by Kit Rocha
A muscle in Finn’s cheek clenched as he finally looked at Trix. “Is that okay?”
As if her input mattered to Shipp and Alya—but at least it did to him. She smiled gently, grateful for the chance to pretend, if only for a moment, that her answer carried weight. “It’s more than generous. And I’m sure Dallas will show his gratitude.”
“I wouldn’t mind a little.” Alya leaned across the table to snag the whiskey bottle. “You wouldn’t believe what we have to pay for a bottle of this stuff.”
Dallas’s appreciation went far beyond free liquor. “He’ll take care of you.”
“And we’ll take care of you.” Alya rose and circled the table, brushing her fingers along the back of Shipp’s neck. A casual touch, soothing, the kind Trix had seen Lex give Dallas a hundred times. “I’m going to start the water heater. Trix, love, when you’re done eating, follow the hallway to the stairs. I’ll have a bath and a med kit waiting.”
“Thank you.” She avoided Shipp’s gaze as she picked up her spoon.
He had danced around things, all right—like the fact that harboring them, even overnight, was dangerous. It was impossible to know how far Beckett would go to catch Finn or recover her, but they had to assume the worst—that he’d tear apart the sectors, not to mention anyone who got in his way.
Chapter Four
Finn didn’t blame Trix for rushing through her meal. Shipp looked perfectly amiable, sprawled in his chair—but she had spent her life around dangerous men. She wouldn’t miss the tension in Shipp’s eyes.
It didn’t explode until she’d vanished down the hall. They both listened to the old wooden stairs creak gently as she climbed, and Shipp lit another cigarette as the sound receded.
Then he swore viciously. “You put me in one hell of a goddamn spot here, Finn.”
“I know.” He reached for the empty glass by Shipp’s elbow and poured himself a generous helping of whiskey. “I’m sorry, man. I am. If I’d had any other option—”
“Forget Fleming’s men,” he interrupted. “Or Beckett’s, or whoever the fuck took over. The other sector leaders could want your head.”
It was true enough. For the first time in forever, the thought of dying stirred a twinge of regret. He’d been barreling toward death for so long, it was hard to believe he could still have a reason to live. But there she was, upstairs in a bathtub, trusting him to get her through this.
“My head, yeah.” He knocked his glass against the whiskey bottle. “If it comes to that, they can have it. But if you keep Trix safe, O’Kane’ll keep you safe. Believe me, Shipp. That man has more pull with the other sectors than anyone else.”
“If you’re so ready to die—if you’re not after that pull yourself—then what are you doing with Ginger up there?”
“You know that favor you owe me?”
“No need to be delicate,” Shipp shot back. “You saved my life. I remember.”
It hadn’t been a big deal—for Finn. He’d been cold already, still grieving the loss of Tracy. But he’d been in the wrong place at the right time, and so fucking tired of watching good people die. “Yeah, well, I didn’t save hers.”
“Did you take a whack to the head? Because you...” Shipp trailed off, his confused expression easing as realization dawned. “That’s her.”
Finn drank his shot. Then he poured another and drank that, too. The physical burn helped to distract him from the one in his chest, the rising tangle of grief and rage he still couldn’t face dead on, because it was fresh again. Raw.
He hadn’t saved Trix’s life. She’d saved her own. “Fleming gave her enough of the good stuff to OD a half-dozen times over. He did it to trap her. To take her from me, because he didn’t like me having anything beautiful in my life.”
Shipp muttered another curse, this time under his breath. “That’s a lot of history. Lot of baggage.”
“That’s a lot of debt,” Finn corrected. But it was his, not Shipp’s, so he sighed as he poured a third shot. “No one inside Five has any reason to look in this direction, unless one of your clients admits who sells him his illegal stims. I wouldn’t bring danger down on you and Alya.”
“Someone always talks.”
“Only if someone asks the right questions. Last I saw, they were all waiting for us to make a dash for O’Kane’s territory.”
Shipp nodded and took a long drag off his cigarette. “What’s your plan?”
He only had one—the one that would redeem and break him at the same time. “Get her home.”
“After that, big guy.”
That was the question, wasn’t it? If there could be an after in a world where Trix was alive but he wasn’t welcome in the home she couldn’t—and shouldn’t—leave. “Fuck if I know.”
“Fair enough.” Shipp shoved the nearly empty bottle of whiskey at him. “Does she know you don’t know?”
He’d already had enough liquor to fuzz his nerves, but he dumped the rest of the amber liquid into his glass anyway. “We’ve been running for our damn lives. Not a lot of time for chats about our hopes and dreams.”
“Doesn’t take long to say, ‘Don’t make big eyes at me, honey, I’m kinda planning on dying,’ does it?”
No time at all. The real killer was all the time they would waste arguing about it afterwards—time she’d spend distracted from the goal of getting her ass safely home. “You’re an asshole, you know that?”
Shipp laughed. “Of course I am. If I was a nice guy, you wouldn’t come around anymore.”
“Doesn’t explain why Alya puts up with you.”
“She loves me. That makes up for damn near anything.”
Oh, that was a dangerous fucking thought. Like waving a prime cut of steak under the nose of a starving dog. “Now you’re just bragging.”
Shipp sobered, a muscle in his jaw clenching. “Shit, Finn. It’s no kind of life to live, not knowing how true that is.”
That summed up his existence: no kind of life. Even those few, bright years when Trix had painted his dull world in colors had been a kind of torture. He’d never been good for her, and the more she shined, the more he’d hated himself for hurting her.
He finished the whiskey and stared at Shipp over the edge of the glass. “Anyone who finds love in the sectors is beating the odds. Count yourself lucky.”
“Is that really what you think?”
Christ, Shipp would get along with Dallas. He even sounded like an O’Kane—high on pixie dust and fairy tales. You could point out all day long that life was a shithole full of shit people who’d step on your face to get out of the muck, and those bastards kept on grinning like the world was made of rainbows.
“Maybe it’s not as bad here as it was in Five,” Finn said. “But don’t tell me you haven’t seen ugly things out there. The world hasn’t been a decent place since the lights went out, and you’re not old enough to remember that.”
“No,” Shipp conceded, “but Alya does. You get her waxed up on a little of O’Kane’s finest, and she’ll tell you the truth—the real truth.” He leaned forward. “The lights went out, but they also came on. The ugly shit isn’t new, Finn, just out in the open now. That’s better, don’t you think?”
He almost disagreed before he remembered Logan Beckett. Sleek. Civilized. Evil wrapped in the illusion of decency, and a far greater threat than Mac had been even at his craziest. Because Mac couldn’t hide the rage seething beneath his skin.
Beckett could. And if you didn’t know it was there, you wouldn’t see him coming.
“You’re right,” Finn said. “This makes it easier to know what you’re up against, at least.”
Shipp grunted and nodded as he finished his cigarette. “I thought of a reason you should make a plan. I managed to get my hands on that car you wanted, but it’s basically a shell. Needs a lot of work. You might want to consider coming back and making that happen.”
It felt like a hundred years had passed since the afternoon he’d spent under the hood of one of
Shipp’s latest restorations. Helping the other man put the final touches on the newly rebuilt engine had been the first good feeling since Trix slipped from his life. A few hours where he’d been building something instead of smashing it into pieces.
The lingering satisfaction had faded almost as soon as he crossed the border back into Five. More of Fleming’s messes to clean up. More lives to ruin, people to kill. Destruction was in his blood. He was good at it. On his worst days, he liked it.
The idea of having a car of his own had been a stupid fantasy, but Shipp’s words weren’t about the car, not really. They were a peace offering. A rope thrown to a drowning man. Whatever went down with Dallas O’Kane, Finn had someplace to go. People who would welcome him. All he had to do was turn his back on the mess he’d made and let it be someone else’s problem.
Not so hard. He’d been doing it all his life. “Maybe we can take a look at that car tomorrow.”
“It’ll give us something to do while the boys make their run out to Four.” Shipp reached under the table and came up with a new, unopened bottle of whiskey. “Tonight? We drink.”
Sometime between slipping into a hot bath and letting Alya scrub the dried blood from her hair, reality began to crash down on Trix.
She’d been living in surreal fantasy since the moment Finn had shot Fleming. The painful danger of their situation had intruded, of course, but only in brief flashes she could barely grasp. It was easier to let it slip through her fingers, to shove it away. To not think about the truth.
Finn had shot Fleming.
Finn had shot a sector leader.
People had been killed for far, far less, no matter how justifiable their reasons.
She shivered in the bath as Alya poured fresh, warm water over her neck and shoulders, rinsing away the last of the soap with gentle fingers. “You’ve had a shit couple days, haven’t you, honey?”
“I’ve had better,” she admitted. “Also had worse, though.”
Alya shook her head and rose. “Too many of us have. But not on this farm, not anymore. You and Finn will be safe here.”
No one would be safe there—not if Beckett showed up, intent on revenge. “You’ll all be better off once we’re gone. That doesn’t hurt my feelings, it’s just fact.”
“Someone could come looking for you,” she agreed, shaking open a fluffy towel. “But it’s not likely to be tonight. It’s one of the nice things about living this far from Eden. People tend to forget you’re there.”
“Sounds peaceful.”
“It can be. Have you ever looked up at the stars without the lights from Eden’s walls getting in the way?”
Just once, when Finn had taken her to his cabin beyond the outskirts of Five. She’d expected it to be dark, so far away from the fires and electric lights, but it had been brighter, somehow. Luminous, with the starlight and the soft glow of the half-moon shining through the windows.
She’d spent her second visit shaking from withdrawal, in too much wracking pain to notice anything else. But she could still hear his voice, with its grating edge of surrender. “Fuck me, Tracy. I can’t watch you die, not like this.”
“No,” she whispered. “I never have.”
“Well, we’ll fix that. Maybe tomorrow night.” She gestured Trix out of the tub and held up the towel. “We’re far from the city, but the main farmhouse has a few luxuries. You can take all the hot baths you want, and we have electric heating, though we usually lay a fire in the bedrooms at night to save power.”
She took the towel and wrapped it around herself before tucking in the edge to secure it. “Thanks, Alya.”
“It’s nothing, honey.” Alya ushered Trix out the door and across the hallway, into a cozy bedroom with a stack of clothing and a med kit laid out on the bed. “Finn saved Shipp’s life, you know. That’s a debt I feel just as much as he does. Maybe more.”
“I think I understand.” The place clearly belonged to Alya, but Shipp seemed right at home.
“Wouldn’t blame you if you didn’t. I can only imagine the stories you’ve heard about Sector Six. Probably as wild as the stories they tell about Dallas O’Kane.”
“Biggest difference?” Trix smiled as she picked up the nightgown, a floor-length confection of peach-colored satin and white lace. “Half that shit is actually true.”
“Is it, now?” Alya sat down and opened the med kit. “Well, most of the shit you hear about Six is true, too, and it’s not half so entertaining. My husband claimed this farmstead when the lights went out. I was fourteen when I became his third wife, and he took seven more before Shipp finally put him in the ground.”
Trix nodded. “There’s a girl from Six—she tells stories. When she feels like talking, I mean. A lot of them sound like that.”
“Not a lot of good stories come out of this sector. Hell, Shipp could have been another bad one. The leader of a gang of outlaws on a farm full of women and children and men too beaten down to fight...” She trailed off and nodded to the ink around Trix’s wrists. “You ever tell people stuff and they don’t believe you, because they think it’s too good to be true?”
It was all her life was—a collection of things that should have killed her but somehow hadn’t. “Every day.”
“Then you understand perfectly.” She patted the bed next to her. “Sit and let me look at those wrists.”
Trix draped the nightgown over her arm and shook her head. “No, I’m fine, really. Just a few scrapes from the handcuffs. I didn’t even need the bandages, but Finn—he needed them.”
“Ah.” Alya tilted her head, studying her with a curiosity she didn’t bother to hide. “That’s a side of him I never thought I’d see.”
“It’s all I’ve ever seen.”
“I’m glad someone has.” She closed the kit and rose. “I don’t know how long Shipp will keep Finn up. Should I make up a second bed for him?”
The denial died on her lips. What she wanted was immutable—and irrelevant. She wanted Finn, always had...but that didn’t make it safe, and it didn’t make it right. Especially here.
“Lex would have my ass if I went into someone else’s house and tried to dictate the sleeping arrangements,” she said instead.
Alya paused with one hand on the door, her expression still serious. “No one will be offended if he shares your bed, honey. But if you need a night to yourself, Finn’ll sleep where I put him.”
Would he? “He spent the last four years believing I was dead,” Trix confessed. “I could be wrong…but, somehow, I think he’ll wind up here.”
“He—” Alya bit off the words as her eyes widened, and she closed the door with a soft click. “Well, that explains a lot. You’re the one he lost.”
That made it all sound so innocent, so harmless, as if it was something outside of her control that had just happened instead of a calculated decision. “No, I’m the one who left him.”
Alya went still, her dark eyes suddenly wary. “Are you with him willingly now?”
“It’s not—it wasn’t like that. I had to get out of Five, and Finn...” She searched for the words. “He wasn’t ready, that’s all.”
After a moment, Alya nodded. “Maybe he wasn’t. I didn’t know him before he lost you, but the man I’ve seen these past few years isn’t the man who showed up tonight. He’s alive.”
Trix shivered, chastised and reassured by the words all at once, and she found herself trying desperately to explain. “We were both fucked up. It wasn’t—wasn’t good. But if I had had a choice—” She swallowed hard. “Leaving hurt him, I know that. But staying would have hurt him worse.”
“Shh, no.” Alya abandoned the med kit and crossed the room. She gripped Trix’s shoulders, her fingers warm and strong as she urged her to sit on the bed. “Girl, I’ve been there. I’ve been fucked up. I put Shipp through hell before I let him love me.”
Love. They had to focus on staying alive right now, nothing else. “If we can make it home, I can show him things are different. But we have t
o get back to Four first.”
“He doesn’t care about a new world right now. He cares about you.” Alya tilted Trix’s chin up and smoothed her hair back. “But that doesn’t make him your burden to carry. You can go back to Four and know we’ll take care of him.”
She nodded, even though it wasn’t true. She couldn’t leave without him, not because he was a burden or a responsibility, but because he was Finn.
Chapter Five
The stairs creaked under Finn’s boots, but he didn’t care if his hosts heard. Alya had dropped a stack of pillows and blankets on the couch downstairs before dragging Shipp to their bedroom, but the suggestion had remained unspoken. Since the woman was fully capable of parking her ass on the stairs with a shotgun and telling Finn to stay away from Trix, an unspoken suggestion damn near equaled permission.
He still knocked on the guestroom door, because damn near wasn’t good enough, and only one person could make it okay. “Trix?”
Silence—until the lock clicked and she pulled open the door. “Come in.”
He couldn’t move. He couldn’t do a damn thing but stare. The lights in the room were off, but firelight suited her. So did the nightgown Alya had dug up, something floaty that made her seem as insubstantial as a dream.
Maybe she was. Maybe he’d never wake up.
She gripped the edge of the door and stared back at him.
Touching her was wrong. She was clean from her bath, her skin soft and smooth under his fingers. A bruise stood out on her cheek, vivid even in the uncertain light, and his other hand clenched until his fingers ached. “You okay?”
Trix tilted her face to his touch. “I was waiting for you.”
No, this wasn’t a dream. He’d never be delusional enough to conjure up a world where she leaned into him. Wanted him. This was a stolen moment, cut off from the truths of both of their lives. A might-have-been or a could-have-been, and it would sting like a bitch when reality tore her away from him again.
Bad choices. His past was littered with them, so he made another one, sliding his hand to cup the back of her neck. Not a rough grip, but firm enough to guide her into the room as he edged one boot over the threshold.