Jagged Edge

“Not today, Jase, sorry.”

I see his face fall. I’m treating him like his needs don’t matter, and it’s breaking my goddamn heart. I’m a shitty boyfriend right now, but I have my reasons.

If I’m right. If not, I’m just a stupid, paranoid boyfriend.

So sue me. After everything that’s gone down, what’s a little paranoia?

Clients come and go, the Inked Brotherhood come by to say hi, bodies are inked and the snow keeps falling outside, and I ask myself in all seriousness if I’ve gone crazy. Jason needs to get out, forget the past, he needs to be happy. The MC is gone, and Simon has surely fled to Texas, or to Mexico.

Sounds too much like a goddamn fairytale ending.

As the evening comes down and the clients leave, the Damage artists waving goodbye one by one as they close their stations and go, I get a prickly feeling between my shoulder blades and up the back of my neck.

Was there a strange noise?

Uneasy, I look up from the computer screen where I’ve been re-checking next week’s schedule, and glance at Jason who’s Googling something on my tablet, his broken leg in the cast stretched before him, propped on another chair.

Then I glance at the darkness outside the glass façade of the shop, at the car lights flashing and the shadows of passersby flitting like dark ghosts.

Nothing out of the ordinary. I’m imagining things… right?

But that wrongness is gnawing at me.

“Jase,” I whisper, moving toward him. He’s seated beside Ocean’s station. Earlier, my brother was showing him how he mixes the colors for the inking. “Jason.”

He looks up, and I’m still wondering if to trust this bad feeling that’s twisting up my stomach, when I hear the back door slam open.

And I know with a sudden clarity that I’m right.

As I press the alarm button under the desk and grab the gun I’ve kept hidden under a pile of papers, as I hurtle myself at Jason who’s turned a pale face toward the crashing noises coming from the back and trying to get up without success, I figure that gut feeling has never let me down. Zane was right.

Because all I kept thinking from the moment my stupid asshole of a dad shot Jason was that Simon would find out about it, and he’d be careful. He’d hide. And he’d plot his revenge. When the Mob didn’t find him, I knew he’d come after Jason, and me, because he’s an obsessed son of a bitch, and what better place than the shop at the end of the day, where we’d be alone, him and me?

I haul Jason down, inside Ocean’s cubicle, doing my best to be careful with his broken leg in the cast. He’s white as a ghost and shaking, but when I lower him down on the ground and start getting up, he gets a death grip in my T-shirt.

He doesn’t speak, but his horrified gaze bores into mine.

“Jason Vega!” a voice booms, and although I

’ve never met Simon Gomez I have no doubt it’s him, especially when Jason’s face goes gray. He looks like he’s about to pass out. “I know you’re here.”

I lean closer to Jason, shake him a little to make sure he’s not out. “Don’t worry,” I mouth at him. “I have a plan.”

More crashes, shouting. Someone is trashing the cubicle beside ours.

Jason flinches.

I have learned a thing or two in the past weeks. I’ve learned to plan for things going wrong. And to have back-up.

But sometimes you can’t wait even for that. Not when someone starts yelling and a gunshot cracks, when a bullet goes right through the cubicle, passing right by Jason’s head.

Fuck that.

Prying Jason’s fingers from my shirt and standing up, I raise the gun Rafe gave me. I release the safety and turn to the opening of the cubicle just as a tall dark-haired guy in a dark suit appears, a gun in his hands.

A motherfucking huge-ass gun, that he levels right at me. At us.

“Simon,” Jason hisses from behind me.