Inked Babies (Inked Brotherhood 6)

She turns on her heel and walks out of the kitchen, and I almost trip over my feet going after her.

“Tess, wait.” She’s in the bathroom, and fuck, she locked the door. “I’m sorry. You like traveling, I know that. You love your job. Come on, Tess, open this door.”

No reply.

Fuck me.

“What’s going on?” Miles asks, standing at the door of his room, his hair sticking up in all directions. “You guys fighting?”

“No, we’re not fighting.” Suddenly I’m so tired I can barely stand straight. “It’s nothing. Go back to bed, I’ll wake you up when Tess is done with the bathroom.”

“Is this why you guys aren’t getting married?” he mutters, and I freeze.

“What?”

“Because we only have one bathroom, and women hog bathrooms. Fact of life.” He wanders back into his room, and I wonder if he’s even really awake.

Am I?

And is it true, do we keep fighting? Am I that selfish that I get upset over what makes her happy? That I want to take it away, convince her to marry me and start popping babies when what she really wants…

…what she really wants is to keep traveling away from me.

***

Before I know it, she’s packed a bag and gotten dressed, and now she’s giving me the quickest hug in history before heading out.

“Tess…”

“We’ll talk when I’m back.” Her hair is pinned back, and she’s dressed in a white shirt and pencil skirt with high heels.

I blink. I haven’t seen her dressed so conservatively since that last huge fight with her parents. What the hell is happening?

She’s gone before I decide how to ask her what’s going on, and I’m left with a mug of cooling coffee, her scent on my skin and a fucking headache.

Instead of talking, I fucked her, and then made her angry, and now she’s gone again, before I can even muster enough brain cells to give a proper apology.

I shouldn’t have gotten angry myself. I just… fucking miss her. She’s rarely here anymore, and when she is, she’s working.

Fucking hell. Drowning in a glass of water, when others have bigger problems, when I need to calm down and get my shit together.

My brothers. I’ve got my brothers to think about, see if I can take them to the zoo today or to a park to have a good time.

And Zane. Fuck, I said I’d search for this guy whose name Zane remembered.

No time like now. I carry the cooling coffee to the living room and turn on my laptop. Where to look?

First, I try Truthfinder.org. I plug in my credit card info, input the name and surname of the guy, and the state, and wait for the database to run through all their police and birth records.

There are many matches, a long list. It will take me quite some time to download the data. I want to have Zane look at the pictures, just in case he sees the guy’s face. The photos aren’t always correctly matched to the names, but you never know. We might luck out.

Christ, if this guy is the one who hurt Zane, I’ll fucking lynch him.

While waiting for the data to download, I try People Search USA for Wisconsin and get only a couple of matches, none of them in Madison. I go through a few more sites, then return to Truthfinder to check the process of the downloads.

Are you one of these people? I ask the digital folders on my computer. Are you in here somewhere?

Are you hiding, or are you innocent?