It was on the inside of my arm, covering my favorite vein. ‘Perfer et obdura, dolor hic tibi proderit olim.’ Be patient and tough; someday this pain will be useful to you. Underneath the sloping script was an intricate and beautifully lifelike skull. It had taken hours and four cans of Coke. For me, that is, not Lex, the artist. Winding, growing from the skull were dark roses. Not red but black, torn and frayed and almost dead.
Almost.
I looked up from the ink. “He’s not going to see it because he’s not going to see me.”
She frowned at me. “You can’t hide from him forever.”
“I can try.”
Chapter Seventeen
“The scariest monsters are the ones that lurk within our souls.”
-Edgar Allan Poe
Time is poison. Toxic. It doesn’t stop for anyone, unyielding, unchanging. Time was my enemy. It didn’t change the desperate need for a fix, didn’t lessen my cravings; if anything, it made them worse. It didn’t chase away the demons that no one could see, the ones that promised to be conquered with one little needle. It didn’t wash off the dirt on every part of me. Amongst all of this, time didn’t make me forget him either. My traitorous mind would not even give me that. Wouldn’t let me kid myself into thinking I wanted to see him, that I needed to see him.
It was crumbling willpower that stopped me. The determination not to go anywhere near the man who held what was left of my ashy heart. The man who led the dirty life but was squeaky clean. I couldn’t see him. Look at his easy smile, get hypnotized by his eyes, let his strong arms touch me. It would make the dirt visible, unbearable.
I was sitting cross-legged on the sofa, sucking on a Diet Coke with my eyes glued to the TV. I was doing my best to ignore the constant itch and focus on the dull burning in my arm from the tattoo. It was comforting, having constant pain to focus on.
Lily had managed to text me after we’d dropped her off at home.
Lily: Asher is not going to kill you. In fact, he says he’s eternally grateful to you for being so impulsive and rash.
I’d grinned at the phone. So the biker didn’t mind his little flower getting marked. Though it wasn’t surprising since she’d inked their wedding date on her wrist in roman numerals.
Rosie had gotten a peace sign, made from birch and flowers, with a gun pointed at it, also threaded with roses. That’s something a therapist would have loved to dissect. Me, I gave her a thumbs-up and let her be. If she wanted to tell me, she would.
Because my attention was so transfixed on meerkat mating rituals, I didn’t even notice the door opening and closing, or the footsteps in the hall. Well, I noticed but I didn’t decipher that the footfalls were not gentle clicks from Rosie’s heels, but hard thumps from motorcycle boots.
Given my track record, it was probably a bad thing being that unaware, but whatever.
“Get up,” a deep voice ordered.
I jumped, or more likely crawled, out of my skin and spilled Diet Coke everywhere at the unexpected presence.
My heartbeat returned to normal when I realized it was not a murderer standing in front of me.
I glared at him. “What’s your fucking trauma? Ever heard of knocking?” I hissed. “Or announcing yourself when you enter a room?” I added, standing and trying to wipe the sticky soda off my hoodie.
Gage stood at the edge of the room, arms crossed. “I thought the slamming of the door might have given you notice that someone was entering the house.”
I glared at him. “I assumed it was Rosie—you know, the woman who actually lives here? Most other, normal humans who don’t reside in a dwelling knock to alert their presence.” I stomped into the kitchen to get a cloth to wipe up my mess.
Gage’s eyes followed me. “Would you have answered if I knocked?” he asked in a flat voice.
Good point.
Since I had gotten back from my little holiday at Thousand Acres or New Beginnings or whatever the fuck it was called, I had sequestered myself in Rosie’s house. Luckily she was totally down with that, and dutifully watched David Attenborough documentaries—I’d moved on from serial killers—with me whenever she was home, which was a lot. When she wasn’t here, it was Lily.
Now and then, it was Gwen and Amy, or Lizzie, with her two weird kids, who I kind of liked. Despite the fact I hated kids.
Other than that, I did not see anyone else. I knew there was a Harley constantly parked outside Rosie’s house, though I didn’t peek often, just in case I caught a glimpse of him.
“That’s the whole point of knocking,” I informed him. “You give the person inside the choice to answer or not.”