He places his hands on my shoulders, his smile warm even as his eyes remain hard. Ruthless. The eyes of a man who is prepared to do anything to protect Mayhem. “Once we put this…business…behind us, I hope you can finally come home.”
With that, he walks away, leaving me confused by his statement.
Tempest comes up behind me. “What’d the boss say?”
“Not much.”
She snorts. “Crow rarely does.”
And yet he said plenty, I realize. “What’s left to do?”
She hands me a stack of utensils. “Relax and have fun.”
“I’m trying, but I’m always stuck in my head.” I arrange disposable forks on the napkins Tempest laid out. “But it’s nothing important.”
She follows me, adding a spoon and knife. “Doesn’t seem like nothing if it’s ruining your good time.”
“Fine,” I concede. “I’m contemplating my options.”
“What sort of options?”
I gaze out over the mountains that scrape the sky in the distance. “If I should stay or if I should leave Mayhem.”
Tempest gapes at me like I’ve lost my mind. “Why the hell would you leave Mayhem?”
“It’s complicated.”
“You got somewhere else you’re fixing to be. That it? You got someplace you plan on going?”
I can lie and end this here and now, but for some crazy reason, I don’t, which goes against my usual style of keeping my thoughts bottled up inside. “I do not.”
“Then what’s the problem?”
“As I said, it’s complicated.”
There’s an actual possibility once Wraith knows the whole truth, he’ll hate me. If he hates me and I stay in Mayhem, I’ll have a front seat to his life. The town’s small enough that I’ll know every time he’s with a woman. I’ll pass his house. See his truck. Run into him in stores. It’ll be my own personal hell.
And what will happen to me? I’ll what? Hook up with an Unholy? No, because they’ll hate me, too. I’ll be a pariah. Ava. Tempest. Sadie. They’ll reject me. I’ll have no one. Nothing.
Or I can put my trust in Wraith.
I’ve never taken a leap of faith, and I’m scared to take one now.
“Why’d you kill your father?”Okay, wow. She’s direct. She stares at me unflinchingly, and I realize that if eyes are the windows of the soul, hers show me that we share the same pain. “My old man was a dick. He had a hand problem. Liked to put them all over me. I ran away at seventeen.” She nods at Sadie, who’s now busy with Ava pulling side dishes out of a giant blue cooler. “Sadie took me in and, well…” She sets down the last of the utensils. “Here I am.”
My first instinct is to put up the wall. But it’s lonely living behind defenses. Words flow out of me like tears, and when I finish telling her my story, I don’t feel vulnerable or dirty. I feel revitalized.
“Good for you, J,” she says, with a fortifying nod. “I wish I’d had the balls to do what you did. Instead, I ran away, and now my dad is doing to my sister what he did to me. I should have gutted the pervert when I had the chance.” Her hug squeezes the breath right out of me. “No one gets it. The shit we’ve been through. Kinda makes us sisters.”
I put my entire self into the embrace. “Yes, it makes us sisters.”
When we separate, a bond remains. An instant kinship. We share pain, but it’s more than that. We share a strength. Not to mention how her positive energy is additive. And apparently, once she knows a person, she’s a chatterbox, like Ava. I love it. She likes to ask questions, and after a lifetime of silence, I enjoy talking.
We share stories about our lives. Our talk of our fears and hopes. We leave out nothing, and I realize I have more in common with Tempest than I do with anyone I’ve known.
“What was the trial like?” she asks, circling back to my acquittal.
“Scary.” I give her the CliffsNotes version. “The first days were hectic, with a lot of police and lawyers. But after that came the doctors to check my mental health and the judge, who took mercy on me and recommended the case stay in juvenile court. But I had to face my father’s family, and details of my life were out there that I didn’t want known. Those details spread like wildfire. It’s one of the reasons I stayed away. I wanted to start over where I’d have a clean slate.” I give her a rueful smile. “It didn’t work out as well as I hoped.”
