Knife & Flesh (The Night Horde SoCal Book 4) Read online

  Over her tall dresser—a French Provincial piece painted cerulean blue and waxed to a high gloss—she’d hung an large ornate mirror frame. Just the frame, painted metallic silver. Instead of a mirror, six strips of white lace crossed the center. From the lace hung her earrings, little studs across the top, graduating to big danglers at the bottom.

  In the corner across from her fascinating sewing area was an old wooden stepladder, the kind every homeowner in America probably had in their garage or their basement somewhere. She had painted it—he assumed she was the one doing all this wonderful painting—fuchsia, and from each rung hung pairs of high-heeled shoes, as many as would fit across.

  On the wall next to her closet was a framed pastel sketch of Lucie. Trick stared at that for a long time. He was staring at it when she woke, stretching in his arms and inhaling a rousing breath.

  “Hey.”

  He tipped his head and smiled down at her. “Hey. Sorry about…sorry.”

  “No, it’s okay. Can we talk about it, though? Are you okay?”

  There had been a glimmer of a hope in the back of his head that getting right with Juliana, finding this balance that they seemed to have found, might settle his shadows back into their hole. Obviously, that hope had been unfounded. But he knew he wasn’t walking away from this, not unless she turned him away, so she deserved to know what she was getting into.

  For her to know that, he’d have to tell her things he hadn’t told anyone since the VA. He’d tried recently to tell Connor and had faltered and failed.

  He’d need to get his thoughts in a logical place, a clear order, before he could make it all known, but there was so much emotion coursing through him right now, with her, that he wasn’t sure he could.

  There was one thing, one way, that always worked to clear his head. “I’m okay. Mostly. And we can talk. I’ll tell you everything I can. I need to do something first, though.” He brushed her sleep-and-sex-tousled hair from her face, letting his fingers linger over her beauty spot.

  She smiled. “Okay. What?”

  “Will you ride with me?”

  ~oOo~

  Juliana had never been on a bike before, and she was afraid. It was half an hour before Trick felt her body settle behind him and her arms rest more comfortably—and therefore more safely—around him. The first time traffic on the interstate had thickened and he’d moved out to split the lanes, he’d had a second when he’d seriously thought she might pull them over.

  Until she settled, his mind was focused on her and on riding in a way not to scare her more, and he had no time to let his thoughts unspool. He hadn’t told her where they were going, but he’d intended to take her to UCLA, to Powell Library, one of his favorite places, maybe his most favorite place. A place he felt safe. He had a feeling she’d understand why he loved it.

  Instead—or, rather, first—he headed north on the 101. He’d take the long way around, through Topanga and down to the PCH to Santa Monica.

  While they were riding through the canyon, he felt her set her chin on his shoulder, and he smiled. He began to lean more deeply into the twisty canyon turns, make the ride more fun, and she went with him. When he took a hairpin and reached his gloved fingers toward the canted pavement and she leaned with him and squealed a laugh, he knew he had her trust.

  Trick laughed with her, his cock filling out in exhilaration, and he realized he was happy. For that moment, everything was beautiful and nothing hurt.

  They’d left after a quick breakfast and a slow shower. Juliana had taken some time to get ready, so it was well past noon when the Ferris wheel on the Santa Monica Pier loomed ahead of them.

  He glanced over his shoulder and called over the roar of his engine, “You hungry?”

  “Yeah!” she shouted back, into his ear, more loudly than she needed to.

  Trick pulled off the road and parked the bike. He held out his arm to help Juliana dismount and then swung off the seat himself. He locked their helmets down and pulled off his gloves, folding them into an inside pocket of his kutte. Then he took her hand.

  “There’s a Mexican restaurant on the end of the pier. The food’s nothing special, but decent enough. The best part is the great view of the…” His sentence faded out when he realized that he was suggesting a Mexican restaurant of average quality to a Latina. But Mexican was usually a safe choice when he was eating with non-vegetarians—which was everybody he knew. There were usually at least a few meatless options on the menu—and he knew something he liked at this place.

  She smiled. “It’s fine. Nicaraguan and Mexican food isn’t exactly the same, and that place is probably not really Mexican, anyway. Tourists on the Pier are choosing between the hot dog stand and that place. They don’t want authentic. Their little white tummies couldn’t handle it.”

  “You want to go into town, find something better?”

  Still smiling, her cheeks bright and rosy from the ride, she shook her head and headed toward the Pier, leading him with her. “Nope. The place with the view is great. First, I want to walk around and stretch my legs. I’m buzzing, and not just because of the engine between my legs. God, that ride through the canyon was amazing.”

  He caught up and pulled her close, hooking his arm around her waist. She turned to him and threw her arms around his neck. He kissed her, and she kissed him back. Standing at the entrance to the Pier, a summer Saturday crowd surging around them, they made out like hormonal kids. Trick felt like one.

  ~oOo~

  The wait for a table wasn’t bad, considering the summer Saturday, but it was long enough that they carried their third drinks—Corona for him and margarita for her—to their table. The roses in Juliana’s cheeks had grown and deepened, as had her frivolous good humor. It seemed she was a lightweight—and a happy drunk.

  That was nice. He usually got maudlin, unless he stuck to beer. He had a long road to drunk, though.

  He’d wanted to talk to her in the library, where it was quiet and he always felt calm. But he wasn’t sure whether they’d make it to the library now. She was only getting back on the bike sober, and right now she was having a very good time getting not sober. Trick thought they’d be on the Pier for a while.

  If they were going to have a serious talk today, it was now or never. After they ordered, in the clamor of the busy restaurant, with the Pacific around them, he leaned close and said, “I told you we could talk about what happened last night.”

  She stopped in the middle of sipping margarita through a blue straw. For a second, she was frozen, her mouth pursed around the straw. He’d surprised her—had she forgotten? No matter. It was something that needed to be said. He’d figure out how much needed to be said as he was saying it.

  She set the glass down and took his hand. “You don’t have to.”

  “Yeah, I do. If we’re together, then you need to know.” He let the next question—whether they were together—go unspoken, but when she nodded, he understood that she’d answered it.

  “The short answer is that I have PTSD.”

  Again, she nodded. He supposed what had happened in the night looked exactly like PTSD, even to a lay observer.

  “I was in the Army, from right out of high school until I was twenty-three. I did almost all my time in Afghanistan. I’m—was, I was—a sniper.”

  Her hand twitched in his. Even a lay observer knew that a sniper had only one job: to kill. He paused, letting her process that bit of information, and when she’d had another drink of margarita and her hand relaxed again, he went on.

  “I saw some pretty terrible shit over there. I did some pretty terrible shit. It messed with my head.” He could probably have stopped there. It would serve as an explanation, and he could see in her dark, sympathetic eyes that she was satisfied. But it wasn’t the full truth, and it didn’t explain everything he needed her to know.

  “The worst thing I did wasn’t even a human target. I had orders to hit a gas main and blow a building—enemy munitions depot. They needed a sniper
because only a precise strike would get the building, and they didn’t want the ruckus that came with an air strike. Things were winding down in the war, and we were supposed to be withdrawing—that was the story, anyway. On the ground, things didn’t look much different. We were just quieter about it and had fewer people paying attention. Anyway, recon was already in when I got the go. I was just on for the hit. It was dark—it gets incredibly dark in the desert when the moon is in. But there was a floodlight on the building. There wasn’t any room for error, but I knew I’d hit my target easily. And the explosion was gorgeous. The fire against the black sky, all the colors, the fluid movement. I was at distance and in deep cover, so I watched through my scope for a while, enjoying the show. My spotter was celebrating behind me. I remember laughing, feeling good. It was a good hit.

  “And then people started running out of what was left of the building. No big deal, of course a depot would be guarded. But there were too many people—and they were small. Women and children. They were on fire. I couldn’t hear them, but I could see them screaming through the flames. I could see everything through the scope, like it was right in front of me, instead of several football fields away. I could see them melting. Little kids. I wanted to stop looking, but I couldn’t. A woman with a baby in her arms ran toward me, screaming and trailing fire, and I was so lost in it all that I flinched away from the scope, expecting her to land on me.”

  “Trick. Trick. Trick!”

  He blinked and saw that Juliana looked like she was in pain. Tears streaked her face, and she was trying to pull away from him—because he was clamped so hard around her hand he was about to tear it off.

  He let go and put his hands up, like he was surrendering. “God. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” After a long pull on his Corona, draining it, he asked, “Are you okay?”

  She was shaking her hand; now she stopped. “I’m okay. Don’t be sorry. Oh, Trick. My God.”

  “The story’s not over. I need to finish, if that’s okay.”

  Wiping the backs of her fingers across her wet cheeks, she nodded. He felt sure he’d made her sober.

  “Obviously, it wasn’t a munitions depot. It was a safe house for families. I guess my CO marked that target to send a message. I don’t know who named that target, really. All I know is he’d given the order. So when I got back to camp I beat him into a coma.

  “I did a couple of months in the stockade, expecting to be court martialed and do about twenty in Leavenworth. But then one day, a colonel came down and handed me discharge papers. Just like that—which told me that nothing about that mission was kosher, and they didn’t want any more to do with it. It was a general discharge, not an honorable, but that was leaps and bounds better than twenty years in prison. So I came home.”

  The server came with their food, and they ordered another round of drinks, and then a photographer came by wanting to sell them a souvenir photo, which they declined. Then they took some time to sample their food. So a few minutes passed before they talked again. It was almost the end of his story, anyway.

  “I don’t understand.” Juliana spoke first, before she’d taken a bite. “What’s a general discharge?”

  “It’s the discharge of rebels and malcontents. When your service is good but your attitude is bad. I’m barred from some benefits because of it—like college. I had to take out loans for that. I guess it was probably the right discharge for me, considering. But before that day, I was a fucking hero. Because I killed people so well.”

  Their drinks came, and when they were again alone, Trick swallowed half his beer down right away. “My dad had been so proud of me. He had all the pictures I’d sent him in these big collage frames. All my medals and certificates, everything framed and hanging on the living room wall. It was the only thing I think I ever did in my life that made him proud. My general discharge broke his heart. I guess literally—he died less than a year later. The last thing my sister ever said to me was that I’d killed both of her parents.”

  Her parents. What Tessa had said was, You killed both of my parents. When he remembered that day, the word he heard most clearly was my.

  “Stop, please stop,” Juliana cried, and once again, Trick came back to where he really was, sitting in a crowded restaurant, and saw that she was sobbing, her hands covering her face.

  Shit. He didn’t know how to tell the story; he’d never before told anyone the part about his family—not the VA therapist, not Connor, not anyone. He hadn’t meant to upset her, only to try to make her understand why the desert night assailed him still.

  Or again. He didn’t think he could tell her what had triggered him this time. Shifting to a nearer chair, he pulled her into his arms. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make you cry.”

  She clutched at him, burying her face against his chest. “God, don’t apologize.” Her voice was muffled by his shirt. After a minute, she sat back, composing herself with a sigh. “Please don’t apologize. I just—I’m so sad for you.”

  “You don’t need to be. I’m mostly okay. I just get caught in my head sometimes.” He brushed at her smeared mascara with his thumb. “So, to sum up: I have PTSD.”

  That made her laugh wetly. “Yeah, I guess so.” She picked up his hand and kissed it. The sweet gesture tightened his chest. “I want to talk more, but can we get out of here? Can we ride back through the canyon again and go home? I just want to be alone with you, not around all these people.”

  “We’re not actually at the place I wanted to take you today.” After all this, he wanted to share something good with her. He wanted to stand in the library and look up and be reminded that people made things beautiful sometimes, too.

  “Can we do that another time?”

  He smiled and touched his forehead to hers. “Yeah. Next ride.”

  ~oOo~

  As they walked back to her apartment, Juliana put her hands on the small of her back and stretched. “I love riding with you, but after a few hours it gets exhausting. My back is killing me. How do you do that all day?”

  He laughed and put his hand on her back, rubbing gently. “You get used to it.” They were walking along the pool area, which was, surprisingly for a Saturday night, empty. The pool lights under the water made the courtyard dance with blue shimmers. “You want to get in the hot tub?”

  She unlocked her apartment door. “I do still want to talk. I don’t want to pry too much, but I have some questions.”

  He figured she’d have questions; it was right that she did. “We can talk in the tub. While we’re relaxed, as long as we have it to ourselves.”

  They went in and straight back to her bedroom. He’d tossed a pair of black board shorts into his pack the night before, and he stripped and pulled them on.

  It took her longer to get ready, and he sat on her bed and watched. While he’d changed, she’d washed her face, removing her mussed makeup. Then she shimmied into a heart-stopping, mint green bikini, and the last thing Trick wanted to do in that hot tub was talk about his mental health issues.

  While she wove her hair into a braid, he stepped behind her and put his hands on her hips, feeling her firm, smooth, warm skin under his hands. “You are beautiful,” he murmured, and kissed her shoulder. “So beautiful. Inside and out.”

  With a sigh, she leaned against him. “What’s happening, Trick?”

  He slid his hands around her waist and pressed a light line of kisses along her shoulder, to the back of her neck, and up. When he got to her ear, he whispered, “I think we’re falling in love.”

  She nodded. “Yeah. I’m scared.”

  “I know. So am I.”

  ~oOo~

  Trick turned on the jets and joined Juliana in the hot tub. The water was warm and smelled strongly of chlorine, a scent far removed from his dark memories. Ducking his head under, he relaxed almost immediately.