by Naima Simone
Sipping the sweet Riesling, I study her as she makes the rounds of the living room, passing out wine and kisses. It’s a little more crowded than our usual Sunday dinners. Mom or Dan invited their next-door neighbors and parish priest. Fine with me. That means the odds of Mom asking me about Analise, my ex, have just gone down by 63.7 percent. Still a chance, but she hates scenes in front of company. And if she questions me again about the woman I dated for a year before ending it four months ago, there will be one. Not that I can tell her about the latest stunt Ana just pulled. No, suicide attempt over pork roast would be too crass.
Not to mention it would resurrect too many painful memories.
Unearth secrets best left buried.
“Your mother really should be ashamed of herself.” I turn at Dan’s grumble. The affection heavy in his voice ruins the disgruntled tone he was going for, though. He loves my mother to the ends of the earth, and in his eyes, she really can do no wrong. Yet the frown he wears as he glowers down into his glass is all too genuine. I’m no mind reader, but it doesn’t take an 800 number to figure out he’s wishing the wine was a Budweiser. With a sigh, he sips from the glass. And doesn’t manage to cover his wince. “She invited Beth and Robert over because their niece is visiting with them.” He nods in the direction of the older couple and the young woman standing next to them. “Subtlety and matchmaking are not your mother’s strong points.”
At that moment, Simon, who has been talking with the trio for the last twenty minutes, glances at me over his shoulder, a slightly maniacal gleam in his eye, his smile strained and frozen on his mouth. Like The Joker—if Batman’s archnemesis was an Armani model, that is.
I get why Mom chose her youngest son to introduce to the neighbor’s niece. Unlike her two oldest sons, Simon is a senior at S.A.I.C., the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, has a respectable job, is tattoo-free, and hasn’t disappointed her—like with me being a tattoo artist—or crushed her—like Knox falling in love with Eden.
Or hasn’t died on her.
It’s stupid as hell that a sliver of hurt slides under my ribs, sitting there like an icy shard. Stupid, because I don’t want to be hooked up with a woman. Any woman. Even if I wasn’t leaving the country in two months for a guest artist position in a London tattoo shop, I still would be avoiding relationships like they were Walking Dead Walkers and I had one arrow left in my crossbow. Not after the clusterfuck of my last one. The latest in a line of clusterfucks.
Still… That Mom didn’t even consider me suitable…good enough. I stop myself before I shake my head in an attempt to dislodge the traitorous, self-pitying thought. Like I said, stupid.
Help me, Simon mouths.
I smother a snort. Nope, I mouth back.
His glare could laser the ink off my skin. This time, I don’t bother to choke back my chuckle.
Dan, catching the byplay between us, coughs. But it does a piss-pot poor job of covering his laughter. “Poor kid. He’ll be lucky to leave the house without your mother arranging their first date…and engagement.” He snickers, but a moment later, sobers, turning fully toward me. Once more, a frown drags down his eyebrows, and he silently studies the pale liquid in his glass before lifting his head. “I meant to tell you something when you first got here.” Clearing his throat, he downs a healthy gulp, and my heart careens toward my gut.
“What?” I ask, worry and a stab of fear sharpening my tone. “Is it Mom? Knox? Eden?” I just saw my brother and my ex-sister-in-law-now-my-brother’s-girl at the shop last night. Had something happened in those few hours?
“No.” He waves off my words. “Your mom is fine. And…” He trails off, shaking his head. He can’t even say Knox and Eden’s names, or it will send Mom spiraling. Even as she still lives in the house that Knox bought for her and Dan with his first big earnings from his MMA days. The irony—and tragedy—of it isn’t lost on me. “No, nothing like that. My—” He pauses, clears his throat again. Starts again. “Cypress is coming to dinner. She’s back in Chicago.”
Cypress. His daughter. My stepsister.
Damn, now there’s someone I haven’t thought of in a long time. How long has it been since we last saw her? Nine, ten years ago? An image of a sullen, chubby teenager with a mass of dark hair and dark blue eyes framed by unfortunately thick glasses wavers in my head. As if nature had decided to take pity on her, Dan’s daughter had been blessed with clear, smooth skin. Almost as if God decided acne would’ve been overkill with the geek thing she’d been rocking.
But even that one concession couldn’t make up for that attitude. She’d been a snide, brooding, well…bitch. At least, that’s what my fifteen-year-old self thought. Cypress had been thirteen when Mom and Dan married. And when she’d been forced to visit our house every other weekend, she’d had no problem letting her hate for the situation be known. She ignored Mom, was rude as hell to my brothers and me, and when she did speak to Dan, she flayed him alive with that razor-sharp tongue.
At sixteen, she’d refused to come over anymore, cutting off the visits to her father altogether. I’m not gonna lie; I was relieved. That meant I stopped finding reasons to be out of the house every other weekend of the month. Three years of that melodramatic teenager crap had been a pain in the ass.
She was back home, though. Interesting. Last I heard, Dan had mentioned she’d gone to California for school. Ten years and thousands of miles can change a person, but for some reason, my mind is conjuring up a taller version of the brat that lived with us on alternating weekends.
“Yeah?” I say, ’cause…’cause, hell, I can’t think of anything else. For some reason, I’m sure I hope your daughter had an attitude adjustment and personality transplant in the last decade, isn’t what he needs to hear right now.
“Yeah,” he echoes. “She’s been back in town for the last three months or so, and I finally managed to convince her to come over.” He releases a weighty sigh. “I’m hoping…” He glances to the side, and a muscle tics along his jaw. “Well, it’ll be nice to see her again,” he finishes softly.
There’s a shitload of stuff left unsaid in that statement. The fine threads of pain, regret, and worst of all, wistfulness, that lace through his voice fill in the gaps between his words.
“Well, I’m happy for you, Dan,” I murmur. Meaning it. While I don’t have the best memories of his daughter, she’s his kid. And if her being back in Chicago is a chance for them to reconnect, then putting up with eating dinner with her and that huge chip on her shoulder that has probably grown to the size of Wrigley Field is worth it.
Maybe.
“Thanks.” Sliding a hand into the front pocket of his pants, he slightly turns and scans the room, his gaze finding and settling on Mom. We both silently study her as she speaks with Father Donovan. A warm smile lights up her face, and my chest aches. Whereas that particular expression of peace and pleasure used to be as normal and comforting as the sun rising every morning, in the last two years, it’s become a rarity. I hate that. Hate the reasons for the theft of her joy.
He sighs, his attention remaining fixed on her. “I need you to watch out for her today. She and Cypress didn’t have a great relationship, and even though she’s older, I’m not quite sure what to expect. So just…”
He shrugs a shoulder, and I nod.
I get it. He’s protective of her. Almost overprotective.
He’d witnessed his wife crumble two years ago when her son, my brother Connor, died in an MMA match. Then he’d seen her suffer the perceived betrayal of her oldest son—the one she held responsible for leading Connor into a world she deemed violent and barbaric—because he “stole” her dead boy’s wife. So Dan could be excused for wanting to encase her in proverbial bubble wrap to shield her from any more pain.
Knox and Eden hadn’t fallen for each other to inflict more emotional torture on Mom. My oldest brother had been in love with Eden for years. He hadn’t been aware that I’d known, but as the secret keeper in this family, I’d figured out his lo
ve for Connor’s wife almost from the beginning. Even after our younger brother’s death, he’d fought his feelings. But then came the moment three months ago, when Eden had announced her love for Knox to the family, to Mom, at a Sunday dinner like this one.
That had been the last time either of them had stepped foot in the house.
Mom couldn’t deal with the knowledge that the woman she’d considered a daughter was now with Eden’s dead husband’s brother. Hell, Mom still couldn’t deal with the fact that Connor was dead. Since then, Dan had gone into Operation Protect Katherine At All Costs. While I agree Mom is fragile, not making her face the changes in this family—face reality—is doing more harm than good.
But then I remember, years ago, walking into the tiny bathroom off her and Dad’s bedroom in our old Bridgeport home a couple of months after Dad’s death… I remember the crimson-soaked white-and-blue checked tiles. I remember the old-fashioned straight razor Dad used to shave with on the floor, the stainless steel edged in my mother’s blood. Blood that pumped from her sliced wrists…
I remember all of that, and I keep my mouth shut.
If denial keeps her from repeating that desperate, almost too-damn-final act, then I can play along, too.
Hard, pitiless, phantom fingers close around my throat and squeeze. The sense of suffocation surges inside me, shoves at my suddenly constricted chest, and it requires every tattered scrap of control not to claw at my neck.
Panic attack.
My brain transmits the message to my body, my nervous system, my organs, but none of them receive it. The nausea still churns in my gut, my lungs remain seized up, my ears roar with the dull crash of far-off waves. Under my shirt, heat prickles over my skin and sweat pops in its wake, dotting my arms, shoulders, and chest. Black, skeletal fingers of darkness unfurl and reach into my peripheral vision.
Heart hammering away at my sternum, I murmur something to Dan and shuffle out of the room into the empty hallway. Bracing my spine against the wall, I close my eyes, even though it worsens everything. Concentrating on getting my body to relax limb by limb, I force air through my nose, inhaling a deep breath, holding it several seconds, then just as deliberately, release it. I repeat the exercise several times, reminding myself that this is a panic attack, that I’m safe.
As the talon-sharp tips of the assault slowly retract from my psyche, I search for my focus object—the thing that I consciously center all my attention on to ground me. But unlike all the other times, my tattoo machine with its needles, coils, capacitor, springs, armature bars don’t flash in front of me. In its place, a striking face of stunning angles, elegant dips, and sensual curves appears on the backs of my eyelids.
Instead of picking apart the mental image of the machinery that is like a natural extension of my hand and describing the shape, color, and purpose of each part, I scrutinize and label each feature of the face that has haunted me for over a week.
The graceful arch of black eyebrows over beautiful, denim-colored eyes that light up with anger and darken with arousal. The slant of cheekbones that could’ve been carved from marble. The full, wide, perfect mouth capable of reducing a man to begging. That delicate chin with its soft dent in the middle.
I grab ahold of the picture in my brain, go over each feature again and again while continuing the other strategies to calm my emotions and physical responses. And if the fact that the woman who was the hottest, most mind- and body-numbing one-night stand in my life has suddenly become my focus object is unsettling, well, at the moment, I don’t give a damn. As long as it works. I’ll wonder why I can’t seem to erase this woman from my mind later.
Gradually, the anxiety and fear fade even more, and my chest loosens, my breathing moving easier.
Christ. Dragging a trembling hand through my hair, I open my eyes, and the pale-green wall fills my vision. These panic attacks are nothing new. The first was a week after finding Mom on the bathroom floor after her suicide attempt. After I clumsily wrapped her gaping wrists with my torn T-shirt and drove her to the hospital, terrified I would kill both of us since, at thirteen, I’d only secretly driven the car on side streets with Knox. Those ten minutes—my still mother bleeding next to me—had been the scariest and longest of my life.
Afterward, she swore me to secrecy about trying to kill herself and wore long-sleeved shirts in June, the cuffs hiding the bandages from my brothers.
Through the years, the attacks have been sporadic. But lately, with the worry over Mom, the internal split in our already small family, my ex Ana’s own suicide threats, and my guilt about letting Knox down, it doesn’t take a psychology degree to figure out why they’ve been more frequent in the last few months.
Lucky for me, I’ve become an expert at beating them back. And hiding them.
For now.
The chime of the doorbell resonates in the hall, and I push off the wall, straightening as Dan strides from the living room.
“You all right?” he asks, glancing at the front door then back at me.
“Yeah,” I assure him, clapping him on the shoulder. “I’m good.” I dip my head toward the foyer. “That’s probably Cypress.”
“Right.” Rubbing his hands down the front of his pants, he heads toward the door, and I return to the room and Mom.
Her gaze meets mine as soon as I enter, and the unease and apprehension clouding her blue eyes has me crossing over to her. Sliding an arm around her shoulders, I squeeze her close.
“It’s going to be fine, Mom,” I murmur to her, low enough so neither Father Donovan, Beth, Robert, or their niece can hear.
“I know, honey,” she whispers, patting my hand. “Dan’s so excited…”
“And you’re happy for him.” I bend my head closer to hers. “But you’re nervous, too. I’m just giving you fair warning. If she’s still the little snot she was at thirteen, I’m snapping her bra strap like I did back then.”
Her scandalized gasp is music to my ears, and I don’t bother hiding my wide grin. “Jude Aaron Gordon, you didn’t.”
I shrug, neither confirming or denying. But sure, I’d been an ass on occasion. And when Cypress had pissed me off one too many times, I’d sometimes retaliated. Nothing too bad because Mom had raised her sons to respect girls and women. But damn, Cypress could’ve made St. Francis of Assisi say, “Fuck this shit!” and hit a bottle of Hennessey.
“The prodigal daughter has finally arrived, huh?” My brother Simon materializes on the other side of her, another bookend. Another shield.
Knox should be here. The thought slips in and lodges in my head. He would’ve wanted to be here, to stand by Mom. If she’d let him.
“You two promise to behave yourselves. It’s important to Dan that she feels welcomed,” Mom warns, pinning us with her patented straighten up and fly right side-eye. My mother discovered and perfected side-eye before it was a thing.
“Yes, ma’am. Scout’s honor.” Simon holds up two fingers in a pledge I’m pretty damn sure he didn’t learn from the Boy Scouts. Especially since he never was one.
“…so glad you’re here.” Dan’s resonant baritone drifts from the hallway, growing nearer.
“Thanks for inviting me,” replies a lighter, huskier voice.
A voice that is somehow familiar.
I frown, stiffening. No. It’s not possible…
Dan appears in the living room doorway, and a tall brunette steps from behind him. She lifts her head, and…
Holy fuck.
“Ro?” I rasp.
The same dark blue eyes I stared down into as she swallowed my cock a week ago widen, the shock ricocheting through me reflected in that gaze. The hell is she doing here?
My brain isn’t connecting the dots. Not when my memories of her include eating her out and finger-banging her ass before burying myself in a tight, hot pussy that still makes me jerk awake with my fingers wrapped around my hard flesh. No, those images don’t click with the woman standing next to Dan, my stepfather.
Because tha
t would mean I fucked his daughter.
That would mean I fucked my stepsister.
Chapter Six
Cypress
No.
No-no-no-no.
This can’t be happening.
God couldn’t possibly hate me this much.
Then again, considering the last year of my life, maybe He could. And this—coming face-to-face with the man who turned me out six ways to Sunday a week ago in my father’s house—is further proof that He has some kind of personal vendetta against me.
I blink. Blink again. Hoping against hope that maybe my cranky vagina and overactive imagination just conjured him up and are playing a cruel prank on me.
But no. I can flutter my lashes until a windstorm kicks up; he’s not disappearing. Jay still stands there, as big, powerful, and hot as he was the night he walked into The Rabbit Hole. The last time I saw him, he’d been asleep, naked, a sheet tangled low around his hips. And even though a white, long-sleeved shirt and black dress pants now cover his beautiful, inked body, he still sends a curl of heat twisting and dancing low in my belly. Still has need flickering to dark and inconvenient life.
Jesus Christ. What are the odds? What is he doing here with Dan…?
“Ro?” Dan questions, frowning at Jay then shifting his confused regard back to me.
My heart bangs out a drum solo against my chest, and the shot of Patron I’d downed in my motel room to get me through this dinner swishes in my stomach, waving hello. Dan didn’t know I worked at a dive bar. He has no clue about the upheaval and changes in my life. Hell, it’s one of those upheavals that brought me here today for dinner after months of avoiding it.
“It’s short for Rowena. My middle name,” I remind him, as if that answers the real question: How do Jay and I know each other?
“I used to call her Ro when we were younger. To irritate her,” Jay adds, his tone even, much calmer than the stunned gasp of my name earlier…
Wait. Oh God, wait.
