Текст книги "Surviving Ice "

Автор книги: K. A. Tucker

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Текущая страница: 18 (всего у книги 22 страниц)

THIRTY-FIVE

IVY

I hadn’t intended on eavesdropping. Honestly.

I left Ned’s room and went to the office to collect the debris left after Sebastian patched all the holes. The window was open a crack, letting the cool air in.

The air that carried with it Sebastian’s low voice.

At least I know he wasn’t talking to a girlfriend, or a wife.

But who the hell was he talking to just now? Besides someone he said no to. He kept referring to “her.”

Am I “her”?

And mercenaries?

Jesus Christ. Who the hell is Sebastian?

“You hungry?”

I gasp at the sound of his voice, my mind so preoccupied, I didn’t notice him slip in. He’s in the doorway, his T-shirt back on.

“Maybe in an hour?”

His gaze flickers to the cracked window and then returns to me, screaming with understanding. My heart starts pounding.

He knows I overheard him.

I wonder if this is what Dakota was talking about. His deep, dark secrets.

I wait for him to say something about it, to accuse me of something, to get angry and storm out. But he simply closes the distance and pulls me into his arms, leaning down until our foreheads press together, not saying a word.

“What are you doing?” I finally ask.

After another long moment, he simply says, “I’m staying.”

I drop down to sit on the floor outside the bathroom, my back to the wall. Sebastian is still upstairs, filling the last of the holes, quietly brooding over something I don’t understand. The pre-phone-call windowsill action is clearly not going to pick up where it left off, so I figured I’d let him brood alone.

I gingerly pick up a broken piece of tile from the box, examining it. “I don’t know why they had to break the tile. Did they seriously think he hid money under there?”

“Watch those. They’re sharp,” Bobby warns, his ass sticking halfway out the bathroom as he kneels, setting the new flooring in. “Damn near hacked half my hand off pullin’ them up.”

“Thank God this bathroom is small.” We went with cheap, generic tile and it still hurt when the bill rang up.

“You realize how much it would cost to have a professional in, right?” He peers over his shoulder at me, his brow coated with sweat and dust.

“I guess it’s good that I know an amateur who can do it for free, then, isn’t it?”

He chuckles, pushing himself off the ground to tower over me. “Ned would be laughin’ his ass off at me right now.”

A spark of sadness touches me with the mention of my uncle.

Bobby’s expression softens. “The guys called. I gotta head out now. Got a tow.”

I nod quietly.

“But I should be ready to grout here by tomorrow.”

“ ’Kay.” I hesitate. “Thanks, Bobby.” For everything else that he is, he and the guys are saving my ass here.

“No problem,” he says, peeling off his work gloves.

A shiver runs down my back as I’m hit with a flash of watching that guy Mario do exactly the same thing from my hiding spot under the desk. I was at the same eye level as I am now, and I remember focusing on the spot of fresh blood on his wrist. I was so horrified by it—by what it meant—that I dismissed everything else.

“Why you lookin’ at me like that?” Bobby asks.

“A scar. He had a scar,” I murmur, remembering it now. The skin was pink and puckered, like a burn mark. It stretched over his knuckles and covered the back of his hand.

When the cops questioned me, they pushed me to think about smaller details. Tattoos and piercings. Any other marks that would make someone stand out. I was so busy trying to push out the memory of Ned’s blood on the guy’s wrist that I pushed the scar out, too.

“Who did?”

“Mario. The guy who killed Ned.”

Bobby frowns. “You just rememberin’ that now?”

“Yeah. Weird, isn’t it?” Fields told me to call him if I thought of anything else that might be useful. I figured that was the standard party line. I didn’t expect to actually remember “anything else.”

I don’t know how helpful this will be, but . . .

I head into the kitchen to find my wallet and Fields’s business card, along with my phone.

THIRTY-SIX

SEBASTIAN

“Keep the porn to a minimum. Dakota’s streaming isn’t unlimited,” Ivy throws over her shoulder on her way out of the bedroom, her voice heavy with sarcasm.

“Like I’d even want that right now.” I eye her ass as it sways in black pants. “Leggings” she called them when I sat here and watched her get dressed, completely spent after a long day working at the house, my mind churning after that disastrous call from Bentley. The one that Ivy ended up hearing anyway, despite my efforts. I played it back in my head at least a dozen times as I worked away, trying to recall every word I might have said. It couldn’t have been too enlightening because she’s still talking to me.

She still stripped down to nothing the minute we stepped into her room, covered in white dust and both needing showers.

She turns to eye me lying in her bed, her gaze drifting over the reaper along my side that she just tended to. It’s scabbing over nicely now, and she seems impressed with the way it’s healing. “I think I’m paid up for at least a week with your bodyguard services, right?”

“At least.” I smirk. “I like your payment plan.”

Her full lips stretch into a devious smile. “I think I do, too.” Dakota’s voice carries into the room. Another guest over for dinner. It’s a revolving door around here. I wonder if this person will top the homeless Jono and the bearded Gerti, whom I never met. “I’m guessing dinner will be ready soon.”

“I’ll be out in fifteen,” I promise her.

I wait until Ivy has rounded the corner before I type “Alliance” into Google’s search engine on my iPad. A list of results fills the screen. They’re the usual articles, most relating to the civilian shooting that government officials were investigating. They’ve been investigating for over four months, with witnesses from both sides giving different accounts. The civilians had guns; they didn’t have guns. They fired first; the Alliance employees fired first. Just two months ago, officials finally concluded there was enough evidence to suggest that enemy bullets were fired, that the two civilians shot and killed may have had guns on them that were swept away by family members.

Alliance was not in violation of deadly-force rules.

When the verdict was first published, I felt only relief for Bentley. Relief that bullshit propaganda wasn’t going to hurt him, or his cause, because it couldn’t be true. Bentley would never support harsh and unfair violence against civilians. Now . . . my stomach turns.

Because the names of two of the Alliance contractors involved mean something to me now.

Mario Scalero and Richard Porter.

They probably did fire on unarmed civilians. They probably do deserve to be charged with murder. Just like they probably deserve to be charged with rape.

And yet they’re going to get off for all of it.

I don’t believe that any of what Royce admitted to Ned on that tape is bullshit propaganda. And now they’re free to go back to a war-torn country to continue doing the kinds of things that Royce spoke up about and got himself killed for.

Worse, Bentley knows. He knows and yet he’s sending them back in because Alliance just won another contract and Scalero is “effective” overseas.

I click on the news article posted just yesterday, showing a head shot of Bentley and a headline that reads, “Alliance Rewarded with Multimillion-Dollar Contract for Private Security Services in Ukraine.”

Bentley must have been in negotiations for that one for some time. Had that video surfaced, I’m guessing that the government would have passed Alliance over for one of the many other companies in line. It wouldn’t have taken too long for an investigative reporter to make the connection between the Mario and Ricky mentioned in Royce’s tattoo shop confession. The confession of a Medal of Honor recipient who was murdered not long after the recording happened.

With an eyewitness who can place a man with a heavy Chicago accent by the name of Mario at the scene.

My stomach tightens. One way or another, that connection may still be made, with something as simple as a mother’s scrapbook.

And the burn scar that the only witness to the murders just remembered.

Fuck . . . Why did she have to remember that?

It’s only a matter of time before someone—Bentley or Scalero or even this Ricky Porter guy, whom I have yet to lay eyes on—feels that Ivy is too big a threat to be allowed to linger.

I toss my iPad to the side and close my eyes, struggling to suppress my panic.

I don’t think I’ve ever been this unnerved at a dinner table.

We’re in Dakota’s greenhouse again. It was peaceful enough the other night, lit by dim lights, surrounded by a jungle of plants. I even liked the dozens of wind chimes dangling from above. Tonight, though, it all adds to the eeriness I’m feeling.

Dakota’s psychic medium guest—she goes by Esmeralda, though I’m guessing that’s her stage name—hasn’t lifted her unsettling crystal-blue eyes from my face since dropping her plump ass into her seat across the table. It’s not in a sexual way, either. She’s not trying to attract me or seduce me.

She’s trying to read me.

Or at least pretend that she can read me, because I know as well as she does that she’s a crook. None of that shit is real. No one can see the dead.

I’ve caught Ivy glaring at the woman through dinner several times. I’m guessing we share the same feelings about people like this. Right now, I’m wishing she’d stop biting that sharp tongue of hers and say something.

“So, Esme, any interesting readings lately?” Dakota asks, seemingly oblivious of the discomfort around her table as she slides a mouthful of scrambled tofu into her mouth.

I’m so uneasy under this woman’s gaze that I don’t even taste what’s on my plate.

“Not as interesting as what I’m reading right now.” Her eyes never lift from me.

Shivers run down my back.

This is bullshit. She can’t see the dead bodies piled up around me.

She can’t.

The pain in my jaw tells me I need to stop clenching my teeth.

“So, what exactly is a psychic medium, Esmeralda?” Ivy asks in that dry, disbelieving tone that I love even more right now, skipping the tofu and going straight for the chicken she threw onto the grill for me.

“Oh, it’s so much,” Esmeralda answers in a soft, breathless voice. “You can be psychic and not a medium, but you can’t be a medium and not a psychic.”

“There’s a difference?”

She smiles kindly at Ivy. As if she can see the same doubt pouring from her as it does from me. “A psychic reads your energy to understand your past, your present, and your future. Your friend Dakota has that intuitive ability.”

“Yes. Auras,” Ivy murmurs, her dark gaze flipping to Dakota, who simply winks.

“Yes, exactly. For example, I can see that you have been wandering for years but you’ve only just found an anchor. No . . .” She squints. “Two anchors. Or rather, one of your anchors has found you.”

Ivy pauses, her fork in her mouth. I can see the tension in her jaw.

Esmeralda’s eyes twinkle, as if she knows she’s hit a mark. “That’s a psychic. Now, a medium has the ability to read your spirit energy to see your past, present, and future.”

“Sounds like the exact same thing to me.” Ivy has regained her cool composure. “Do you charge double for that?”

Esmeralda reaches across the table to seize Ivy’s small hand. “Someone from your past who has left you recently, who loves you, approves of these anchors, both the new and the old. Very much so.”

Ivy’s complexion goes from pinkish to deathly white in seconds as the blood drains from her face. I watch quietly to see how she’ll react.

But she doesn’t. She doesn’t even pull her hand away. Her mind is too busy working through the woman’s words, deciphering them. Making sense of them.

And I suddenly want to get the hell away from this woman.

That’s of course when she turns her attention to me. “Now you are something else. Are you being chased?”

“No,” I answer without missing a beat.

She frowns, as if disappointed in my answer. And not because she thinks she was wrong; because she knows she’s right. “Yes . . . Yes, you are. Ghosts from your past that need to be faced. It wasn’t your fault. You know that, and yet you haven’t forgiven yourself for it yet, after all these years. She knows, as well. She has forgiven you. So have the others.”

I shove a piece of chicken in my mouth to give myself an excuse not to answer, shooting her with a warning look. She gives me a slight nod in understanding and then purses her lips, signifying that she understands. That she won’t push anymore.

But it’s too late. Her words have already infiltrated my mind. I wouldn’t have cared if she’d brought up the pile of human scum that I’ve dispatched on Bentley’s orders. Those lives don’t keep me up at night.

At least, they haven’t before. Now that I doubt Bentley’s motives, that’s starting to change. I’m beginning to wonder if all my assignments have had more to do with money and less to do with saving lives. I push those worries aside, though, because if that’s true, then I’ve become nothing more than an unwitting murderer.

But how the fuck does this woman know about my ghosts?

The small, round face that has lingered in my mind for almost six years. She would have been twelve now.

Dakota and Esmeralda chatter easily through the rest of dinner, while both Ivy and I stew in our own inner turmoil. I push my food around until Ivy stands and collects her plate—her food uneaten—and swipes mine out from under me. “We’re heading out,” she announces. “Thanks for dinner.” With a heavy sigh, she adds, “It was nice meeting you.”

Esmeralda beams, her gaze shifting between the two of us, settling on me once again. “You know what you need to do, Sebastian.”

“Excuse me?” An eerie chill skitters down my back. Just hearing my name on her tongue bothers me.

She nods. “You know.”

I want to grab the woman and shake her. What do I need to do?

Punish Scalero for the crimes he’s committed?

Punish Bentley for what he’s allowed to happen?

Turn myself in for what I’ve done?

Tell Ivy everything?

“Okay, see you guys later!” Dakota waves and continues with her conversation.

I trail Ivy to the kitchen in a daze, where she scrapes the food off the plates and dumps them into the dishwasher, kicking the door shut on her way by.

She grabs my keys from the kitchen counter. “Come on.”

“Where are we going?” She’s clearly on a mission.

Chewing the inside of her cheek for a moment in thought, she finally answers, “To fix one of my anchors.”

THIRTY-SEVEN

IVY

Fausto and his guys have cleaned up and left, leaving behind nothing but this cold, sterile white cave and the stench of fresh paint.

I drop the box at my feet. It’s every last spray paint can I have. They clatter noisily against each other with the impact.

Sebastian’s boots clomp against the ground as he wanders over to stand next to me, arms folded across his chest, staring at the wide white canvas in front of me. He hasn’t said much since leaving Dakota’s, appearing as disturbed by Esmeralda’s intrusive words as I feel. Though I’m not sure for the same reasons.

How the fuck did she know about anchors? As soon as she said it, I knew exactly what she meant. She had to be talking about Sebastian, and this shop, because they’re the only two things keeping me in San Francisco right now. One old—this shop—and one new, who found me. Sebastian found me.

And someone I lost recently, who loves me dearly . . .

Ned.

Would Ned approve of Sebastian? He didn’t approve of most people, so I find that hard to believe. Then again, Sebastian’s not like anyone I’ve ever met.

I want to race back there and shake Dakota until she admits that she fed that loony tune all my personal information before dinner, that they’re just fucking with my head. But I know Dakota well enough to know that she’d never do that. She actually believes in that stuff.

And she’s almost made me a believer. Almost.

So then, what do Esmeralda’s words to Sebastian mean? By the set jaw and the stiff back and the way his eyes keep drifting elsewhere, she hit a raw nerve with him, too.

Who is the “she” Esmeralda referred to? Is Sebastian in love with her?

Suddenly, Sebastian turns to catch my gaze. I want to ask him what he blames himself for. I want to ask him about this ghost. I want to ask him all kinds of questions.

Instead, I reach for a can of black paint. With his eyes on my back, I close in on the longest wall in Black Rabbit, a solid mass of white with not a single window to break it up.

All it takes is a single swipe with my finger on the nozzle, the inky black marring the canvas in a long line, and I already feel better. “Ned would hate the white.” I point to the expanse of blank wall behind me. “But this . . .” I exhale with a sense of relief. “He’d be all for this.”

“You’re going to need a lot more paint,” Sebastian murmurs, a hint of a smile on his lips now.

He’s right. I will. And capable hands.

Luckily I know where to get both.

I pull out my phone.

“Why did you have all these extras lying around?” Joker asks, rubbing his bald head with one hand as he shoves a slice of pizza in his mouth. It’s long since cold, but no one around here minds cold pizza.

“Because I’m da shit,” Fez hollers, and I roll my eyes, sharing a look with Joker and Weazy. I don’t say anything, though. Fez has earned his status as a decent friend to me. Within twenty minutes of my texting the guys to see if they’d be into helping me around here, they showed up with their entire supply of paint cans, and they’ve worked next to me all night.

I step back now and take in the long eastern wall in Black Rabbit, and the mesmerizing kaleidoscope of colors staring back at me. Some of the original paint remains. It’s still there in the background, peeking out between the loops of letters, incorporated into the whites of eyes and the collars of shirts, but it’s nowhere near as overbearing as it used to be.

Now the cold, sterile white complements my wild side nicely.

In the center, I’ve sketched another depiction of Ned, his devilish grin filling up the bottom half of his face, his braids resting on either shoulder. Weazy did one of his infamous jungle scenes, except the asshole added a barely dressed Asian girl swinging from a rope. The blue streak in her hair is telling.

The rest of the sketches are different scenes from San Francisco—the Golden Gate Bridge; a trolley speeding down one of the steep streets and into a pit of fire. That’s Fez’s addition.

We have so much still to do—I’ve decided I want to cover the ceiling, too—but the sun’s coming up soon, we’re out of paint, and everyone’s tired.

“Hey, Ivy.” Joker leans in next to me as I stoop to collect the empty cans. “Was that a gun I saw tucked into the back of your guy’s jeans?”

“Yeah. Probably.” I glance back over my shoulder at Sebastian, who stands like the soldier he once was by the propped-open door—we had to get some air in here; the fumes were getting to be too much. He’s been stationed by that door without complaint all night, as if he knew how important it was for me to do this, scaring away any curious wanderer with a simple look. I guess he wanted his gun within reach, just in case.

Though, that doesn’t explain why he had it lying on the windowsill last night.

I wander over to him, pressing myself up against his chest. He’s so hard to read most times; right now, he’s impossible. “What do you think?”

His strong arms rope around my body, pulling me in tight. “I think it’s perfect.”

“Does it say Ivy?”

He lays a gentle kiss on my forehead. “I said it was perfect, didn’t I?”

Yeah, I’m beginning to think that Esmeralda was right.

Ned would like my new anchor.

“I look like a three-year-old who got into an art studio,” I muse, scratching at the dried splotches of green and yellow paint that cover my skin, my clothes. They’re probably in my hair, too.

Sebastian gives me a sideways look as we wade through the sand toward the crop of rocks. It’s the very same pile at Ocean Beach that I sat at while designing his reaper. “No, you don’t. Not at all.”

His recently smooth jaw is already covered by a thick coat of stubble, and I can’t help but reach up to scratch my fingers across it now. “You going to grow that back out?”

“You want me to?”

I shrug. “I’m good with it either way.” As long as I have you.

He throws an arm around my shoulders, pulling me into him. Though that dark cloud that formed during dinner with Esmeralda last night still hovers, I’ve managed to get a few smiles out of him this morning.

“I come here sometimes, to think,” I admit, settling onto my favorite perch, which gives me a perfect view of the surfers in the water.

“I can see why.” His gaze narrows as he watches them, too. It’s six forty, and the sun is just cresting over the horizon behind us. The circles under his eyes are probably as dark as mine, but if he’s tired, he doesn’t let on. “Do you feel better about the shop now?”

“Now that I’ve vandalized it, yeah,” I chuckle.

Reaching down to pluck a perfectly intact seashell from between the rocks, he flips it between his fingers. “Now what?”

I shrug. “Now I call my cousin and tell him I want to keep it.” I sigh. “It’s what Ned would want. It’s what I want.” Oddly enough, saying the words out loud for the first time brings me a sense of peace.

“Because she was right, wasn’t she? It’s an anchor.”

I glance up to see that distant worry in his eyes. Esmeralda’s words are still lingering in his mind, too.

“One of them.”

His chest lifts with a deep breath, and I’m hit with a wave of panic that something between us has changed since yesterday, that he’s grown bored with me overnight. That he’s decided he doesn’t want to do this, after all.

I hate this insecurity swirling inside my head and my heart. I’m not used to feeling it; I’ve managed to avoid it all this time by not committing to people. And now, here I am, finally ready to commit, and I’m already losing my cool.

“She was right. About my ghost,” he says quietly, his gaze holding to the ocean’s water line.

I sigh with relief. This isn’t about us at all. “What do you mean?”

He clears his throat, as if voicing the next words is going to be hard. “We used to go on these regular raids through Marjah, routing out insurgents. There were a lot. I can’t tell you how many rounds of ammunition I fired in my time over there. Anyway, there was this one day on my second tour, we had a tip on someone and I was out with my team, hunting them down. We found ourselves driving into this long corridor in our Humvee. And there was this little girl running at us, with these big blue eyes and dark hair, and wearing a backpack. The Taliban were known for using children in these kinds of attacks. Where we were, with buildings on either side, we’d be leveled by an explosion. She was so little, six or seven. She was scared, I could see it in her eyes.”

I’m trying to picture this but I’m struggling, partly because I don’t want to. I’ve always rolled my eyes at Dakota when she talks about auras, but right now the very air around Sebastian has chilled. I’m shivering.

He heaves a sigh. “We yelled at her to stop, but she kept coming. I was the only one who had the clear line of sight. So I took it. She went quickly. We scouted the area for insurgents before we closed in to secure the backpack. There was a blanket, a bottle of water, and naan wrapped in cloth.” I look over to see his profile, an image of sorrow, as his voice grows thick. “She wasn’t coming to kill us. We found out later that she had no home, no parents. She was running to us for help.”

My chest begins to throb. “But . . . that wasn’t your fault.” Even as I say it, I understand that wouldn’t mean anything to the man who pulled the trigger. To a man with Sebastian’s discipline and code of honor. Something like that must have destroyed him.

He says nothing, peering down at his boots.

“So what happened?”

“It got swept under the rug as a wartime casualty and everybody moved on.” He pauses. Everybody but him, I’m guessing. “The next time a kid darted out from behind a car at our outfit, I froze. Even when my commanding officer yelled the order to fire, even when I saw the IED in his hand, I couldn’t pull the trigger. He lobbed it at the Humvee in front of us and blew them up.”

“The one your friends were in?”

“They were all my friends,” Sebastian explains quietly. “But, yeah. That’s the one.”

This story is getting worse and worse.

Sebastian has an army of ghosts trailing him.

I reach over to take his hand and squeeze it. He turns my fingers in his palm, lightly tracing the splotches of color with his free hand.

“I took some shrapnel to the back. Kirkpatrick, my commander at the time and a fucking dick wad, wrote me up for insubordination. When I filed my papers to leave the navy, I ended up with an ‘Other than Honorable’ discharge.”

“What does that mean?”

His lips twist in a bitter smile. “It depends who you ask. For someone like you, who doesn’t know anything about the navy, it doesn’t mean much at all. For someone like my father, who retired as a highly decorated navy captain, it’s almost as bad as if I were some street thug, murdering innocent human beings.” He pauses. “It means that it can be hard to get a job, and a lot of veteran benefits don’t apply to me, even with my years of service.”

“But you did get a job.”

His lips twist in thought. “Yeah. Through a friend.”

“Well, then . . . screw that less than honorable discharge, because you’re doing what you’re good at anyway. Right?”

He studies the sand for a moment. “Right.”

No wonder he doesn’t like talking about the navy. I wouldn’t either if those memories were tied to it. And it sounds like he doesn’t have anyone in his corner, now that he’s trying to move on. “Are you and your parents close?”

“Not really.” He hesitates. “But I haven’t made much of an effort, to be honest. I haven’t made an effort with anyone.”

“Where are they now?”

“Still in Potrero Hill.”

I frown. “Don’t you live in Potrero, too?”

A slight frown touches his forehead. “Right.”

So they’re probably minutes away from each other? While I’m not necessarily one to push family bonding, after watching Ian miss out on making amends with his father, I don’t want to see it happen again. “Thanksgiving is in a couple of days. Maybe it’s time to make an effort?”

“Maybe.”

Silence hangs over us as we both watch the waves crash in.

I finally reach up to smooth my hand over his back in a soothing way. Wanting to take some of his agony away, to make him feel less alone. “So . . . I guess creepy Esmeralda was right about a lot of things.”

“Fuck, was she ever creepy,” he mutters, and we share a laugh. Sebastian pauses to toss the seashell into the water. “These anchors she talked about . . .” He shoots a sideways glance my way.

“What about them?”

“Well, they sound like they involve some commitments, and I remember Ivy Lee telling me that she didn’t make commitments.”

“I did say that, didn’t I?”

“Has that changed?”

It’s endearing, watching Sebastian—a man who’s normally so controlled and in charge—hesitantly probe in a way that he wouldn’t have before.

How has he not figured out that everything has changed for me, and it’s all because of him?

I answer by throwing a leg over his thighs to straddle him, my back to the ocean. Because I’d rather be looking at this man anyway. “Maybe.”

His eyes scan my face, settling on my lips, and I expect that he’s going to lean in and kiss me. But he suddenly scoops me up in his arms and trudges easily through the thick mounds of sand toward his car. I squeal like the kind of girls I mock.

“We should get home. Get some sleep.” His deep voice hums through my body, because I know we won’t be going to sleep immediately.

“When is your plumbing going to be fixed?” I’m desperate to see Sebastian’s home. To be surrounded by his things. To invade his life like he’s invaded mine.

“Don’t know yet. Soon.”

I groan. “Are you sure you don’t have a wife there?” That would be just my fucking luck. I hate that I asked, but it’s beginning to drive me nuts.

“Yes, I’m sure.”

“Girlfriend?”

“None.”

“Boyfriend?”

He chuckles. “Trust me, after last night’s dinner, I’d rather be bringing you to my place than risk meeting another one of Dakota’s friends.” We reach the car and he sets me down, opening the door for me.

I climb in and watch him as he rounds the front, his raptor gaze scanning our surroundings.

When Sebastian told me we were going to his parents’ for Thanksgiving dinner, I remember being happy that he actually listened to me, and that this was a big step for him. I completely dismissed the reality that Sebastian’s parents would be meeting me.

And, most likely, judging me.

Normally I wouldn’t give a damn. But these are Sebastian’s parents.

I give a damn.

“So, on a scale of one to ten, how much do they hate tattooed women?” I ask, taking in the perfectly manicured little house before us, the American flag drifting ever so slightly in the cool fall breeze.

Sebastian’s eyes float over me from head to toe, settling on the black turtleneck I chose for today’s meeting. The temperatures allow for it, thank God; it’s only about fifty degrees out. “You look great.”

“Right. And you’re sure we shouldn’t have brought flowers or something?” Showing up at someone’s house for Thanksgiving dinner empty-handed feels like the wrong thing to do, even though I really have no experience in this sort of thing. Aside from meeting Jesse’s father—albeit years later, when he nearly arrested me—I’ve never actually met a guy’s parents.

“You’re nervous?”

“No,” I lie, smoothing my long hair down around my face to cover where I recently shaved the sides. They were getting too long and mangy.

“Well, don’t worry. It’ll be fine.” He sets his jaw, like he doesn’t really believe that.

He curls his fingers through mine, and then presses the doorbell. Moments later, footfalls sound on the other side and the door cracks open, and a small woman with a blond bob appears.

She gives her head a shake. “Sebastian?”

“Hey, Mom.”

She looks dazed for a moment. “Why didn’t you . . .” Her words drift off as she glances from him to me, to our clasped hands, to him again. And then she heaves a sigh and smiles. “Come in, please.”