Inked in Lies (The Fallen Men 5)

It irritated me to see his face in my line of sight, his features in shadow, the sun an aura behind his head. He’d been busy since we moved in, working, and I’d thought, doing school work. In that time, he’d also changed in some indecipherable way. His smiles felt like secrets pressed between his lips. I wanted to part the pages and read what was written there, but I was too young to understand how to ask the right questions to unlock his mysteries. We hadn’t spent much time together, and as a result, I was annoyed with him for being the one to find me. It felt insincere somehow.

He stared down at me without saying anything for a long moment, then shifted out of view so he could lie with his head beside mine, facing the other way.

It was irrational, but I was angry with him too.

He was Dane’s best friend. He should have said something, protested more or better. Stopped him from hatching such a stupid, selfish idea.

My heart burned in my chest, and fire boiled up my throat, so I aimed it at the only person I could.

“You’re an asshole,” I told him. “You and Dane.”

“Hey, now, what the hell did I do? And you shouldn’t be swearin’, Li, it’s not right for little girls.”

“I’m not a little girl,” I said stubbornly even though I was acutely aware of that reality.

If I was an adult I could work, and Dane wouldn’t have to work for the both of us. Jonathon wouldn’t have had to drop out of school, and Dane wouldn’t have to leave.

My age felt like an albatross around my neck, and I was furious over my helplessness to remove it.

“Okay,” Jonathon agreed easily, shifting his head so soft strands of his hair brushed my cheek. “Okay, Li, you’re not a little girl, but neither is Dane. He’s a man now. You don’t get this, maybe ’cause you’re a woman, but probably ’cause you’re young and you’re his little sister, but a man’s gotta do somethin’ to prove he’s a man.” I opened my mouth to protest, but he continued. “He’s got nothin’ to prove to you, to me, or the rest of the family. It’s about provin’ somethin’ to himself, you get me? He’s a man, and he needs to test himself against his dreams. Against the real world.”

“But we’re finally happy,” I argued then felt sudden, crushing doubt.

Was Dane happy?

Had I ever really asked him?

Before, with Ignacio, it was a given that we were just surviving. There’d been no room for personal growth or desires or happy dreams.

But now, with the Booths, there was so much room, a veritable field to frolic through and cultivate every beautiful dream we might have ever entertained.

Had Dane discovered his own dreams in that field?

It hadn’t occurred to me that he could, that we were two separate people. We had always shared the same vision: survive our childhood and get away.

Together.

But we had, survived that is, and now what?

For Dane, that obviously meant it was time for him to abandon me.

“I can hear you thinkin’, the whirr of that mind is drownin’ out the bird song,” Jonathon joked with me. “Listen to me, okay?”

I scowled at the sky because I didn’t want to listen to him. I wanted to be left alone to stew in my self-righteous self-pity.

Instead, drawn by the intensity of his eyes on the side of my head like a magnetic force, I turned my head so that I could face him. Up close like we were, his eyes weren’t merely brown. They shone like sunlight through maple syrup, rimmed by black and streaked through with spikes of onyx. I blinked as I looked in those eyes and felt instant contrition for being angry with him when all he had ever offered me was a safe place to be.

Like Dane.

“Okay,” I agreed softly.

“I told you to find a dream, yeah? Well, I said the same thing to our boy, Dane. You know him better than anyone, right? So what do you think he would dream about?”

I cracked my knuckles as I thought, because for some reason, I was nervous.

What if Dane’s dreams didn’t match my own?

I wanted to live with the Booths and my brother forever. For us all to be happy and whole.

But Dane?

Of course, I knew what he wanted. He was the best person I knew, and all he had ever wanted to do was help people. As a girl, heroism was defined by my brother, not by knights in silly storybooks Papá didn’t buy, or in Disney movies we couldn’t watch because Mamá didn’t like TV.

It was Dane who had always and forever ridden to my rescue, and I guess I’d always imagined that he would remain the same.

“He wants to save people,” I muttered petulantly. “Like he saved me.”