Penance Page 7

  How I got mixed up with the Soul Suckers would lead me down a path of explaining how I ended up going to the Black Angels. And that really wasn’t a story I wanted to tell. “That’s not your business.”

  “You’re right—it’s not.” He leaned forward, closing the distance between us and softening his voice. Soothing me with his words as he said, “That doesn’t mean you can’t tell me, though. That you can’t talk to me. I’m a good secret keeper.”

  I wished. Wished hard. Sometimes, I just wanted to lay out everything I’d been through—every step I’d taken—to someone who could help me figure out where I’d gone wrong. Help me find what I’d missed. Who could simply listen to the tale and tell me I wasn’t insane, and everything really had happened.

  But that was an impossibility. “It’s not safe to talk about such things.”

  Rough. My voice came out so rough, but Finn heard me.

  “For you or for me?” he asked, all low and quiet. Still soothing. Still pulling honesty from me when I knew better than to give that to him.

  “For everyone.”

  He inched closer, shifting all the way to the edge of his bed, reaching slowly across the space between us toward me. Raising his arm bit by bit and extending it until his fingers brushed mine as they sat in my lap. He’d held my hand earlier in the evening at the truck stop, so the touch shouldn’t have surprised me. But it did. It shook me, too. Sent sparks of energy shooting up my arm and brought a shiver to my spine. His lips parted slightly, drawing my attention. So pink and full and soft-looking, so perfect. I’d never wanted to kiss someone so badly. Never wanted to know what they tasted like so much. For one moment—one second—I thought maybe I could have that. One taste. One kiss. One moment of more.

  But that one second passed.

  Finn ran his fingers along the length of the scars on my wrists—the ones that had only one story to tell—causing my body to lock down. My fear to explode within me. I tried to pull away on instinct, fear of more hurt and pain and mess driving my actions. Finn didn’t let me run from him, though—hanging on with a gentle touch as he raised the sleeves of the hoodie I wore. Staring at my scars in a way that made my eyes burn.

  “Are these from the Soul Suckers?”

  Yes. No. Sort of.

  “Partially,” I said, finally succeeding in pulling my hands away. I crossed my arms, trying to hide my wrists. The lines around them that screamed restraints. That proved I’d been a prisoner. And in that moment, as Finn allowed me to retreat, as he settled farther back on his bed and gave me my space, I allowed one tiny crack in the wall around my truth. “Some are from my mom’s old club.”

  “Your mom rode?” He shook his head when I cocked mine. “Wait…not rode. She was involved in a club?”

  “Yeah. That’s how I met Parris.”

  That definitely got a reaction, though not a brash one. The man was nothing if not subtle. He was also confusing, as he didn’t ask me the question I’d been expecting. Nothing about Parris or our history. Instead, he went with, “Why’d they restrain you?”

  No one who’d seen my scars had ever asked that, and I couldn’t do anything but answer honestly. “Because I tried to run after I’d sworn I’d stay.”

  He kept his eyes on my wrists. Kept his voice so gentle in tone as he asked, “Why’d you try to run?”

  Because I hadn’t belonged there. Because I’d been terrified. Because I’d given up all hope of finding out what I’d wanted to. Because the new president hadn’t honored my old deal. “Because I didn’t want to do what they told me to.”

  He shifted forward again, coming closer. Pressing his knees against mine and his hands on my thighs. “What did they want you to do?”

  So close. So very close and warm and smelling of man. Of safety. Of home. “Likely the same thing you want me to do right now.”

  His eyes darted to mine, and he shook his head. “I would never make you do anything you didn’t want to. I would never push you like that.”

  “I know.” And I did. I trusted him…as much as I could trust anyone. With my body but not my heart. Or my secrets. “But you want something from me. I can tell.”

  Finn inched closer, running his fingertips along the length of my hand. “I do. I’ll admit to that. But I’d never hurt you, Jinx. I’d never take without asking.”

  “I know that, too.” That wasn’t in Finn’s nature, the taking. The abusing. He’d ask for what he wanted and respect my right to turn him down, not that I planned on doing so. In fact, I had a feeling I wanted the same thing as he did. Maybe more. Maybe a lot more. “Ask me, Finn. Tell me what you need, and I may feel the same way. You know you want to.”

  “What I need doesn’t matter.”

  It did, but I wouldn’t argue with him. “What about what I need?” I leaned closer, bringing our faces only inches apart and licking my lips before whispering, “I want you to ask me, Finn.”

  His breath caught, and he bit his bottom lip for just a moment before he finally voiced the question I’d been hoping for. “Can I kiss you?”

  “Yes.” I closed my eyes as his hands slid around my hips, as he dropped to his knees on the floor between us and gently brought our bodies closer together. As he breathed over my lips before pressing his to them. Soft, so soft and sweet and gentle. Just as I’d thought they’d be. Unlike anyone else. Uniquely Finn and so damn perfect, those lips. That kiss. Simple and graceful and easy.

  But way too short.

  “Thank you,” he said after he broke the kiss. As if I’d given him a gift or something.

  “You don’t have to thank me.”

  “I feel like I do.” He sighed, moving back to meet my gaze. To stare up at me. “I liked that.”

  So honest, this man. So sweet. How could I do anything but reciprocate? “Me too.”

  He pushed my hair over my shoulder, keeping his eyes locked on mine. “I want to know more about you.”

  I swallowed the dread those words inspired. I could trust Finn. Sort of. “Ditto.”

  “Quid pro quo?”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “It means I ask you a question, then you ask me one. We take turns.”

  What a terrifying thought. “Can I go first?”

  “Sure.”

  I grabbed his arm and tugged, twisting as gently as I could until I had access to the place I wanted. To his elbow where a black and gray cobweb radiated from the joint. Until black ink stared back at me. The same black ink I’d seen that first night at The Jury Room. The spider web tattoo that told me Finn wasn’t as innocent as he seemed.

  “What were you in prison for?”

  Chapter Seven

  FINN

  The tattoo. Jinx had been around bikers—some of them likely criminals. Of course she'd see the tattoo and know the meaning of the symbol. The real meaning. I didn’t usually have to explain the art to anyone. Most people assumed it was nothing more than that—art. A common design likely found “on the wall” at the shop I’d gone to. They didn’t know I didn’t get the art in any shop. They also didn’t know the symbolism behind it. That spider web had a long history in prison culture. It meant I’d been an insect trapped in the web of the penitentiary system for a long time. Long enough to have earned the dark, rough lines drawn on my arm. Too damn long.

  “Those years…” I licked my lips, suddenly hot and dry and in desperate need of something more than a ginger ale. Jinx was pure chaos even in her calmest state, a disruption I shouldn’t be playing with. One I didn’t want to walk away from just yet, though. “That's really not something I talk about.”

  “Cool.” She nodded, looking at me as if things were decidedly not cool. She might as well have said fine. “So that ends this whole quid pro quote thing.”

  “Quo.” By her glower, my automatic correction of her misspoken word didn’t help matters. “Sorry.”

  “It's fine—”

  “It's not.” I reached for her hand, unable not to. Needing some sort of connection
to her, even if only for a few moments. “Talking about that time in my life is hard, and you knowing that the tattoo was a prison one threw me off. Most people don't know or don’t ask.”

  “I'm not most people.”

  “Trust me, I’ve figured that out.” I took a deep breath, letting go of her hand so I could sit on the edge of the bed closest to the door. The one I assumed she didn't sleep in. I couldn’t handle the thought of being in her bed at that moment. I also couldn’t break my word—we’d made a deal, and I’d stick by it. “I went to prison for possession with intent to sell methamphetamines.”

  She rose to her feet and walked out of our little hallway between the beds, leaning a hip against the dresser at the end, putting extra space between us and looking so damn disappointed. “You sold drugs.”

  “Nope. Not once.”

  “Then why—”

  “I’m not innocent,” I said, knowing there were no truer words. “I would never claim I didn't do things that were wrong, but I didn't do that.”

  She didn’t look convinced. “I’m confused.”

  “Yeah. I really suck at this.” I took a deep breath and dug down deep for the right words to say. The ones that might tell my story without this entire thing blowing up in my face. “I wasn't bad, you know? I wasn't a troublemaker, and I didn't come from some messed-up family. I was a good kid with solid grades, a close family, and a future all planned out. I was a good kid.”

  “Until you weren't.”

  “Until I wasn’t.” Until that first summer. “It started almost as a joke—my friend’s mom had a bunch of prescriptions, and some of them made you feel pretty loopy. Or pretty relaxed. I didn't really think much about taking them because she didn't seem to need them, and they weren't illegal or anything. They came from a doctor.”

  A doctor with a total disregard for his patient’s health and an overactive prescription pad, but I was too far gone by the time I figured that part out.

  Jinx sighed, shaking her head. “Fish, you don’t have to—”

  “Those drugs led to painkillers, which led me to things that were harder to get my hands on.” I clenched my fingers, my hands nearly shaking. I’d have given anything to be able to have something to do with them—to have a carving project to work on or a piece of wood to whittle. I hated when my hands didn’t know what to do with themselves. “At least until I found a doctor willing to write me my own prescriptions.”

  Her eyes zeroed in on mine, pinning me in place. Making my hands go still again. “You found Oxy.”

  Bull’s-eye. “Yeah. There was a doctor over in Whitman who—I thought—would write anyone a prescription for it without them being a patient. Turns out, his medical assistant was writing the orders and selling them. She got busted and my supply line dried up, so that’s when I moved on to Special K.”

  Ketamine. A powerful disassociative drug that had seemed like a gift at the time. A gift of distraction.

  Jinx must have known about it already. “And the bikers who dealt it.”

  I shook my head. “Not at first. There was a local guy, someone I'd grown up with. He would go outside Justice to buy and then sell to the rest of us. It wasn't until my addiction grew strong enough for me to want to cut out the middleman that I met the Soul Suckers.”

  “I bet they loved seeing you coming.”

  There was no holding back my snort of laughter. “Dumb, rural kid who had parents with a little money? Already addicted and needing my daily doses to get through life? Yeah. I was a wet dream of a customer for them.”

  Jinx nodded as if she knew exactly where this story was going. “And they got you to sell to your friends?”

  “No.” I shrugged at her confused expression. “I wasn't kidding or trying to soften what I said earlier. I never once sold drugs. I only bought them.”

  “But…you went to prison for dealing.” She couldn’t have sounded any more surprised or filled with doubt. And I couldn’t blame her a bit.

  “I did. I’m sure you’ve heard this from anyone who ever went to jail, but I was innocent of the charges brought against me.” Man, I hated that word. “I may not have been innocent—I was an addict, after all, and had done some shady things to get my hands on my drugs. But I never sold. Not one time.”

  “Then how did you end up in jail?”

  Two words…Sheriff Fucking Baker. Okay, three. “The county sheriff had a beef with my family, and I took the brunt of his anger. Sheriff Baker came at me hard with a bunch of trumped-up evidence and some major exaggerations about my past. He made me out to be some serious degenerate who would murder your kids to get what I wanted, and I was too stupid to figure out a way through him. I refused to let my parents hire some expensive lawyer and lose their retirement money, so I used the public defender. And I went to jail.”

  She looked horrified—not unexpectedly. But there was sadness there as well. Pain in her expressive almost-gray eyes as she asked, “How long?”

  I sighed, deep and loud, and lay back on the bed. Hands behind my head, I stared at the ceiling as I said, “Simple possession of Schedule II drugs is a level four drug felony and carries a penalty of six to twelve months plus a fine. Judges can also knock that down to a misdemeanor if you complete a treatment program and don’t violate any conditions of your parole.”

  “How long, Finn?”

  “Baker pushed and got the DA to charge me with possession of a Schedule II drug with intent to sell. Nine grams—two over the limit for a shorter sentence.”

  Jinx was nothing if not persistent. “How long?”

  The sound of my father’s gasp when the judge sentenced me was something I would never forget, something I would never not hear. Something that would haunt me for the rest of my life. “I did seven years of an eight-year sentence.”

  “Jesus.”

  “Trust me, Jinx—he wasn’t at that sentencing.”

  Memories of those first few nights in jail, of the fear and the sickness and the anger—at everyone around me because of how unfair life was, but not at myself…not yet—clogged my mind. I’d hated the world but had hated myself more for needing that fix. That way to make the world around me fuzzy and hide inside myself. All these years later, and I still itched for something to help me cope when my emotions came into play. When everything around me suddenly felt like too much. When I couldn’t put my hands on a piece of wood or a stick or a knife that would transform the ordinary into more and take over every thought in my muddled brain. Carving wood kept me sane when the world tried to make me crazy, but I couldn’t carve all the time. So I took a few deep breaths, searching hard for some sort of balance. Shoving the memories to the back of my mind to deal with later.

  The mattress dipped as Jinx sat beside me, her very presence stealing every bit of my attention and making my chest tighten. I rose a little and turned her way, watching. Needing. So close. I could smell the soft, floral perfume that clung to her. Could almost taste it on the air.

  I suddenly wanted to taste it on her skin instead.

  “I’m sorry that happened to you,” she said, her voice quiet and soft. Her eyes locked on to mine. “That asshole sheriff deserves to be shot for what he did.”

  Irony, thy name is Sheriff Baker. “He was.”

  She blinked. “They shot him for pressing fake charges?”

  “No. Someone shot Sheriff Baker for trying to kill his girlfriend.” I lay back on the bed, staring at the ceiling. Needing a moment to calm my thoughts. “Either way, he’s dead.”

  She opened and closed her mouth as if to speak but seemed unable to find the words. I totally understood that. Baker’s treachery in my arrest and subsequent trial, how he’d padded every piece of evidence to make sure my charge was just harsh enough for such a rough penalty, his constant threats hanging over my head, how he’d helped destroy what little life I’d had—all of that ended the moment someone else had pulled the trigger. If I’d have been man enough—if I’d been as tough and badass as my two older brothers with all t
hat training and experience in war—maybe I would have been the one to do it. Maybe I would have shoved a gun in his face and pulled that trigger. Going back to jail hadn’t seemed worth the satisfaction that act would have brought me, though. And really, I’d never been given the opportunity.

  I would never know what I’d have done if I had, though.

  “So,” Jinx said as she lay down beside me and inched closer. Bringing our shoulders together and forcing me to stop breathing. “How long since your release?”

  “Five years.”

  “Still sober?”

  The carefulness of that question, the obvious concern, gutted me. I was proud to say, “Absolutely.”

  She nodded, almost seeming to hold her breath for a moment before whispering, “I’m sorry I always ask if you want a beer.”

  I hadn’t expected that. “Don’t be. Alcohol wasn’t my thing, but even if it had been, you didn’t know. It’s my job to turn down temptation.”

  “Yeah, but there’s no sense in tempting you even more.”

  With alcohol. Not with her body, which was the sort of temptation that had me sliding ever closer to her. Moving so our arms, legs, and hips touched as well. “I’m okay with you tempting me. I’ve actually grown almost used to it.”

  She bumped me with her shoulder. “Quit being so charming.”

  “I’ll try, but since I don’t know how to be charming, it might be difficult to turn off.”

  “I’ll tell you when you’re charming me. That way, you can learn how to be a regular loser guy instead of someone sort of great.”

  This girl. “Perfect. Thanks. It’s what I’ve been wanting—a crash course in how to be a loser. I appreciate the help.”

  “You’re welcome. Just doing my part to save the world from falling for the local fish.”

  “My name’s Finn.”

  “I know.” She turned toward me, grinning. “But you’ll always be my fish.”

  Hers. I shouldn’t like the sound of that as much as I did already.

  “So,” I said, turning on my side to face her as she mimicked my movements. “Quid pro quo. Tell me something about yourself.”