She shook her head. “Mateo showed me how to colour the slide.”
“Did he tell you he drew this tattoo for me?”
“Well, yeah. Mateo’s the best drawder.”
Not sure that was even a word, but I couldn’t argue with the sentiment. I sat still while he guided her in adding sparkly colour to my favourite tattoo, tracing the sequence of numbers he’d never explained to me. It appeared in every drawing he ever did, every idle doodle. One day I’d get round to asking him why, but today wasn’t that day. Mateo was way too hot when he concentrated, and he was as absorbed in Ivy’s activity as she was, skating his fingertip over the lines while I bit the inside of my cheek until it bled.
Was he trying to kill me?
Or did he just have no idea that his touch incinerated my synapses?
My money was on the latter. Every night he slept in my bed, he left a gulf of space between us—space I’d told him I needed or I’d lose my shit to every horrible fucking thing that had ever happened to me. Trouble was, I needed him too. I couldn’t close my eyes without imagining how he’d feel pressed up behind me, his arms around my waist, his face buried in my neck. Without picturing all the things I’d told him I could nevereverdo.
Nonsensical things.
Fuck’s sake, I’d slept against him in a hospital waiting room while we’d waited to find out if Saint would live. In the back of the van a thousand times. Why couldn’t I do it in my own bed? Or his bed? Not that he ever slept there anymore. No. He slept withme, guarding one side of the mattress while I hung off the edge of the other.
If that wasn’t a clusterfuck of epic proportions, I didn’t know what was.
“Em.” Mateo murmured my name under his breath. Punctuated it with a nudge of his knee under the table.
I raised my unseeing gaze from my arm to find Ivy was no longer drawing on me. She was sitting on Mateo’s lap, eating one of the Russian pancakes that seemed to appear by magic every time we held church in daylight.
She had sugar on her face.
Mateo brushed it off, the gesture absent and natural, as if he hadn’t really thought about it. But it did something to me I couldn’t explain, and my scratchy heart ached, pulsating in time with the grinding pain still twisting my abdomen.
I took another deep breath, safe in the knowledge that Mateo’s scent would drown out everything else.
Saint returned to the room. Done with her snack, Ivy climbed across the table to get to him.
Decoy shook his head. “Sorry. I’ve told her not to do that.”
I reached for my tea. “No one minds.”
“I mind. She doesn’t give a shit what I say and she’s starting school next month. What’s she gonna be like when a teacher tells her to do something?”
“Sharp enough to know the difference between an authority figure and her soft-hearted old dad.”
Decoy chuckled, then sobered as Cam appeared.
We all did.
4
EMBRY
Cam wasn’t a dictator.
But he had an aura we respected.
Authority.
Strength.
When he walked into a room, we knew it. When he spoke, we listened.
He spoke now with no preamble, jabbing his finger first at Nash, then Rubi, then at me.
