Inked in Lies (The Fallen Men 5)

“You are,” Dane agreed, his voice too loud in the hushed, confessional space the kitchen had become. He was standing too tall, his chest puffed out. “And I’ve been thinking about this for a while. Now that Lila has a safe place to be, I can do what I’ve always wanted to do, and I can do it making money for the family so we aren’t a burden––”

“You are not a burden,” Molly interjected.

Dane ignored her.

“I’m enlisting,” he continued. I was old enough to know what that meant, to feel each word like an assault rifle pounding rounds into my chest. “I’m enlisting in the navy.”

“Hey now, don’t do something so drastic because of this,” Diogo demanded, stepping forward. “We want you here, we’ll make it work.”

But my brother was already shaking his head, so firm, so calm. As assured in this as he was everything else.

I felt my heart sink like a stone into the soft pit of my belly.

“Always wanted to do something worthwhile. Jonathon’s an idiot, but he did something worthwhile for me and Lila by quitting school. I want to do something worthwhile by making money for this family while serving my country.”

“You just want to be a hero instead of someone evil like Papá,” I spat at him, backing away from Jonathon, Molly, and Diogo, inching toward the front door to be as far from my brother as I could possibly be so that maybe it would lessen the assault on my heart. “You just want to prove you’re better than him.”

Dane stared at me for a moment with sad, wet, velvet blue eyes. “Maybe, Li, maybe you’re right. But I’m going to do it anyway, and I’m going to do it for more than just that.”

“You’re going to leave!” I screeched so loudly the words ripped through my throat and exploded in the air.

Milo and Oliver flinched. Hudson started toward me then turned away, running to his parents.

“Lila,” Dane started, coming for me with his big, gentle hands extended. “Come on, now.”

“NO!” I screamed as loud as I could, trying to expel the poison that was pooling in my belly, swirling around my sunken heart and spilling through my veins. “NO! You just promised me. You just promised me you wouldn’t leave. What are you doing? What are you doing? You’re leaving me!”

“I’m not leaving right now,” he tried to soothe, palms open to the sky as he crept closer. “I have to join up, complete training…I might not even have to go overseas right away.”

“Dane, we’re at war in Afghanistan,” Diogo rumbled.

Molly swatted at Diogo to silence him, but it was too late.

My eyes bugged out of my head so far I thought they would fall out.

“We’re at war? Why do you want to keep fighting? We just found it. We just found it!” I yelled at him, scrambling backward down the hall to the front door faster because Dane was gaining on me, and if he touched me I’d detonate, and there would be so many pieces I’d never fit back together again right.

“Found what, Li?” he asked calmly, trying to smile, trying to comfort me when he was the one ripping me apart. “You aren’t losing anything. Stop backing up. Let’s talk about this, okay?”

“We just found peace,” I hiccoughed, the bubble of air bursting in my throat, breaking the dam on my tears. They flooded forth, pouring like fire down my cheeks as I blindly reached for the door handle and yanked it open. “We just found peace, and you want more war.”

“Lila,” he said sharply as I turned on my heel and ran into the cool autumn morning. “Lila, get back here!”

But I didn’t go back.

I did what I’d wanted to do every day in that yellow house across the street. I did what I hadn’t wanted to do any of the days since I’d moved in with the Booths until now.

I ran away.

* * *

* * *

The skate park was nearly abandoned so early on a Sunday morning. I sat in one of the sloping bowls of graffitied concrete, letting the sun warm my face, eyes unseeing as they stared up at the clotted clouds blowing like overwhipped cream across the blue sky.

My tears had dried, leaving tight, salty tracks down to my ears, but at least I felt emptied. Purged. Thoughts filtered in and out of my heads thin as gauze. There was a lingering ache in my chest, but it had dulled and deepened. I knew it would be there forever, a crater carved beneath my breastbone where fear and abandonment had nearly sundered me in two.

It was only a matter of time before someone found me.

I thought maybe it would be Milo and Oliver because they always knew how to make me smile, but in the end, it was Jonathon.