Shane (Damage Control #4)

by Jo Raven

  “Seffers,” I mutter. “What’s up?”

  “Gym day, remember? Rafe’s showing us some new defense moves. I thought you said you were coming?”

  Oh fuck. “Forgot.”

  “Get your ass here now. We only just started.” Someone yells something at him, and he moves away from the phone to say, “I am taking it easy, Rafe. Shoulder’s fucking great, I swear to God, man.”

  I listen to their banter, my hip propped against the couch, guilt weighing on me. Seth’s got the shit beaten out of him a lot in his life—first courtesy of his mom’s junkie boyfriends and husband, and then of the guards and inmates in prison.

  What he probably never counted on was me punching him, throwing him to the floor. Dislocating his shoulder again, for maybe the third time in the past three years. He only took the sling off two months ago, and he needs to be careful with that arm.

  Because of me.

  “Shane.” He’s back on the phone. “Are you coming?”

  “No.”

  “Why the hell not?”

  “Busy.”

  “Busy staring at the walls of your apartment? Did you even eat anything today? Dammit, Shane.” When I don’t reply, because fuck, I can’t lie to him, he changes track. “Come on, cuz. It’ll be fun. Rafe is riding my ass about how to flex and how to stand, and it’s driving me up the wall. Come save me.”

  “Not today.”

  Can’t stand the thought of being around people—people from Damage Control, no less, asking me questions. Prodding at wounds they can’t see.

  “Okay, man. Your call.” He sounds disappointed, and the weight on my shoulders doubles, forcing me down to sit on the back of the sofa.

  “Sorry.”

  “No, it’s okay. You tired, huh?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Next time, then. And hey, you won’t believe who works the front desk now.”

  I shake my head. What do I care?

  “You’ll never guess,” he goes on, oblivious. “It’s Cassie.”

  “Cassie?”

  Wait a sec.

  “Crazy, right? I saw her, but I don’t think she saw me. She was busy with some new customers.”

  I say nothing, not sure how I feel about this. About the girl I want, but can’t have, the girl who wants all men but me, the girl I shoot pool with because anything else is impossible—about the fact that she’ll be there twice a week when I go to the gym. And that’s not counting the days we train with Rafe.

  “Anyway. Have to go now,” Seth says. “Talk to you soon, man. Stay safe.”

  Safe. Yeah. What the fuck ever.

  He disconnects before I can think of a reply.

  Better that way. I’m vibrating with anger, anger I can’t direct anywhere but at Seth right now, and he means well. Seth always means well, always has my back, but even he doesn’t know it all—about the past, about the present, and about just how fucked-up I am.

  Nobody ever should.

  ***

  The show playing on the TV seems to be about movie stars and their diets, or some shit like that. I’m trying to draw, but my lids are so heavy my vision keeps blurring. My hand holding the pencil against the drawing pad keeps slipping, leaving random lines and smudges.

  Shit.

  I blink, rub at my eyes with the back of my hand, lean closer to the drawing board. Can’t quite make out what I drew. It’s basically a dark swirl, like the heart of a hurricane, broken faces and limbs peeking out of the black.

  A shiver wracks me, and I push the board back, let it drop on the sofa cushions. I turn, stare at the dark corners of the room.

  Calm the fuck down, I tell myself. Nobody’s here. Nobody can hurt you now.

  Tell that to my brain, to my racing heart. It’s three in the morning, and my body is trying to shut down. If I was spaced out all day, now my mind’s twisted like a pretzel.

  I lean back, watching the show. A guy is explaining that an actress I’ve never heard of is trying to lose weight by only eating blueberries.

  Fascinating.

  Maybe I should change the channel, but the remote’s on the table. I see it, a dark outline in the flickering light from the TV. If I reach for it, I might just grab it without getting up.

  A scent of stale sweat and cinnamon hits me as I lift my hand, frighteningly familiar, and the remote moves. It slithers on the table, growing long and shiny, turning into a black snake.

  Fuck. I pull my hand back, but not fast enough. The snake jumps on my arm and wraps around it, moving up, its fangs glinting as its head lifts.

  Jerking to my feet, I shake my arm to dislodge the snake, and it bites into my arm, the pain shocking me. I stumble backward, and my back hits the iron bars of my cell.

  When I look down at my arm again, there’s no snake—but there’s a bleeding cut, a slice from a blade, trickling crimson down to my hand. I lift my other hand to my throat, and there’s another cut there.

  Say you want it, a voice whispers, oily and slippery, and I whip around, my heart crashing about in my chest. A face surfaces from the dark, a body.

  No.

  ‘Missed me?’

  No!

  He winks at me, and the terror is a giant fist crushing my skull, crushing my spine, until I can’t stay standing and drop to my knees on the floor.

  ‘Come here,’ says a voice behind me, and I fall sideways, trying to get away from both of them. ‘Come here, boy.’

  Shit. No, I can’t. Not again.

  A hand grabs my hair and pulls, stopping me. A blade flashes. A face approaches mine, bodiless, moving out of the dark like a ghost.

  ‘Ready?’ the lips whisper as hands paw at my body, tear at my clothes, scratch my skin. The hands on my hair drag me backward, and I try to scream, but I can’t, my voice locked in my throat, my lungs crushed.

  The pain hits. Everything hurts, everything burns, and I struggle and kick, but nothing gives, the pain eating at my bones, until the scream breaks free from me.

  It echoes in the room.

  A living room.

  My living room. The TV is on. The curtains are drawn shut. A standing lamp is on beside the sofa.

  I’m lying on the floor, pain lancing through my body.

  What happened? Why the fuck am I on the floor? I sit up carefully. My long hair falls in my face, and I pull it back, wincing when my scalp burns. I lift my other hand, stare at the spot on my arm where I swear an open wound was bleeding a few seconds ago.

  Nothing. But there’s a red, thin scar, half-lost in the tattoos covering the inside of my wrists, crisscrossing the thicker line running up my arm, along the vein.

  A scar, Shane. Lost in a web of other scars. An old wound from years ago.

  Okay, fine. Then why the hell am I on the floor? I was…

  Oh fuck. A flashback.

  Christ.

  I get up slowly, my heart pounding so hard I taste bile in the back of my throat. It’s okay, I tell myself as I stumble to the bathroom and brace myself on the sink, trying to take deep breaths. I’ve been here, done this. It can’t kill me.

  I survived. I’m here. I’m fine.

  Fuck… I changed my appearance, let my hair grow long, pumped iron at the gym, got tattoos. But it’s made no difference.

  What a goddamn joke that I survived the real thing, beat death and despair, only to live inside a nightmare without end.

  Chapter Two

  Cassie

  Manon’s blue Kia Rio stops in front of my building, and she rolls down the window to wave at me.

  “Come on in! It’s frigging cold!”

  “You telling me?” I cross the sidewalk, tottering on my high heels, sliding a little on the thin layer of snow. “I’ve been waiting out here for ages.”

  “We’re, like, three minutes late,” Manon mutters as I climb inside and sigh at the warmth. “And you’re dressed for summer, not January in Madison.”

  “What’s wrong with my clothes, huh?” Blowing a bubble with my gum, I close the car do
or and tug down my long coat over my super-mini skirt. “Hey, Seth!” I pat him on the shoulder, and he turns to grin at me from the driver’s seat.

  “How’s it going, Cass?”

  “Good.” I grin back and tug on my rubber bracelet, then on my pendant, an old habit I’ve had from the time Angel came back and I couldn’t quite cope.

  Stop thinking about Angel.

  Seth’s taken to calling me Cass like Manon does, and I like it. I like the feeling of belonging again. I may not be one hundred percent in yet—the Inked and Damage family are tough nuts to crack after you’ve stupidly stomped all over their protective instincts—but I’m getting there.

  Baby steps.

  Jesse and Amber will be at Halo tonight, as will most of the guys, and Ev who knows them all said I was welcome to join in. Apparently I’ve been cleared for entry. Or at least I’ve passed the inspection for a night out in the vicinity of the glorious Inked and Damage boys and girls.

  Okay, I know I sound kind of bitter. And I know it was all my own damn fault. I didn’t realize at the time—when I kissed Jesse Lee at Asher’s wedding, a little tipsy and a lot disillusioned with the world—that I was about to piss off everyone around me so royally they’d shun me for months, try and cut me out of their lives.

  Manon and Ev only just recently started to believe my apologies were sincere, and as for the rest… Let’s just say I’m still working on that front.

  Except that there’s one person who hasn’t shut me out. One boy.

  Shane.

  During these past months, he hasn’t avoided me, hasn’t turned his back. Even when everyone else pretended I didn’t exist, he played pool with me and listened to me complain about the world at large, not saying a thing.

  Then again… He rarely says anything. To anyone. He’s pretty much the tall, dark and quiet type.

  A very sexy tall, dark and quiet—

  “How’s the new job?” Seth asks, glancing at me in the rear-view mirror, his dark eyes shining, his mouth curved in a smile. He reminds me so much of Shane sometimes. “At the gym. Saw you there the other day.”

  “You go there? Oh my God, I didn’t see you!” I wedge myself between the backrests of the two front seats and put my arms over their shoulders. “Do you go there often? Do your friends go? It’s a nice gym, I like it so far. The owner seems like a decent guy, and the—”

  “Cass.” Manon reaches up to put a hand over my mouth. “Stop. Take a breath.”

  “Okay.” I giggle. “I’ve shut up. Done.”

  “You’re nervous,” Manon says. “It’s going to be okay.”

  “Yeah. I know.”

  But I don’t. Not really. Losing someone’s trust is easy. Getting it back… is a bitch. And although I have other friends from the previous job at the sports shop where I met Ev, and the other gym where I worked, it’s not the same. I want this group to like me, let me in.

  Crazy, huh? I guess partly it’s because this is Shane’s group, and despite not really knowing where I stand with him, either, I like him. Like, really like him. I wish he’d let me in, open up. Show me if we’re friends, or if he wants more.

  Like I do.

  Partly it’s because this is the group where my two besties hang out, Manon and Ev. Their boyfriends belong here, and so do they.

  And then there’s the fact that it’s like a family. The Inked Brotherhood is the core, the dynamo behind this circle of love and warmth, and the Damage Boyz gravitate around them, getting pulled in to the trajectory, becoming part of the system. Warmed by the same burning sun of energy and affection, tied by the same brotherhood bonds that have transformed a group of virtual strangers into a unit, a single beating heart.

  I’d like that. To be part of that family. More than I’d ever admit to myself.

  “That’s our gym,” Seth is saying. “We go there once a week to train with Rafe in self-defense. I also go once a week on my own to train my shoulder, make it stronger. It’s one of the places where we hang out.”

  I nod, listening with half an ear as we drive through the snowy streets, searching for a parking spot near Halo. It has started to snow again, delicate flakes falling on the windshield, swept off in a blink by the wipers.

  We’re almost there.

  ***

  I’ve been to Halo once or twice over these past months. My first reaction after I realized the error I’d committed and the anger I’d sparked was to keep away from here, from all the usual haunts of Ev and Manon’s friends.

  But lately I’ve been coming over for a drink or two. Sometimes, if Shane is here, we play pool. I like watching him play. Watch as he bends over the table, watch that cute ass, those powerful muscles in his arms and back rippling as he prepares his shot, unaware of me.

  My guilty little pleasure. I watch and store the images in my brain, so I can recall them at night, alone in my bed with my trusted vibrator, and pretend it’s him who’s touching me, spreading me, thrusting inside me.

  If only. He’s never looked at me that way, and it looks like he’ll remain that: a fantasy.

  Tonight, though… Tonight the whole bunch will be here, making plans for Zane and Dakota’s wedding, and although I have no hopes of ever getting an invite to a wedding from this group again—totally my fault, I know—this is my chance to finally speak to Jesse and Amber. Make amends.

  These two have avoided me to this day, which makes sense. They are the ones I hurt the most. They’re the ones I need to see.

  Guilt churns in my stomach even after more than half a year. Nobody believes me, but I really didn’t mean to hurt anybody. And no matter how many times I rehash this argument, it always boils down to the same: I screwed up royally. I am sorry. And no matter how sorry I am, I can’t just undo the damage.

  I wish I could.

  Seth finally parks and we get out of the car. God, it’s cold. Having grown up around here, I should have gotten used to it by now. Then again, Manon’s right. Despite my long coat, it’s clear my clothes are kind of skimpy for this weather.

  But a girl needs to look good, right? Especially when going to battle, a hopeless battle to win back the impressions.

  And if Shane’s there, too… Man, I hope he is. If he isn’t, I might just turn around and run away. His presence always gives me strength, makes me feel better. Even if he doesn’t speak, or smile.

  I think about that as I hurry after my love-struck friends toward the bar. Even if Shane doesn’t tell me his life woes or talk to me about his day, even if he doesn’t always laugh at my silly jokes, I know he’s paying attention. He is focused on me, like nobody else.

  He makes me feel like less of a ghost drifting through life. Less of a fake. More real.

  Pondering that, I follow them into the bar, flinching at the blast of warmth and noise. Why am I having all these strange thoughts? Shane is hot. That much is clear. With his long dark hair, handsome face and strong body, he’s every girl’s wet dream.

  So let’s just stick to that, shall we? Stick to the facts. Yeah, I do want to get into Shane’s pants. That’s all. The rest is bullshit.

  Would’ve, if it wasn’t complicated already with this group. Hopefully things will return to normal, and I will, too.

  Reverse to my old self. Carefree. Happy. Living for the moment.

  “Hey, Seth.” A tall, blond guy claps Seth on the back, and I recognize Rafe. “Hi, Manon.” He glances at me, his gaze appraising. “Cassie.”

  “Hi.” I wiggle my fingers at him and get an elbow in my ribs from Manon.

  What?

  “The others are over there,” Rafe says, jabbing a thumb over his shoulder, his cat-like eyes hard. “Come on.”

  What did I do now? Crap, and we’ve only just arrived.

  “Be serious for five minutes,” Manon whispers in my ear as we follow him in the dimness of the bar.

  “I only wiggled my fingers at him.”

  “Well, he wasn’t amused.”

  “I noticed. So what?”

 
She sighs.

  Holy mother of baby Jesus. Is this how it’s going to be? Do I have to turn into Mother Teresa to redeem myself?

  I keep my mouth shut, though, as we make our way to the back of the bar. The group is taking up two tables and loads of chairs, even with the girls sitting in the boys’ laps. So many couples. Good God. And all of them are now looking at me.

  This is so not how I imagined this meeting. How am I supposed to talk to Jesse Lee and Amber with everyone else breathing down my neck?

  Panic grips me, and in turn I grip Manon’s hand. “Don’t leave me.”

  “Cass…” She pulls her hand away, gives me a smile. “Breathe.”

  “Hi, Cassie.” Ev hops off Micah’s lap and saunters over to us. She throws an arm over my shoulders and drags me toward the others. “Everyone’s having beer, but here they have awesome Chocolate Berry Martinis. I’m having one. Want to try?”

  “Sure,” I mutter, in too much of a shock to resist. “Sounds good.”

  Ev has barely spoken two words to me since Asher’s wedding. Her show of support is touching, like really touching, making my eyes sting, but the cynical part of me can’t trust so easily.

  Micah’s sitting at the end of the second table, next to Jesse and Amber. My steps falter when I see them, but I force myself to keep going.

  One of the guys gets up—Ocean, I realize when the dim headlights catch the blue in his hair. “I’ll get your drinks.”

  “Another Chocolate Berry Martini,” Ev calls out to him and drags his now empty chair over. “Here, sit.”

  It’s a command rather than an offer, and I obey, sinking into the chair, glancing around for Manon and Seth, my supporters. Any moment now, the trial will start.

  I swear to tell the truth and nothing but the truth, your Honor.

  Silence spreads around our table, stretching between us, vibrating. Jesse’s green eyes are fixed on me, hot with anger, his arms tight around Amber’s soft curves. She’s giving me a milder look, half-curiosity, half-nervousness.

  As if I’m about to jump over, push her aside and kiss Jesse Lee again. Against his will.

  “You wanted to talk to us,” Jesse says, his voice low and strained, his brows knit. “So talk.”