Tyler (Inked Brotherhood 2)

The tap drips, and it’s like gunshots in my ears. My skin fucking hurts where it stretches over my bones. I sink down to the floor and fold my arms over my knees, resting my forehead on them. It feels like I’m dying, like my heart will give out. I know it’s not a panic attack; I know those way too well.

Not an attack, but I can feel the panic lurking at the back of my mind, waiting to pounce, a dark presence, a shadow waiting to sink sharp claws into my chest and try to rip my heart out.

Time passes in odd lurches and jumps. The sky is lightening outside the tiny bathroom window. Insomnia is another old buddy of mine. The pills helped with that over the years, as they did with the attacks, but now... Now it’s as if those years have been wiped away, and I’m back at the beginning.

Where I don’t wanna be. Stuck in the past, stuck in fear.

Finally I manage to get up and step into the shower stall. I slam my hand on the wall, trying to focus. Pain radiates down my hand to my elbow, clearing some of the haze in my head. I crank up the cold water, and the first splash jerks me like a puppet.

I’m too cold already, so I turn on the hot water and lean back against the tiled wall until the shivers stop. I clench my bruised fist as images flash through my head—Dad with a baseball bat, his eyes hard. The knife, glinting in his hand, then dulled with bright red. The pain. Small details—water dripping in a corner of the basement. The scratching noise of mice or rats in the walls while I was locked and left alone. Mom’s and Dad’s voices rising from upstairs in a fight.

Mom. I never even knew she got sick and died until months had passed. Uncle Jerry dragged me into the kitchen one day—he wasn’t high, and that was rare enough that I didn’t fight him—and sat me at the dirty table. Told me without preamble that Mom had died of leukemia. A few months back. He hadn’t remembered to tell me. In fact, he’d been feeding me bullshit about how everything was fine at home, that Mom had called and told him things were perfect, and I’d believed him. Because I wanted to believe it. Needed it.

Turns out he’d dreamed it, made it up, thought it’d calm me down when I had panic attacks and nightmares.

Mom was dead.

I remember sitting there, numb, hunched over, trying to make sense of something so incredible, so unimaginable it wasn’t working. The only thing keeping me sane in insane Uncle Jerry’s house, far from the world and already hooked on pills, was that Mom and Ash would be okay. Because I kept my silence, kept away.

I had this fantasy that Dad would leave, or do something stupid and be locked behind bars. Then I’d go back. I’d get a chance to get back what I’d lost: see Asher grow. Help Mom with her vegetable patch. Live a last sliver of happy childhood. Mend the cracks in my sleep through which nightmares slipped.

No such luck.

And now I need to get my head straight, to rise out of this funk. I can hear my cell phone ringing from the bedside stand, and I turn the water off, but I can’t bother to move. Not many people have my number. Has to be Marlene, three-night-stand extraordinaire who doesn’t give up on the bastard who fucked her, then left without an address. I don’t feel flattered. I feel goddamn murderous. If she doesn’t stop calling, I’m gonna have to ditch this phone and get another number just to escape the constant ringing.

But the cold is getting to me. The windows are half-closed to keep the snow out, but they still let in a sharp breeze, and I’m wet.

Rubbing my head with a towel, I drip my way into the studio and glance at the phone screen. Huh, unknown caller. Not Marlene, then, unless she’s calling from somebody else’s cell.

I dry myself and get dressed in loose drawstring pants. My teeth are chattering, but no way am I closing the windows. Can’t stand the lack of air, the feeling of suffocation that reminds me too much of my time in the basement. Another thing I thought I’d gotten over and is now back with a vengeance.

Dammit. Losing it now is not an option, not after everything—after giving up the drugs and hauling my ass back to Madison. Where Erin is, the one woman I want and can’t have. Where memories drag me down like chains.

The little box with the gift I bought her before leaving four years back is mocking me from its place on the shelf. I grab it and put it in the drawer, then push it shut and lean on the furniture for a moment.

Stop hoping. Stop thinking. Stop expecting good things to happen.

I start my exercises, pushing myself to go faster, to work harder. Push-ups until my knuckles bleed, crunches until my stomach aches dully.

Gonna work today. Gonna do just fine, be nice to the customers and pretend my head isn’t all fucked up. Then I’ll ask Zane for my brother’s phone number, work on an apology for him and get Erin out of my damn mind.

It had better work.

Chapter Six

Erin

The kitchen is filled with the heavenly scent of fried arepas—small pancakes made of maize flour—when Tessa enters. I check the oven, where a tray of fried arepas is already baking.

“Babe, you shouldn’t have,” Tessa whispers in my ear, making me jump. She laughs. “Honey, I’m home.”

I snicker and take the pan off the stove. Perfectly round, golden arepas are ready to be dished out into the next oven tray. “We need boyfriends.”

“You need a boyfriend,” she counters and slides into one of the chairs at the table. “And I mean a real boyfriend, not the invisible Jax. As for myself, I’m perfectly fine on my own.”

“Yeah, right.” I pull out the ready arepas from the oven and push the new tray in. Wiping my hands on a towel, I sink into the seat across from her. I fought my Latino heritage all my life—hated how the kids teased me about it, how Abuela insisted I speak Spanish to her, how Mom always cooked traditional food and not what the other kids had for dinner.

But the support of my family in the past years convinced me of a couple of things: one, they are awesome people, and I don’t deserve them, and two, if they’re Latinos then I’m proud to be one. Once my resistance fell, I realized how much I love Venezuelan food, and Tessa was one of my first converts. She’d blow a night at the movies or out with her friends for a taste of my specialties.