Chapter One
“SomethingInTheOrange”—StateofMine
“ D ude, come with me to get some shit for the clubhouse,” my brother Dallas said as he kicked the bottom of my foot that was hanging off the bed.
“Fuck off,” I grumbled and pulled the pillow over my head. “I was driving all damn day yesterday. I’m fucking tired.”
In a way, I was glad he had woken me up.
I’d been having another dream about that little kid again. I’d been having visions and dreams of the same little boy for over a year now. It shook me up every time.
Because he looked similar to my childhood pictures, I was sure it was my brother, and I was getting flashes of his life when he was young. He was six years older than me, and I’d only been two when our mom died. So, it was possible. I never saw the kid’s mom in my dreams. Only her arms or her fuzzy figure from the back. So, it seemed possible that it was our mom.
It would match the memories I had of her—fuzzy and unclear.
“Don’t be a loser. You crashed out at midnight. It’s ten in the morning,” he shot back.
I lifted the pillow from my face to glare at him from my comfy position in his guest bedroom. “So? I don’t have to go into the shop until tomorrow at three. Let me be lazy.”
“Bro, I need help. Come on,” he beseeched.
“Can’t one of your brothers do it?” I groaned.
“No. They’re all tasked out. Besides you owe me for letting you stay with me indefinitely until you get on your feet and find a place.” He thumped my foot again.
“Really? That’s low. Besides, I told you I’d hook you up with some free tattoos for letting me stay here.” I sat up as I glowered at him.
“Hey, I’m not above that.” He shrugged and grinned. “Besides, I really do need the help loading and unloading the crap I gotta get.”
“Well, now that I’m wide awake thanks to you, I might as fucking well.” I threw off the covers and got up.
“Whoa! Dude! I didn’t need to see that!” Dallas dramatically covered his eyes.
“Then you shouldn’t have come in here and woke me up!” I called out as I sauntered out of the bedroom door and into the bathroom. I chuckled to myself as I turned on the water for the shower.
Within ten minutes, I was showered, had my teeth brushed, and had walked back into my room with the towel around my waist. I quickly dressed in a beat-up, but comfy, pair of jeans, a T-shirt, and a hoodie. I was lacing up my boots when Dallas came back in my room.
“Don’t you ever knock?” I asked with one brow arched.
“The door was open, numbnuts,” he dryly replied.
I shook my head but couldn’t stop the way the corner of my mouth pulled upward. I’d missed the easy banter with my brother. I would forever be grateful to my foster parents for making sure I was able to keep in contact with my brother. It had allowed us to get really close as we got older.
“You ready?” he asked as he glanced at his watch.
“Yep,” I replied.
We walked outside and my brother unlocked the lifted, black Chevy truck. Once we were inside, he headed down the road. As he drove, I opened my phone to find a text message from Killswitch, Dallas’s VP in his club and my new boss.
Killswitch: Hey Frosty, I booked a couple of clients for you for tomorrow. First one is at noon.
“Killswitch said he already has a couple of clients booked for me tomorrow. And why does he keep calling me Frosty?” I asked my brother as I replied to the message.
“Because you came from Montana.” He laughed and I shook my head. “And that’s good, bro. I’m happy for you,” he said with a quick glance my way before returning his eyes to the road.
For a few minutes, I was quiet.
“I dreamed of that kid again. Do you remember falling off a picnic table and breaking your arm when you were real little?” I asked as I stared absently out the window. It seemed crazy that Christmas was approaching. This time last year, I was trudging through snow. Though it was overcast, Louisiana certainly wasn’t even close to being inundated with the fluffy white stuff.
“No. Why? You still think it’s me you’re having visions of?” He shot me a curious look. “They might not be a hundred percent accurate. You know that, right? Or it might not be me at all. Maybe focus and tell yourself you know it isn’t me and then you’ll see more around the kid that can give you clues?”
“Maybe,” I quietly replied. Something told me I knew this kid. Sometimes he was in my dreams, other times, I had actual visions of him. What sucked was that I couldn’t control the visions I had, so it’s not like I could try to see things better. They were random and popped up sporadically.
Distracted, I watched as evidence of the upcoming holidays started appearing. The city crews were busy beginning to place the wreaths and lit Christmas decorations on the lamp posts. As we started getting closer to the French Quarter, I sat up straight. “Where the fuck are we going?”
Dallas frowned at me. “What are you talking about? I told you, I needed to pick up supplies.”
“I figured we’d be going somewhere out by your clubhouse. We probably passed a ton of places. Where exactly are we picking up supplies?” I demanded, though I was afraid I already knew.
“Miller’s,” he replied, and my stomach sank.
I immediately cursed and covered my face with my hands.
“What the fuck is your deal?”
“Can’t we go somewhere else?” I asked, my voice strained. “Surely there’s a place closer to your clubhouse.”
I couldn’t stop saying “your clubhouse.” I wanted to scream, “Let’s go somewhere closer to your clubhouse!” Clubhouse, clubhouse, clubhouse—not down by the French quarter of freaking New Orleans.
“The club has had an account with Miller’s for years. Probably longer than I’ve been a member. We get contractor rates there because he knows the owner, I guess. Then I think we get an additional discount because we installed and man their security system. Besides, Slang likes to shop local and with small businesses,” he explained with a shrug like he hadn’t just dredged up a past I thought I’d buried.
Boomslang was his president. I’d never met the guy and I had no clue what his real name was. The members all used nicknames or some shit. They called my brother Crypt Keeper. He had some special title, but for the life of me I couldn’t remember it.
“Fuck, man, that’s Ryian’s family’s place,” I explained with a groan. I wasn’t ready for those memories. It was bad enough that I’d let my brother convince me to move back here from Montana.
“Who’s Ryan? Do you have beef with him? I thought it was just Ms. Buchanan who ran the place.” He turned another corner, and the streets grew more familiar. It was almost like walking back in time. I’d grown up in this area.
Shit, Ryian’s mom still ran the place. For a second, I hoped they had sold it.
Dallas had gone up to his father after Mom died. He had lived several hours north of New Orleans. Since no one knew who my father was, I went into foster care. When I was younger, I wished I could’ve went to his dad’s with him. Later I realized that our mom had cheated on him with whoever my father was, so he didn’t really want me as a reminder.
Thankfully, my foster parents had been pretty cool. They were an elderly couple, and they were good to me. I still missed them, and I felt bad that I’d left town like I had a few years ago. Two years ago, they passed away within three days of each other. I was on my way home for Helen’s funeral when I received word that John died.
“She. Ryian was the chick I dated off and on through high school and when she was in college. She ran off to Chicago the summer after she graduated without a word.” We had argued because she found a tube of lipstick in my car.
I’d explained to her that it probably belonged to my buddy’s girlfriend. She’d been the only female besides Ryian that had been in my car. Well, except for when I had to give my coworker a ride home after work when her car wouldn’t start. She was still in high school though and I’d never seen her wear lipstick—or maybe I’d never paid attention.
“I know it didn’t help that I panicked and lied about some lipstick she found in my truck. She was pissed though, and I thought I could just ease her mind and say it was my friend’s girl’s lipstick. I knew I hadn’t done anything wrong. I thought we had worked through it, and it was water under the bridge. Then she up and hauled ass.”
“Damn,” Dallas murmured. “Though lying was dumb as shit.”
“No shit. I think I figured that out. She wouldn’t answer my calls. I went to talk to her mom because she and her mom were super close, and her mom always liked me. Her mom wouldn’t tell me why she left like she did. Just that she told her she had to go get a fresh start,” I muttered. Though I didn’t get the feeling that Ms. Buchanan was lying, I couldn’t believe Ryian would just haul ass like she had without telling her mom why.
“Well, fuck her. Good riddance and Chicago can have her,” he said.
Though I’d said that often enough myself over the years, to hear anyone disparage Ryian, even my own brother, set my teeth on edge. There was seriously something wrong with me.
How could I possibly not hate her for ripping my heart out?
Maybe because I’d been in love with Ryian Buchanan since I was probably nine years old. Maybe that was an exaggeration, but I can’t think of a time when she wasn’t the center of my world.
I was almost sixteen and she was fourteen when I finally crossed the friendship line and asked her out.
What ensued after that was a tumultuous roller coaster of emotions. We were young and immature and with that came typical juvenile jealousy and behaviors. I’m not putting all the blame at her feet, because it was definitely both of us.
But I thought we’d moved on from that. She had graduated college and come back home. I thought she’d been there to stay. I was working my ass off as a shift manager at the grocery store by that time, with the intent of buying her a ring. Then that fiasco with the lipstick happened and evidently, she freaked out or something after I thought we were good.
“You can stay in the truck if you want,” Dallas offered.
I took a deep breath and slowly exhaled. “Nah. I doubt her mom would recognize me anymore. If she’s even there.”
It had been over four years since I’d seen her mother. When she couldn’t tell me why Ryian left and refused to tell me where she was, I’m ashamed to say, I threw in the towel—and my phone. Her picture had been on the screen, and I was drunk down by the river one night and pitched it into the murky water. Not that it mattered. I’d quickly figured out Ry had blocked me.
Then I packed my shit, turned in my notice, and moved to Montana where I started to apprentice under a friend of mine from high school. His family had moved there the year after we graduated, and he’d gone with. We reconnected through a mutual friend I’d run into.
It seemed crazy that I’d left everything behind to become a tattoo artist, yet I didn’t regret it for a second. I loved what I did, and I was damn good at it. I was making more as a tattoo artist than I had at the grocery store, by a long shot.
As we pulled into the small parking lot behind the hardware store, my stomach was in knots. After taking a deep breath, I got out and we started toward the entrance. As I walked past a red Toyota truck, I heard a gasp and turned to look.
“Dalton!” a woman said with wide eyes as she opened the back door of a little gray Nissan next to the truck.
At first, I wasn’t sure who she was, but then recognition dawned.
“Hey, Holly,” I greeted. Then I saw the little boy peeking from the inside of the car. “Holy cow! Is that little Daniel? He’s grown!”
“He sure has,” she murmured with a fond smile at the boy in question. Then her gaze returned to me before it darted to the store and back. “You know—”
“Dalton! Let’s go!” Dallas shouted from the doorway.
“Sorry, I gotta run. Good to see you again,” I said before jogging to catch up to my demanding brother. “You’re such a dick.”
“I told you that you could stay in the truck. You said no, so hurry up,” he replied as he teasingly shoulder-checked me.
I grunted in retort.
Except I’d been all talk. The second I stepped foot into the store, the past flooded back, and I damn near hyperventilated. Jesus, I was a pussy. “I need to look for something real quick,” I muttered to Dallas before I shot down the first aisle.
“Okay, I’m gonna get a cart,” he explained as he walked off, but I was already gone.
Fingers steepled, I held them over my nose and mouth as I fought to calm my racing heart and my breathing. I lost track of how long I stood there, blindly staring at the shelves. When I finally got my shit under control, I laughed at myself. She wasn’t here, I assured myself. Then I gripped the shelf in front of me and dropped my head to get my breathing under control.
“Hi,” a small voice said from off to my left. “What’s your name?”
Slowly, I turned my head to see the kid that had spoken. If I thought I’d been a mess when I entered, I was completely knocked for a loop. Because standing at the end of the aisle was the little blond boy from my visions.
I barely registered the sound of the spray paint cans I knocked off the shelf.