“I don’t care, Kane. Go back to Faceless.” I slam the bedroom door closed behind me and start stripping out of my clothing. It hits the floor with a gentle thud mimicking the almost vacant beat of my heart.
It’s not until I’m under the hot spray of the shower that I let myself cry. The water hides the tears but it doesn’t drown out the sound of my sobs.
I told myself I’d be strong, but how can I be strong when I’m nothing but a cracked shell with a hollow center?
The shower door opens and closes and Kane steps in fully naked. His body presses against my back and he holds me so tight I can hardly breathe.
“We’ll find her, Immy.”
“We won’t.”
“We will.” He kisses the curve of my shoulder. “We’ll find you too.”
I bite my lip and sniffle like a child. “I still love you Kane. I can feel it there, it’s deep, it’s buried under a lot of heavy shit but it’s there. Couldn’t hurt you. I thought it’d be easier this way. I thought you’d move on and forget all about me.” It’s not a lie either. “I thought you’d get married, have kids… didn’t think I’d ever have to explain this shit to you.”
“I know.” He kisses my neck this time after pulling my hair to one side. “You don’t gotta say it again. You don’t gotta say shit to me again, Imogen. No more explainin’.” He caresses my stomach, gently gliding his fingers over my scar. “Just healing now. Gonna fix you. Gonna fix us both.”
“You really think we’ll find her?”
“Absolutely. Not a doubt in my mind.”
For the first time since she was taken, there’s not a doubt in mine either.
* * *
“You’ve gotta hold still,” I hiss as he slides his hand up my thigh.
The buzzing machine in my hand rolls over his skin, leaving beads of ink and blood. He told me to tattoo him, who was I to say no? Though there’s not much of his skin left that isn’t branded already, I get the space over his heart and I’m using it wisely.
“Naw, you won’t fuck up.” He’s so cocky, still the same as he was way back then. It makes me smile, not like I used to, but the smile is real. “You’re the prettiest girl I ever saw, Imogen Hardy.”
“Stop,” I growl playfully, and dip the needle into the ink. Then I look at the tattoo on his inner wrist. It’s my tattoo, one that tells the world Kane is mine and always will be. I guess his love for me is as permanent as the ink imbedded in his skin. Even after all this time.
He tenses as the bell above the door beeps.
“Hi honey, I’m home,” Marshall announces, his shoes clicking on the sterile ground. “Kane Jessop as I live and breathe.”
“Marshall Jones,” Kane replies, making me stop what I’m doing so he can stand and shake Marshall’s hand.
Marshall eyes Kane’s bare chest with no small amount of appraisal.
“Is my Immy working her inky magic?” Marshall asks and Kane, who is chewing on a wad of gum nods and reclaims his seat.
“She’s better than she says,” he admits, looking down at the piece I’ve already spent two hours on.
Which is saying something because I can get kind of braggy.
“Agreed.” Marshall winks at me. “So y’all are both back in each other’s lives?”
“Yeah,” I answer and Marshall’s face gets all smug.
“So, I made the right call.”
“Should’a made that call a lot sooner,” Kane puts in but there’s no vehemence. He’s simply stating a fact he believes. “How have you been, Martian?”
“Never disliked that name, Jessop.” Marshall straddles a chair backwards. “But I’ve been good. As have you. I can tell. Size of those biceps.” He whistles low and long which has me rolling my eyes. “Still lifting tires at your daddy’s garage?”
Kane nods and smiles softly at me. “Course. Where else would I be?”
“Your ambition is admirable,” Marshall jokes, his sarcasm evident in his tone.
Kane flips him off and motions for me to start again. “Fuck you. I’m earning more doing what I do than most people.” He’s probably right about that. No shame in being a mechanic, and a good one. Heard he sprays cars and does all the pretty shit to them as well now which isn’t an easy trade. “What are you doing these days?”
This might be the first time he has ever asked Marshall. Back in school Kane hated him purely because he saw him as a threat.
“Lotta bullshit.”
“Right?”
“Adult life fucking sucks man.” Marshall says this with such a comical tone.
“Spoken like a true stoner,” I put in and we share a smile.
“So how did y’all get from what you were, to you lettin’ her tattoo your left tit?”
Kane’s eyes do a narrow smiling thing that they do and his lips twitch at the ends. “Decided to stop being mad over shit we can’t change.”
“Decided it’s better if we work together.”
“You gonna go hunting again?” Marshall asks and I nod.
“Hunting?” Kane asks, wetting his lips as he looks between us both.
“That’s what we call it when she goes looking for, Flipper.”
“Flipper?”
I shrug sadly. “That’s what we used to call her. She was a mover. Never stopped wriggling.”
“Looked alien as fuck,” Marshall admits with a shudder and we share another smile but then I concentrate on my art and keep moving the inky needle across Kane’s chest. “She used to stick out her elbow or somethin’ and it’d look pointy like when a shark’s fin breeches the water surface.”
I remember those days and the discomfort, but I never complained. I would have stayed pregnant forever if it meant keeping her safe with me.
“I didn’t get any of that.”
“I thought you would with somebody else.”
He brushes my hair off my face and tucks it behind my ear making me smile again, softly this time. I don’t smile enough but he never expected me to. I’ve never been a particularly expressive person and Kane was always happy to just be with me regardless.
Once he told me I didn’t need to smile to be beautiful. That I should only smile when I meant it.
He wanted everything to be real between us and I fucked that up and yet here he is, backing my corner, helping me figure shit out.
“Why are you here anyway?” I ask Marshall, still looking at the ink. I don’t lose focus, not even for a second.
So far I have the outline done and a small fraction of the shading. It’s going to eventually be his Challenger. A car he still has. It’ll look like a photograph when I’m done.
“Just checking you’re still breathing.”
“He means you,” I utter to Kane who chuckles. Then without looking up I add, “Lock the door on your way out, Marsh.”
“Damn, it’s like that is it?” Marshall isn’t offended in the slightest, he’s just being a drama llama. “That hurts real deep.”
With a cutting look his way, I raise a brow and nod to the door.
Laughing he backs away with his hands raised. “I’m gone.”
“Get gone quicker.”
I put the machine down for a moment and flex my hand, that is until Kane grabs my hips and pulls me onto his lap. He forces me to straddle him without much coaxing and smirks up at me.
“This isn’t sanitary,” I admonish. “I’m going to have to clean you again, and change my gloves…”
I’m still not sure how we went from shower to tattoo.
He dried me, I dried him, we shared a laugh like when we were kids and for a moment I saw the boy I fell in love with. Though older, the Kane Jessop I remember still smiles at me like the mischievous man-boy I knew. He’s still in there, I don’t even have to dig deep to find him. It brings me hope that maybe I’m still here too. Maybe Kane Jessop is wishful thinking, or maybe he sees the girl I used to be brimming below the surface of her hurt.
He leaned down to kiss me, softer this time but I pulled
away. I don’t even know why. I wanted to kiss him desperately. But every time he kisses me, I just remember what I lost.
That’s when we got talking instead as we dressed, and he said he wanted the challenger on his chest and could I fit him in. I was desperate to escape my apartment and now here we are.
He’s hard beneath me and the feel of it pressing against my parted thighs, covered only by the stiff denim of my tight jeans and the lace thong, is making me tingle through my entire body.
The plastic of my apron crackles as he rips it away and my hands go to his waist.
His muscles are so hard beneath my touch, which I can’t say is soft. Months of hard labor at that fucking cult, plus a lifetime of drawing since have made my fingers harder in places. On both hands, not just one. Though he doesn’t seem to mind.
“You haven’t aged a bit, Immy,” he compliments, gripping my waist and bucking his hips up to meet mine.
“You’ve only gotten better,” I appraise and trace the contours of his abs. He’s a God. His body has been chiseled by the angels. There’s no other way to describe this masterpiece. “I didn’t really kill him.”
His guarded eyes find mine. “What?”
“It’s a story I tell myself to make it all better. I’ve done nothing but tell lies my entire life, I don’t know how to stop.”
“You didn’t sever his spine with a knife?”
I shake my head, feeling ashamed. “No. I wish I did. I wish I could have hurt him like that.”
“So what did happen?”
“I pushed him, he fell, hit his head and had a seizure that put him into a coma.”
His hands squeeze. “Can you stop lying to me now?”
I nod. “I’ll try.”
“No trying, just… stop lyin’. Okay? I don’t have time for it and neither do you.”
“I thought you’d walk away.”
“You want me to?”
I don’t know how to answer that. So instead I sigh and choose honesty, picking the first thing that comes to mind. “I don’t want to hurt again.”
“I ain’t gonna hurt you.”
“I know,” I whisper, chewing on my lip. “You never did.”
“Fresh start, Immy. No more fucking around.” He sits up, mindful of his tattoo, and holds me tight against him as I push my hands through his hair. “I’m gonna stay here with you, tomorrow we’re gonna see this Webber guy and then we’re gonna find our kid.” He gives me a reassuring squeeze. “Okay?”
I nod. “Okay.”
“You’re going to be Immy again. You’re going to come back to Faceless and be with the people who love you.”
“Like who?”
“Like me, like Poppy, like my folks.”
“Poppy,” I say softly. “How is she?”
“She’s good, she’s seeing this guy from out of town. Seems to be a decent man.”
I frown. “You talk to her often?”
“Not really, but she pops in when she gets time, to check on me, to see if I’ve heard about you.”
“She didn’t come see me when I returned.”
“She wasn’t in Faceless. She told me to tell you to call her.” His thumbs massage deep circles into my skin. “Said she’s pissed you haven’t been in touch.” When I look away he moves his head to follow my line of sight. “She looked for you too, you know. Until your brother returned. She asked him where you were and that’s when we heard you left with Marshall. Nobody questioned it because he wasn’t reported missing either.” He sighs heavily. “It’s so fucked up. If you’d told me back then that he was gay… I’d have—”
“No use looking back.”
“You do, to keep hating on me every fuckin’ chance you get. Don’t know why.”
I feel guilty, I deserve to feel guilty. “My brother said you were seeing someone else. Said you told him to tell me you never wanted to see me again.”
“And you believed him?”
“Yeah,” I whisper, my guilt winding deeper. “As much as I wanted you to move on and have a family, it hurt knowing you had.”
The room is now filling with our mutual pain. We both share a thought but he verbalizes it.
“Let’s stop talking about it.”
“Okay.”
He presses his lips to mine for a lingering moment that’s entirely too brief.
“Finish my tattoo,” he breathes against my mouth.
“Okay.”
A few hours later…
He loves it. Adores it. Can’t stop looking at it despite the fact I told him not to uncover it. He’s a fucking nightmare for anybody wanting to keep shit sterile.
“One day I want a man to look at me the way you look at that tattoo,” I jest, feeling less uptight now we’ve been together for quite a while.
Kane has made himself at home with his suitcase at the foot of my bed. He knew he’d be coming and staying. He’s either very presumptuous or very optimistic. Either way, when he dives onto my couch in plaid pajama bottoms, the bandage covering his chest, he opens his arm to me, and I stare at him for the longest time. The length of his body from head to toe, the thickness of his thighs and biceps, the incredible shape of his toned stomach, the scar on his jaw where he cut himself shaving, the way he’s pulled his hair up into a messy knot that suits him so perfectly.
“You just gonna stand there?” He’s amused, not offended. His arm is still open.
Eventually I can’t seem to tell myself a good reason why I shouldn’t cuddle up to Kane on my sofa, so I do just that. I climb over the arm of the couch, crawl towards him and rest my head on his ribs, far from his incredible new piece of ink. He smells smoky and sweet, a new scent. He must have put some kind of antiperspirant on despite the fact he’s clean and fresh already.
My fingertips tickle his side, making his skin break out in goosebumps.
“Feel seventeen again?” I ask softly because it’s all I can think about.
“Fuck, I feel everything again, Immy.”
I kiss his side, purely to feel his soft skin against my lips and he nuzzles my hair.
I lift my head raising my mouth to receive his and gently we meet. For a while we stay like this, kissing softly, until it gets more heated and our breathing gets more desperate. For a moment there I thought we were going to do soft and gentle but it has become a frenzy of him trying to pull my underwear down my thighs.
He flips us over so I’m on my back and kisses his way down my body. I tug on his hair, stopping when he reaches my stomach and tries to slide my gown up.
“For all my bravado earlier, I don’t really want you up close and personal with my stomach.”
His incredible blue eyes glitter in the dark. “Why?”
“It looks like the inside of a crisp packet.”
At that he laughs until he sees I’m being serious. “You’re worried the part of you that gave life to our kid isn’t pretty enough for me?”
“It’s not my best asset, Kane.”
“It fuckin’ is.” He rips up my gown anyway and kisses below each of my breasts.
When he rests his forehead against my sternum and whispers something, I close my eyes. Unable to watch this moment that was once upon a time stolen from both of us. Flipper never got to hear her daddy’s voice.
“Kane,” I mutter sadly and grab his hair again.
“I feel sick,” he admits. “Knowing she’s out there, not knowing if she’s happy or sad, or if the people who took her would’a taught her shit like we would have.” He sits up, seeming to have lost the mood. “Would have taught her to drive already, she’d have her own quad, would’a stuck her name in sparkly shit on her helmet.”
“Kane,” I repeat, even quieter this time. I rub my hand over his shoulder. “Try not the think about it, it’s maddening.”
“We might’a been young, Immy, but I’d have done the right thing. Wouldn’t have treated her like my momma treated me or yours treated you.”
“I know.”
He inhales long and
slow through his nose and I can see his emotions in his eyes like a storm on the horizon. He’s processing but it’s hurting him.
“Come here,” I breathe, grabbing his long hair and yanking. He doesn’t move so I tug harder. “I said come here.”
Finally, he drifts my way, leaning his body just close enough for me to place my lips on his.
“Let’s do something fun,” I say, straddling his lap and massaging his scalp with my fingers. I have missed how soft his hair is. He conditions now, I can tell. It’s incredibly sexy.
“Like what?” he asks, his eyes guarded now and tired.
“Let’s go for a ride.”
“Where?”
“Fuck it, who cares? Let’s just go until we run out of gas.”
He laughs once and grins at me. “Don’t have my car, flew here remember?”
“I’ve got mine.”
“Yours is a piece of shit.”
My jaw drops. “Fuck you. She’s amazing.”
“She isn’t a she, she identifies as a tin can or some shit.”
I throw my head back and laugh for real. It feels good. “You’re a mean boy, Kane Jessop.”
“And you have shit taste in cars.”
“I have great taste in men though.”
His smile is so cocky and arrogant and so entirely handsome it hurts my eyes. “Yeah you do.”
Webber’s Office
“These are all the files I have on that case.” Webber drops the folder onto his desk and looks between us both. “You can’t take these out of here. We have to keep the identity of the other families involved under wraps.”
“That’s fine,” Kane utters as he pores over the first two pages and winces. “This is fucked up.”
“Immy got the kinder side of Righteous Hill.”
“Righteous Hill?” Kane questions, looking up from the files.
“That’s what it was called,” I reply, cringing. “They didn’t have a very creative board meeting before deciding what to name the place that was going to ruin the lives of hundreds of young people.”
Webber hums his agreement. “Still gives me chills the kind of things that went on there.”
Vicious Page 24
