Inked in Lies (The Fallen Men 5)

There was a whoomphing thump, and I winced in bed, wishing more than anything that Dane was there to comfort me.

But he wasn’t.

It was a Thursday, and on Thursdays, Dane snuck out to see his secret girlfriend, Anne Munn.

So I was alone amid the wilting blooms in my bedroom, the air hot and stale because it was mid-summer and so hot the Okanogan Valley was alive with wildfires. I was sweating, so thirsty my tongue peeled like Velcro off the roof of my mouth, but I didn’t dare to venture to the kitchen for water.

That was their battleground.

I curled tighter beneath my blanket, listing off flower varieties in my head to distract myself from the chaos in the kitchen.

I always started with sunflowers because they were my favourite, their bright, smiling faces such a marvelous contrast to the grit and grime of my reality.

Little Becka, Soraya, American Giant.

“I’ll take the kids and run!” Mamá screamed over the clang of falling pans.

“Over my dead fucking body,” Ignacio roared.

Pacino, Zohar, Baby Bear, and Elegance.

“You can’t keep an eye on them all day long, Ignacio, and I swear, I’m taking them with me.”

“No one takes my kids. You think they’d wanna go with you anyway? You’re practically a stranger to them, Ellie. They’d be more likely to go with the fucking ice cream truck driver.”

A female war cry and then a series of thumps.

Mamá always ended up hitting Ignacio when she was in a rage.

Bashful, Frilly, Suntastic Yellow.

“I’m taking them, I’m taking them, I’m taking them––” Mamá chanted, high and clanging, an alarm I wished I could shut off.

There was a sharp rap against my bedroom window that startled me so badly it broke the seal on my lips and a bright, high sob burst through. I peered under my blanket through the low light at the window, heart beating so hard in my chest it felt like a hammer strike.

Some of Ignacio’s friends had come by before and peered through the window after a deal or on their way to the back porch where Papá held court. Luckily, they hadn’t done anything but look and leave streaks of greasy fingermarks against the window pane.

It wasn’t one of Ignacio’s friends there now.

It was mine.

Jonathon’s face was cut into harsh angles by the grimy yellow light of the street lamps, but I recognized him in the dark, even in the midst of my own personal hell.

It wasn’t strange to find him at my window either.

He was an insomniac, which he’d told me meant he couldn’t sleep. Embarrassingly, I’d followed that up by asking if he was a vampire.

He hadn’t laughed in a mean way, which was one of the many reasons I loved him. He never made fun of people who were inferior to him in any way. He was more handsome, funnier, and more charismatic at seventeen years old than most people ever were, but he was also kind, his endearing smile authentic.

It wasn’t until a few years later that the smile I’d once loved turned brittle at the corners and cracked like an ill-fitting mask.

But right then, in the midst of my terror, I’d never seen anything so lovely as Jonathon Booth’s smile through the yellow glint of the window pane.

He jerked his chin at me then worked his fingers under the ledge to jimmy the window up its tacky seams.

“Come here,” he whispered, his hand snaking through the gap, fingers unfurled, a pen drawn image of a lotus flower in the center of his palm. “You come stay with me tonight.”

I bit my lip as there was a crash of breaking porcelain in the kitchen. Sometimes, when Dane wasn’t home, I thought Jonathon made a special effort to check in on me. And sometimes, if I needed him, he would arrive at the window and pull me free of the stinking wrath boiling up the walls of my house before it could scald me.

But sometimes, when I was too terrified to leave Mamá alone with Ignacio or Ignacio alone with Mamá, worried their fury would raze the house to the ground, I begged Jonathon to stay.

I unpeeled my sticky tongue from the roof of my mouth to do just that when he sighed gustily and heaved the window open even farther so he could swing himself through it. He landed nimbly on his scuffed black converse and made his way to my bed. When he sat, I felt the ugliness in my chest, the knotted mass of emotions residing there, loosen.

He smelled like tobacco and something spicy that itched my nose in a good way.

Instantly, my hand snapped out of the covers to clutch at his.

His wavy hair fell across his brow as he stared down at our cinched hands, and for one moment, almost scarier than the minutes before that, I was worried he’d reject me.