveled the words that I’d kept bottled up for so damn long. “The target was a kid,” I said, pulling her hand away from my scars. As much as I wanted her touch, I didn’t deserve her empathy with this story. I never would. “An innocent kid who’d done nothing but exist, but Jason wanted retaliation for something his so-called enemy had done.”
Avery’s gasp felt so very loud. Just keep going. Get to the point of the story. It was hard, so hard to know that my actions had set so much into motion.
“I agreed—”
Dark brows furrowing, Avery watched me carefully. “You said that you almost balked. Please—please tell me you didn’t go through with it.”
The weight of her quiet disappointment felt like chains circling my neck. I was going to hell, that was for sure. A first-class ticket engraved in gold, just for me.
“I agreed, at first. Ambid—Jason was like a father to me, and I hated the thought of disappointing him. But in the end, I couldn’t go through with it. I went to Whiskey Bay, determined to get the fuck out of that life and confront him. He was waiting for me already, knew exactly how I’d failed to follow through.”
My mind’s eye brought forth a visual of Ambideaux waiting for me at the bottom of the stairs of the Basement, arms crossed over his broad chest. To say that he’d been pissed was an understatement. Furious, more like. I’d never seen him in such a rage before, and my gut had told me to whip around and get the hell out of dodge.
I’d stood my ground.
And he’d shot me in return.
My voice emerged like I’d been silent for years instead of seconds. “I told him he was a fucking predatory asshole for bringing a kid into the mess. I wanted out.” Forcing the lingering panic away, I tucked my elbows on my knees and let my hands dangle between my legs. Stay calm, man. Don’t lose it. “I remember turning away, and then feeling hot fire ripping through my right thigh. And, then, a split second later, more flames just above my knee.”
Avery’s eyes went wide, and her full lips parted like I’d ordered them open on my command. “He shot you?”
“Yes.”
“What an asshole,” she ground out, as though horrified on my behalf. And, hell, but it felt good—even if her sympathy was all wrongly misplaced.
“I woke up in a car, blood all over me. We weren’t in N’Orleans, and it was like some twisted sort of fate that I knew exactly where they were bringing me—Whiskey Bay.” At her lifted brows, I corrected myself: “The Atchafalaya Basin. It’s where we—they—brought the bodies we were dumping. The river would bring the dead straight out to the Gulf of Mexico, and if that failed, then they’d end up as food. I wasn’t dead, and they knew that.” But they’d stripped me of all my belongings—my ID, my guns, my sanity. “And before they threw me over, Jason made one last order.”
“What else—” Breaking off with a low growl, Avery stared hard at my face. “Please tell me they didn’t.”
“Held me down.” I could picture it all now, my limbs restrained as I tried to fight the fuckers off; the tip of the knife drawing first blood; my already tepid heart rate growing slower with extreme blood loss. “They carved my face with a J. One guy made the comment that he could see bone, and then they threw me in.”
It should have warmed me to see the way Avery reacted, the utter shock that lined her delicate features as her hands went to her mouth to hold in a small cry. The chill was back in my limbs, though, the memories of that day still so vivid in my head that I could almost taste the bile that had stolen up my throat.
“How did you—” Shaking her head, Avery whispered, her eyes shimmering with unshed tears. “It doesn’t look like . . .”
I laughed, but there wasn’t a single ounce of joy in it. “Trust me, I wanted to die. There wasn’t anything I wanted more. And I won’t lie, I don’t know what twist of fate had me washing up on a grassy bank like some sort of bastard prince, but there I was when some shrimpers were coming out to set some traps.” Reaching up, I skimmed my palm over the jagged scars. I couldn’t remember a time when they weren’t there, but now, much like the tattoos, they were symbolic of my guilt. Visual suffering for all to see. Jaw unclenching, I said, “As for the scar, I fixed it.”
Avery blinked. “You fixed it?”
I waited for the implication to sink in.
I didn’t have to wait long—not even three seconds had passed before she was swallowing convulsively and tearing her gaze from my face, the first time she’d cut eye contact since sitting down. “Lincoln—”
“No one owns me, sweetheart. Not Jason, not Foley, not Hampton. I would rather have a face that scares kids for the rest of my life than live a single day with that asshole’s initial etched into me.”
“I-I don’t even know what to say. He’s awful—and awful isn’t even a good enough word for it at all. You shouldn’t have had to suffer like that, just for wanting to do the right thing. The noble thing. It’s not okay. None of it is okay, and I can’t even imagine what that must have felt like, having your—”
“There’s nothing to say. That was my reality and so I walked out. I’m a damn lucky bastard, but that’s not the point to why I brought up all this up.” I picked up the card that I’d selected for her future while stalking the internet for any and all understanding of tarot. Dominion had fit for what I wanted for Avery, according to the website I’d found. Illustrated with yellow and orange swords and flames, the card was supposed to represent boldness and courage. Something about the spirit rebelling against boundaries in order to find a resolution.
What it meant besides that—or, hell, if that meaning was completely wrong in the first place—I had no idea.
Guns were my area of expertise, not fortune-telling.
Twirling the card between my index finger and thumb, I husked out, “My point is, Avery, I don’t want that for you.” I tapped the corner of the card to my face, just below the raised flesh. “This is not going to be your future. I’ll be dead before I let them touch you. So everything we said the other night, all those bitter feelings? We’re squashing the fuck out of them right now. You need me, I’m here. You don’t need me, I’m still gonna be right here, waiting.”
Looking shaken up, Avery licked her lips. “You could be waiting forever. I highly doubt anyone is looking for me.”
“You don’t think Foley will be if he finds out?
Her hazel eyes squeezed shut. “I don’t know. I hope not.”
He might not be right now, but he would be soon. If Hampton was stirring the pot, and so was Ambideaux, it was only a matter of time before Foley caught wind and started paying notice to everything around him.
My father had grown comfortable during his term as mayor—it wasn’t a secret. But shit was changing, and one wrong move could land Avery back on his radar.
Unless I stepped in and watched her back. I was a glorified hitman with a suspended badge, not a bodyguard. You can’t walk away—not again.
Not from her, Avery.