Jagged Edge

I nod.

“Okay. You’ll be all right here. Stay inside, don’t go out. We need to talk when I’m back, make a plan.”

A plan.

I don’t want to go to that event, even if it was all a misunderstanding. But he can’t leave yet. I’m still not sure where I’m standing, what I’m doing. What we are. So I do the only thing I know:

I grab his shoulders and crush our mouths together, desperate to taste and touch him. Even if it’s not in payment… this is the only way I know to get close to someone. This intimacy he’s been teaching me, skin to skin. Heart to heart.

I push him back onto the armchair where he first fucked me, what feels like ages ago. I tug down his sweats, cursing at the delay, then spread his legs and go down on my knees.

“Jase. Hold up.”

But I can’t. This is urgent. I need… him. Close. Closer.

I don’t know what the fuck I need.

His hand grips the back of my head, stroking, and I shudder. He tugs until I lay my cheek on his thigh, and he keeps stroking. Petting me.

Maybe this. This feels good. Sends tingles down my back, makes my skin shiver pleasantly. His other hand caresses my shoulder, my arm, and I sag against him, all the urgency seeping out of me.

Then he says, “The scars. How did you get them?”

Oh fuck.

I jerk back but his grip only tightens. It makes my breath rattle in my chest, and my heart hammer against my ribs.

“It’s, uh.” Shit. Just say something and be done with it. “I think it was an accident I was in. As a kid.”

And for some reason my stomach twists, as if it’s true. But it’s not.

Not that I’d know. Or that I’d wanna know. Can’t remember anyway.

Christ, I forgot about the scars for a moment there. Maybe because I got comfortable here, and I’ve lived with the scars for so long. Since I was a kid, and…

My stomach twists again, and I swallow bile. The world starts to darken at the edges, like it sometimes does when I try to remember about my childhood. I look up at Raine, look into that deep blue gaze, and he frowns.

“Fuck,” he mutters, and grabs me under the armpits, dragging me toward him. I hadn’t realized I’d been listing sideways. He lifts me up on the armchair with disturbing ease, as if I weigh nothing, and settles me down in his lap, wrapping his arms around me. “I’m an idiot. I push too much.”

“Don’t,” I whisper.

“Don’t what?”

“Don’t stop pushing. Don’t let go.”

He’s silent for a beat. Then he presses a kiss to my hair. “Never,” he says. “For as long as you want me to, I’ll be by your side.”

Chapter Thirty-Five

Raine

The event’s second day is even better than the first. It’s snowing outside, the sky is gray, the wind icy, and inside Collateral the party is in full force.

Goths, punks, proper middle-class families, grizzled rockers and tattooed old ladies mingle among the tables, checking out the wares and designs. The buzzing of tattoo guns is a constant background to the music playing on the speakers.

I would have loved Jason to come along, but he looked so tired that I didn’t press him. My mind’s with him, through the noise and work, and I’m thinking of calling, checking on him, soon.

I’m taking payment for a small ink job from a bulky man who looks like a biker—which of course reminds me of Simon Gomez and of Jason—when Megan comes over and stands at the counter, waiting for me to finish so she can talk to me.