LITMIR.BIZ

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serious than I wanted them to be.”

      I laughed a little and rubbed between my eyebrows. My headache had turned into a dull throb but was starting to be manageable. I needed to ask her to swing by a Starbucks or something if I was going to get through this afternoon.

      “Is that your prissy way of telling me that he was trying to get in your pants and you weren’t having it?”

      She narrowed her eyes at me and pulled off the freeway at the exit that took us toward Brookside.

      “I need you to stop by Starbucks before going to my parents’ house, and don’t think I didn’t notice you aren’t answering my question.”

      “If we stop we’re going to be late. And not every boy thinks with what’s in their pants.”

      “The sky isn’t going to fall on us if we show up five minutes behind Margot’s schedule. And you have got to be kidding me—you strung that loser along for six months without giving it up? What a joke.”

      That made me flat-out laugh at her. I laughed so hard that I had to hold my head in both hands as my whiskey-logged brain started screaming at me again. I gasped a little and looked at her with watery eyes. “If you really believe that he wasn’t interested in getting in your pants, you aren’t nearly as smart as I always thought you were. Every single dude under the age of ninety is trying to get in your pants, Shaw—especially if he’s thinking that he’s your boy. I’m a guy, I know this shit.”

      She bit her lip again, conceding I probably had a valid point as she pulled the car into the coffee shop’s parking lot. I practically bolted out of the car, eager to stretch my legs and get a little distance from her typical haughty attitude.

      There was a line when I got inside, and I took a quick look around to see if I recognized anyone. Brookside is a pretty small town and usually when I stopped by on the weekends I inevitably ran into someone I used to go to school with. I hadn’t bothered to ask Shaw if she wanted me to grab her anything because she was being all uppity about having to stop in the first place. It was almost my turn to order when my phone started blasting a Social Distortion song in my pocket. I dug it out after ordering a big-ass black coffee and took a spot by the counter next to a cute brunette who was trying her hardest to not get caught checking me out.

      “What up?”

      I could hear the music in the shop blaring behind Nash when he asked, “How did this morning go?”

      Nash knew my faults and bad habits better than anyone, and the reason we had maintained our friendship as long as we had was because he never judged me.

      “Sucked. I’m hungover, grumpy, and about to sit through yet another forced family function. Plus, Shaw is in rare form today.”

      “How was the chick from last night?”

      “No clue. I don’t even remember leaving the bar with her. Apparently I did a huge piece on her side so she was a little pissed that I didn’t remember who she was, so ouch.”

      He chuckled on the other end of the line. “She told you that, like, six times last night. She even tried to pull her top off to show you. And I drove your dumb ass home last night, drunko. I tried to get you to leave at, like, midnight but you weren’t having any of it, as usual. I had to drive your truck home and then take a cab back to get my car.”

      I snorted and reached for the coffee when the guy behind the counter called my name. I noticed the brunette’s eyes follow the hand that wrapped around the cardboard cup. It was the hand that had the flared head of a king cobra on it, the snake’s forked tongue making the L in my name that was inked across my four knuckles. The rest of the snake wound its way up my forearm and around my elbow. The brunette’s mouth made a little O of surprise so I flashed her a wink and walked back to the BMW.

      “Sorry, dude. How did your appointment go?”

      Nash’s uncle Phil had opened the tattoo shop years ago on Capitol Hill when it mainly catered to gangbangers and bikers. Now with the influx of young urbanites and hipsters populating the area, the Marked was one of the busiest tattoo parlors in town. Nash and I met in art class in the fifth grade and have been inseparable since. In fact, ever since we were twelve our plan was to move to the city and work for Phil. We both had mad skills and the personality to make the shop bump with business so Phil had no qualms apprenticing us and putting us to work before we were both in our twenties. It was killer to have a friend in the same field; I had a plethora of ink on my skin that ranged from not-so-great to great that chronicled Nash’s evolution as a tattoo artist, and he could state the same thing about me.

      “I finished that back piece that I’ve been working on since July. It turned out better than I thought and the dude is talking about doing the front. I’ll take it, because he’s a fat tipper.”

      “Nice.” I was juggling the phone and the coffee, trying to open the door to the car when a female voice stopped me in my tracks.

      “Hey.” I looked over my shoulder and the brunette was standing a car over with a smile on her face. “I really like your tattoos.”

      I smiled back at her and then jumped, nearly spilling scalding hot coffee down my crotch as Shaw shoved the door open from the inside.

      “Thanks.” If we had been closer to home and Shaw wasn’t already putting the car in reverse I probably would have taken a second to ask the girl for her number. Shaw shot me a look of contempt that I promptly ignored, and I went back to my conversation with Nash. “Rome is home. He got in an accident and Shaw said he’s got a few weeks of R and R coming to him. I guess that’s why Mom was blowing my phone up all week.”

      “Kick ass. Ask him if he wants to roll with us for a few days. I miss that surly bastard.”

      I sipped on the coffee and my head finally started to calm down. “That’s the plan. I’ll hit you up on my way home and let you know what the story is.”

      I flicked my thumb across the screen to end the call and settled back into the seat. Shaw scowled angrily at me and I swore her eyes glowed. Really. I have never seen anything that green, even in nature, and when she gets mad they are just otherworldly.

      “Your mom called while you were busy flirting. She’s mad that we’re late.”

      I sucked on more of the black nectar of the gods and started tapping out a beat on my knee with my free hand. I was always kind of a fidgety guy and the closer we got to my parents’ house, the worse it usually got. Brunch was always stilted and forced. I couldn’t figure out why they insisted on going through with it every single week and couldn’t figure out why Shaw enabled the farce, but I went, even when I knew nothing would ever change.

      “She’s mad that you’re late. We both know she couldn’t care less if I’m there or not.” My fingers moved faster and faster as she wheeled the car into a gated community and passed rows and rows of cookie-cutter minimansions that were built back into the mountains.

      “That’s not true and you know it, Rule. I do not suffer through these car rides every weekend, subject myself to the delight of your morning-after nastiness because your parents want me to have eggs and pancakes every Sunday. I do it because they want to see you, want to try to have a relationship with you no matter how many times you hurt them or push them away. I owe it to your parents and, more important, I owe it to Remy to try to make you act right even though lord knows that’s almost a full-time job.”

      I sucked in a breath as the blinding pain that always came when someone mentioned Remy’s name barreled through my chest. My fingers involuntarily opened and closed around the coffee cup and I whipped my head around to glare at her.

      “Remy wouldn’t be all over my ass to try and be something to them I’m not. I was never good enough for them, and never will be. He understood that better than anyone and worked overtime to try and be everything to them I never could be.”

      She sighed and pulled the car to a stop in the driveway behind my dad’s SUV. “The only difference between you and

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