Inked in Lies (The Fallen Men 5)

I was thirteen when I finally found the words for what he meant to me, even though I didn’t realize it at the time. It was what he did for me that night that tattooed itself onto my heart in a way that could never be erased.

There was no moon that night, the sky spilling into the streets like an overturned ink pot coating everything in obsidian and shadow. I was in bed, but not asleep, my stomach cramped with something other than the period pains I’d been getting for a little over a year by then. I’d made a cup of dandelion tea to soothe my troubled mind and coax it to sleep, but nothing would quell that restless anxiety that seemed to turn my blood to acid.

I could have woken Hudson. He was always up for late night shenanigans, pranking his brothers or sneaking out of the house into the fields behind our house to tip cows in old lady McLintock’s meadow.

I could have called H.R. who was no doubt up listening to records well past the hour she should have been asleep. She was an MC princess, so she didn’t have a bedtime, but I knew she’d arrive at school the next day with deep grooves under her pretty blue eyes and a big, lopsided smile on her face because she’d just been to Old Sam’s Record Shop where she’d discovered the next best thing in music.

I could have even gone to Molly, who would have woken the instant I opened the door, ushering me downstairs for a talk and some warm milk with honey.

But I didn’t do anything of that because what I really wanted was to talk to Dane.

It had been three weeks since we’d heard from him, which wasn’t unusual when he was deployed, but gave me anxiety all the same.

I wasn’t quite an insomniac like Nova, but some nights I wouldn’t sleep, wide awake thinking about my brother overseas in hostile territory with only an armoured vest and a service rifle, his wits and his brothers in arms to protect him.

This was his second deployment, and I knew he loved his job, but missing him stalked me closer than my shadow, never disappearing, a spectre even in the dark.

I curled tighter into my huddled ball on the window seat in my attic bedroom and stared out into the night, letting my melancholy spill into that inky night.

My phone buzzed on the pillow beside me, and I smiled before I could even check to see who had texted me.

There was only one person who would bother me that late at night.

Nova: You awake?

Lila: No

I smiled as the reply came in, my moroseness chased away by the light that always accompanied Nova wherever he went.

Nova: Too bad. Can’t sleep, I need you to entertain me.

Lila: It’s 2am, I’m a teenager, and I need my sleep.

Nova: I’m living proof that beauty rest is a lie. I sleep for shit and still look fuckin’ stunnin’.

Lila: Women like humble men, you know.

Nova: Not in my extensive experience.

Lila: Barf. Please refrain from being disgusting, or when I do actually sleep, I’ll have nightmares.

Nova: We both know I’m the stuff dreams are made of, not nightmares.

Lila: Okay, I’m going now.

But I was laughing as I typed, waiting for his response like it was some kind of gift.

And it was.

Nova had moved out of the house at eighteen and never moved back. He still lived in town, on Main Street over an old stationary shop that had been out of business for the last few months. I always saw him on Sundays. Diogo eschewed many things about his Portuguese heritage, but Sundays were always family day. But otherwise, Nova was busy working at Hephaestus Auto, apprenticing in Vancouver at a locally famous tattoo shop, and doing whatever it was The Fallen motorcycle club did for fun.

Truth be told, sometimes I missed him as much as I did Dane.

I was just about to respond when there was a knock at the door.

It was just a knock.

Three short, soft raps of knuckles against the wood.

But a violent shiver wrenched down my spine, rattling me and setting my teeth on edge.

Lila: Nova, I think something’s wrong.

And then Molly was pushing open the door, her Irish skin pale as I’d ever seen, so white I could see through it to the blue veins in her cheek, the pulse throbbing at her neck.

I shivered again, so hard my teeth clanged.

“M-Molly?” I murmured, and I realized I was shivering, teeth chattering.

Was it cold?

No. It was late spring, and heat had settled between the mountain tops.

She had such large eyes, big irises the colour of blue hydrangeas. They weren’t blinking, and I thought that was weird, so I said, “Why aren’t you blinking?”

It was such a silly thing to notice.