Freefall

by Tess Oliver

  “Come live with me,” he blurted, and my shoulders shook with a silent laugh. His long lashes dropped. He was hurt.

  I cursed my lack of speech and quickly wrote. “I wouldn’t do that because I really like you. I don’t want to be dependent on you.” I glanced toward the door.

  Lincoln took a brief break from his conversation to yell to the back. “Why don’t I hear that fucking tattoo gun?”

  Nix’s fingers tightened around the gun, and I leaned back down. “I’m almost done.” There was still disappointment in his tone.

  Lincoln sounded pissed at whoever was on the other end. Nothing seemed to be going right for him these days.

  Nix wiped the extra ink from the tattoo and took the opportunity to lean down and kiss my bare hip. “I just thought of something. I need someone to sit with my grandmother during the day. I was looking online for someone, but what she really wants is for someone to write out her memoirs.” He smiled. “She says memoirs have to be written in long hand. I can’t think of anyone who can write faster than you. She lives over in Century City.”

  I looked down at him to be sure he was serious.

  “What do you think?” he asked. “Twenty bucks an hour seemed to be the average rate. It would really help me out of a problem.” The gleam faded from his eyes. “My sister wants to put her in a home.”

  “I’ll think about it. My biggest problem would be Lincoln.” I scratched out the words once he’d read them. The idea of it thrilled me, but I had no idea how to push the notion past Lincoln. I would try and catch him in a good mood, which seemed harder and harder to do these days.

  Unsettling phone call finished, Lincoln came back in and sat down hard on the chair. It scooted several inches across the tile floor.

  “All done here,” Nix said, the strain in his tone had returned. He stood blocking me from Lincoln’s view with his broad shoulders. He gently covered the new area with a large piece of gauze making sure to run his rough fingertips along the edge of the tape so that it brushed my skin. His gaze held mine the entire time, and my lips tingled with the leftover sensation of his kisses.

  “Can we finish tomorrow night?” Lincoln asked brusquely.

  Nix’s gaze was still transfixed to mine, and though his back was facing Lincoln, it was obvious that he couldn’t give a damn if Lincoln saw him looking at me, stroking me with his eyes, touching me with his fingertips.

  Nix pulled his gaze away and turned to Lincoln. “Tomorrow will be fine.” He started cleaning the tools on his tray telling us silently that we could show ourselves out. I hopped down from the table, and Nix’s forearm tightened as I touched it on the way out.

  CHAPTER 13

  Nix

  I glanced over my list of appointments for the day. The shop was still empty and quiet. A cold shower hadn’t done much to relieve the blur in my head. I’d gone home after last night’s tattoo session and pulled out the giant bottle of cheap whiskey. Dray drank to help take off the edge of pain that was making him miserable, and I drank to take the edge off too. And my edge was making me pretty friggin’ miserable too. Dray was still sleeping his off when I left the Zany Lucy.

  I’d wanted badly to text Scotlyn, and nearly did twice in my drunken haze, but I had no idea if she could read a text without the asshole grabbing her phone from her to see who she was talking to. And he seemed to be near her every minute of the day. If he knew we were texting each other, I was sure he would take her to a different tattoo artist. And I would never see her again. I wasn’t willing to risk it. The worst thing about all of it was the jerk didn’t seem to know what he had. A girl like Scotlyn didn’t just happen every day.

  Cassie walked into the shop carrying a pink bakery box. She looked up at me apologetically. “He called me. I had to bring him. He’s not really ready to stay alone.”

  Dray walked in behind her, moving slow and hunched over like an old man, with a stack of my Playboy magazines under his arm. He shuffled past me to the back room. “Just think of me as Freefall’s new mascot.”

  I turned and watched him scoot across the floor like a snail pulling a wagon of bricks. “You mean like a stray cat?”

  “Yeah, but I think of myself more like a dog.” He disappeared into the office.

  Cassie put the box down. “He wanted donuts.”

  “Don’t touch the crème-filled ones,” Dray called from the back and then moaned from the pain of talking loudly with broken ribs.

  I grabbed out a glazed.

  “How come you’re so early?” Cassie asked. “And how come you look like shit?”

  “We finished off a bottle of whiskey that tasted like piss.” Dray’s feet scuffed over the tile floor. He’d taken off his shoes.

  Cassie stared up at me from behind her big lenses.

  “He’s right. It did take like piss.”

  “I don’t care what it tasted like,” she said. “I get why he was drinking, but why were you?” Cassie always knew when something was eating at me, and there was no way she didn’t sense my unhappiness today. “What’s got you in such a snit?”

  Dray stood close enough that I could see the powdered sugar from his donut on his chin stubble. “Yeah, Nix, what has you in such a snit?” I wanted to wipe the sugar off with the bottom of my shoe. Dray looked over at Cassie. “Snit? Really?”

  “You have a problem with my vocabulary?”

  “Only when you say things like snit.” Dray might have looked as if he’d been run over by a tractor, but he was definitely in a better mood. I wondered or maybe I was just hoping it had to do with Cassie.

  “Oh, I guess I should have said ‘what has you in such a fucking snit’ then it would have made more sense to you. Here eat another donut.” She handed him a second one. “It’s better when you don’t talk.”

  I headed to the back to finish sterilizing my tools.

  “You didn’t answer me, Nix,” Cassie called to me.

  “Not now, Cass. I don’t really want to talk about it.”

  ***

  After a morning of odd tattoo requests, including a giant cockroach on a girl’s neck and Bugs Bunny on a tough looking dude’s calf, I was glad for the afternoon lull. Dray had read himself to sleep or, more accurately, had looked at pictures until his eyes drifted shut. Cassie added a few more items to her earring displays and then pulled out her romance novel.

  I checked my phone a thousand times hoping for a text from Scotlyn, but she was about the only person on the planet who hadn’t texted me. I just didn’t feel like responding to anybody.

  I carried out a list of ink colors I needed and handed them to Cassie. “Here’s the order list.”

  She glanced up from her book. “Just put it by the computer, and I’ll get to it after my break.”

  Dray shuffled out of the office with his hair standing straight up and rubbing his eyes like a little kid who’d just got up in the morning. “What’s for lunch? A patient can’t heal his body on donuts alone.” He stopped at the counter next to Cassie and leaned against it for support. “Why are you reading a book about pirates?”

  I laughed, and Cassie rolled her eyes.

  “What?” Dray asked completely unaware why his question was so comical.

  “Dude,” I said, “anyone can see that that is a—” I looked at Cassie for support.

  “A Regency era duke,” she finished for me.

  “I thought girls had a thing for pirates,” Dray said as he licked his finger and reached into the donut box to pick up the extra sugar.

  “They do,” Cassie said. “They’re definitely up there on the list of alpha males along with rakish lords, knights, cowboys, and navy seals. Although, I’m pretty sure the real pirates were leather-skinned, old salty guys who were missing limbs and who never bathed. Still, they work well in a romance novel.”

  “What about billionaires?” I asked. “I thought they were the new hotties.”

  Cassie shut her book and sighed, which meant she was going to go into one of her well thought out r
ants. “Don’t get me started on billionaires.” Which, of course, meant she was about to get started. “First of all, there aren’t all that many of them in existence, and when I think of billionaires, I think of guys like Bill Gates. Now don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t kick the man out of my bed, and I would certainly not say no to having his children, but he is definitely not romance novel material. Even if he had whips and blindfolds.”

  That statement caused Dray to suck in some powder sugar, and he tried desperately to suppress the cough. He held his stomach and shut his eyes, holding his breath until his face turned red. Cassie hurried to the back for a cup of water. When the cough passed, Dray took a breath. His eyes watered as he drank it. “So you like whips and blindfolds?” Even after the trauma of coughing with broken ribs, Cassie’s comment had stuck in his head.

  Cassie looked up at me and shook her head. “He nearly coughs up a lung, and that’s what he’s still thinking about.”

  “What?” Dray asked. “I’m just curious. And what about fighters? We’re alpha males.”

  Cassie sighed loudly and faced him. “You are definitely an alpha. I just wish you’d think more with you head than your . . . than your alpha.”

  The door opened and Clutch walked inside.

  “You’re pouting too?” Dray said. “You look like a kid who didn’t get any bananas in his cereal this morning.” Dray turned back to me. “Seriously, the two of you should go on Oprah or something.”

  “I don’t think office mascots are supposed to talk,” I said.

  Clutch headed straight to the pink box, and his frown deepened when he saw that it was empty.

  “So what happened?” I asked. “No offers on the car?”

  He leaned his elbows on the counter, and the glass creaked with the weight of it. “I’m driving it up to some guy who lives in Hollywood Hills. He’s going to check it out, but he’s probably as cheap as the rest of them.”

  “Maybe you need to drop the price,” I said. “The economy is still pretty bad.”

  “The economy is never bad for rich people,” Clutch snarled.

  “O.K, what’s wrong? You never talk badly about the rich.”

  “Nothing is wrong. I’m hungry. What are you guys doing for lunch?”

  “I could order pizza,” Cassie said.

  Dray lifted his hand up. “Works for me.”

  Clutch really looked at him for the first time. “Jeez, did you get run over by a bus?”

  “Close to it,” Dray said. “I vote for pepperoni and sausage, but I’m going back to my couch. Everything hurts like hell.”

  Cassie went online to order lunch.

  “Jason told me his parents are planning to ship Taylor off to some strict boarding school for her last year of high school,” Clutch said. “I told that kid she needed to rein it in or she’d get into trouble.”

  “For someone who finds Taylor irritating, you sure looked bummed about it.”

  “Yeah? Well, you aren’t exactly the picture of happiness yourself this morning.” He went and sat on the waiting room couch.

  “Look, Clutch, she’s not going to be seventeen forever.”

  “Five more months,” he supplied the time quickly.

  I smiled. “You know it down to the last hour, huh?”

  Clutch looked annoyed. “No, she keeps telling me, that’s why. Look, she doesn’t listen to me anyhow. Maybe boarding school will be good for her.”

  “You keep telling yourself that. Besides, she would listen to you if you talked to her without an angry scowl on that giant face of yours. Just remember, if she does go, you have a big chance of never seeing her again.”

  That statement of cold fact got to him, but he was sticking to his story. “That’s fine. I’m not interested Taylor. She’s a wild, little brat. I’m looking for someone more sophisticated.” His tone sounded as if he was trying to convince himself that his words were true.

  I shrugged. “I’m wrong then. I thought you might be into Taylor more than you let on, but obviously I was imagining it.”

  Clutch leaned back and the couch creaked. “Enough about me. How was the tattoo session last night?”

  I looked back at Cassie. “She lifted her hand from the keyboard. Don’t mind me. I have no interest in your tawdry affairs. I’m going to go back and see if Prince Alpha wants onions on his pizza.” She headed to the back office.

  I sat on the sliver of couch that was left after Clutch had sat down. I leaned my forearms on my thighs and stared at my hands, the hands that had touched her. “I have to fucking have her, Clutch.”

  “Seems to me that she’s already taken.”

  I shook my head. “Don’t care. I have to have her.”

  CHAPTER 14

  Scotlyn

  It was hard to know how much Lincoln was sensing about Nix and me. He was always so wrapped up in his business that he hardly ever took the time to think about our relationship. But he’d known for some time, even before Freefall, he was losing me. But sometimes I wondered if his supreme confidence had allowed him to believe that I would stay no matter how unhappy I was. For awhile, I’d resigned myself to staying with him. He rarely paid attention to me, giving me a lot of alone time, and I had a ridiculously lavish roof over my head. It beat huddling beneath a newspaper in a downpour.

  For the longest time, I’d persuaded myself not to feel anything. That way, nothing mattered and living with Lincoln just became an existence that didn’t include using a gas station bathroom to wash.

  This time Lincoln had invited girls out to the poolside meeting. I’d stayed in my room while they paraded through the house to the outside cabana. Lincoln had told me I could join them, but he knew I would say no.

  With everyone outside, I took the opportunity to run down to the kitchen to pour myself a bowl of cereal. I was returning the milk to the fridge when the glass door slid open. I spun around to footsteps assuming it would be Lincoln. It was Grady, and he sneered at me like a hungry shark or in his case a lecherous one. He immediately stepped into my personal space, and the smell of beer, perspiration, and spicy aftershave surrounded me. I was wedged between Grady and the counter. I had nowhere to go. The small of my back and the fresh tattoo hit the edge of the counter and I winced.

  “Oh, come on, looking at me is not that painful, my silent little treasure.” His breath smelled even stronger than his aftershave.

  I looked at the glass door hoping Lincoln would appear. Grady would never come this close to me if Lincoln was around. Lincoln was his bread and butter.

  I was trapped. I side stepped and he followed me.

  “You know what is really great about the fact that you can’t talk?”

  I glared at him and swallowed back a bitter taste in my throat.

  He reached for my waist. “You can’t scream.”

  As his hand reached for me, I stepped hard on his bare foot. He yelled out, and as he reached down to grab his foot, I raced for the stairs. I flew into the bedroom and locked the door. Tears filled my eyes as I picked up the phone to text Lincoln but then thought better of it. Grady had brought his two beastly looking buddies, and Lincoln was on his own. I didn’t even know for certain that Lincoln would do anything about it. And the last thing I wanted was to have any connection to his sordid business life. I would just make sure to avoid Grady from now on.

  “I miss you,” I typed and sent it to Nix.

  “I know exactly how you feel,” came back.

  “I’m tired of being lost,” I typed.

  “You were never lost. You were just waiting for me to find you.”

  The tears flowed faster. I pressed the phone with his text against my chest and curled up on the bed to sleep.

  ***

  An angry knock on the door woke me. I walked blurry-eyed and half-dazed to the door. Lincoln’s face was red, and he smelled of sickeningly sweet perfume. “Why the hell did you lock the door?” He actually looked past me into the room as if I’d somehow managed to sneak someone inside.

/>   With a flourish, I motioned around the room to assure him it was quite empty. He really was a stupid ass. He apparently had no clue at all about Grady’s kitchen incident, even though the man had to have been limping when he returned to the pool.

  Lincoln grabbed my chin with his fingers, and immediately my jaw clenched shut. “It looks like you’ve been crying.”

  I pulled away from his grasp and headed to the bathroom to wash my face. He followed and stood behind me as I leaned over the sink. “Look, Babe, you know those girls don’t mean a thing to me. It’s just business.” Naturally, his ego went right to jealousy as the source of my tears.

  I dried my face and hung up the towel. He followed me out of the bathroom. I picked up my notepad from the nightstand and wrote. “I found a job in Century City. I’ll be taking care of an elderly woman. She wants someone to write her memoirs.”

  He read it twice as if it was a complicated message. Then he laughed.

  I shook the paper angrily at him.

  “Not a chance, Scotlyn. No one is going to hire you for that anyhow.” He squinted suspiciously at me. “How did you find this job?”

  I lifted a brow and pointed down at the laptop on the nightstand.

  He shook his head. “I knew that thing would be a problem.” It seemed as if he wasn’t going to give the idea more than a cruel burst of laughter.

  I scribbled words quickly before tears flowed again. “I need to be part of the human world again.”

  “You are part of my world, Babe. How would you even get there? You can’t drive,” he took pleasure in reminding me just how much of a prisoner I truly was.

  “I can take the bus. I need this badly.” Tears threatened again.

  He stared at me, and for a second, it seemed he was actually considering it. Then he waved it off. “No way.”

  I crumpled the paper and threw it at his face. He dodged it with another cruel laugh. He turned to walk out and then stopped and looked back at me. “If I let you try this then you have to start planning our wedding.”