Inked in Lies (The Fallen Men 5)

“Hey,” he said. “Haven’t seen you in a while.”

I frowned at him instantly, but he only chuckled softly and slung an arm around my shoulders to usher me to the front door of the shop. He opened it with a key attached to a skull chain on his jeans then pushed me into the dark interior.

I coughed as I sucked up dust into my mouth then gasped as he flicked the lights on, and the old stationary shop came into focus.

Only, it wasn’t a stationary shop anymore.

It had been transformed into a tattoo parlour.

Black walls, purple accents, silver and chrome glinting here and there. I spotted five different stations, a tall, rounded receptionist desk spray painted with a logo in silver of a skull and two crossing tattoo guns.

Street Ink Tattoo Parlour, it read.

I gaped.

“Pretty, isn’t she?” Nova asked smugly, arms crossed as he surveyed the shop.

His shop.

“This is yours,” I stated because there was no question.

From the art on the walls to the colours of the space and its layout, this place was all Nova Booth.

“It is,” he agreed. “When I patched in, I got a loan from the club to open this place up. We’ve been workin’ ’round the clock to get it spruced up, and now, well, it’s fuckin’ perfect if I do say so myself.”

“It is,” I agreed instantly, trailing my hands over a coy fish painted on the black half-wall behind the reception desk. “It’s perfectly you.”

He sighed behind me, a happy, almost relieved sound. “Needed to hear you say that more than I thought.”

“What?” I looked over my shoulder at him incredulously. “Like you don’t know it’s perfect, you just said so yourself.”

He shrugged one shoulder. “Now Dane’s gone… no one knows me better than you. Woulda brought you both here, cracked a bottle’a champagne,” I wrinkled my nose because I hated the sweet stuff, and he laughed. “Or maybe a beer, and we would’a made our first memory in here together. Los tres Caballeros.”

I smiled thinly as I moved over to a station with ‘Casanova’ in stylized like graffiti on the wall over the purple reclining tattoo chair.

“Your station,” I murmured as I played my fingers over the sleek fabric of the chair. “Yeah, Dane would have thought it was perfect too. For what it’s worth.”

“It’s worth everythin’,” he said, voice hard bitten, eyes almost mean as he lashed out to grip my arm tightly and wrench me closer. I could see the striations of black in his warm brown eyes he was so close. “You can be sad, you can wallow, you can never get over the loss’a Dane. I don’t give a fuck ’cause God knows I’m never gonna get over him either. What I do give a fuckin’ colossal fuck about is you. You’re still fuckin’ here, Li. You’re here, and Dane isn’t. It sucks. It’s the worst kinda thing to happen to a girl who already had tragic eyes at six. But it happened, and you. Are. Here. You wanna cherish Dane and respect his memory? You live for both of you. You like the life of freedom and joy you deserved but never got. You do it for the both of you ’cause you guys were always a package deal, and you still are. You can still love him and live for him just like you did before.

Don’t give up, Li. Don’t die with him. Don’t take both of you away from mum and Dad, Milo, Oliver, Hudson, and me. Not when we fought so hard to get you both, and we’ve lost Dane too.”

I was arrested by his speech, both because Nova wasn’t the kinda guy that gave into seriousness for long, and also because it hurt to hear how selfish I’d been in my grief. Faintly, I’d been aware of Molly crying when I entered a room only to stop and force a smile onto her face. Distantly, I’d been aware of Hudson clinging to me while I slept like he was afraid to lose me too. Then a single memory of Diogo, staring blankly at his wall of tools in the garage. I’d asked him what he was doing, but he hadn’t heard me. He just stood there and stared blankly at the wall, rubbing at his heart as if it pained him. I’d left him there, and when he’d finally come inside for dinner an hour later, I hadn’t really noticed his eyes were shot through with red.

God, we’d all lost Dane and his considerable light.

I wasn’t the only one struggling through the sudden darkness.

The sigh that left me felt like a tsunami wave of ugly, selfish mourning expelled from my lungs.

“I’m sorry,” I said to him, eyes locked because I wanted him to read my sincerity there.

“You’re thirteen,” he replied. “You’re just a girl still. I’m not mad at you. I’m tryin’ to remind you that Milo, Oliver, and Hudson are just boys who lost a brother. Molly and Diogo are just parents that lost a son. I’m just a man who lost his best friend and brother, the first one I ever made by choice. We’re all in it together, and we’re all gonna get through it together, yeah?”