I round the corner and my brain fucking shorts out. Viper’s on the edge of the counter, her legs locked around some guy’s waist, her skirt shoved up to her ribs. And the guy… the fucking guy is wearing a black balaclava, the kind of cheap cloth mask every two-bit hood in Tar City wears to hide his face.
My mind tries to piece it together.Is this a hit?Did some Cutter decide to get his rocks off before he wasted her? But she’s not scared. She’s flushed, her head thrown back, her mouth open. And then it clicks.It’s a kink.A goddamn, middle-of-my-fucking-bar kink. I move my hand without thinking, catching a bottle of top-shelf whiskey before it smashes against the floor.
For half a second, none of us move. Viper glances over his shoulder, her face flushed. “Oh,” she says calmly, like she’s just noticed the time. “Hey, Jax.”
The masked man twists around, his movements jerky with panic. He rips the mask off in one quick motion, revealing Matt’s flushed, sweaty face. “Fucking hell?—”
“Un-fucking-believable,” I curse, dragging a hand down my face. The image is burned into my retinas like a goddamn brand. I back away slowly, holding up the bottle I just saved. “I’m not paying for whatever you break.”
“Close the door!” Viper calls out, a laugh in her voice.
I turn and head for the stairs without another word, the sound of their rutting starting up again behind me. I hear Matt’s muffled voice. “Thought you locked it.”
I stop outside my door for half a second.She better be in here.I find Sisk in my bed, curled against the headboard with one of my journals open in her lap. A bowl of noodles steams on the nightstand and Scotch is sprawled across her legs.
She glances up when she hears me. “Oh,” she says, and a small smile touches her lips. “There you are.”
Scotch lifts his head, gives a happy bark, and thumps his tail harder, his whole body wiggling with joy.
The tight knot in my chest finally loosens. Again. It’s a goddamn miracle. One minute I’m ready to burn this whole town to the ground, the next I’m just… home.
Sisk scratches behind Scotch’s ear without looking away from me. “Where have you been?” she asks softly. “I was starting to think you’d found trouble.” She pauses, a smirk playing on her lips. “Or that you’d finally picked a fight with someone bigger than you and gotten your ass kicked for a change.”
I push the door closed behind me, the final snap of my temper fraying.
“Looking for you,” I answer.
She blinks, all innocent. “For me?”
“For all of you,” I grit out, dragging a hand through my hair. “You fucking vanished from the docks.”
“We didn’t vanish,” she says, calm as a fucking pond. “We said if you took too long at Gyx Point, we’d meet you back here.”
“Nobody said that. And ‘too long’ was less than a goddamn hour.” I step farther into the room.
She shrugs one shoulder. “Things moved fast.”
“Things moved fast my ass.”
Her fork pauses halfway to her mouth. “Are you hungry?” she asks, like she’s offering a simple solution to a simple problem.
“I don’t think you get this. At all.”
She waits, her eyes on mine.
“I could’ve torn this city apart looking for you,” I admit.
She just studies me, then she takes another bite of the noodles, chewing slowly. “What happened with your grandfather?” she asks, changing the subject like that’s going to fix things.
I sink onto the edge of the chair across from the bed. “Nothing good.”
Scotch shifts and lays his head back down on her leg.
“He knew about the mark,” I say.
Her posture straightens. “He did?”
“Yeah.”