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CHAPTER TWO
Adam
Iwas in serious need of a good fight or a good fuck. Either one would take the edge off this all too familiar burning want rolling through my system with the finesse of a freight train about to jump the tracks. The same one I’d stifled with Faith McMasters our entire “friendship.” The one I’d caved to the day I was carted off to prison, then bottled back up, leading me into too many prison yard altercations.
Unfortunately, neither was in my near future. I couldn’t get into anything resembling a fight without violating my parole, and my straitlaced parole officer, Julio, would happily have them lock my ass back up and throw away the key.
As for the fuck—well, ever since my release, I’d had my share of propositions both at Rudy’s bar and at my brother’s tattoo studio, Espérer Ink, where I was an apprentice. Even now, as I hunched over the thawed pig’s thigh, inking the intricate design I’d drawn myself, I was having a hard time concentrating as the frustrated energy coursed through my veins, needing an outlet. It was there for the taking, but... Something kept me walking away from barflies and chicks whose only interest was in banging a guy with an ankle bracelet and prison tats. I had to be fucking crazy, but I wasn’t interested in being a trophy. Not when I’d tasted perfection.
Call me a damn fool, but one reckless moment that I should never have had with Faith McMasters ruined me for other women. I could only pray that someone else would come along that could hold a candle to her before my balls blew up or my hand froze up from jerking off.
But I’d held my own well enough for six years in lockup—no pun intended. I figured I could hold out a little longer. Maybe.
“Hey,” my big brother, Tobias, said from the doorway.
I paused the needle and glanced up as he strolled over and eyed my work. “Looks good, bro. Your linework is solid. No blowouts.” He leaned in for a closer inspection. “What colors you going to use?”
I leaned back and studied the tribal piece. “Probably just heavy black with some hits of red and gray. Simple. Nothing too bright.”
He nodded and met my eyes. “Good choice. You’re picking this up really fast, brother.”
“Thanks. I’ve got a great teacher.”
He smiled. “You like working here?”
“Eh.” I shrugged with a half smile. “The boss can be a dick sometimes, but it’s alright.” We both laughed. “Seriously, I really do like it. It’s been cool of you to take me on and teach me. It also helps that I have a badass sister-in-law who comes by with dinner sometimes.” I wiggled my brows, recalling the Thai food she’d brought us both the night before.
Love filled his eyes at the mention of Hope. “She is a badass.”
“How is the new house?” I asked.
“It’s good. We’re making it work and the drive isn’t bad. I even got to get the Bel Air out on the road today.”
I grinned, knowing how much he loved that car. “Yeah?”
“Yeah. Charger’s in the shop.” He lifted his chin as he leaned against the counter. “So, you doing okay?”
“Fine.”
My eyes flicked to the front of the shop where his best friend and coworker, CJ, was laughing and bullshitting with their newest hire, Andromeda, a statuesque redhead with full sleeves of tattoos and a retro style straight from the fifties whom he’d found in the French Quarter. She specialized in black-and-white realism tats as well as piercings and had brought in a whole new clientele.
Her gaze drifted to mine and she winked from behind her lime-green cat-eye glasses.
I turned back to my brother. “I’m just tired.”
“You sleeping?”
I shrugged. “Some.”
It was hard adapting to quiet after the constant chaos and noise of prison. The silence was deafening, and I’d taken to blaring the music in my headphones to get even a few hours each night.
Didn’t help, either, that the bane of my existence lived just a few blocks away and occupied my every thought every night. Knowing that Faith was that close, still healing from being stabbed nearly to death in a mugging was torture. I’d gone to lay eyes on her when she was still unconscious in the hospital, to see for myself that she was alive and whole, but once she woke up, I’d kept my distance—though it went against every protective instinct in my body to stay away from her. It took all I had to stay away on her birthday, knowing she was stuck in that place. Got stone-cold drunk instead. She didn’t need my drama. But more than anything I wanted to find out who hurt her and rip their heart from their chest. Tobias knew that and urged me, more than once, to let the chief of police—his new brother-in-law, Mateo Beckett—do his job. That wasn’t easy.
A changed man had walked out of those prison gates. I was quieter now. More controlled. But a potent fury still boiled deep in my gut from a lifetime of being kicked around as Bishop trash. Spit on. Overlooked. Overrun. Barreled over as the Redemption punching bag and scapegoat. The only people in my life who hadn’t treated me that way? My big brother and Faith. They were the only ones who saw me for who I was. No judgment.
Don’t get me wrong. I was far from innocent and no damn saint. But I was done paying for the sins of my forefathers and for the DNA that flowed in my veins. It seemed that Tobias was too.
He clapped a hand to my shoulder. “Why don’t you get outta here? Get some rest? You can finish this up tomorrow.”
