Page 84

I looked across the dark water toward an island I could not see from shore.

"Wren," I said. "Like the bird."

I got back to Ironmoor about an hour before dawn.

Climbing the crooked stair to my room took longer than usual. I went one step at a time with my hand against the wall, then unlocked the door with my own key and slipped inside as quietly as I could manage with several cracked ribs.

Wren was still asleep.

She had curled onto her side in the middle of my bed, still wearing my shirt. Her hair had dried into a wild dark tangle across my pillow, and one hand was tucked beneath her cheek.

Near her temple, where the dye was beginning to grow out, I noticed a streak of pure white that I had somehow missed before. The weak gray light from the window caught it clearly.

I did not wake her.

Instead, I lowered myself carefully onto the rug beside the bed and used my jacket as a pillow. I was close enough that I could have reached up and touched the hand hanging over the edge of the mattress.

I did not.

I simply lay there and listened to her breathe.

For five years, my life had been black sand, blood, and interest payments. During all that time, I had trained myself not to want anything I could not earn, fight for, or protect with my own hands.

Wanting something gave other people leverage.

Men like Vey understood that better than anyone.

But there I was, lying on the floor of my own room with broken ribs, listening to a woman who believed she was nothing breathe in my bed.

And for the first time in a long time, I wanted something anyway.

God help me, I wanted it.

11

Chapter 11

Wren

Iwoke up in a bed that smelled of cinnamon, and for one long, blissfully confused moment, I had no idea where I was.

Then everything from the night before came back at once: the pool, the flash, the gallery, his mouth on my hip. I lay perfectly still beneath Jax Rivera’s blankets, my face burning against his pillow, and waited for the embarrassment to kill me. It didn’t, which was frankly annoying.

Gray morning light seeped through the little window, and somewhere beside the bed, someone was breathing. I rolled over carefully and looked down.

Jax was asleep on the rug with his jacket bunched beneath his head and one arm folded tightly across his body. Sleep made him look younger, but it also made it impossible to miss how bad he looked. Even without my glasses, I could see the bruise spreading from beneath his left arm, down his side, and around onto his stomach where his sweater had ridden up. The skin was swollen and mottled deep red, purple, and black, with the darkest bruising concentrated near the center.

There were four marks in the middle of it.

They ran side by side, long and slightly curved.

I knew what made wounds like those. I had cleaned enough dogs after they had gone through a fence with a large cat waiting on the other side.

Before I had even decided to move, I was out of bed and kneeling beside him.

“Jax.” I pressed two fingers to his throat. His pulse was fast, but steady. “Jax, wake up.”

His eyes opened immediately, and his hand closed around my wrist before he seemed fully conscious. The moment he realized it was me, the tension left his face and that lazy, crooked grin appeared.