His Custody

by Tamsen Parker

  “I know. It hurts.”

  “What was it Cain said to God about Abel? When he was being a smartass?”

  “Am I my brother’s keeper?” Why on earth was she thinking about Bible stories right now?

  “Yeah, that.”

  “What made you think of that?”

  “I was his keeper, Jas. I was his keeper and I let him down.”

  She was curling in on herself. He could fight it, try to pry her open and leave her there, wounds gaping open, hoping the air would heal them. Would it be worth it? Watching her hurt that badly? At the moment he didn’t think so. Maybe in a while he would try again when the words weren’t so fresh in her mind. He’d be steady, solid, remind her every day it hadn’t been her fault, but in the end only she could choose what to believe. In the meantime . . .

  “I’m sorry you feel that way, Tinker Bell. I don’t think Gavin would. I hope you’ll let yourself off the hook. It’s not going to happen today and not tomorrow, but if you need a reminder, you come see me. I’ll tell you as many times as you need to hear it. But for now, would it help to beat the crap out of some bags? I think Alice has a new sparring partner for you today if you’re up for it.”

  She turned, anticipation making an overture in her eyes like the sun coming up over the horizon. There was a possibility she was going to be okay. “I think so.”

  “Willing to try, are you?” he teased, propping up the side of his mouth into a smile that was way too fucking hard.

  “Yeah. I’ll try.”

  That had to be good enough for now.

  Chapter Thirteen

  January

  Two months later he caught her looking up tattoos. Caught wasn’t the right word. Her door was open, it was at a time she knew he’d be getting home, and she was sitting at her desk.

  “You know that counts as cutting, right?”

  Keyne startled, her slim shoulders jumping, but she wasn’t embarrassed. She even smiled at him, something she hadn’t been doing enough. He wouldn’t be the douchebag to tell her to, though. She’d smile when she was good and fucking ready and she was ready now. He’d rather one genuine smile than ten thousand forced death grins any day. His wait had paid off. She was beautiful, even when she was exasperated with him. Maybe especially when she was exasperated. “I know. I was going to ask you. I have to anyway. I’m not eighteen.”

  “A tattoo, huh? Why do you want a tattoo?”

  “As a reminder.”

  “A reminder of what?” Some kind of memorial of what she’d lost? That didn’t sit well with him. As far as he could tell, she didn’t require a reminder: it haunted her every moment.

  “Every day I wake up and I wonder. If she was right, if it was my fault, if I could have done something about it. Some days it’s easy, I can say no almost the second I wake up. It wasn’t my fault, I had no control, it wouldn’t have mattered what I did or didn’t do. Some days it takes me longer, some days I never get to no at all. But the worst days are the ones I forget to ask.”

  He knew those days. The ones when he had to coax her to do anything because she was barely alive. It was like she had to think about every breath. To breathe or not to breathe, that was the question. So far, she had chosen to breathe, but it was clear to him it was an active choice. Keyne had lost so much of the ground she’d gained when that immature, rancorous schoolgirl had called Gavin her pet, even two months after it had happened. “So I thought if I could remind myself to ask, it might help.”

  He nodded. That was fair, and better than the possibility he’d dreamed up. And just because he hoped she wouldn’t be asking herself that question for the rest of her life didn’t make it true. She probably would be and if he could make it easier for her, then he’d do it. “What did you have in mind?”

  She turned the screen so he could see it better and clicked over to a different window. There in elegant script it read, “Am I my brother’s keeper?”

  “It’s pretty.” She’d taken the well-known phrase and made it her own. No longer a sarcastic dig, but an earnest question. “Where are you going to put it?”

  She pointed to the scar on her arm, the one he saw her rubbing almost daily. Sometimes it was in an absent, meditative way. Sometimes it was a desperate lament. She’d rub the letters inked into her skin the same way she rubbed at the star on her bracelet. A memory.

  Her eyes were wide, full of caution and curiosity. Apparently she’d been nervous to ask. “You’re not going to try to talk me out of it?”

  “Nope.”

  “Why not?”

  “Do you want me to?” He could talk nearly anyone on the planet into nearly anything, although Keyne wasn’t usually subject to his charms or his logic, or anything else for that matter. But if she was looking for an out, a reason not to do this, he’d sure as hell try to give her one. That was one thing he’d learned from his parents. They’d told him when he was a teenager if there was ever something his peers were trying to talk him into and he didn’t want to do it, to use them as an excuse: My parents would be so fucking pissed, I’d get grounded for the rest of my life. Dude, I would, but if I get caught, and you know my mom’s got a nose like a bloodhound, I’m losing my car until I’m forty. He hadn’t used it as an excuse often, but it had been there.

  “No, I’m sure, but . . .”

  “Doesn’t seem like a thing a guardian should green-light?”

  “No, not really.”

  “Well, as we’ve discussed many times before, I have no idea what the fuck I’m doing.” She laughed, as he’d hoped she would. It made his heart sing, made him want to spend the rest of his life charming her. At the moment, though, he had some explaining to do. “But here’s my thought process. This isn’t like the cutting. You’re not doing it to hurt yourself. You’ve put a lot of thought into it and I understand why it’s something you want. Also, I believe you when you said you were going to tell me. This whole trust thing goes both ways, so if you say this is something you want, something you need, and I don’t think you’re being self-destructive, then I’ll do my best to give it to you. I have some friends who have tats—”

  Her strawberry brows went halfway up her forehead. “You do?”

  “Yes, Keyne, I do.” Many. Kink and ink seemed to go hand in hand.

  “Do you have one?”

  “No.”

  She nodded, arranging this new information in her head. Oh, the things he could surprise her with. But she’d probably be traumatized enough by the things he didn’t realize he was doing wrong, never mind things he was certain he shouldn’t do, so he’d leave that part of himself locked in a vault.

  A lot of the people he knew at the club had ink, he’d ask them for recommendations. He’d find her the cleanest, most reputable place in the tristate area and he’d bring her there himself. Hold her hand while the needles pierced her skin and inked on the reminder. Would she change her mind when it started to hurt? He doubted it. From what he could tell from the way she went flat out at Alice’s gym, she was a bit of a masochist, his Tinker Bell. They’d see how much of one.

  ***

  The place Jasper brought her to looked more like a doctor’s office than a tattoo parlor. At least in the back room where they did the work. In the front, it looked like any other that she’d seen on TV. It disturbed her more, almost, the sterility, the bright white and the gleaming metal. It was supposed to be dark and dingy, sketchy. This didn’t feel rebellious. And it wasn’t.

  Jasper’s easy endorsement had taken a little of the high off of the idea of a tattoo, but she found she still wanted it, badly. For precisely the reasons she’d told him she did. A reminder to ask herself every day if she’d been responsible for Gavin. She hadn’t been able to say no yet today.

  If the studio wasn’t what she had in mind, at least the woman who would be doing her ink was straight out of central casting. If she couldn’t have
an overweight biker-looking dude whose name was Tiny or Bubba, wearing a leather vest and a greasy bandana, she would definitely pick Leisl.

  The woman was tall and built enough to not look small next to Jasper, but she wore her black hair in pigtails and her pristine chucks had pink glitter hearts on them. Add to that more tattoos than Keyne had ever seen on a single person, and piercings in places she didn’t know a person could be pierced, and Keyne was in insta-love.

  “Make yourself comfortable, Keyne. I’ve got a few things I need to get ready and then we’ll get started. Do you have any questions you want to ask me?”

  Keyne sat in the chair, almost identical to the one at her dentist’s office, and tried to get comfortable. It was hard when she felt like she had fireflies in her stomach.

  “Will it hurt?”

  Leisl smiled. It wasn’t a mean smile, but Keyne wished she didn’t sound like a stupid kid. That was probably the first question everyone asked.

  “It feels different to everyone. Most people say it hurts, but how much depends on where you’re getting it and how you process pain. Some people like it.”

  Leisl winked at her and Keyne’s eyes went wide. “Do you like it?”

  “I do. Clearly.” She gestured to her inked sleeves. On one arm Leisl had blue waves cresting over her muscles, the tips of the waves frothing and when she flexed her forearm Keyne could picture the waves rolling into shore. On the other arm, there were cherry blossom branches and sparrows flying between the delicate pink blooms. “It doesn’t feel good exactly, but there’s a rush that comes with it I haven’t been able to duplicate with anything else. Not anything legal anyway.”

  Keyne expected Jasper’s face to darken—drugs were something he was super strict about—but he sat on a stool he’d pulled up beside her, expression as neutral as if he were eating a sandwich. Actually more neutral than that: Jasper liked sandwiches. She didn’t have other questions so she sat back and half listened while Jasper asked questions about the ink, the equipment, and how to take care of the tattoo once she had it.

  Once Leisl had everything set up, she slid her wheeled stool up to Keyne’s side and put on some gloves. “Ready?”

  “Yes.”

  “Sure?”

  “Yes.”

  “Really? Because—”

  “Did Jasper ask you to talk me out of this?”

  Leisl shook her head, sending the strands of her pigtails flying. “Absolutely not. He wouldn’t do that. If he was going to say no, he would’ve told you no himself. He wouldn’t have dragged you down here, wasted my time, and had someone else do his dirty work. It’s something you can’t change and I don’t want you to hate me forever because you regret it.”

  “I would never hate you.” Leisl was super cool and Keyne wished she could come hang out at her half-tattoo parlor/half-doctor’s office all the time.

  “Fine, but you also can’t blame me if all you can think of after we do this is getting another tat.” Her white teeth shone from between her dark red lips as she grinned. It faded as quickly as it had come and she turned to Jasper. “That goes for you, too.”

  Jasper held up a hand. “Yes, ma’am. She’ll have to wait until she turns eighteen for her next one, but I’ll bring her back if she wants.”

  ***

  Keyne had picked a good spot for her first ink, padded with as much muscle as she had anywhere on her skinny frame. He’d tried to get her to eat more, but she’d always tended toward being thin like her mother. Little pixies, the both of them. Whenever he got too focused on how much she was eating, he tried to remind himself of that and it served well enough to shut him up. He didn’t want to make her feel like there was anything wrong with her body. There wasn’t.

  She didn’t fidget as she reclined in the chair and for a flash of a second, an image of Leisl strapped down to a similar chair and being tormented by two of her partners came to mind. Leisl was a switch and he’d seen her both Domme and sub, but that was by far his most vivid memory of her.

  Josh had stroked her hair and kissed her, soothing her as Mistress Alice threaded needles around her nipples. Leisl had whimpered and implored Josh with those big golden brown eyes.

  Both of them had murmured encouragement and praise to her and when Mistress Alice had finished, a pretty gleaming five-pointed star adorning the tips of each of Leisl’s breasts, Josh had spread Leisl’s legs as Alice pleasured her girl with her mouth. Leisl had come so hard she screamed and Jasper had had to drag his play partner into the other room and put her to good use before his head exploded.

  It would not do to have those thoughts anywhere near Keyne, especially when Leisl was instructing him to hold her hand. He did, Keyne’s hand small and smooth in his. Cool, but not clammy. “Are you cold?”

  “No. Nervous.”

  “That’s okay. It’s scary isn’t it? You know you can change your mind anytime. Or if you need to take a break, say so. We’ve got plenty of time.”

  He’d asked Leisl to clear her schedule this morning and paid for the privilege. He’d made a good choice bringing Keyne here. Leisl did good work and she liked kids, hadn’t blinked an eye when Jasper had told her about Keyne.

  A strand of hair escaped Keyne’s messy bun and he brushed it aside as she turned toward him and closed her eyes. The tender touch sent thoughts he really shouldn’t have been having through his head. Keyne underneath him while he pressed inside her, sighing, and her delicate lids falling closed as he did, because pleasure. He was giving her pleasure. It took everything he had to not shake the image from his head but instead just shut a mental door on it. So very not okay.

  When the needle touched her skin, she flinched and her eyes flew open, but she didn’t say to stop. On the contrary, her lips parted, her pupils dilated and she closed her eyes again on a sigh. A thought nagged at the back of his mind but he didn’t want to reel it in. All he needed to know was that Keyne was fine. She was fine.

  Leisl raised her eyebrows at him over Keyne’s prone form.

  “She’s okay. You can keep going.” Keyne’s fingers tightened around his in confirmation, and her breath came slow and even.

  The work didn’t take long; it was simple and small. When she was done, Leisl brought Keyne a mirror so she could see the words curling below the uneven skin of her scar. The angry red had faded, but if you didn’t know how it had looked before, it still looked pretty bad. Pink and raw.

  “What do you think?”

  “I love it. It’s beautiful. Exactly what I thought it would be like. Do you like it, Jasper?”

  Truthfully, yes. He did. More than he ought to, even.

  He knew it was supposed to remind her that what had happened wasn’t her fault, but it reminded him of how strong she was to be able to make her way through this world when everything that had been so certain in her short life had been taken from her. He’d do his best to be there for her, ease her through being alive when it sometimes hurt so badly, but in the end, it was up to her. There was only so much he could do. And the stubborn girl he’d known was still stubborn; she’d fight tooth and nail. He was just a contrivance responsible for setting up the best conditions he could to let her do it. One of those conditions was letting her find her own way.

  “I’m glad you’re happy with it.”

  She wrenched her eyes away long enough to scowl at him. “That’s not what I asked you.”

  Fair, and he wouldn’t deny her something she was asking for, something she seemed to need. “Yeah, Keyne. I like it a lot. Leisl does good work.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  March

  Jasper was still in the city when she got home from school. She much preferred the days when he picked her up from school in the Audi or when he was waiting for her in the backseat of the town car Edwin drove. The only good thing about Jasper not being home yet was that she got the snack Ada had no doubt made her all to
herself.

  Today, it was apple nachos and she grabbed the entire plate and turned to head toward the den. Not that she didn’t have homework, but she needed a little break before she started. Besides, it wasn’t homework hours yet. Yeah, homework hours were eye-roll inducing, but—and she would never in a zillion years admit this to Jasper—they’d been helpful. Rules, clear expectations, consequences . . . they might make her bridle, but at the end of the day she was glad they were there. They’d done as Jasper had said they would do, and freed up her head for other things. Like snacks.

  She snagged an apple slice off the plate and had taken a bite when she noticed a note Ada had left by the side of the plate.

  You might want to go to your room before you go watch TV. Just a thought.

  Her room? Why would she— Oh. It was college letter season and a few of her classmates had already gotten news—good and bad. Some of them were obsessively logging into admissions websites, but she’d wanted to do it the old school way: fat envelope, skinny envelope. Ada always put her mail on her desk, and since she wasn’t expecting anything else, that was likely it.

  Keyne shoved the rest of the apple slice in her mouth and headed down the hall, took a breath before she crossed the threshold into her room. Maybe she should wait for Jasper. But, no. If it was bad news, she wanted to get her reaction smoothed over before he got home. And to be honest, she couldn’t get as worked up about college as her classmates were.

  It was just where she would spend the next four years of her life, and then . . . then she didn’t know what. A hazard of taking one day at a time was that she didn’t care all that much about the future. She was alive, that was good, and that’s about where it ended. But that’s not where it ended for Jasper. He cared far more about where she went to college, and indeed about her going to college at all.