“Still pretty as hell, though.”
Nash choked on a bewildered laugh. “Back atcha.”
“You okay?”
“I need a fucking cigarette.”
I had some in my room. Caught up in the moment, I rolled out of bed and moved to the door.
Nash made a weird sound, but I figured he was still acclimatising to waking up to a giant dude between his sheets—at least one who wasn’t Rubi.
I drifted back to my room to search out my smokes. I never lit up in bed—what was the point when I was alone?—and it took me a minute to find them squashed in the pocket of my old jeans.
By the time I got back to Nash, he was up, his dick tucked away in faded sweats. He was at the window, staring out over the yard.
I tossed him the cigarettes. “Lighter’s in the box.”
Startled, Nash missed my throw and the smokes hit the deck. He crouched to retrieve them, shoulders knotted with tension that hadn’t been there before, brow furrowed so hard he looked like he was having a fuckin’ stroke.
“Hey.” I reached him as he came upright. “What’s wrong?”
Nash gripped my arms, anguish twisting his pretty face, those sweet baby blues a mess of grief and pain. “Brother, what thefuckhappened to your back?”
8
NASH
Locke didn’t answer me. He shook a cigarette from the box in my hand. Lit it and passed it to me, then he walked out of my room, the godawful horror of his lower back obscured by the cloud of smoke he’d blown in my face.
A minute later, his boots hit the stairs and the door at the bottom opened and shut.
He emerged in the yard with his torso covered and disappeared into the bunkhouse, a sight that wasn’t unusual as he didn’t use the bathroom in this building that often.
I guess now I knew why, but there was no comfort in the knowledge that he’d been hiding something as terrible as the mess of scars painting his skin.Deepscars, roped and thick.
Some old.
Some new.
All this time I’d spent believing whatever Frank Crow and his band of cunts had done to him was ancient history, but some of those marks on his back were barely fucking healed.
Rocco lied.
My phone rang again. Ignoring it, I jammed the cigarette Locke had lit for me into my mouth and scooped more clothes from the bedroom floor. Socks. A Kings T-shirt that had seen better days, and a lace bra-type contraption that definitely wasn’t mine.
I pulled the shirt on and folded Orla’s underwear into a drawer full of other silky things. Yanked socks over my feet with the voice of Folk’s dead best friend echoing in my head.
“It’s not as bad as it used to be.”
That conversation was years old. Three. Four. So much had happened—andnumbers, man—I couldn’t figure it out, but what was crystal clear to me was that even if Rocco hadn’t lied to me, he’d been horribly fucking wrong.
“Nash!” Rubi banged something against a pot, loud and obnoxious. “Come get this fucking bacon before I feed it to Aunty Saint’s birds.”
Fucking A. I ran a hand through my hair and forced myself to my feet, stamping into the boots that were never far from wherever I knocked out. My body ached like it always did when I’d had a rough night, but every twinge made me think harder about the pain behind the vicious scars marring Locke’s skin, and I was as far from fucking hungry as Farmer Bean.
I cast another glance at the bunkhouse. Whatever Locke was doing, he was still inside, and it was that reality that drove me out of my room and into the morning sun.
Then, you know, back in again to fetch the phone that was as annoying as Rubi.
