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What the hell am I gonna do with this guy—and why can’t I just leave him out of my life?
“You like punk rock?”
I blink at the quiet question, then realize what’s playing on the old stereo of the truck. “Yeah. This is DeathMoth. The group. Some friends of mine play in it.”
I glance sideways at him. We’ve stopped at a traffic light, and his face is washed in red. It looks disturbingly like blood, and there’s a dark shadow on his cheek I hadn’t noticed before. A bruise?
Son of a bitch. It is. There’s a dark line right below his eye, too, like a cut. In the narrow confines of the car, he stinks of something sour like trash and vomit, and still underneath it all there’s that cinnamon scent and male musk that I can’t get enough of.
“You mean Rafe Vestri and Dakota Madden from the tattoo shop you work at.” He fiddles with the cuff of his jacket sleeve and looks away, as if feeling my scrutiny.
“Right. How did you know?”
“Jesse Lee told me about it.”
Jesse Lee had once been on the streets with Jason, hustling for a living—until Zane Madden and Rafe Vestri found him and brought him to Damage Control as an apprentice. Like they did with Shun and all the Damage Boyz.
Like Jason would’ve been, if he’d accepted the help.
He shivers, and I reach for the heater, cranking up the heat.
“You’re good friends with Jesse,” I say.
He shrugs. “I don’t see him much these days. Not since he left this life behind.” There’s an odd catch in his voice.
“He moved on.”
“He sure did.” He chuckles, a deep, rich sound, and it makes me mad at him all over again. “Never looked back.”
“Why should he?”
He doesn’t reply to that. Doesn’t laugh again, either. “Right,” he says eventually as we’re rolling again through traffic. “You and the guys of the shop… you’re pretty close, huh? You and Jesse Lee?”
“What do you care?” It comes out with more force than I’d intended. What is it about this guy that gets me so pissed? “That’s none of your business.”
He jerks a little. “Sheesh, relax. Just making conversation.”
And that somehow pisses me off even more, especially when I take another look at his jaw. “You could do what Jesse did. Stop living that life.”
He’s quiet. Again avoiding the topic. After a while, he sighs. “Who pissed in your cornflakes today?”
Of all the things to say… Deflating, I shake my head and focus on the street ahead. “Fuck you.”
“Sure, but it’ll cost you.”
That startles a bark of laughter from me. Damn him. “Everything has a price with you.”
He looks at me then. I catch his gaze as I slow down to park the truck, and it’s… interested. Curious. Analyzing. “Everything has a cost. But if you wanna tell me what got your pink panties in a twist, I’ll listen for free.”
Really? I’m tempted to snark. How big of you.
But instead, as I throw the truck into park, I find myself saying, “It’s my fucking parents.”
A chuckle, quieter than the last. “I’ll just go out on a limb here and guess you don’t get along.”
“You’d guess right.” It’s dark now inside the truck, the only light the next street lamp that’s casting a pool of gold on the sidewalk. It’s drizzling, the fine drops weaving a sheet of sparkles from the lightbulb down to the street. “We never have, even less so since they swindled my brother out of all his money and skipped town.”
He nods. Maybe Ocean told him about it. Maybe he’s just being polite.
