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I didn't put the picture in my jewelry box mainly because it would require me folding it and I decided that I was going to take that one and get it framed as soon as I looked less like I was one of those too stupid to live chicks who somehow managed to live through the horror movie despite their aforementioned too stupid to live-ness.
I left my arms unwrapped, all of the cuts having healed over. They were still all red and ugly, some bigger than others, but there was no longer any risk for infection. Besides, the bandages thing was too much of a hassle. I was over it.
I showered, spent way too much time fiddling over my hair and makeup, using a liberal amount of the tattoo cover-up, then hemmed and hawed my clothing choices for an embarrassing amount of time. It sounded like a casual event so there was no way I was showing up in a dress and pumps. But I didn't want to show up looking like a slob when I was meeting so many people for the first time. Normally, that was something I would have run past my sister.
I felt a stab of something akin to grief pierce through me. It was a feeling I knew I would have to get used to, a feeling that would never go away. Because, for me, it wouldn't matter if Elana decided to clean her act up and want her old life back... she wasn't my sister anymore. I put up with a lot of abuse from my father and, I imagined, I would continue to do so. But my father had never raised a hand, let alone a gun, to me. And if I knew my sister, that gun was absolutely loaded. Even if she never had any intention of using it on me, she was taking a major risk. What if something scared her? What if her finger twitched on the trigger? She could have killed me because of her selfishness.
I wasn't sure if I was big enough to forgive that.
And I knew I would never forget it.
So I envisioned a lot of moments in my future where the void she left in my life by her own actions would ache, would make me wince, would make me sad.
On a sigh, I reached for a pair of gray skinny jeans, a lightweight v-neck black sweater, and black bootie heels. Simple and understated, but still classy.
With a knot the size of Texas in my stomach, I drove to the florist, picking up a simple bouquet of mixed flowers for Gina, then made my way over toward the townhouse complex where his mother lived. It was the same housing complex that I had originally planned on buying a place in. It was a nice, winding complex of modest one or two bedroom houses, green lawns, and tons of kids. Even in the dead of the winter, they were out in force, on their bikes, on skateboards, playing hopscotch. It was so quaint that it belonged on some campaign commercial for a politician.
I spotted the cars before I spotted the people: Paine's Challenger, Breaker's SUV, Shooter's expensive sports car. The men were all standing in the driveway talking to another man in a leather jacket with a Henchmen logo on the back, his blond hair long on one side and shaved to a buzzcut on the other. His arm was thrown around a blond woman, tall, leggy. I couldn't see either of their faces as I tentatively parked my car behind all the others which would give me a second to think about what it meant that Paine, Breaker, and Shooter were friends with a member of a lawless bike gang. I grabbed the flowers and got out, deciding it probably made a lot of sense. They were all presently, or had at one time, been criminals. I guess they all ran together. Or at least got along.
"Hey babygirl," Paine said, reaching out to sling an arm around my hips as I moved in beside him.
Up close, I finally got a good look at the biker and his woman. And, well, he was hot. Fantastic features, deep green eyes, tattoos, cocky grin. His woman was a little older than him and freaking gorgeous in a way that said she could disarm you with a smile then slit your throat before you could see it coming kind of way. Her brown eyes focused on me for a second, taking in my arms and lingering on my cheek like maybe she knew what was underneath the makeup.
"This is Cash and Lo," Paine explained, nodding at the couple.
"Heya sweetheart," Cash said with a smile that would make any woman's (who didn't belong to Paine) knees wobble.
"Cash is Mom's neighbor. And a friend. Lo runs Hailstorm."
