The bartender offered her a bottle of alcoholic synth, but she turned it down. She and Adriana had some before she left for San Francisco — and drunkenly redecorated Harlan’s office with a similarly mulled wine-drunk Zia — but Carmine wasn’t about to risk becoming tipsy aroundhim.Atticus abstained, too. Loosely cradling his bottle of regular synth between his thumb and forefinger, guided her onto the game floor.
It wasmarvelous.
The excess, the light and sound of the machines, the thumping music playing from the speakers over their heads… Carmine was terrible at every game she tried, but she loved the chaos of it all.
They roared with laughter when they attempted a dance game. Atticus won her a large packet of glowing plastic jewelry from a shooting game, which she donned immediately, and she even managed to get tenth place in a racing car game.
They bounced from one end of the room to the other, doing whatever caught her fancy. Atticus’s usual intense expression had been left in the car. Instead, he grinned so wide that his cheeks creased, and when she finally won her first ball rolling game, he whooped and twirled her around until she screamed with laughter.
But that was how it was when they were together. When she wasn’t trying to hold her breath, her mind and heart torn intwo directions, being with Atticus was effortless. He teased her. He listened to her when she spoke and he snuck small, tender touches whenever the chance arose. He treated her like she was important. Precious, even.
He didn’t just open up a new world for her — Atticus made her believe that she had her own special place in it.
That was why it was so hard whenever the spell broke. He’d given her a taste of more than just his blood, and every minute she went without it hurt just a bit more than the last.
But she didn’t want to think about that. Not when they sat in a small, two person booth in the far corner of the bar area after hours of laughter. She was breathless and a thin layer of sweat slicked her spine as she wiggled onto the sparkly vinyl seat. Atticus sprawled beside her, his knee touching hers, and shot her a goofy, lopsided grin.
“Having fun, doll?”
“So much,” she answered, slouching over onto her folded arms. The glowing, rubbery bracelets would leave dents in her cheek, but she didn’t care.
Atticus’s smile softened. “Good. I want you to try all the fun shit you never got to do. I remember how it felt to do stuff like this for the first time with the boss. My parents never would have cared enough to take us to an arcade or anything. It meant the world to me.” He nudged her beneath the table. “It feels nice being able to do it for someone else.”
A bucket of ice water couldn’t have doused her hazy golden glow any more effectively. Carmine’s throat went tight. For a glorious couple hours she’d let herself forget, but that time had passed.
This isn’t a date. He’s not mine. This is…Her first thought wascharity,but that wasn’t right either. It was some messed up cross between that and a friendly responsibility.
Feeling both ungrateful and foolish, Carmine pushed through the muck of her feelings to ask a question that had sat heavily on her heart. “What happened to your parents?”
“Died in a fire,” he answered, fiddling with the label on his bottle. “About a month after I stupidly tried pickpocketing the UTA’s most dangerous assassin, our piece of shit apartment building caught on fire.” His throat bobbed with a hard swallow when he gestured to it. “That’s why I sound like this. Smoke inhalation fucked up my throat.”
The hair on her arms stood on end. She assumed they weren’t around anymore for one reason or another, but that was worse than she could have imagined. She’d seen victims of fires on her slab. Sheknewthe damage and the pain something as innocuous as smoke, let alone fire, could cause. “You wereinside?”
“Not for the start, no. I was running errands for the boss in exchange for synth money when I saw the smoke coming from our block. I ran back because Adriana was in there. Probably wouldn’t have bothered otherwise.”
“Why?”
“Because they weren’t good people, doll. They’d started to talk about my sister.” A stark, dangerous look crossed his face. “She was barely more than a toddler and they werehopingshe was neutral so they could sell her off. I’d planned on running away with her, which is part of why I needed the money from the boss, but the fire saved me the trouble.”
A lot of things about Atticus made sense to her then.No wonder he’s so protective of me.
It wasn’t about her, but about what had shaped him. Atticus had been protecting his people since he was a child himself. He’d jumped at the chance to save her because that was what he’d always done, and now he was stuck with her like a stray he fed one too many times.
A strange mix of guilt and pride for the man he’d managed to become twisted her up. Carmine’s voice came out as a croak when she asked, “You got hurt when you rescued Adriana. Was it bad?”
“Nasty smoke inhalation, some small burns. Nothing too bad.” He waved a hand as if to bat away the memory. “I showed up on the boss’s steps covered in ash, holding my baby sister, and passed out pretty much as soon as he cracked the door open. Then we just… never left.”
Merciful One bless Harlan Bounds.
She’d seen the devotion in the eyes of his men, the love that radiated from his anchor and daughter, but now shegotit. He was a hard, dangerous man, but he’d earned every ounce of loyalty he was given.
She was grateful for what had been done for her, but shelovedHarlan Bounds for what he’d done for her anchor.
“I’m glad,” she whispered, holding onto her biceps to keep from reaching for the vampire across the table. “I’m not glad you had bad parents, but I’m glad you found a good one. Now you can live whatever kind of life you want.”
Atticus leaned forward, nearly mimicking her pose, and replied, “You can, too, you know?”
“I do know.”
