My head had lolled back onto the seat. I could see the lightning jags of gold and green meeting his pupils, the tiny lines that formed at the corner of his eyes, the one strand of salt-colored hair that dared to show its face at his widow’s peak. Javier had aged. There was nothing scarier.
“Sleep well, my angel.” His voice came to me on a wave of vibration. There were swirls of light and then everything went black.
CHAPTER TWO
CAMDEN
She’d lied. She f**king lied.
I should have seen it coming, should have known this wasn’t going to end easily. I should have known it the minute Javier called that there was no way he’d let her go once he had her. He wasn’t weak like me, I’ll give him that. He wasn’t the one left in the rock garden, two assfuck thugs’ meaty hands wrapped around him, holding him in place as he watched her leave. No, that was me. Camden McQueen.
I had to watch her leave again, but this wasn’t high school and this wasn’t a hallway.
She left me in a cloud of dust, a swirl of crushed cherry blossoms that choked my heart.
I must have been screaming in the aftermath, outside of my body with my old friend rage. I hated this part of being me – when I lost it, lost myself – the blackness that settled into my bones, that took over and booted my brain out of my skin. I was seeing everything from another angle and it looked just as f**ked from up here.
And there was crying. My beautiful son, Ben, just three years old, was crying in his mother’s arms and I knew I needed to get control back. Screaming, fighting, it wasn’t going to solve anything. I had to think about him, and my ex-wife Sophia. I had to think about getting us out of there or getting Javier’s men out of my tattoo parlor, Sins & Needles. I needed control.
I shut my mouth, nearly clamping down on my tongue, as my heart ached and crumbled and slowed in my throat. The tunnel vision ended and suddenly the desert sky was as bright as it had ever been.
The SUV – Ellie – was now long gone.
“Get your f**king hands off me,” I snarled, jerking out of their grasp. Their stupid, thick fingers finally let go. I turned around and finally got a good look at them. They were both built like linebackers, large heads with nothing inside, programmed to do Javier’s bidding. Pussies to the core.
“Are you going to leave or do you want me to call the cops on you?” I asked, knowing I wasn’t about to get my father involved, the sheriff of Palm Valley and someone who could easily out-asshole them while grinding me down in the process.
The men exchanged a look but were silent.
“That won’t be necessary,” Raul said from behind me, the stairs creaking as he came down. I’d forgotten he had been there, hovering behind Sophia and Ben during the whole transaction like a yellow jacket in a fancy suit. “That is, unless they’re already on their way because of the scene you just caused.”
I swallowed down the volcano in my chest and exhaled sharply through my nose as his skinny, catcher’s mitt face came closer. “If you think that was me making a scene, you haven’t seen anything yet.”
His smile was wry, it belonged to a prick with empty power. If I wasn’t certain that the thugs were carrying guns, I would have kicked his teeth in.
“We’re leaving,” he said, folding his arms across his chest. My eyes focused on the scar at his jaw and for a painful second I saw the ones on Ellie’s leg, felt them under my tattoo gun, under my hands, under my tongue.
“Are you?” he continued, snapping me out of it before I could further drown.
I glared. “None of your f**king business.”
He shrugged like Javier Jr. “If you were a smart man, you’d leave this place. Take your wife and your kid and your dirty money and get out of here.”
Ex-wife, I wanted to say but the dirty money comment stung even more.
“Or what?” I challenged stupidly. I should have shut my mouth again, just kept it all in and go but I felt like being an annoyance, if anything.
He raised his brow. “Or nothing. We,” he nodded at the thugs and their blank, bloated faces, “are done with you.” He jerked his head to the street, where people were driving past like lives weren’t being threatened and ruined and changed before their eyes. The men nodded and the three of them walked past me, out of my trampled rock garden where plants would still continue to thrive even when I left the shop to cobwebs and dust. Because I had to leave, though on no account of Raul. I had to leave because I’d made my decision weeks ago.
Raul stopped on the sidewalk, the heat rising off of it. He took a pair of shades out of his jacket pocket and handled them for a moment, his eyes two dark dots in the harsh sun.
“But,” he said louder, voice thick, “just because we are done with you, doesn’t mean Javier is. Don’t go looking for her, whatever you do. Or it’s your funeral. And hers.”
He slipped the sunglasses on his face and he and the thugs disappeared down the street toward whatever getaway they had planned.
Although I believed him when he said he was done with us, it didn’t make me feel any safer. I slowly turned around and looked at Sophia and Ben. She was holding onto his hand, my boy leaning up against her leg. In her other hand was the briefcase full of money. She held onto that just as tightly.
Our eyes met, perhaps really, truly, for the first time today. Man, even with her in the shade of the porch, I could see her eyes blazing, full of fire, and not the type I wanted to go up in. Fuck it, there was no avoiding it. I’d avoided this for way too long.
After everything – everything – I’d gone through, it was ridiculous that I’d feel the slightest bit scared of my ex-wife. But I was. I could admit it. I’d admit to anything at this point. I was afraid of what she was going to make me feel, of what she couldn’t wait to make me feel.
Meanwhile, Ellie was in a car with Javier. Was she afraid too? Was she afraid of what Javier could possibly make her feel? Or, was that fear exclusively mine?
I brushed it out of my thoughts like a loose strand of hair and walked up the stairs to them, my fingers flicking past one another, trying to disperse the nervous energy that was building up.
I stopped in front of Sophia, on the last step so I was at her level. She was petite, not so much in shape, only height. She was always a foot smaller than me though her hips and thighs had weight to them, something that lured me in all those years ago.