Chapter Seven
ONCE WE LEFT the tattoo shop, we met Joshua and Juniper here. They were asleep on the couch. It was clear that the immediate threat was not to us, nor June, but we wanted to keep an eye on her anyway. She will now be taking up residence in our guest room for the foreseeable future.
I had seen them first so I kept quiet, but Corver hadn’t seen them so he was loud and talking plans as we walked in, waking both Joshua and June up.
They scooted away from each other, trying not to be obvious they were just wrapped up in one another seconds earlier.
We both didn’t say anything, it wasn’t the time to give Josh shit.
Honestly, we were all too tired to tease each other right now anyway.
I went straight to the kitchen to grab a drink, pulling out a Redbull that had been calling my name since the glass first crunched under my boots at the shop.
Juniper is the only person who sleeps in our guest room, but I have a suspicion that she doesn’t actually sleep in there.
Instead, I think she is actually staying with Joshua.
But that’s not on my list of things to worry about.
They can worry about that themselves. My only focus is to keep them all safe, not worry about their love lives if that’s even what you would call it.
But anyone with eyes can see that they have a thing for each other.
We settle in for the night, ordering dinner and then watching a movie before heading off to bed to hopefully forget the day that we had.
Four days pass in a blur.
Not quiet, not peaceful—just… suspended. Like we’re all waiting for the next hit to land.
Corver’s barely left his office in all that time.
The door stays half-shut, blue light leaking through the crack like some kind of warning.
The sound of typing, the occasional clatter of a dropped pen, and the steady arrival of takeout bags are the only proof he’s still alive in there.
If he’s cooked a single meal, I haven’t seen it.
He says he’s “researching,” but we all know that means he’s obsessing.
Josh and Juniper made a quick run to her apartment on the second day—mostly to check on her plants, which she swears have abandonment issues.
She came back with half a duffel of her things, though she hasn’t worn any of them.
Every time I’ve seen her since, she’s been swimming in Josh’s shirts, her hair a permanent tangle, her feet bare against the hardwood.
She’s restless, pacing from room to room like a caged cat. But if you look at Josh—really look—you can see it’s heaven for him. Her chaos is his calm. The man’s never looked more content in his life than he does sitting on that couch watching her wear holes into the floorboards.
When Corver finally emerges this evening, his eyes are bloodshot, and he looks like he hasn’t slept since the dawn of time. He just mutters something about “needing more coffee” and disappears again. Typical.
I drop onto the couch beside Josh with a sigh that feels like it comes from somewhere deep in my bones. The cushions mold around me, claiming me instantly. “If I move from this spot, assume I’ve been abducted,” I mutter, leaning my head back.
Juniper breezes past the hallway at that exact moment—freshly showered, hair scraped up in a wild bun, wearing yet another one of Josh’s shirts that’s too big to be decent. She looks relaxed, smug even, which makes me suspicious immediately.
She pauses, eyeing me with that mischievous glint I know too well. “Oh, by the way…” she singsongs, grabbing a Red Bull from the fridge like she owns the place. “I invited everyone over. Hope you don’t mind, B! Love you!”
I groan and lift my head just enough to glare at her. “Juniper, if by ‘everyone’ you mean anyone who breathes, I do mind.”
She flashes me a grin over her shoulder. “Too late. Already texted them.”
She saunters past, humming, and I sink deeper into the couch. The same couch that’s been my second home for the past four days.
“Again, who is everyone, June Bug?” Using the nickname that she despises gets her attention immediately. She stops what she’s doing and fully turns to look at me.
“You know. Hazel, Richie, Alisha, Sam, Selene…Surry.” She whispers Surry’s name hoping I won’t hear, but I’m not as old as she pretends as I am.
“You invited Surry here? That is a really bad idea, June.” The last thing we need is Gavin to be keeping an eye on her, and for her to come here. Which also then makes Surry and the others my problem. My problem to keep safe.
“Oh no, how come?” she asks, and I think she means it. Does she just not think about consequences like this, or is it just me who has these types of fears. I just stare at her, blinking slowly, as if we didn’t just get through explaining to her what is going on.
“What if Gavin is watching her? Or tracking her? You saw what he did to the shop. Heard what he did to the car. Her coming here will lead him right to our door, putting a target on more than just Surry, but you, me, Corver, and Joshua also. You cannot be serious.”
“Well then let’s go to my place? I am okay with him targeting it. I need to move anyways.”
I roll my eyes at her, honestly shocked she didn’t think about this. All we have talked about the last several days is who did this, how bad they are. You would think with Corver’s obsession she would see how serious this was.
Juniper places her empty cup under the ice machine in the fridge, the cubes dinging against the inside as they tumble down into it. “Do you really think he would follow her here? Target us?” She yells over the ice machine.
I watch as she finishes, then moves from the fridge to the counter, grabbing the Malibu and pouring two shots of in it. “Yes, I do. It’s why he targeted the tattoo shop. She is there so often it was somewhere she enjoyed being, obviously.”
“Aww, you really think she loved being at the shop?” She finishes her drink off by filling it the rest of the way with Pepsi, turning to look at me with a softness in her eyes before looking back at her cup and topping it with a maraschino cherry, all with a happy, almost dreamy, smile on her face.
I don’t understand the drink, but it’s her guts, not mine.
I snort a laugh. As if Surry loving the shop is the top of our worries.
All of a sudden, heavy footsteps sound beside me, and Corver walks in, he still looks like he hasn’t slept. Ever. “There are people coming up the elevator, Brenden.”
“Okay. June, you’re up. They are your friends. I am going to take a shower. I may or may not come back out.” I peel myself from the couch and begin trudging to my bedroom.
She pouts at me, but makes her way toward the door to greet her friends. I pass Joshua in the hallway on the way to my bedroom.
“Hazel and all of them are coming over.” I say.
“That’s a bad fucking idea,” he looks at me with raised eyebrows, as if I am the one who thought to invite them.
“I know it is, but they’re already here. See to it that you keep an eye, and that Corver turns up all the security, please. I am going to take a shower.”
“Oh, come on, old man. Come hang out with us. They’re already here, so you might as well hang out. You never do anything fun.” He punches me in the arm, then looks toward June. I catch him staring at her ass.
“I’m good, have fun.” I wink at him and continue on my way toward my room.
My room is the first door on the right, so that way I am closest to the door.
I prefer it this way. I am also right across from the guest bathroom, which means I can keep an ear on everything as well.
Not that we have any visitors outside of June.
The hallway stretched out in front of me, long and bare, the kind of empty that spoke more of indifference than design. No pictures, no art, not even a clock. Just white paint over drywall, scuffed here and there from boots or moving gear. A bachelor’s stretch of wall, really.
We’d never bothered to fill it with anything—too busy building other people’s towers and tearing down other people’s demons.
The silence of it made every footstep echo sharper than it should, and for a second, I caught myself staring at the blank space, thinking maybe we should hang something there.
Then again, we never really cared. The place wasn’t about being lived in—it was about being secure.
I walk into my room and shut the door. The video of Gavin keeps replaying in my mind.
I am not really sure what to do. What the next move is.
I texted Michael, our lead foreman for the construction company, the day after the shop blew up and let him know he will be running the show for the rest of the week at minimum, informing him it is locked down, no strangers in the compound, no new clients.
I walk into my closet and strip off all my clothes before walking through my closet to the bathroom and turn the shower on. While it begins to get warm, I look at myself in the mirror.
Tattoos stretch over me like armor plates, black and grey winding into each other, stories inked deep into my skin. They look good under the light—menacing, deliberate—but all I see is what came before.
I wasn’t always this.
Back in high school, I was tall but not filled out—six foot and maybe a buck fifty, lanky as hell, invisible. Easy target. The scrawny kid everyone thought was safe to shove around. Nobody said my name unless it was followed by a laugh. Nobody thought I’d ever be more than a shadow.
Then I grew up and started to try and get my life figured out. That was easy until Mom died. And the shadow turned into fire.