by Maria Luis
In this moment, though, I turned to Avery—the woman who saw beneath my hard veneer—and I swallowed her in a hug that lifted her feet off the floor and had her hands jumping around my back to keep her balance.
“I’m okay, Lincoln.” She kissed my chest, right over my heart, right over her number. “I’m okay.”
My nose nudged her neck as I inhaled her scent. “I didn’t ask for a savior.” My lips found the pulse at her neck, and I lingered there, gratification filtering through me that she was safe, she was okay. “I didn’t ask for a savior, but you found me anyway.”
And then my Avery, the bravest girl I knew, kissed my chest again and propped her chin on my pec, lifting her gaze to mine. Her lashes were wet with tears. Her beautiful face open and transparent as she murmured, “You found me in the shadows, Sergeant, when I was afraid, and you brought me back to the world of the living.”
We were two untethered souls who’d found each other, and, Christ, holding her felt so good. So right. “You’re mi—”
Commotion at the doorway had me lowering Avery to her feet.
Katie was there. Quinn. Delery. And, to my biggest shock of all, Big Hampton stood before them all. He looked from me to Avery. And then, to her, he said, “I’ve heard that sometimes good people do bad things, Miss Peyton. I’m making an effort to be good all the way around, so I hope you won’t mind that I took the liberty to go to the NOPD in your stead and”—he looked down at the mayor of New Orleans, who was clutching his stomach and moaning—“see to it that things were put into place to make things right.”
Avery released a strangled cough. “Well, damn.”
And if that wasn’t a proper slogan for the last month’s events, I didn’t know what was.
35
Avery
Six Hours Later…
“Can I sit here with you?”
Since the showdown at Ambideaux’s house, and the bloodshed that had followed, Lincoln and I had been shuffled to NOPD Headquarters. The building was a 1960’s monolith with stark, uncompromising lines, and a general air of sterility that made my skin run cold.
Or maybe it was just that, after learning everything that I had today about Foley and Momma, and then Lincoln and Jason Ambideaux and his poor Aunt Samantha, I felt chilled to the bone.
“Miss Laurel?”
Throughout the day, I’d had to answer to Laurel and Avery, and my brain had lost track the number of times I’d failed to turn around when spoken to. For a woman who’d adopted too many identities, I’d grown to know one—Avery—and nothing else seemed to fit any longer.
I glanced up at the familiar husky voice—Quinn—he’d introduced himself to me, earlier, when we’d all first found ourselves at headquarters and camped out in uncomfortable seats to wait our turn to speak with the police.
The man who let me live.
The man who didn’t kill Momma.
I knew, somehow, that he’d seemed familiar when I’d first stumbled across him at Whiskey Bay.
I nodded jerkily. “Of course. Sure.”
His ass hit the seat next to mine, and he immediately hunched over, elbows on his knees. For a moment, he was quiet. And then, “I thought I was seeing ghosts when you walked into Whiskey Bay a few weeks back. My past coming back to haunt me and all that.”
I swallowed, then dropped my gaze to my clasped hands. “Not a ghost,” I said softly, “just a girl who learned to hide for a very long time.”
A dark noise reverberated in his chest, and he shoved one hand through his salt-and-pepper crewcut. “You didn’t deserve any of what happened. You were a child and Foley was a greedy son of a gun. She knew what he’d do to her—what he’d done to others—and that he’d never let her get out alive. I’ve wracked my brain so many times, so many conversations we never got to have. I wouldn’t do it, she knew that, and I think she worried about Foley moving to the next person who’d kill her, no questions asked.” He shoved a hand through his hair again, tugging on the short strands. “I want to believe she knew what she was doing and that she’d thought everything through, including what might happen to you.”
I stared down at my hands. Watched them curl and unfurl in my lap. “She drank a lot. I remember her falling asleep with the bottle tucked to her chest. I remember her crying at all hours of the day, a glass of wine in her hand.” She’d been lightness and shadows, when I really looked back on it—laughter and thunderstorms, a troubled combination that probably had crumpled upon learning what Foley intended.
It pained me to think that Momma had been in such a dark place . . . that she probably hadn’t been thinking clearly when she’d pulled the trigger. That maybe she’d felt like she had nowhere to go, nowhere to turn.
Just like I had for all these years.
It hurt to swallow, but no more than my heart already hurt, knowing all that I knew now. And what I’d never know. “I know you feel guilty, but I promise that it’s okay. From what I understand, you were stuck. She stole the decision from you and you did what you could—you kept me safe.”
I didn’t want to understand—I wanted to cling to the rage that had fueled me for so long. But at what purpose? You couldn’t reverse the actions of the dead, and you couldn’t question them after they were gone. If any of that were possible, the world would be a different place. Momma had made her decision that night, and I had to live with that.
Quinn’s Adam’s apple bobbed as he continued to stare down at his scarred hands, and it hit me then that he and Lincoln were one and the same. Their loyalties had laid with different people, but at the end of the day . . . two killers, two so-called monsters, two allegedly heartless men who lived for the violence and nothing more.
Quinn swiped a thumb under his eye. Cleared his throat. “I met her first, you know. In Jackson Square. She was twenty-four to my nineteen, but goddamn, she was beautiful. All long, blond hair and brilliant hazel eyes, the kind I wanted to lose myself in.”
My heart rocketed to a stop. “In Jackson Square?”
His jaw clenched. “She was one of the artists along the gates. Painted the most beautiful scenes of the city that you’d ever see. I didn’t have the courage to do more than talk to her that day, and the next time I saw her, she was on Foley’s arm. My boss, the girl I couldn’t stop thinking about.” He laughed, the sound hollow and sad. “She remembered me because I’d made a fool of myself. I remembered her because I’d never seen another soul with so much light. You were six then, I think.”
The heartache in his voice broke my own heart, cleaving it in two. Without giving it a second thought, I touched his forearm in sympathy. He looked like he needed it. Like maybe this was the first time since Momma had passed that he’d had the chance to say what he wanted to say.
“I wasn’t allowed to be around you,” he added a moment later. “You weren’t even his child, but there were rules in play. Like Cat, you belonged to him. He was—is—a controlling man, but the night he came to me and told me that I needed to be the one to kill her, I refused. Said no.”
It was hard to breathe, harder to digest it all. “Lincoln mentioned something about an inheritance? I just don’t understand.”
Quinn’s shoulders lifted. “From what little I know, your mom was cut off from her family when she had you. She made her living down in the square, sometimes bartending here or there, but then Foley swept her off her feet.” His feet began to tap the floor, nervous energy radiating from him. “Your grandfather was dying, and I guess there was no one else to leave the money to—so he gave it to your mom with a single stipulation: if something were to happen to her, the money, the countless properties throughout the city, would go to her husband.”
“And not to me.”
“Not to you,” he repeated, his voice cut with an edge. “I’m sorry that he wasn’t progressive or that he didn’t see you as—”
“I’m not.”
And I wasn’t. I’d never met my grandfather. The sparse memories that I had of life before Jay were of m
e and my mother living in a small apartment over a corner store in the Marigny. There were no cousins to play with or family to smother me with affection, just me and Momma. I’d done fine without the money all these years, and though it balled my fists to think that she was dead on account of a greedy bastard like Jay wanting to own it all, I knew he felt his own form of regret.
He’d called Nat by my mother’s name whenever he screwed her.
He’d found women—sometimes teenagers—throughout the city who looked like her, to do the same.
He’d get what was coming to him, but I . . . I just wanted to go home for tonight. Wherever that was.
“Sweetheart.”
That voice.
I blinked up at Lincoln, at the hand he offered me, at the harshness of his features, and the beauty of his Haint-blue eyes.
“Harlonne let me know we can take off for the night.” He paused, fingers curling when I didn’t take his hand fast enough. Doubt flashed like a bolt of lightning across his face. And then, “Come home with me.”
We were two broken souls, our lives somehow aligning parallel throughout the years without either of us knowing. My eyes watered, and just before his hand would have dropped back to his side, I caught him by the fingertips. “Yes,” I whispered, “please.”
At my side, Quinn cleared his throat again. “I’ll let you go, then.” He stood, clapping Lincoln on the shoulder. “Thanks for using me as a human body shield today. Much appreciated.”
Lincoln barked out a laugh. “Desperate times.”
“Don’t I know it.” He glanced back at me, brow furrowed. “Before I go . . . Nat’s already getting out of the city. We all got the alert, so I—well, I thought you should know. You’re not going to have to worry.” He turned away without another word, head down. His limp was more pronounced than the first time I’d seen him at Whiskey Bay.
“Quinn!” I shouted, and he immediately checked over his shoulder. “Give me your number. Maybe . . . maybe we could get lunch one day? Talk about my momma or the Saints or whatever it is that you want?”
The man’s face lit up like a beacon, and I felt the warmth inside my chest, too. “Fuck yeah. I mean, yeah. Yeah, that would be good. If your boyfriend promises not to clobber me over the head, maybe we can invite him too.”
Lincoln’s smile was all badass charm. “No promises, man. Bad habits are the hardest to break.”
And then my own Captain America, my own Thor, was swooping me up in his arms, just like he had outside that shack when I’d wanted to clobber him over the head. He pressed a kiss to my cheek, to my forehead, to the crooked slant of my nose, broken from a skateboard accident gone wrong as a kid.
“I’m taking you home,” he said in my ear, “and that’s an order you’re gonna have to obey.”
I grinned. “Funny enough, no isn’t a word in my vocabulary right now. Better take advantage while you can.”
“Oh, I plan to, sweetheart. I plan to.”
36
Lincoln
I took advantage, as I promised—and Avery didn’t have a single complaint as she sank into the steaming bathwater two hours later.
“God,” she groaned, her head tipping back as the water lapped at her small breasts, “that feels so damn good.”
I snapped open a shampoo bottle. Squeezed a healthy dose into my palm. “Lean forward,” I said, my voice pure grit as my cock hardened in my sweats. “Let me take care of you.”
She did as I ordered, leaning forward without question, droplets of water clinging to her smooth skin as she pulled away from the side of the tub. Like a lot of old homes in New Orleans, I was the proud owner of a claw-foot tub. Normally, I hated the damn thing. Now, I counted my lucky blessings as I inched my chair closer to the porcelain and set my hands in Avery’s dark hair to massage the shampoo into her scalp.
“Will you keep it black?” I asked. I didn’t give a shit one way or the other, but with Jay Foley in the hospital—and then on a one-way ticket to Louisiana’s infamous Angola prison—she was free.
Free to be who she wanted.
Free to look however she pleased.
Free to leave me.
If I had it my way, she’d be suctioned to my side for the rest of our lives. My wife, my anchor, the future mother of our children. Fuck, I wanted it so bad. When death had always been my fated future, however I looked at it, it felt surreal to think that I had a chance for something else now.
“Yeah.” A moan escaped her lips as I rocked my thumbs into the base of her skull, kneading the muscles at the nape of her neck. “God, yes.”
Laughter rumbled in my chest. “Is that a yes to the dark hair or a yes to me making you feel like heaven right now?”
Her head fell forward. “All of it. Particularly the heaven bit.”
My hands glided down the expanse of her back, thumbs digging in along either side of her spine. She was perfect under my touch. Beautiful. Expressive. Her arms went to the sides of the tub, and then she arched her back. The mirror on the wall opposite us showed me what my vantage point didn’t: her breasts thrusting forward, her eyes open and homed in on me, the slope of her belly rising above the water as she stretched upward gracefully.
Fingers teasing the sides of her ribcage, I blatantly flirted with the outer swells of her breasts. “What do you want, sweetheart? Tell me what you want.”
If she heard the urgency in my voice, it only seemed to spur hers on. In the mirror, her hazel eyes rounded. She reached back over her shoulder, seeking my hand. I dunked my hand in the water, rinsing off the shampoo and then tangled our fingers together.
“I want to be wanted,” she said, and I didn’t miss the slight quiver in her hands. “But more than that, I want to be loved.” She swallowed. Squeezed my hand. “By you, though. Only you.”
I’d never been particularly sentimental, but as I brought her hand up to my mouth to press a kiss to her knuckles, I realized that I’d never let my guard down long enough to fall either. “Make room for me, Ave.” I let her go. Shucked my sweats and my shirt and put all the horrors of my life on display for her to see. “I’m coming in.”
The water swirled around her diaphragm as she moved to the opposite end of the tub. Craned her back and rinsed some of the soap from her head. Steam enveloped me as I set one foot into the water, then did the same with the other. And when I lowered myself to sit, the water rose from her diaphragm to her collarbone. It flirted with the lip of the tub, splashing over the side.
I didn’t give a fuck.
“C’mere,” I growled. “Let me love you.”
A small smile played at her lips as she crawled on her hands and knees toward me, the water caressing her bottom lip. She looked like a sea goddess, sent to ruin my piece of mind.
Gorgeous. So fucking gorgeous, and she was all mine.
My hand gripped her waist, spinning her around so that her back was to my chest. She floated up, and I clamped my legs over hers to keep her in place. Bent my legs, so that hers would do the same, driving her open for me down below.
The back of her head fell to my collarbone. “I feel like there’s so much to say.” Her fingers teased the short hairs on my thighs, dragging her nails down, down, down until they came mighty damn close to grazing my cock. “I want to say everything—how shocked I feel that Momma took her own life, knowing that he would kill her anyway. That I’m trying not to feel disappointed that Jay will probably live or that Ambideaux . . .”
The blow she’d delivered him had shaken his brains, that’s for sure. He’d fallen into a coma—maybe I was still that heartless bastard I’d always been because I felt no remorse about hoping he never woke up from it. A tiger couldn’t always change his stripes, and I’d done enough changing in the last few weeks. For the better. I may not be a monster, but I’d never be citizen of the year.
I kissed Avery’s damp shoulder. “We’ll watch and see how it goes with the medics. He might come out of it.”
“I wish I felt guiltier, for your sake
more than mine. He was your father, but what he did to Samantha all these years . . .”
The way I looked at it, Samantha was the true victim in this situation. The doctors had found both heroin and Methamphetamine in her system—no doubt injected by Jason himself to keep her hooked and sedated. She’d told me over and over again that I wasn’t her son, and instead of feeling dejected over it, I should have wondered why. Should have done something more instead of giving Jason more time to buy off the doctors so they told me what he wanted me to hear: her head was scrambled from the accident.
No, her head was scrambled from decades of drug usage that had been forced upon her.
My grip tightened on Avery’s waist, and I wrapped an arm around her front like a band. “They’ll wean her off,” I said into the curve of her shoulder, “and if he survives, he’ll rot in jail the way he should have for all these years.”
Avery’s soft hand, wrinkled from the water, closed over mine. “Look at me, Lincoln.”
I met her gaze in the mirror, my chin on her shoulder. Struggled to not let her see the pain that I couldn’t shake. “It’ll all be fine. All of it.”
Her nail bit into my knuckles. “Stop being so strong.”
I smiled—and the one that reflected back in the mirror was just as weak as I suspected it was. “Thought I was Captain America. Thor, whatever. I have to be strong.”
She shook her head, the strands of her hair brushing my face. “What did you once tell me? I’m a brave girl.” Gently, she removed my arm from her middle and turned around. “Sit on the edge of the tub and let me be the one who takes care of you.”
I wanted to tell her no. I wanted to be the one who cared for her, who made her feel safe.
Fuck it.
The bathwater surged as I ripped my body from its fold and sat on the edge of the tub, my hands going to the curved lip. Avery licked her lips. Glided closer. Rose onto her knees and circled my cock at the root.