Inked in Lies (The Fallen Men 5)

I frowned because I didn’t have any dreams, not really. I clung to Dane’s plans for us like a dream, because I was hopeful but suspicious of our ability to succeed.

But for myself?

No.

I hadn’t been given the tools to even know how to build one.

Instead of answering, I turned my head on the pillow to offer Jonathon my shining eyes in reply.

His lips twisted, a smile deformed by pity. “We’ll find you a dream. Don’t worry. There’s plenty’a time yet for you.”

“I bet you have dreams,” I said, because Jonathon was always moving and shaking, meeting new people, trying new things. Almost like his good life bothered him, always searching for something new to test his edges against.

He exhaled deeply and looked up at the ceiling like it held all the answers. “Yeah, I got dreams.”

“I can keep a secret really good,” I rushed to say, then blushed at my eagerness and shrugged lamely. “I mean, if you wanna tell me.”

I traced his slightly smiling profile with my eyes and felt warmed by his ease with me. He was loose and relaxed, still in a way I rarely saw him. I liked that. I liked that he could be at rest in my small room wrapped in the hot green scent of leaves on my cramped twin bed.

“My dreams don’t line up real well with my family’s dreams for me. So I think I’ll keep ’em to myself for a while longer. But you’ll be the first person I tell, yeah?”

That was somehow even better than being told right away.

“Okay,” I agreed easily, the last syllable warbled by a mammoth yawn.

Jonathon chuckled. “Okay, Li, why don’t we try your flower game, huh? We can get some sleep before Dane comes home. You start us off.”

I snuggled deeper into the warm bedclothes, turning on my side so I could face him and tuck my knees up to my chest to hug while I slept.

“Anemone.”

“Baby’s Breath,” he countered, reaching over to gently flick my nose.

I scrunched it up. “I’m not a baby.”

“No, but it’s gotta be said, I wish you were. You’re eyes are too damn old for six years’a life.”

I pressed them closed so he couldn’t read anything else I had written in my hazel eyes and stubbornly continued.

“Carnation.”

“Daisy.”

“Evening Primrose,” I murmured because it was already working.

An hour ago, sleep had been out of the question, but enclosed in my room with Jonathon like a sentry at my side, I trusted him enough to reach for the hand of sleep and be led into the dark.

“Flower Child,” I heard him murmur distantly as I sank into slumber. “I hope you find some dreams tonight.”

* * *

* * *

I woke up because I couldn’t breathe.

There was a hand over my mouth, fingers pressed up under my nostrils so I couldn’t drag air through my nose. Instantly, I froze. It was a conditioned response. The history of abuse in my family had taught me that the only course of action in a crisis was to be still and be calm or else face an escalation of violence.

So I tried to focus my eyes on the figure looming over me.

My mamá.

The whites of her eyes glowed in the dark, her irises pools of depthless black. She looked haunted. No, not haunted, because I always imagined ghosts as sad beings.

She looked demented.

Driven by some crazed force that was telling her to steal my air.

I blinked hard to clear the fuzz at the corners of my thoughts and tried not to panic.

“Hey nena, come with your mamá now, okay?” Mamá swooped lower over me, and I realized she was at the end of the bed, being careful not to disturb Jonathon who was still passed out beside me.

Jonathon.

I tried to kick his leg somewhere to the right of me, but Mamá’s hand clamped down viciously on my struggling limb, and her eyes glowed even whiter.

“Listen to me, nena, I need you to do exactly what I say. Get up quietly, and come with me. We don’t want your papá to hear, do you?”

I didn’t.

Mamá didn’t care that there was a teenage boy in her six-year old’s bed, but I knew Ignacio would kill Jonathon as soon as he discovered him there.

So I nodded as much as I could under the force of Mamá’s hand, breathing deeply when she released me.

Before I scooted off the bed, I shot a look at Jonathon.

He looked more peaceful than I’d ever seen him, one arm flung over his head, the other low on his stomach, mouth lax, lashes long fans over his cheeks.

My stomach cramped at the thought of him hurting, at the thought of the Booth family hurting if Ignacio discovered him there when all they’d ever done was help Dane and me.

I sucked in another deep breath and crawled off the bed even though I didn’t want to go anywhere with Mamá.