Seven
Brennan
Her coolness,her calm, her resolve, all of it keyed me into the impossible—she knew about us.
About Mariska and me.
Of the many directions I could have anticipated this conversation taking,thiswasn’t one of them.
“How?”
It was the only question I was really interested in.
The favor? Less so. Favors were dull, a common commodity in my world.
No, what I found fascinating washer.
She reached up and tugged on a chain around her neck. As she let the silvery metal slide between her fingers, I saw the tiny star. Platinum. Tipped with emeralds.
My lips tightened at the sight of the stupid gift I’d given to someone I’d thought I’d loved at the time. I’d been too young to recognize it for what it was—a crush a guy had on a beautiful older woman. One who wasn’t a whore. One who knew how to suck a cock, and who was mature enough to take her own pleasure.
She'd been my Mrs. Robinson.
I’d been infatuated.
I knew that now.
The gift was a sign of my recklessness, however, and I didn’t appreciate seeing the proof of that in the flesh.
“She told you?”
“No.” Camille shook her head. “She wouldn’t have dreamed of sharing something like that with me.”
“Then, I repeat, how?” If it sounded like it came out between gritted teeth, then so be it. I wasn’t about to dig myself a deeper grave. I wanted to know exactly what she’d learned, and how, before I committed to anything.
It was just uncanny that she was talking of favors when the burden of Mariska’s promise had been weighing heavily on me.
Coincidence.
Nothing more.
“I found this necklace first. And it triggered a few memories.”
Her smile made an appearance, and it was uncanny how much she took after Mariska, while also being a thousand times more beautiful. It was like the difference between a candle and a thousand-watt flashlight.
One illuminated, the other laid everything bare.
And the most impressive thing of all was that she wore little to no make-up. Her skin gleamed with honest sweat, she didn’t use any of that shit women wore nowadays—the stuff that crafted illusions about their bone structure.
There was no magic here.
She had a chin as sharp as an ice pick. A deep point that added to the fragility of her cheeks, making the arches seem impossibly high. They were slightly gaunt, like she hadn’t been eating well. She had long blonde lashes that weren’t tinted with mascara, and the greenest fucking eyes I’d ever come across. And I was Irish. Green eyes were our stock in trade.
Her brow was slanted, the temples delicate with golden hair wisping around in a chaotic mess that came from the helmet she’d been wearing, and it arched into a widow’s peak that seemed to add to how many angles she had.
Her nose was streamlined, a delicate blade that bisected the two perfect halves, before it gave way to the delicious rosebud mouth that merely confirmed she was a china doll in the flesh.
Everything about her was delicate.