Inked in Lies (The Fallen Men 5)

Dane’s husky chuckle ruffled my hair. “You still smell earthy and sweet as spring.”

And that was it, the end of my composure. Sobs barrelled up my throat and tore across my tongue, a tempest of disconsolate sound.

“Shh, Li, you’re going to make yourself sick,” he murmured to me as he stroked a big hand down my hair and back, letting me maul him. “Quiet, now, my Li girl.”

“I-I-I can’t,” I wailed helplessly, tossing my head back so I could look at his face, snot trailing across my cheek with the momentum of my turn. “I love you so much.”

“I love you,” he answered calmly, always so composed, always so ready to tether my wild soul. “I’m here now, and I love you.”

I placed my chubby hands on his cheeks to feel the planes of his face, the way a beard pushed up through the skin of his jaw and abraded my palms, how his cheekbones angled so high and so steep. I delighted in recognizing the familiar shade of his dark skin and the way his left eye twitched when he was tired. I ran my thumbs over his brows and finished by tipping my forehead back against his neck, more settled by my physical examination than by his soothing words.

I had always been tactile, touch the only affirmation my mind would believe.

“There we go,” Dane murmured as he picked me up and planted me on his hip like I was a baby.

I was too elated and too exhausted by my emotional waterworks to protest. Instead, I fisted a hand in his tee and rolled my head so I could look at the Booths as we walked back across the driveway to them.

Molly was the only one openly crying, but Hudson had red eyes and a serious sniffle as he clung to his mother’s hand. Milo and Oliver were pressed shoulder to shoulder, taking solace from each other, and Jonathon stood beside Diogo, both men with their arms crossed and feet braced like they were ready to slay anyone who got in the way of our reunion.

My heart ached so badly it dropped a beat.

“Hi,” I said, suddenly shy.

I hadn’t seen them in weeks. Maybe things were different. Maybe, like my parents, they’d forgotten how to love me.

But then Molly was surging forward with Hudson, enveloping both of us in a hug. She smelled of home, of leavened bread and sun-soaked linen.

“Hey, sweet girl,” she said through her tears and her smile. “Hey, sweetie.”

Then Diogo was over her shoulder, his huge hand descending on my head. I was proud to wear it there like a coronet.

“Hey, girl,” he said in his rumbly, lightly accented voice. “You ready to come home?”

“Are you serious?” I breathed, tears flooding my eyes again.

Dane laughed and pressed his cheek against mine. “It took a while, but they got it sorted out with the province. Molly and Diogo are going to foster us until I’m eighteen and I can take guardianship of you in nine weeks.”

“And eleven days,” I added, making everyone laugh in an expression that was more relief than humour.

“Or longer,” Molly said as she pulled back in order to let Milo and Oliver pat my back, touch my hand, kiss my cheek.

The Booths were tactile, too, and I took every ounce of their bright affection like the sun starved hyacinth at the side of the farm house.

“You two don’t have to move out until you’re ready,” she continued. “If you want to stay so Dane can go to school or something, we’ll be happy to have you.”

I could feel Dane’s shift, the way his spine straightened and his shoulders locked. “We’ll see.”

Molly looked at him with her big, sad brown eyes, lips rolled between her teeth, and then she nodded. “Okay. For now, why don’t we talk to your foster parents and get your stuff? If we hustle, we can make it back to Entrance before midnight.”

“Unless you want to spend one more night here?” Jonathon teased.

He was still standing a little set apart from our group, his hands in the pockets of his baggy, distressed jeans. There was a small, easy grin stamped on his rosy mouth, but he didn’t look happy, not really.

He looked worried.

Something twisted in my chest because the same vulnerability I had felt moments ago seemed to be echoed in him.

I squirmed until Dane let me down, and then I walked over to Jonathon, slowly, even though I wanted to run.

He eyed me with that fake grin affixed to his face, his eyes the only true tell of his wariness.

I didn’t stop moving until I was against him, my arms wrapped around his waist as I hugged him.

It was the first time I’d ever embraced him, and it made me remember the last time he’d touched me, curled around me like a human shield amid the chaos of my mother’s murder.