Until Jinx - Happily Ever Alpha World

“She’s close, Jinx. Way too fucking close. We’ve got security and eyes on Sienna, but there needs to be bodies around her. I figure that during the day we can do drive-bys, and you can get the guys to take turns checking in on her. At night we’ll do the same, and you’ll be there.”

Shit, how was I going to get Sienna to accept me staying with her every night? We had the projects we were working on so I had a genuine reason to go there—even though she was reason enough—but to spend the night?

Sighing, I rubbed my face with my hand. “Sure, Nico, we’ll get it arranged. If you could organize the drive-bys, that’d be great. I’ll speak to Wes and the others and arrange for her to have company during the day.” Then, I remembered to ask what I was going to text him later. “Has there been anything on the cameras?”

“She’s got an unusually large number of raccoons, squirrels, and small things in her area. When something with enough mass cuts in front of the camera, it sends an alert to us to check the footage and even sends a clip of what it was. It usually averages three a week to one or two a night, depending on where you live.”

“What’s Sienna’s?”

“Roughly seven.”

That wasn’t so bad. “A week? That’s average going on your statistics.”

“A night, Jinx. Seven a night.”

Chewing on the inside of my lip, I started tapping my foot agitatedly. Was something stirring the animals up? “We need cameras in the woods and pointed at that side of her fence. Is there a way to set up decoys with red lights that look like we’ve tried to hide them and failed? If we aim them at a certain area of her fence, it’ll herd anyone who sees them toward the ones we want them to go to.”

“I was going to organize the cameras, but I like the idea of the decoy ones. Usually, we’d need permission first to put them in the woods, but I’m owed some favors, so I’ll get that all cleared and done.”

Dropping my head, I stared blindly between my legs at the ground. “We have to keep her safe, Nico.” It felt like my lungs were being squeezed as I rasped the words out. “Failure isn’t an option. I can’t lose Sienna.”

I had a lot of respect for Nico Mayson as it was—hell, I had it for the entire family—but when he said, “You won’t ever have to deal with losing her, man. We’ll make sure of it,” it grew from respect to something bigger and deeper with how confident he was.

A man like him wouldn’t make an assurance he wasn’t sure he could keep, and I knew that from his family’s history. They’d faced down shit like this many times, so he had experience and knew what he could and couldn’t say as confidently as he had.

“I…” I took in a deep, shuddering breath. “I owe you for this. Anything you want, just name it.”

Bursting out laughing, he said, “You can do me the tattoo of Sophie I’ve wanted for years. I’ve got the kids baby pictures with the first time they wrote their names tattooed all over me, but she wouldn’t let me do the same with her. After the last guy who could do portraits left, she said I wasn’t getting it done because the new tattoo artist would make her look like Princess Fiona from Shrek.”

“It happens,” I choked out through my laughter.

“Under it, I want her signature, too. She’s under my skin and a vital part of me anyway, and she may as well be on the surface so she’s always with me.”

Something began to take shape in my mind. Sure, I knew how I’d do his tattoo, but I wanted something similar of Sienna on my own.

Goals. Some people made relationship goals of little houses with white picket fences, a dog, and two point five kids.

My goal was to have Sienna on my skin, for what I knew were the same reasons Nico had for Sophie.

It hadn’t been long, and I don’t even know when it’d happened, but she’d become a vital part of me. Maybe she’d always been like that, and I’d just been breathing and existing until she came back without even knowing it?

I didn’t even want to consider life without her in it now, though. It seemed like every move I made was with her in mind, and I loved spending time with her, even if we were just painting and listening to classic rock.

Every moment with her was something, and if I had her on my skin—when the time was right—then maybe I’d have with her what Nico had with Sophie.

Discussing it a bit more, Nico relayed to me what July had said to him earlier about solving shit soon because she couldn’t put up with Jane for much longer. She’d said someone needed to have the patience of a saint to deal with her, and she wasn’t a saint, so to hurry the fuck up before he was visiting her behind bars.