Inked Babies (Inked Brotherhood 6)

“Shut up, fucker.” I sink into the cushions and press my thumbs into my eyes, wishing the headache would leave and go fuck up someone else instead.

I’m fucked up enough in the head as it is.

“That’s a good sign,” he says, sitting down across from me.

“You serious right now?”

“Sure am.” He shrugs. “Swear at me all you want. For hours you weren’t… yourself. Know what I mean?”

I stare hard at him. “Nope

.”

“Like you were in pain. Helpless. Scared.”

I’m fucking terrified of what my mind is doing to me, but I’m not about to admit that. Bad enough that Dylan, and probably all our friends, saw me like that.

“What do I do?” I wipe a hand over my mouth. “Do I rock back and forth in a corner? Drool? Froth at the mouth? What?”

“When you have flashbacks?” He seems surprised by my question.

I have no idea what flashbacks look like to others. All I know is that I am reliving all the bad shit in my past, over and over, without any way to escape.

“You’re quiet mostly,” he says. “Not that I saw you having many of those. But this time you just kept muttering things and… and moaning.”

“Moaning.” My voice is flat. “What the fuck. Why would I do that, I just—”

Pain, burning pain, and fear. No, not fear: terror.

The memory hits me like a punch in the teeth, complete with the taste of blood in my mouth, the stench of urine and rot, and the fiery pain inside me.

I keen like a wounded animal, curling in on myself, trying to get away from it all. It fucking hurts, and it’s killing me, tearing me apart.

“Shit, that’s the sound,” Dylan breathes, and he’s in my face, his hands on my shoulders. “The sound you kept making. That keening sound.”

I blink, falling quiet. My breathing sounds too loud, too harsh. My back hurts like a bitch, but his hands feel heavy on my shoulders. Real.

“Snap out of it,” Dylan says. “Enough for one day. Focus on me.”

“Why focus…” My words slur a bit and I try harder. “Why focus on your ugly mug, fucker?”

He laughs, an incredulous sound. “Thank fuck.” He rocks back on his heels and sits down on the carpet, that blue carpet I first saw when my eyes cleared earlier on.

The carpet Dakota picked out for our apartment when she moved in.

I turn my head to find her standing by the window, rocking the baby in her arms. She’s looking at me, though, and she meets my gaze with a smile.

It unwinds the twisty string of panic inside me, helps shove down the lingering phantom pain and take a good deep breath, at last.

My girl. My kid. My home.

“You have to tell me.” I turn back to Dylan whose back is propped against our old coffee table, one leg drawn up to his chest. He looks awfully young like that, with his blond hair cropped short and his white T-shirt and blue jeans—or maybe I just feel too damn old tonight.

“Tell you what?”

“What happened tonight. We went to Kenneth Shaw’s house. I remember that.” I scratch the shaved side of my head, tug on the hoops in my ear. “We went looking for the basement, because… because of something the police said.” The memory is right out of my grasp, and my head is fucking killing me.

“You were there, Zen-man,” Dylan says. “The basement was your guess. We did what we did because of you. Thanks to you.”