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And I’m glad about that.
“I know I already asked you about these,” Ransom says after a while, breaking the silence as he traces the edge of one of my scars. “And if you don’t want to talk about them, you don’t have to. But will you tell me what happened? I want to know.”
I hesitate, the way I usually do when this subject comes up, but none of the usual defensiveness flares. Ransom doesn’t sound disgusted or horrified, just curious, and I relax against him, nodding.
“They’re from burns,” I say, my voice soft. “I got them when I was really little. I was in a fire.”
He lets out a low whistle, running the cloth down my arm and over the worst of the scarring. “Do you remember any of it?”
I shake my head.
“No.” Then I consider it for a moment and add, “Maybe. I dream about fire sometimes. About being trapped in a place filled with heat and smoke. I can never see anything, and I can’t even really breathe or scream for help. But I don’t know if that’s a real memory from when I was little or just something my brain cooked up from thinking about it so much and wondering what happened.”
“Maybe a bit of both,” Ransom suggests.
“Maybe,” I reply with a shrug. “But I’ll never know either way. I don’t know much at all about my life before whatever this accident was. I wish I did. I wish I knew who my real family was, at least. I assume they died, and that’s how I ended up in the system. But I have no real idea what happened.”
I run my fingers along the scarring on my thigh, trailing them through the soapy water.
“It’s weird,” I continue quietly. “To miss people I never knew. But sometimes I get this pang in my chest.” I draw one wet hand up and touch my chest, right above where Malice tattooed me. Right where I can feel my heart beating. “Sometimes I feel this… sadness. This kind of longing. And I know it means I miss them, even though I don’t really know who they were.”
Ransom is quiet for a beat, then he wraps an arm around me. “I get that.”
I turn a little in his arms, looking up at him curiously. “But didn’t you know your parents?”
He nods. “Yeah, of course I did. I just mean I know what it’s like to miss someone who isn’t here anymore. I miss my mom.”
From the way all the brothers talk about Diana, it makes sense that they still miss her to this day. But it feels like there’s something else Ransom isn’t telling me. There’s something behind his eyes that flickers and fades when I peer at him, but I don’t push it. There are probably hundreds on hundreds of secrets the three of them have, and even if they started telling them to me for some reason, I’d probably never know all of them.
Besides, there’s still an end date on our time together—a moment in the not too distant future when they’ll go back to their lives and I’ll go back to mine, when the forces that pushed us together in the first place will fade away. And even though I know that will be for the best, it makes me want to savor the last bit of time I have with the brothers.
So it’s easy to settle back into Ransom’s arms and let the heat of the water keep soothing my aches. It probablyshouldn’tbe easy, considering who he is, but ‘shouldn’t’ stopped mattering a while ago.
All of this is something I shouldn’t be doing.
And yet, I feel so relaxed and happy in his embrace. For the first time in a long time, maybe in my whole life, I feel cared about.
I just want to soak that up a little more.
43
RANSOM
I singalong under my breath to the music I have playing in the shop, tightening a nut before stepping back to give the whole thing a once-over.
“Looks good,” I mutter to myself, reaching for the rag tucked through my belt loop and wiping grease off my hands.
It’s good to be working again.
Business has been a bit light since we pissed off Ethan Donovan and his gang. Well… sinceMalicepissed them off. But that’s the thing about being a family. A unit. We’re all in this shit together, and Vic and I have his back no matter what. Besides, he did exactly what all of us wanted to do in that moment, when we saw Donovan’s lackey pawing at her.
Still, we’re gonna have to figure out what the fuck to do about Donovan scaring potential customers away, and we need to do it soon. It’s probably too late to fix things enough to make a deal with Ethan, and I can’t even picture Malice going along with that anyway. It’s not like he’s going to apologize, and realistically, he shouldn’t have to.
They’re the ones who fucked up first.
That means we’re going to have to hunt down other business.
And if Ethan decides to fuck with us more, we’ll have to take him on more aggressively. Malice did have a point when he said we can’t afford to show weakness. Looking weak invites people to go right for the fucking jugular.
