Burn (Brothers of Ink and Steel #2)

by Allie Juliette Mousseau

  I pull myself to my feet.

  “Where you hiding your money, boy?” he seethes. “This is my house! Anything you bring in here is mine!”

  He gets his hand around my neck and pushes me against the wall. In that movement, my eyes catch mine and Quinn’s shoes together near the wall.

  Fuck, fuck, fuck!!!

  He sees them too and understanding dawns on his face. “Two Subway wrappers and two pairs of shoes? Who have you let into my house, prick?”

  “No one. I was hungry, and I found the pair of shoes by a dumpster,” I lie.

  He spins me around and forces my head towards Quinn’s sneakers. He presses my face into them.

  “They’re way too small to be yours, bigfoot!” He considers them then smiles. “You got a girl in here? Got your ass laid, didn’t you?”

  I shove him off of me. “I told you, I fucking found them. I’m bringing them to school Monday.”

  “You think I’m buying that?” He backhands me across the face so hard, I hit the far wall. The cheap wall material reverberates with the force.

  I touch my hand to my lips and catch the blood in my fingers. “Goddamnit!”

  “What did you say, asshole?” He leans his ear at me.

  His fist pummels into my gut, another cracks against my jaw.

  The next two blows I block, which infuriates him! The question is, do I let him beat the shit out of me or fight back? We’ve done it both ways before. He might throw me out on my ass either way—we’ve done that both ways too—and I can’t leave Quinn in here alone.

  “Hey, guy, you’re drunk as shit! Just go the fuck to bed and make up with your old lady,” I say, exasperated.

  “You good-for-nothing bastard!” He maneuvers me into a headlock and starts dragging me out of the room.

  I’m not entirely unhappy with this; it keeps Quinn safe under my bed. For now.

  If I can tire him out, he might forget all about the conversation and simply pass the fuck out.

  “Did you say that piece of shit brought somebody into my house?” Mrs. Richardson squawks. “Is there someone in my house boy?”

  She must have been in the kitchen, because now I can smell something cooking and she’s brandishing a large serrated kitchen knife.

  “Jesus Christ! So, I got laid and threw her out when I was finished. She was carrying her goddamn shoes with her cause she was wearing her boots outside. This is not a big fucking deal!” I’ve never seen the woman with a knife before, in fact she’s never been involved with her husband’s rages, but it sinks in that I could be in serious danger.

  “Did you let the slut in my room? Did she take anything?” She breathes into my face; her breath is rancid, and I can only wish that they’d been picked up by cops for driving drunk.

  “No, ma’am.” I use respect, hoping it helps.

  But it looks like they’re enjoying what’s transpiring.

  “Let’s make him really sorry,” she says.

  Mr. Richardson—Dick—throws me to the couch and pins me with his knee in my kidney. I feel the cool of the knife blade slide under the collar of my shirt and Bitch cuts it in half down my back.

  What the fuck! This is an entirely new MO for them, and I’m definitely freaking the fuck out! I hate men being so close to me … on top of me … behind me … so much so that I lose my sense of perspective and my self-control.

  I struggle and try to kick up, but Dick laughs and puts all of his weight on top of me, pinning my legs and torso, with his knee driven deeper into my kidney, causing terrible pain.

  “Captain of the high school wrestling team,” he crows proudly.

  Why do people take in kids if they hate them? The government doesn’t hand out that much fucking money.

  I can’t take in a good breath. As Bitch is holding my head down and the knife against the back of my neck, I’m smothered within the filthy cloth of the cushion.

  The most frightening part is that, as I’m sucking through the fabric for air and feeling the weight of Dick on my back, my mind begins to dredge up the darkest waters of my soul.

  I start to thrash. I know I’m in trouble.

  “That’s not going to help,” Bitch says. “You need to learn a lesson.”

  The next sensation I feel is a thick, hard rubber tubing being lashed with terrible force across my exposed back. At the end of it is a piece of metal or something, and it feels like it’s flaying open my flesh.

  It hurts like nothing I know, and my scream is caught in the cushion.

  I jerk my body up, more calculated this time. I almost throw Dick off, when the whip comes down again, three times, fast and violent.

  My body crumples against the couch in agony.

  “Stay down! You piece of shit! We’d be doing the world a favor, snuffing out your pitiful existence.”

  I hear a crash above me.

  “What the fuck!?” Dick shouts.

  I realize I don’t feel the knife on my neck anymore. I use the moment of surprise and lift up with every ounce of strength I’ve got and manage to throw Dick off of my back. He goes over, but takes me with him. We crash down against the coffee table, which snaps under our combined weight.

  Dick’s breath is pushed out of his lungs as he cushions my fall.

  “LIAM!” Quinn is yanking me to my feet. “Are you okay? Please tell me you’re okay!” She’s crying.

  Between my oxygen deprived brain, the resurrected monster in my thoughts and the stinging fury of my back, my mind is too addled to think coherently. I stumble back a few steps, but catch myself.

  What’s the damage?

  Bitch is lying on the floor, motionless. “Did you kill her?”

  “I don’t fucking know!” Quinn yells, a frying pan dangling from her hand. “They were beating you with a piece of hose! They were going to kill you!”

  Her eyes trail to the floor, where in the melee, a cut piece of thick green garden hose about twelve inches long lays like a dead snake. The metal screw-like connector is still attached.

  “LIAM!” Quinn screams and points behind me.

  My foster dad is back on his feet.

  But so am I. And I’m hungry for blood.

  My first blow cracks over his jaw, and I can hear the pop as it dislocates. As he tries to catch himself from falling, I pull him across me, knee him hard in the gut and push him away. He falls forward and sprawls across the floor.

  “Make sure they stay down! We got to get the fuck out of here, now!” I race back to the room, pick up our shoes and coats and my backpack.

  Running through the living room, I tell Quinn to follow me.

  “You’ll pay for this,” the Bitch hisses.

  Guess she’s not dead. Pity.

  I lead us out the side door and down the alley so we stay out of the streetlights.

  We run full-on until we’re far enough from the townhouse that I feel safe enough for us to take a minute to get on our shoes and coats.

  “Are you okay?” I check Quinn over.

  She shoves my hands away. “Of course I’m okay! Are you okay?”

  Her soft fingers pad the swell of my lip and eye. She’s trembling. I take both her hands in mine to calm her down.

  “They were going to kill you!” Tears spill down her face.

  “It’s not the first time, Quinn.” If she only knew how many times the adults in my world had threatened my life.

  She wriggles out of my hands and throws her arms around my neck, pressing against me in a full body hug.

  What if they’d succeeded?

  I shudder and wrap my arms around Quinn’s waist. Then, I lift a hand and sink it into her beautiful, comforting, golden hair.

  “Maybe you saved my life.”

  *****

  2015

  Liam

  “You make no sense!” Talon chastises me as I aim a dart into the red center of the target. “You’ve been pining away for a decade. Here she is, and you’re going to be a douche?”

  “Leave me the f
uck alone, Tal.” I throw the dart, but I’m off and it hits the wall; its tip sinks into the plaster. Goddamnit!

  “Jesus Christ, man, she’s here!” he implores. “Don’t bite the hand of fate.”

  “Fate doesn’t give you anything but agony and heartache! It makes you believe in something good, or even great, and then it rips it away and watches while you bleed.”

  “You don’t believe that shit you’re shoveling, and you know it.”

  “It doesn’t matter what I believe now or what I believed then, that’s just reality,” I say finally and fist my jacket off the chair. “I’ve got to let Bailey out before he destroys the house. We also have blind dates to get ready for.”

  “About that …” Talon says. “Ryder canceled it.”

  “Why the hell did he do that?” I growl.

  He just answers me with a stare, like I’m an idiot.

  “You know she has a life we know nothing about! Nada! She could be fucking married for all we know! She could have kids!” I shake my head. “I don’t know who that Quinn is!”

  “Bullshit! You know exactly who that Quinn is. Her life may have changed and her circumstances altered, but she’s still Quinn! Beautiful, amazing, intelligent, demanding—”

  “I KNOW!” I hurl the words at him. “Do you think I don’t know!? What am I, fucking blind?! I saw her! I saw the pain she’s going through about her mom and the pain I instantly caused her merely by my presence! And don’t tell me you know what you’d do if you were me—you have no fucking clue!”

  “Dude, you’re a smart guy, always have been, a born leader. You’re closer to me than any brother could be. And when it’s about Quinn, you always think with your heart first. When it comes to her, you’ve always had a sixth sense or some kind of direct line to her psychic energy. I don’t care what people believe in—God, the Universe, themselves—you have a connection to her that’s unexplainable. You’re soul mates, you and Quinn.”

  I hate Talon.

  “Right now, asshole, you’re thinking with your brain—the injured, sore, unforgiving part. It won’t tell you the truth. It will nurture your pain by feeding it pity.”

  Now I hate him more.

  “Self-pity certainly tastes good, doesn’t it? Mmm …” he makes a face like he’s eating dessert, or maybe pussy.

  “Shut. Up,” I say.

  Then he throws a spoon at me. It hits me right in the head. “Ouch! Fuck!”

  “WAKE UP! You knew she was coming, you felt her.”

  “Goddamnit!” I find the spoon and chuck it across the room, hard. It skips across the floor. “This is my place, Talon! You can leave if you don’t like the company!”

  “HA! I’ve put just as much sweat and heart into The House of Ink and Steel as you have. A name on a piece of paper is only ink on burnable tree pulp,” he challenges.

  “Fine, I’ll leave you to yourself then.” I stride towards the back door of my tattoo and pierce shop.

  “Even this place is full of her,” Talon says, just before I get out the door.

  I halt in my tracks.

  He continues, “The House of Ink and Steel—the brothers of ink and steel—these …”

  I turn to see as he lifts the hem of his t-shirt to reveal the “I am my brother’s keeper” tattoo across his left rib.

  Seven of us have it—me, Talon, Ryder, Josh, Chase, Connor and Reese. We were troubled kids who hated each other, forced under Cade’s roof at North House. Quinn was always trying to make us get along, but it was her near death plight that brought us together that fateful night.

  Fucking-ass fate—I’d give up every one of my friendships with the brothers to have her back. I don’t give a rat’s ass if the idea is selfish, it’s the fucking truth. And I would certainly give them all up in a fucking heartbeat if it meant she didn’t have to suffer the way she did that horrible fucking nightmare night.

  I feel the sting of tears pool in my eyes and blind me for a moment before they fall. Yeah, Talon is one hundred percent correct; Quinn is and always will be everywhere. And wasn’t that the argument I’d been having with myself all day?

  “I don’t … I can’t …” I stammer and wring my hands together. “How do I do it—be her friend with all of this rage and hurt and unreciprocated love inside of me—without breaking?”

  “No one said you wouldn’t have to break,” Talon replies in all seriousness. “Might be the only thing that’ll put the two of you back together again.”

  “Two halves of a whole, she used to say,” I think out loud.

  I take a quick glance at the wall clock. It’ll be dinner time at North House in a couple hours. She’ll be there. Could I handle it?

  “I’ve got to run Bailey and think.”

  “Remember to use your heart.”

  “Yes, oh spiritual master,” I throw back over my shoulder.

  “Don’t forget it,” he gets out before the door closes.

  An icy wind rides up my shirt and swirls around me before I can get my coat zipped. I slide into my car and tear out of the shop’s back lot.

  I drive too fast to my house near Lake Nokomis.

  Thinking straight is obviously out. Every thought, every word, every memory, proves to be alive and well in my psyche. It feels like a fucking hurricane of torment with Quinn as the eye of the storm.

  Can I really handle going to dinner? At North House? And have every bit of the destroyed part of me thrown in my face—like a Technicolor replay?

  I pull into my driveway and stalk like an angry, frustrated animal up to the house. I’m greeted immediately by Bailey, my all black Newfoundland puppy, who at under a year old, weighs almost one hundred pounds. And try as I may, I can’t stay mad when one hundred pounds of fluff and love comes to playfully maul me.

  “BAILEY!” I open my arms, and he leaps up, places his huge paws over my shoulders and licks my face in our I’m-home-hug ritual.

  “Come on, boy, I bet you want to go for a run!” I grab his leash off the hook and we head off to the greenspace by the lake.

  I know what to do; it’s the what to say and how to say it that’s stumping my pre-psychology play-through. It’s a trick all professional athletes use—you visualize the fight—the opponent, how calm and confident you feel in his presence; you imagine yourself punching and kicking; you visualize each strike hitting its mark.

  This is so not the same psychology at all! I really want to speed dial my brother, Josh North—the Light Heavyweight champion of the UFC—and get into the ring with him. He’d give me the satisfying challenge I could really use right now to release these feelings and this pent up self-fucking-pity … he wouldn’t let any of that shit slide. But he’s too busy right now to pester.

  I’m on the UFC fight card against Milano a month from now.

  First you’re on the fight card with Quinn Kelley, in about a half an hour.

  Chapter Five

  October, 2004

  Quinn

  “Fucking snow! Not tonight.” Liam curses the sky once we get away from his foster house and tries to figure out the new and almost as bad situation we’ve been thrown into.

  It feels worse than if we’d been dealing with the cold all through the night; instead, we were warm and asleep just a couple hours ago.

  The wind is blowing badly, too.

  “If I was alone, I’d go to Randy’s,” Liam says. “Crawl through his basement window. But if his mom found me there with a girl … not good.”

  “Then, go on. I know where the bridge is!” I snap back, hurt.

  “I didn’t mean it like that! I was just thinking out loud—”

  “That you’d be better off without me. Trust me, I’ve heard that one, Liam.” All of a sudden the cold doesn’t bother me anymore. “You know what? Fuck this and fuck you.”

  Abruptly I turn and walk the opposite way.

  “Quinn!” Liam catches hold of my arm.

  I scream, “Let go of my fucking arm!”

  “What the fuck is your
problem?” He shoves my arm down.

  “You! You’re my problem!” I get in his face. “I didn’t ask you to take care of me!”

  “I didn’t say you did!” he yells.

  “Yeah, well, you’re acting like it!” It’s not right, and I try to stop myself—he just had his asshole foster parents try to snuff out his life and I’m going to be a bitch? “I’m not stopping you from going your own fucking way! Go to Randy’s! Maybe you can call Tina and get into her pants, and it can be like you never met me!”

  Fuck! I’m going to cry. “Screw this! Screw you!” I run away from him. I’m acting like a baby, but I can’t control my freaking thoughts or mouth!

  “Tina?” Liam shouts at my back. “What the fuck are you talking about? And get back here!”

  “None of that would have happened with your foster parents if I hadn’t been there. You’d be sleeping in your safe, warm bed!”

  “That’s ridiculous, he’s been pulling me out of that bed since I’ve been there—it was never warm or safe.”

  “Look, I’m really not trying to be an immature bitch. I’m serious. You’re better off without me! You don’t owe me anything.”

  “Would you just shut up? Stop talking like that! Jesus Christ! You’re a real pain in the ass, you know that?”

  “An even a better reason to go our separate ways.”

  “Quinn, I don’t want to go my own way. Friends don’t do that.”

  “I haven’t had many friends who haven’t done that. Could be I’m just a loser.”

  “You’re a pain in the ass, but you are definitely not a loser! You’re anything but a loser.”

  “I don’t want to be weak! This world isn’t kind to weaklings.”

  “You just feel weak ’cause you’re tired and have been fucked over so many times,” he says. “You’re not weak, you’re not a loser. And what I said before about wanting a home and a family not being a dream … I was acting like a dick. They’re perfectly real dreams … and maybe I want to help you get them.”

  I take a deep breath as Liam pulls me into his arms and holds me.