by Karina Halle
“And if I refuse?” I repeated, wiping my mouth.
He slowly sipped his water, his eyes on me, far too intimate, far too observant. “I have ways of making you see the bigger picture. Now, drink up.”
At that, I immediately brought the bottle away from my lips.
“So suspicious, Ellie,” he crooned. I felt the bottle slipping out of my hands as I tried to grasp it. He plucked it from me and pressed down on my shoulder so I was back against the seat. His fingers were rougher than I remembered but hot, like they were fueled by a radiator. Everything was starting to go loose and numb. The interior of the car swirled.
“Naturally,” he went on, leaning forward and peering into my eyes. “You have a right to be so. Eden White was far too trusting.”
My head had lolled back onto the seat. I could see the lightning jags of gold and green meeting his pupils, the tiny lines that formed at the corner of his eyes, the one strand of salt-colored hair that dared to show its face at his widow’s peak. Javier had aged. There was nothing scarier.
“Sleep well, my angel.” His voice came to me on a wave of vibration. There were swirls of light and then everything went black.
CHAPTER TWO
CAMDEN
She’d lied. She fucking lied.
I should have seen it coming, should have known this wasn’t going to end easily. I should have known it the minute Javier called that there was no way he’d let her go once he had her. He wasn’t weak like me, I’ll give him that. He wasn’t the one left in the rock garden, two assfuck thugs’ meaty hands wrapped around him, holding him in place as he watched her leave. No, that was me. Camden McQueen.
I had to watch her leave again, but this wasn’t high school and this wasn’t a hallway.
She left me in a cloud of dust, a swirl of crushed cherry blossoms that choked my heart.
I must have been screaming in the aftermath, outside of my body with my old friend rage. I hated this part of being me – when I lost it, lost myself – the blackness that settled into my bones, that took over and booted my brain out of my skin. I was seeing everything from another angle and it looked just as fucked from up here.
And there was crying. My beautiful son, Ben, just three years old, was crying in his mother’s arms and I knew I needed to get control back. Screaming, fighting, it wasn’t going to solve anything. I had to think about him, and my ex-wife Sophia. I had to think about getting us out of there or getting Javier’s men out of my tattoo parlor, Sins & Needles. I needed control.
I shut my mouth, nearly clamping down on my tongue, as my heart ached and crumbled and slowed in my throat. The tunnel vision ended and suddenly the desert sky was as bright as it had ever been.
The SUV – Ellie – was now long gone.
“Get your fucking hands off me,” I snarled, jerking out of their grasp. Their stupid, thick fingers finally let go. I turned around and finally got a good look at them. They were both built like linebackers, large heads with nothing inside, programmed to do Javier’s bidding. Pussies to the core.
“Are you going to leave or do you want me to call the cops on you?” I asked, knowing I wasn’t about to get my father involved, the sheriff of Palm Valley and someone who could easily out-asshole them while grinding me down in the process.
The men exchanged a look but were silent.
“That won’t be necessary,” Raul said from behind me, the stairs creaking as he came down. I’d forgotten he had been there, hovering behind Sophia and Ben during the whole transaction like a yellow jacket in a fancy suit. “That is, unless they’re already on their way because of the scene you just caused.”
I swallowed down the volcano in my chest and exhaled sharply through my nose as his skinny, catcher’s mitt face came closer. “If you think that was me making a scene, you haven’t seen anything yet.”
His smile was wry, it belonged to a prick with empty power. If I wasn’t certain that the thugs were carrying guns, I would have kicked his teeth in.
“We’re leaving,” he said, folding his arms across his chest. My eyes focused on the scar at his jaw and for a painful second I saw the ones on Ellie’s leg, felt them under my tattoo gun, under my hands, under my tongue.
“Are you?” he continued, snapping me out of it before I could further drown.
I glared. “None of your fucking business.”
He shrugged like Javier Jr. “If you were a smart man, you’d leave this place. Take your wife and your kid and your dirty money and get out of here.”
Ex-wife, I wanted to say but the dirty money comment stung even more.
“Or what?” I challenged stupidly. I should have shut my mouth again, just kept it all in and go but I felt like being an annoyance, if anything.
He raised his brow. “Or nothing. We,” he nodded at the thugs and their blank, bloated faces, “are done with you.” He jerked his head to the street, where people were driving past like lives weren’t being threatened and ruined and changed before their eyes. The men nodded and the three of them walked past me, out of my trampled rock garden where plants would still continue to thrive even when I left the shop to cobwebs and dust. Because I had to leave, though on no account of Raul. I had to leave because I’d made my decision weeks ago.
Raul stopped on the sidewalk, the heat rising off of it. He took a pair of shades out of his jacket pocket and handled them for a moment, his eyes two dark dots in the harsh sun.
“But,” he said louder, voice thick, “just because we are done with you, doesn’t mean Javier is. Don’t go looking for her, whatever you do. Or it’s your funeral. And hers.”
He slipped the sunglasses on his face and he and the thugs disappeared down the street toward whatever getaway they had planned.
Although I believed him when he said he was done with us, it didn’t make me feel any safer. I slowly turned around and looked at Sophia and Ben. She was holding onto his hand, my boy leaning up against her leg. In her other hand was the briefcase full of money. She held onto that just as tightly.
Our eyes met, perhaps really, truly, for the first time today. Man, even with her in the shade of the porch, I could see her eyes blazing, full of fire, and not the type I wanted to go up in. Fuck it, there was no avoiding it. I’d avoided this for way too long.
After everything – everything – I’d gone through, it was ridiculous that I’d feel the slightest bit scared of my ex-wife. But I was. I could admit it. I’d admit to anything at this point. I was afraid of what she was going to make me feel, of what she couldn’t wait to make me feel.
Meanwhile, Ellie was in a car with Javier. Was she afraid too? Was she afraid of what Javier could possibly make her feel? Or, was that fear exclusively mine?
I brushed it out of my thoughts like a loose strand of hair and walked up the stairs to them, my fingers flicking past one another, trying to disperse the nervous energy that was building up.
I stopped in front of Sophia, on the last step so I was at her level. She was petite, not so much in shape, only height. She was always a foot smaller than me though her hips and thighs had weight to them, something that lured me in all those years ago.
“I’m sorry,” I said thickly, my eyes on hers, and meaning it.
I never thought she’d let go of the briefcase. And when she did, it landed on the porch with a bang that echoed in the overhang and the next thing that happened was her open palm meeting my face. She hit me fast, a quick draw, one side of my cheekbone, then the other with the back of her hand, catching the corner of my lip. It stung like hell and I sucked in my breath. Because getting angry would do me no good – getting angry was the reason she was my ex-wife.
“I deserved that,” I said quietly, avoiding her eyes.
“Shut up!’ she cried out, spittle falling out of her mouth. Ben, bless his innocent heart, whimpered and hugged his mother tighter, refusing to cry. “You shut up. You asshole! You …”
She trailed off and just when I thought all of this was too much for her, she hit me
again. Then she burst into tears, her head hung down, briefcase at her feet. I couldn’t help but look at Ben, my son, who was looking up at me like I was not only a bad man, the bad man that made his mother cry, but a total stranger. I was a stranger to both of them and it didn’t matter how many letters I wrote. We were all lost to each other.
“Hey,” I said softly and wrapped my arms around her. She stiffened but let me hold her. I stretched one hand down and placed it on Ben’s head and we stood there for a good few minutes, a family by blood not heart, while she continued to cry.
“I don’t even know where to begin,” she said, her voice muffled into my tear-soaked chest.
“I did a stupid thing,” I told her, figuring it was better to attempt it or not.
“I know,” she said, the edge returning to her voice. She raised her head, her face inches from mine. I remembered how hard it used to be for me to not kiss her and how easy it was now. The bruises around her eye and cheek where someone – Javier? – had hit her were blooming. It made me feel sick all over again.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered and she pulled out of my grasp. “I had the best intentions for Ben in mind throughout all of it. I wanted to escape this life, the life your … brothers … put me in.”
She wiped hard at her tears like they burned. “You put yourself in that life. You—”
“I hit you,” I said and even she looked a bit shocked at the way I admitted it after all this time. I placed my hands on her shoulders and held her firmly, lowering my head, eyeing her closely. “I hit you. There’s no excuse. I’m done excusing myself. I hit you and I hate myself for it and I hate that it ruined what we had. A family. I can never take it back and I have to live with it. I’m sorry, Sophia. Really, truly for what I did to you.”
She sniffed, seeming to take it in. I didn’t expect her to forgive me and I didn’t even care if she did. As I said to Ellie once, I didn’t regret the consequences of my actions but I did regret the action. And I had been making excuses for it all this time, blaming Sophia for something that was entirely my fault. My temper, my anger, my old friend rage – I wanted to finally kick it to the curb. I wanted to own it, destroy it. Wasn’t that what second chances were about?
I crouched down and pulled up the briefcase. I put it in her hand. “I didn’t earn this money. I didn’t ask for it. I hate what it stands for. If it can give us a second chance, then maybe it’s not all for nothing.”
“Who said I wanted a second chance with you?” she said. She was right. I never assumed she would.
“Because it feels like the right thing to do, to try. Listen, Sophia. I can’t let you go back to the way things were. Your brothers … they turned you over to a fucking madman. That life, that wasn’t a life, that’s not a family. I can be your family.”
“Even though you’re in love with another woman,” she pointed out. “Who was she? Who was this woman who was worth all of this?”
“An old friend,” I said simply, ignoring the nails in my heart. I didn’t even want to say her name, not now while we stood there in Palm Valley, where I could almost feel her getting farther and farther away. I had to focus on what I had right in front of me: Ben and Sophia. Money for a new life. I had to make sure they were safe first before I could even indulge in thoughts about Ellie.
I hated that I had to choose.
“Please, let’s just get out of here. Somewhere safe. We can lay it all out, discuss our next move.”
She turned and looked behind her at the shop, my beautiful shop, built on lies and ink. “This isn’t safe? It’s your home.”
“This will never be safe. And it’s done being my home.”
She nodded, seeming to understand. “So what, you’re going to leave right now, like this? Your father …”
“I’ve already left, Sophia. I shouldn’t even be here.” I shouldn’t have been so careless to think a man like Javier wouldn’t go after me and take the things I loved. He gave some of them back to me and I had to make it work.
I looked at the GTO, the car that Ellie named Jóse, sitting in the driveway. It had seen so much already. It was time for it to see more.
I grabbed Sophia’s hand and tried to grab Ben’s but he pulled away from me. Would he recognize himself inked on the back of my leg? Would he one day realize how much he meant to me? I wanted to feel like a father again. I wanted him to feel like he had a dad.
We had just reached the car when I heard someone call out from the street.
“Camden!”
“Shit,” I swore under my breath and turned to look. It was Audrey Price, one of my clients. Her pale skin glowed under the hot sun like skin cancer waiting to happen. On her arm was the sleeve of cherry blossoms I had partly filled in a few weeks back. The day I met Ellie. The same cherry blossoms I would later add to Ellie’s leg.
“Who is that?” I heard Sophia whisper.
“A client,” I said and put on my most charming smile as Audrey approached us. “What’s up, Audrey? How’s the tat?”
She stopped in front of us and quickly glanced at Sophia over her retro shades. She took her in first, then Ben, who was still as quiet as a mouse. Finally she looked to me.
“I came to see you the other day. You were closed,” she said uneasily, and slid her shades back on.
I shrugged as casually as I could muster. “Going on a vacation with my family.”
She frowned, then her head swung to Sophia and Ben again for a better look. Her mouth dropped open. In the stark light, it wasn’t obvious off the bat that Sophia had been knocked around. “Family? I … I had no idea you were … I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry,” I told her, knowing that Audrey was running over a few scenarios in her head. She’d always had a female hard on for me, that much was obvious. It didn’t help that I tattooed her ass late one night and in turn she sucked my dick. Now, all of that, combined with what seemed like a hidden wife and child and obvious case of spousal abuse, probably made things seem that much more wrong.
She never really knew Camden McQueen, did she?
She smiled tightly at me and I went on, trying to put her at ease. “I’m just going off for a bit, need some quality time, that’s all. I’ll re-open when I return. Did you want another session? Let me take a look.”
I reached for her arm as I would normally do, to inspect my work, just to see how it was holding up and if it had somehow gotten more beautiful as it melded with the skin, something I’d notice time and time again. They say tattoos are permanent, but in my eyes they adapt, ever changing.
She jerked her arm away as if my fingers were needles themselves and shot me another one of those awkward smiles. “I should be going.”
I swallowed my fear, the kind that would paralyze me and keep me here to make sure I wasn’t given a bad name, so no one would think ill of me. “Alright, well drop by in a week or so.” I could see now I was no longer the hot tattoo artist but something more sinister. In a week, she wouldn’t return. And I wouldn’t be here anyway.
Audrey gave me a vague nod, turned and quickly walked away, her sex heels echoing on the sidewalk.
“Are all your clients that awkward?” Sophia asked as she moved over to the passenger side door of the car.
“I guess none of this looks very good,” I said with a forced shrug.
“It’s beyond looking good,” she said, throwing the briefcase inside and squinting at me gravely. “Because this is all very, very bad, Camden. I don’t think you realize how bad this all is.”
Oh, the thing was, I did.
I took one last look at Sins & Needles and got in the car, not even feeling the heat that only an old car can hold.
I’d only been driving for twenty minutes before the depraved finality of everything settled in. Beneath my hands was the wheel of a car that wasn’t mine and wasn’t his and wasn’t hers but it was all I had left. I had lived too fast and too hard and now I was just supposed to accept it, accept that it was a parting gift, like the briefcase in So
phia’s hands, my reward for giving up my love.
I wasn’t giving up, was I? Every bone in my body ached to turn the GTO around, to go back for Ellie, to take her from something she didn’t need to do, from a life she didn’t need to return to. From a love that never was, that could never be what she needed.
“We’re about to run out of gas,” Sophia spoke up, her voice hoarse and emotionless. My eyes drifted sideways to Ben sleeping on her lap and my lungs burned like I’d swallowed a pint of sand. I couldn’t give up on Ellie. But I couldn’t give up on Ben either. My choice had been made when I drove away from Palm Valley, I just didn’t know if I’d get my second chance one more time.
I pulled the car over to the next gas station and filled up as quickly as possible. I needed to keep it together, I needed to keep control. I needed, needed, needed.
The passenger door opened and Sophia got out, Ben still in her arms, still asleep. “I’m going to get some food,” she said, nodding at the convenience mart with the garish lights that wouldn’t hide a thing.
I put the pump back in the receiver. “Why don’t you leave Ben with me? You don’t need to take him with you.”
She shook her head. “I don’t want to wake him. He’ll sleep as long as I’m holding him.”
Things I should know about my own kid. Things that I didn’t.
“Don’t you trust me with him?” I asked coming around the car.
She raised her brows. “No, Camden. I don’t. You might be his father by birth but that’s the only father you’ve been.”
“I wrote letters …” I trailed off.
“No, you didn’t,” she snapped.
It fucking figured. My heart began to pump loudly in my ears, my fingers twitched. “I did, Sophia. I wrote him. I sent you money too, but I’m guessing you never saw any of that.”
Her eyes darted to the store and back. She licked her lips and looked back at me. “No. I haven’t gotten a dime from you.”
“Fuck,” I muttered, trying hard to keep myself from pounding my fist on the back of the car.
“If it makes you feel better, I believe you.”