Chapter 21
21
Davis
I stare straight ahead at the closed bedroom door as Sloane approaches me with the scissors while I sit on a folding chair in the kitchen.
Karma.
It’s always karma.
And I fucking deserved this.
Can’t even be happy that I’ve figured out what was making the noise last night.
Not when the little fuckers decided to be agents of chaos.
Sloane’s expression is bleak as she takes in my appearance again in the full light inside the camper. Her cat is happily licking its own butt on the floor in front of me.
Now that we’re all safe inside, no creatures attacking any of us, with me double-checking Giselle’s inspection of Sloane to make sure she was okay—and she is, the raccoon who landed on her didn’t break any skin—the tension is back.
And not the good tension.
This is the I’ll help you one last time because you were trying to save me and my cat, but then I’m gone until you decide to be an equal player in all things tension.
And I don’t blame her.
She’s been put through hell over this treasure. Not her fault.
Also not her fault that a psycho from her past is here making things worse.
“Are you sure you want me to do this?” she asks.
“Yes.”
“I’m no hair stylist.”
“Giselle would shave symbols into my head, and I wouldn’t be able to go out in public for weeks.”
“You could if you shaved it all the way off.”
“Don’t have the head for it.”
She doesn’t laugh.
Good thing, since it’s not a joke. “I shaved my head after our next-to-last tour, then went into hiding for a few months. Didn’t leave my house unless I was in a hoodie with the hood up. Every time.”
Got several new tats in those few months.
And it’s the last time I really cut my hair. Trimmed on occasion, yes. Cut like this, no.
She circles me with the scissors like she’s deciding the best way to tackle cutting out the mess in my hair.
I don’t look to see if my hair is all that she’s studying.
Had to change out of my wet clothes, and now I’m in nothing but a pair of cotton shorts.
A pair of cotton shorts and the tattoos covering nearly every inch of my exposed skin.
It’s been a while—a long while—since I’ve let anyone new see me shirtless.
Not ashamed.
But my ink isn’t for anyone else’s amusement or entertainment.
She’s blank-faced as she stops in front of me again. “I’ll try to keep it as long as I can.”
“It’ll grow back.”
“You sure you don’t want a picture for posterity’s sake?”
“I’m sure.”
“Okay then.” She touches my hair, and goosebumps flare across my scalp.
Mind over body. Mind over body .
My mind responds by dishing up images of Sloane in my bed last night, legs spread, stroking her pussy.
“Thank you for helping save Peggy,” she says.
I don’t answer.
I’m too busy breathing as she tugs at my hair and takes the first snip.
“And I want you to know I’m fighting a lot of guilt when I say this, but I still have to leave. It’s not entirely you. It’s a long history of people letting me down and me practicing acknowledging that I don’t have to always take the short stick. Not that this has been…the short stick. But also, I have a very complicated relationship with feeling like I owe people when they do nice things for me, and I…don’t.”
Translation: I’m trying to not let one orgasm guilt me into doing anything you want.
At least, that’s how I interpret what she just said.
My body howls in outrage.
I have lost all control of it.
Still try to get some back as I swallow hard. “Don’t feel guilty for taking care of yourself.”
She snips again and drops a chunk of my hair into a small wastebasket. The chunk with the fucking pine cone that the damn raccoon launched at me.
Giselle’s outside setting traps.
That’s what she said she was doing anyway.
I didn’t ask if she means traps to relocate them, or traps to fling flaming pine cones at them if they try to come close to the camper again.
We’re in their territory.
So I don’t want to know how she’s handling this.
Or how I’m going to break it to Levi that I broke his favorite security agent.
Snip. Snip. Snip .
More hair on the floor.
My hair.
The hair that helped hide me for years. My disguise, even when people figured out it was my disguise.
Sloane inhales softly. “I’ll tell Nigel that I’m not interested and to go home.”
Nigel’s a fucknugget, and when I’m done with Patrick Dixon, I’d like to have a quiet, private discussion with Nigel too. “Will he listen?”
“If he doesn’t, I’ll call Cooper and tell him I need help. He has resources. And friends.”
My blood pressure creeps higher.
She can’t leave.
I can’t let her leave.
But I don’t want to be one more person manipulating her either.
“I’m not saying that as a threat,” she adds. “And yes, I realize that saying that I don’t mean that as a threat can be interpreted to mean that I mean that as a threat. But I really don’t. Cooper’s my friend. He can help me handle a problem.”
He would.
His methods would probably make the news, and with him married to Waverly now, it would make every gossip site, get inflated on social media, and probably end up getting him a book deal or something.
I have to tell her.
I have to give her something .
Something to prove she can trust me.
“We saved an elephant once.”
Her hand stills in my hair.
I point to my left shoulder while my heart ramps up its staccato drumbeat of terror.
I don’t tell people these things.
Trust the wrong people, they betray you.
But isn’t that exactly why I have to tell Sloane?
She’s been betrayed too, even if she might not put it in those words.
She trusted people who were supposed to love her, and they used the threat of eternal damnation to make her feel like she was never enough.
She deserves to know that she’s enough.
That she can be trusted.
Even if it scares the ever-loving fuck out of me.
“That elephant. We saved it. Levi still gets postcards about once a year from the sanctuary where it lives now.”
She doesn’t reply.
Her cat pauses in licking its own ass, gives me an if you think one little story about an elephant will win her trust, you’re an idiot look, and goes back to grooming itself.
Mind over body .
I breathe deeply to try to slow my pulse, then I point to my other shoulder. “Spent hours on the tour bus watching this show about space cowboys. That’s the ship. Sometimes Cash would make us reenact the scenes. I was always the lady mechanic. They said it was because I was youngest, but Beck got to be the badass assassin chick who was technically younger in the show. The youngest.”
She puts her hand back in my hair and snips again. “I know what you’re doing.”
Fuck . “I need your help, and my secrets are all I have to offer.”
“How do I know they’re secrets?”
I suppress a sigh. I could tell her my mother’s never seen all of my tattoos. I could tell her I haven’t been shirtless in front of a woman who’s not my tattoo artist or someone I’ve known all my life for over a decade. I could tell her to call any of the guys to back me up, but she doesn’t know they’d tell the truth before they’d defend me.
It’s why I don’t tell people things.
Because I don’t want my friends to have to stick up for me.
Or call me out when I tell the lies that make it easier for me to get around in the world without letting people in.
I wouldn’t believe me if I were her. “You don’t.”
“How do I know you’re telling the truth?”
“You don’t.”
She touches the base of my neck. “What’s this one?”
My shoulders bunch.
My body is a canvas with one design rolling into the other seamlessly, weaving together all of my favorite and not-so-favorite moments of my life.
The lessons I’ve learned.
The highs.
The lows.
Life .
And while she could be pointing to two or three different elements, I know what she’s asking about.
It’s three overlapping triangles with a coin in the middle. “That one’s off-limits.”
She touches my thigh just above my left knee as she stands in front of me to trim more hair, and it takes every ounce of self-control I possess to not visibly shiver at her touch.
I like her touching me.
I like her touching me entirely too much.
“Is that mistletoe?” she asks. “With an engagement ring?”
“First relationship I had after the band started. I kissed my sister’s best friend at Christmas. We dated for three months, the last two months long distance because of tour rehearsals in New York, and she was mad that I didn’t send her diamonds for her birthday.”
Her fingers move to my ribs. “The Fireballs dragon?”
Keep touching me. Please keep touching me . “Baseball will be my favorite sport until the day I die. Fireballs forever.”
“Not martial arts?”
“Peace and clarity. Not a sport. We—the guys—the five of us—we were going to buy the Fireballs before Lila inherited the team. It’s what I was supposed to be doing now. Helping run my own baseball team. With the guys. The band. Together. Like we used to be.”
I’m sweating.
I’m sweating, and she can probably see it.
I don’t talk about how much I sometimes miss being part of the band. How I set my work schedule for the past decade to give me as much flexibility as possible so I could drop in and see my buddies regularly despite living an hour on the other side of Copper Valley. How much I loved knowing we’re doing something amazing for the world together.
Not solo.
Together.
“Tripp and Lila wouldn’t give you a job?”
“Not the same.”
“You don’t like to work for other people.”
“Spent the last decade working for other people. I wanted a purpose. To do—to be working together with all of us again. It’s different.”
She falls quiet while she snips at my hair again, dropping more and more into the trash can.
My heart is in a race with itself.
I don’t tell people these stories.
It’s not safe.
You don’t know who’ll sell you out to the paps for a quick profit and who you can trust.
But she doesn’t trust me and I need her to.
Want her to.
No, need her to.
It’s not logical. It’s not rational.
And I’m well aware that I’m lying to myself when I say that it’s situational.
I just?—
Life won’t be right if Sloane doesn’t trust me.
The end.
I close my eyes and picture myself on a beach at sunrise—nothing but me and the seagulls and sand and ocean—and breathe to ground myself.
Trying to calm my panic at the ammunition I’m giving her.
I’m never in the tabloids. Like it that way.
And she has the power to change it now.
Because I have to trust her.
It’s the only way.
She touches the back of my right arm. “Which flag is that?”
“Morocco.” I keep my eyes closed, picturing sunset over the Atlantic in Morocco now.
“You’ve been?”
“Hiked the Atlas Mountains between the band breaking up and me starting school.”
“What did you go to college for?”
“Dual degree. Nuclear engineering and computer science.”
“Why?”
“I get bored easily. Good challenge.” I point to my left bicep where there’s an atom and a series of ones and zeros that spell do good if you know how to read binary. “That was my job. At the nuclear reactor. Keeping people safe by keeping the bad guys out. Virtually.”
“The bike?” She touches a bicycle tattoo on my forearm.
“I was eight before I learned to ride. Scared before that. My father tried to bully me into learning, and that made it worse. So Wyatt taught me. Beck’s best friend. Ellie’s husband. He didn’t want to join the band. Him and the other two Rivers brothers. Wyatt was too serious and needed security. Waylon thought we were going to bomb. Hank had two left feet and sang like a pig being butchered.”
“Do they know you talk about them like that?”
“Yes.”
“What do they say about you?”
“Far better things than they should.”
“Because you’re a terrible person?”
My jaw clenches, and I actively force it to relax. “Because I’m human. I make mistakes, and when I do, I judge myself harshly.”
Snip.
Snip.
Snip.
My head feels lighter.
My hair too.
I’m still squeezing my eyes shut, and when I realize I’m squeezing and not just closing, I force my facial muscles to relax again.
Hair will grow back.
Sloane won’t tell anyone my secrets.
We’ll find the treasure.
She’ll kiss me again like she did last night.
Fuck .
No.
We’ll both go about our daily lives again.
I’ll find a new obsession.
It’ll be her.
Goddammit .
Trick of the moment. Not real.
Learning that she feels guilty for breathing because of how she was raised when I feel guilty for getting away with things I should’ve been punished for.
That she’s actively fighting shame all the time when I never truly had to face the shame I should’ve for what happened in Denver.
Wanting to carry her burdens for her because she doesn’t deserve them while I do.
This is why I show up and ask my buddies for favors and then never say another word about them.
Because I’ll hear a coworker’s always wanted to take a trip up to the city to see an air show but never got tickets.
Or an old contact has a kid who’s been struggling in school and just needs a win, like seeing her favorite former boy bander turned solo artist in concert.
I’ve caused harm in this life.
I never want to do it again.
I want to balance my scales.
Watching Sloane balance her own scales for things that aren’t her fault—how could I not want to help her?
How could I not find that inherently attractive in a fellow human being?
The snipping stops. “You want the good news or the bad news?”
There’s no good or bad.
There’s only what is. “Both.”
“I got the pine cone remnants out. And it looks like a toddler attacked your head in your sleep. We just had a new stylist move to town. She might not know who you are. She’s pretty young. But she’s good. She can fix this. Or I guess you could just wear hoodies again for a while.”
I blink my eyes open. “Thank you.”
“So you want me to call?—”
“I’ll wear hoodies.”
She steps back. “Great. Then I’ll just get Peggy and we’ll get out of your…ahh… I mean, we’ll head home.”
Dammit . “Wait.”
“Thank you for sharing with me, but I need time to think about what I’m going to do next.”
My pulse roars in my ears.
I have to tell her.
Shit.
Shit .
She lifts her brows at me. “I don’t know what you’re thinking, but whatever it is, I’m regretting not bringing my stethoscope and blood pressure cuff. Are you having a stroke?”
Fuck it.
She has to know.
“Thorny Rock and Walter Bombeck switched identities when they left the ship. Thorny Rock founded Sarcasm. Walter Bombeck founded Shipwreck. If the treasure was hidden safely, if it was protected right against the elements, there’s another journal with the gold and jewels documenting their entire history. If anyone else finds that treasure, if anyone else finds out—Shipwreck’s fucked. Please stay. Please help me. Please.”