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I crossed my arms and huffed. “I don’t know why I love you.”
“Yeah you do.” He grinned.
My lips twitching with amusement, I rolled my eyes. “Yeah,” I admitted, “I do.”
One of the bedroom doors opened and Jenna walked out. I tried to keep my surprise at her appearance from showing on my face, but I wasn’t sure I was completely successful. Jenna had lost a lot of weight. More so than when she’d been getting high more often than not. She had dark shadows under her haunted blue-gray eyes, and her hair looked dry and lifeless.
That was all it took. That one look at her, and I knew she had more than paid for her part in what had happened to Harris. Any punishment I could have thought up wouldn’t have come close to how much she had been punishing herself. My anger with her disappeared and was replaced with compassion as I stepped forward without even thinking about it and hugged her.
Jenna’s thin body tensed at first. I knew she was still upset because she thought I was trying to turn Harris against her, but I’d try to fix that. After a long moment I heard her blow out a shuddery breath and her arms wrapped around me too. “It’s good to see you,” she murmured against my ear.
I pulled back enough to look up at her. “You too. I’m so sorry, Jen.”
She gave me a shaky smile. “Me too.”
Drake cleared his throat. “If you ladies are ready? We have an appointment in half an hour.”
Angie, still standing by the door, opened it. “You three have fun.”
Jenna grabbed her purse and keys and followed us out. As she passed Angie, the little blonde grasped her hand and gave it a small squeeze. “Call me later, okay?”
The look that crossed Jenna’s face was so intense I had to look away. Their friendship was closer than I realized and I was glad that Jenna had someone so kind in her life to help her.
The door closed behind us and Drake took each of our hands. “Angie wouldn’t say where we were going,” Jenna told her brother as we stepped into the elevator.
“He wouldn’t tell me either,” I assured her as the elevator started to lower.
“You’ll both have to wait and see. It’s not long now, so you can wait a little longer.”
Back in the car, Drake pulled out of the garage and into traffic. Jenna and I had both taken the back seat because I wanted to talk to her. I hadn’t seen her since January and I wanted to catch up.
There wasn’t much to catch up on, though. She hadn’t left her apartment in weeks. I quickly realized that Angie was her only connection to the outside world other than Shane and Drake, who visited her once a week. My heart hurt for her because I knew she was having such a hard time since her sister had stopped talking to her. When Jenna was younger, she and Natalie had been closer than any sisters I’d ever seen. Closer than even my relationship with Lana. The distance had first started when Natalie had given birth to Trinity, and only gotten worse over the years as Jenna had gone out to explore the world with her art. Since January, their relationship had become completely cut off.
The time passed quickly and when Drake pulled to a stop I took a look around. We were in West Hollywood and Drake had parked right outside one of the best tattoo shops in the state. “We’re getting ink?”
He shot me a grin. “Of course.”
“All of us?” Jenna frowned as she got out on her side and looked up at the shop. “I’m not a big fan of tattoos, Dray.”
“You have a few,” he said. “One more won’t hurt you.”
“But—”
He didn’t give her time to protest. Taking her hand, he led the way into the tattoo shop. The place was quiet when we entered, but three men stood behind the front counter, all of them looking bored until they saw Drake.
The guy in the middle moved around the counter and stepped forward to greet us. “Stevenson. Good to see you.”
They shook hands and he pulled Jenna forward. “You guys ready for us?”
“We’re all set up. Just tell us where you want them and we’ll get started right away.” He nodded toward the other two guys. “I have my two best guys ready for the girls.”
“Thanks, man. Give me a second with them, will you?”
Without questioning it, the three guys disappeared into the back, and Drake slowly turned to face me and Jenna. I was beyond curious now. Not only were we getting ink, but apparently Drake had already picked out what we were getting. What the hell was going on?
His blue-gray eyes, when I saw them, completely stopped anything I might have said. The look on his face told me that this was important to him. Jenna’s hand was still in his, but he reached for mine and gave us both a firm squeeze. “You two are more than family to me. I love you both so damn much and it’s killing me that you are both going through so much. That you’ve both felt so alone and have done things to yourselves that could have taken you away from me forever.”
I lowered my eyes to the floor, unable to look at him a second longer. I doubted the shame of what I had done would ever leave me.
