Liar.
If she leaves, her honeysuckle scent goes with her, and what will remain is my own stink.
I hate how I crave to know if her skin is as soft as it seems. But here the fuck I am, itching to glide my hands over her, imagining her beneath me. I want to taste her. Explore the secrets hidden beneath that hideous dress. Wrap her legs around my waist and slide my dick—
Yeah…let’s stop this train of thought before it leaves the station.
She casts a glance around the cell, but there’s not much to see. The bed with its disgusting mattress. A sink and toilet combo—sink’s broken. Metal hooks embedded in the cement floor where they latch the chains when they restrain me. Nothing else. Not even a blanket.
When she settles her attention back on me, her icy regard is a physical touch grazing my sweat-slicked skin. “You’re a long way from home.”
The fuck?
That’s a hell of a remark considering her focus is fixed on my tattoo.
Can’t miss the damn thing.Unholyis written larger than life beneath my collarbone. Word runs shoulder to shoulder. Every Unholy gets the same ink the day we’re bled into the gang. So, yeah, I’m marked, but we’re not known this far south. Yet there’s recognition in her eyes as she studies the tattoo.
Hope and foreboding collide and coil in my gut. “Now how the hell would you know where I’m from?”
She shifts her gaze to my face, and the coil tightens. Her eyes are suddenly too green. Too familiar.
Too haunted.
I’ve known exactly one other person with those eyes. Eyes that have seen too much misery. And when she turns her head and looks away, as if she can’t bear the burden of my scrutiny, the air is sucked clean out of my lungs. My mind spins as I gape at the puckered circle of skin on the side of her neck.
The old burn is the size of a cigarette.
Hell no.
Abso-fucking-lutely not.
It’s not her. Can’t be. Jamie’s gone.Long gone. I followed the trial, and no, I didn’t expect her to come running back to Mayhem after her acquittal. With her father dead, the girl had no family left in town. But I expected a phone call, a letter. Shit, I’d even take a fucking smoke signal.Something.Anything. Instead, she went to live her with grandmother and then… Nothing. She disappeared. Vanished off the face of the fucking planet.
Took me months—okay, years—but I finally gave up and moved on. Forced myself not to think about the scarred girl with the sad eyes.
But Jamie’s last day in Mayhem comes crashing back like a freight train to the brain. I see her, sitting next to me, her chin on her knees with the sunlight turning her brown hair to fire. The image superimposes itself over the woman across from me.
Gotta be the concussion, because no fucking way can Jamie Ellis be here. No way can she magically appear in this hellhole, married, and be all friendly-like with the prick who’s holding me captive.
But sheishere. I can see her. Smell her. She’s as real as the bars holding me prisoner. The reality of her—ofmyJamie—sitting across from me, snaps that frayed thread in my brain.
Before I can stop myself, I spring forward. Her gasp bounces off the walls as my weight knocks her backward. She slams against the floor, and I land on top of her. A flood of pain shoots through me like daggers stabbing my nerves. Damn ketaphrin. Doesn’t matter. I deal with the agony as I stare into the face of a ghost, searching for the girl who crushed my heart.
And I see her. She’s there, simmering beneath the icy exterior of the woman pinned beneath me. She’s reflected in the golden glitter in the woman’s melancholy eyes. In the freckles sprinkled across the bridge of her nose. And in the faint scars left behind by Billy Ellis’s sloppy fists. I remember when those marks were new. I was the one who helped wipe away the blood. Who brought her bandages. Who held ice packs to swollen flesh. I was there when she pretended she was fine. But I saw her pain. How important it was for her to show the world her strength. My brave, unbreakable girl. And when she rested her head on my shoulder in the aftermath of a particularly brutal beating, her absent tears fucking shattered me.
“Impossible.”
Didn’t mean to say the word out loud.
“Not so impossible.” Her voice is a hush, barely audible above the rushing of blood in my ears and the hammering of my heart.
Afraid I’m dreaming, praying I’m awake, I balance my weight on one arm and trace my fingers down her cheek. Reverently. Half expecting her to dissolve beneath my touch. But she’s warm and smooth. Perfect.Real.Not a figment of my desperate imagination.
She blinks up at me, her face frustratingly unreadable. The rapid rise and fall of her chest the only sign of her distress. There she is, the girl who dug herself so deep into my heart, I didn’t know where I ended and she began.
The girl who was tungsten wrapped around stardust.
“Jamie.” It’s a whisper of a prayer in the darkness.
