Dauntless (Sons of Templar MC 5)

The tone, his gaze, they had me stuttering over a response for a second before I found my façade and laughed. Although that time it was forced. “Yeah, because I could totally grace the cover for Vogue right now,” I retorted. “I’m not a huge fucking mess or anything.”

I was. Sleep was a stranger to me. Especially being here, where the walls fucking seeped Faith. Her paintings, her spirit was everywhere in the colorful bohemian cottage by the sea.

It was a paradise. Tranquility. Or was supposed to be. If you weren’t dragging chaos around with you. I couldn’t be comforted by the ghost of her presence because I didn’t want her to be a fucking ghost. A memory. She didn’t deserve to have her dignity and spirit sucked away by a disgusting disease. Lily didn’t deserve to lose her mom.

They were good people. And shitty things happened to them.

What hope was there for a fuckup like me?

So yeah, no sleep, which meant black smudges under my bloodshot eyes. I had managed to wash my hair, but it was still a messy mop atop my head. Food was hit or miss, which meant my cheeks were sunken in. And despite Lucky’s constant presence, I didn’t have the energy to hide behind my mask of makeup, to wear clothes that gave me an identity other than what I was.

Instead I was wearing leggings and a stained hoodie. I looked like a homeless person and he looked like a fucking GQ model.

The teasing left his eyes at my words and his jaw went hard. “You won’t say that shit, not around me,” he growled.

I frowned at the sudden change in his demeanor. I was getting more used to it, now that he was spending more time around me, despite my protests. Most of the time he was easygoing, almost annoying in his fucking optimism and cheer. Almost. Would have been certainly if I didn’t harbor this huge schoolgirl crush on him. If I weren’t addicted to everything about him.

His dumb attractive smile, the way his face darkened and his jaw hardened when the topic of Carlos came up, or when I stumbled from getting up too quickly. And when I refused to give him the details on my ‘sickness.’ That really pissed him off.

So much so that he’d declared he was camping out here until I ‘got better’ and until he was sure Carlos’s goons would leave me alone. The latter wouldn’t take long, I guessed. The former, well, he’d be here until the day he died waiting for me to ‘get better.’

“What shit?” I asked.

He leaned forward, the motion so quick I couldn’t scuttle away from his touch. My reaction times were shot to shit. He grasped my chin in his hands. “You bringing yourself down. Saying shit that pisses me the fuck off because it’s not true, and because you’re so fuckin’ certain of it. So we’ll get this straight. You’re beautiful. Gorgeous, in fact. When you’re strutting your stuff on stage, showin’ too many fuckin’ people your amazing tits and ass. When you’re strutting your stuff down the goddamn street. When you smile when you don’t think anyone’s watching. When you laugh for me.” His thumb brushed my lower lip. “When you’ve taken all your armor off and are just you. Even when you’re spattered with bruises that make me want to kill and maim every person who had a hand in it. Even when you’re battlin’ some fuckin’ sickness that you won’t tell me about, you’re stunning. So don’t say anything to the contrary. Don’t fuckin’ think it. I’ll know.” He tapped his temple. “I can read minds. There’s no end to my powers.”

His eyes flared slightly with their telltale humor, but mostly there was something that wasn’t common. That I tricked myself into thinking was unique to the way he looked at me.

His mouth was inches away from mine. The fix was within reach. I actually leaned forward slightly to get just one hit, but he pulled back and it stung.

“Now pick a fuckin’ show,” he ordered.

I blinked a couple times, letting my breathing get back to normal. Then I scowled, more to hide my emotion from the rejection. I flipped through channels till I found the perfect one, grinning wickedly.

He didn’t say a thing, just leaned back, eyes on the screen.

“Oh my fucking God. That bitch,” Lucky snarled.

I was no longer watching the screen. Watching him was so much more entertaining. I just needed a glass of wine. But I couldn’t, you know, because I couldn’t replace heroin addiction with alcoholism, as much as I wanted to.

He glared at me. “Can you believe that they did that? Right behind her back. Oh, that’s not cool. She better put them on the blacklist for every charity event from now to forever for that shit.” He paused. “Or cut the brakes on whatsherface’s new Mercedes.”