I like seeing you like this.
D.C.—that world, for all its faults, was all I knew. I couldn’t live between two worlds. I’d have to completely sever all ties to my family and to Charlie. Because they’d never be convinced I wanted to be here.
If Charlie’s dad died in office, my dad was next in line. And with my father as one of the most powerful men in the world, I doubted my family would give up looking for me, and not because I was their child, but because of what I knew.
As much as things change, they stay the same.
We all put our pants on one leg at a time.
All of that was a politician’s grab bag of phrases to make them seem like everyone else. Even though they thought they weren’t.
Turns out, they were.
The only thing my old life didn’t have was Mathias.
Mathias, who took my wrists in his hands and turned them slowly, so the scars faced him. He looked at me and mouthed, Why? as he stroked my scarred wrists with his thumbs.
He hadn’t avoided them when we’d had sex. If anything, he seemed to pay more attention to them and I’d never realized how much of an aphrodisiac my pulse points there were. For me, my scars were always the elephant in the room, but Mathias stroked and kissed them.
I turned the question right back on him. “Why?”
He typed, Because you’re here. You made it. You found out you get to live, and look what you’ve done since then. Because scars are beautiful. They mean you’ve lived hard. That means you can love hard.
He was born to have his heart broken. So was I.
I don’t want to love, he typed.
“I don’t believe in it, so we’re even. Or at least we were, until we met.”
Everybody’s got to fight to be free
Mathias
She kissed me then, her hands wrapped tenderly around the back of my neck. The kiss told me everything I needed to know.
Jessa wasn’t suicidal now. Most likely, she wouldn’t be again.
“Can you hide them for me? I mean, you and I know they’re there. You’ll always be able to feel them. But having you cover them up is right.”
I traced the deep cuts with my forefingers. Covering scars was an art form. But I’d honor them, and I’d make sure no one made Jessa feel badly about them ever again. When I was through with them, she’d have charmed tattoos. Only after I nodded, told her that I’d cover them, if that’s what she wanted, did she answer my original question.
“I was sixteen,” she started, the story she’d said she’d tell me at some point. The one she hadn’t fully been able to on our first night together. “I didn’t know what else to do to get their attention. My father was running for office. I was expected to go on the road with them and be tutored on the tour bus. I was expected to be perfect every minute of every day for as long as the campaign lasted. There were reporters who’d travel with us. There wasn’t any privacy, and that’s how my parents liked to live. When the reporters and the cameras went away, they honestly seemed not to know what to do with themselves.”
I stroked her palm, ran a finger down her lifeline. I wasn’t psychic, but I knew the basics of palm and tea reading. It was about broken lines and split lines and long lines...and her lifeline was long and winding.
Living a life in the public eye would’ve broken her. What do you want to do? If the Chaos hadn’t happened and you had your choice, what would you do?
“I never really thought about it. Since I couldn’t have it, that only seemed like a waste of time. Something that would make me more sad.”
But now you can.
“Tell me yours.”
I would’ve been happy on the bayou with my family close. Would raise a family of my own with my traditions. I like things simple.
“You also like to blow things up.”
Yeah well, I would’ve joined the military, with or without the Chaos. It hasn’t stopped me from doing a damned thing. Not since I’d floated out of the bayou, holding on and then running for my life, with Bish at my side.
I wondered if I’d be doing the same thing with her.
Chapter Twenty-Three
So wild and free, so far from me
Bishop
Luna was where she always was these days, in a corner of the shop, working on a bike. I didn’t know whose it was—but it was custom and he knew she’d started building it from the ground up the day after Aimee had been attacked.
She was alone now, because Caspar was running drills, which gave me the time off. Sometimes Mathias and I participated but lately, since we hadn’t asked to officially join the club, Caspar had stopped pushing.
Luna had a half sleeve of tattoos on her arm. Inside the shop was warm and she only wore a tank top, her long hair wrapped and held in place with a bandanna. Her face was bare of makeup, her cheek smudged with grease and she looked more beautiful to him than ever.
“You shouldn’t be here, Bishop,” Luna told me finally, without looking up.
“I’m always someplace I shouldn’t be.” I leaned against the door frame and gazed at her. She stood then and marched over to me, blocking my way in with her body. “Lettin’ me in?”
“No.”
Over my head
Luna
After she told him no, Bishop simply smiled easily and shrugged his way past her while managing to leave her in place. She huffed, looked over her shoulder at him and finally shut the door. “You can’t stay.”
In response, he planted himself on her couch and started to put his feet up on the small table, until she shot him a look. He turned and put his feet up on the couch instead.
“Incorrigible.”
“And you like that, right, Luna?”
“I don’t know what I like.” But she was lying and the insistent throb between her legs taunted her. It would be easy enough to give herself over to Bishop and God knew she’d had enough dreams about it.
“You can’t hide him forever.”
“You don’t know anything about it.”
But his gaze told her differently. She wouldn’t say anything more, wouldn’t risk a man’s reputation, not someone who’d been her best friend through thick and thin, someone who hadn’t run off like Tru. She’d been closer to Rebel than she’d even been with Aimee, and she was really close to Aimee. Or had been, until Aimee had been hurt.
“You wear that guilt so plain on your face, babe. Wipe that shit off. Not a good look,” Bishop admonished her.
“Fuck you.” That made him smile. “You’re a sick man,” she told him and that made him smile more. “You can’t save everyone, Bishop,” she said finally, pushed past him and slammed the door so she could get the final word.
“But I can try,” she heard him call through the closed door.
Chapter Twenty-Four
I never said I was a victim of circumstance
Mathias
We’d lost what was left of our childhood because of the Chaos. Most days, we hadn’t felt like we were adults, but we’d been forced to act like we were anyway. Now, when we got tired of the adult shit, Bish and I would run wild. Didn’t matter where we were or what our responsibilities were, for an hour or two, we’d steal gas for our bikes and whatever drink we could find.