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

  She shook her head. “That’s Papi. Papi has a different house. I’m s’poseda push 9-1-1, but Mami has the phone in her pocket and I can’t get it. I need a good people that won’t hurt because Mami is sleeping and won’t wake up. Do you promise you’re a good people?”

  He stood and took the little girl’s hand. “I promise. Where’s your mommy?”

  “In our new house. It’s this way.” She led him down the other walkway, still clutching her stuffed monkey.

  As they walked, he said, “My name is Trick. What’s yours?”

  She stopped and looked up at him. “I’m not s’poseda tell to strangers.”

  He smiled. “Your mommy sounds like she takes good care of you.”

  “She does but she’s sleeping and she’s not s’poseda be. I don’t like it.”

  An apartment door was open about halfway down the walk. Trick wasn’t surprised when the girl led him there and walked inside.

  From the look of things, Trick decided that they had just moved in on this very day. There were stacks of boxes everywhere in the main room, and furniture that was bare and precisely set—interesting, old-fashioned furniture. The apartment had the rich smell of floor wax and fresh paint.

  “Where’s your mommy, muffin?”

  The layout of this apartment was exactly like Trick’s, except the reverse: the front door opened into a living room, which stretched to the right. To the left was a tiny eating area. Off of that was the kitchen, most of which was readily visible from the front door. A hallway led off the living room, at about the middle of the apartment. He knew that there would be a bathroom to the right and then two bedrooms, side-by-side and identical, at the end.

  The girl took his hand and led him to the kitchen. A woman with long, dark hair lay sprawled, unconscious, on the floor, the remnants of a broken chair around her.

  He picked up the girl and set her aside. “Okay, honey. Okay.” Then he went to the woman and crouched at her side, laying his fingertips on her throat. She was alive, and her pulse was strong. A quick look around the kitchen showed him a plastic caddy full of cleaning supplies, with a white rag hanging over it. He stood and rooted through it. When he found a bottle of ammonia, he splashed some on the rag and then crouched again at the woman’s side.

  She roused groggily when he waved the ammonia under her nose. When she opened her eyes and found focus, Trick recognized her. She had gorgeous eyes, so dark they seemed entirely pupil. Then he noticed the tiny mole, what he thought women called a beauty mark, above her mouth. “Juliana?”

  She sang karaoke at The Flight Deck sometimes. Though he didn’t generally pay attention to karaoke, he’d noticed her once when Connor had performed as payment on a bet he’d lost, and now he noticed whenever she was there to sing.

  She was good—excellent. And he liked her. They’d talked a couple of times, and she had a lively brain. He would’ve pushed for more, but she’d made it clear she wasn’t interested in him. He knew how to take no for an answer, and he knew he was an acquired taste. Even now, without the dreads he’d worn for a decade.

  At her name, she started to full awareness and then pushed him away, sitting up in alarm. “What? Who? Lucie! Where’s Lucie! Who the hell?”

  “Easy, easy. I’m Trick. From The Deck?”

  Just then the girl—Lucie—came into the room. “Mami!”

  “I’m okay, Lulu. I’m okay.” Calming down, Juliana tried to stand, and she didn’t fight when Trick took her arms to help her up.

  Halfway up, she puked all over him, and her knees gave out. He clutched her close and eased her back to the floor. “You definitely have a concussion. I’m calling 911.”

  “No, no,” she gasped, fighting to keep her eyes open. “No. I can’t afford it.”

  “You’re really hurt. I’ll pay.”

  That brought consciousness back, and she scowled at him. “That’s nuts. No. I just…I need to lie down.”

  “Okay. You shouldn’t be alone, though. There somebody I can call to stay with you?”

  Her eyes fluttered shut, and she was out again. As he laid her back gently on the floor, he felt a goose egg on the side of her head. Fuck, this was no little knock on the head. He considered calling an ambulance anyway, but she didn’t want it, and he hated foisting shit like that on people. Crouching on the floor of her tiny kitchen, vomit dripping thickly from his kutte, Trick looked around as if he’d find an answer on the bare walls of this apartment.

  His eyes met the Lucie’s. Hers were wide with worry. “It’s okay, Lulu. She’s gonna be okay.”

  “Only Mami and Papi can call me Lulu. You can call me Lucie. Or muffin. I liked that. I like chocolate chip muffins. Mami bakes them sometimes.”

  “Okay, muffin. I’m a good people. I’m gonna make sure your mommy’s okay.” He picked up the rag and waved it under Juliana’s nose again. When she roused and focused again, he asked, “Is there somebody I can call for you?”

  Her eyes got wet, but she blinked any possible tears away. “No. There’s…nobody’s around tonight. I’m okay, though. I’ll be okay.” She put her hands on his shoulders as if she meant to use him as leverage to stand, and then she realized that she’d puked on him. “Oh God. I’m so sorry.”

  “Not a concern right now. Look, I know you don’t know me much—or like me much—but I’m not leaving you here alone with your little girl. You’re hurt. If there’s nobody else, then it’s me. Or an ambulance. Pick your poison.”

  Lucie came around and peered between them. “He’s a good people, Mami.”

  Looking green around the gills again, Juliana gave her daughter a weak smile. “You think so, mija?”

  Lucie nodded, and Juliana looked up at Trick. He didn’t know why he was going so fucking far out of his way for a woman who’d rejected him, but what he wanted right then was for her to trust him—to trust him, a near-stranger, enough to leave him alone with her four-year-old daughter.

  He liked that little girl a lot. She was brave and smart, he knew it already.

  “Okay,” her mother sighed, looking like she was fading again. “Thank you.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  Juliana felt a large, rough hand on her face, and then her neck. At first, it simply soothed her. Her head was screaming, and she felt slow and sore. She didn’t even bother to open her eyes; the mere thought of it made her head hurt more.

  But then she remembered that there wasn’t anybody in the world who should have been touching her with a hand like that, and her eyes flew open anyway, accompanied by an electric charge of panic, which made her head hurt so badly she could almost taste the pain.

  “What?” she croaked.

  There was a man sitting on her bed. A strange man. He was blurry and kept trying to become two strange men. He smiled at her—or snarled, it was hard to be sure with all the moving his face was doing—and said, “Still Trick. Just checking on you.”

  Though her confusion remained, her panic abated somewhat, and she pushed his hand away and tried to sit up. As soon as her head left the pillow, the room spun and her mouth flooded with saliva. She felt carsick, and she dropped back down in defeat.

  “Damn. I’m worried, Juliana. I think you need the hospital.”

  Hearing those words, she found a sliver of orientation, and with it came memory. She’d been standing on one of the dining room chairs, scrubbing out the top shelf of the pantry, where earlier, reaching up over her head, she’d found an old husk of a cockroach—by putting her hand directly on it.

  She’d known when she’d pulled the chair over that it was a stupid risk she was taking—the chairs were cheap, the bases made out of metal tubes shaped a little bit like an ‘S’—but she’d thought she would be okay, since it would only take a minute to scrub out that shelf.

  The second she’d stood up on it, the chair had collapsed and then broken apart, and she’d fallen and slammed her head on…something. The range, maybe? She didn’t know. The last thing she remembered was the blast of pain.
/>   And then a strange man crouching next to her. This strange man.

  But he wasn’t strange—or at least not a stranger, not completely. He seemed familiar. Trick, he’d said.

  From The Deck. Right. The biker. Sitting on the side of her bed.

  Shirtless. Why didn’t he have a shirt on? Why was he in her apartment half-dressed? Holy God.

  “No hospital. I’m okay. Where’s Lucie? My daughter?” Juliana forced herself back up, shoving her elbows under her for support, and ignoring the green swim of the room around her.

  “Sleeping. It’s after midnight.”

  “Sleeping where? I have to put her bed together.”

  “I did that, and Lucie helped me find her blankets and bedding. She and Mr. Bananas are tucked in with her favorite star sheets. I found her nightlight, too.”

  Mr. Bananas. He knew her monkey’s name.

  “You tucked her in?”

  He smiled. The room was dim—just the light from the hallway through the open door—but he was sitting in that band of light, and she could see the sincerity of his smile. She relaxed more. Though she was confused yet, she felt safe.

  “I did. We read a chapter in a book about the Milky Way, and then I turned on her nightlight and she went to sleep. She’s a cool kid.”

  Thinking about her little girl, Juliana had to smile. “Yes, she is. Why don’t you have a shirt on?”

  He looked down at his bare chest as if he’d forgotten. The light caught a ring that ran through his nipple and made it glint. “Um…I guess you don’t remember. My shirt—”

  “Oh, God. I threw up on you.” She put her hands on her face. “Oh, no. I’m so sorry.”

  “It’s okay. I got you cleaned up, and I got my kutte cleaned up. The t-shirt is a loss, though. I didn’t have anything else to put on.”

  Feeling sick and weak, her head pounding, Juliana let her arms slide out from under her, and she lay back on her pillows. “Why are you doing this—taking care of us?”

  “There wasn’t anybody else. You said there wasn’t anybody to call, and you didn’t want an ambulance. I couldn’t leave you and Lucie alone.”

  Juliana took a breath and focused on the man in front of her. Her impression in their few previous meetings was that he was kind; this night had done nothing to disabuse her of that understanding.

  He was handsome, too—not in a matinee-idol way, but in a real way. He had light eyes—she’d never seen him in good enough lighting to know their exact color, but they were light, maybe blue. His hair had grown since he’d first introduced himself—jeez, that was the night she’d won that karaoke thing, almost a year ago. Then, his head had been close-cropped; now he had a head of shaggy, wavy golden hair, getting on the long side. His beard, too, was dark gold and a little long, an inch or two longer than his chin.

  He was tall, she knew, and lean—she certainly knew that now, looking at his defined chest, sprinkled with golden curls, and his broad shoulders. He sat leaning slightly on his nearest arm, making the muscles there bulge.

  And his skin was nearly covered with tattoos—down his arms and over his hands, and a big one she couldn’t make out over the left side of his ribs. Around both wrists he had what seemed to be simple black bands of ink. A lot of the others were words, inked as if they’d been typewritten on his skin. In the ray of light from the hallway, she could make out one on his upper arm: everything was beautiful and nothing hurt.

  Something fluttered in her chest, and she felt suddenly emotional. Covering that with a sigh, she looked up to find him watching her, still smiling gently. “You don’t know us,” she said, her voice low. “You didn’t need to do any of this.”

  “I couldn’t walk away. That’s not who I am.”

  Emotion swelled inside her again. Maybe it was the blow to her head, which was probably a concussion, making her feel so weepy. Or maybe it was because she’d been so often left alone, except by this man, who owed her nothing. She swallowed what felt like a sharp rock in her throat. “You’re a good people.”

  That gentle grin grew and made the skin at the outside corners of his eyes crinkle. “I hope so.”

  They simply looked at each other for a moment, until Juliana’s vision doubled again, and she closed her eyes. A spasm of pain flashed through her head, and she put a hand on her forehead.

  Then she felt his hand on her again, gently stroking her head until he found a viciously sore spot, and she hissed. She felt the bed shift as he stood up. “You need to rest, Juliana, and I should have gotten you ice earlier, but I’ll do it now. Can I get you anything else? I looked for aspirin, but I felt bad about rooting through boxes too much.”

  She had half a bottle of Vicodin in one of the bathroom boxes. “I know where something is. I’ll get it.” Tossing the comforter back—she was on her bare mattress and pillows—she sat up and stood in a series of quick, careless movements.

  And the room rolled so hard it might as well have turned upside down. Her knees folded, and Trick’s arms were around her, catching her before she could fall. Again.

  At least this time she didn’t yark on him.

  The room settled, and she became aware of his chest on hers—she was wearing only a bra and a camisole over her panties, what she’d had on under the baggy shirt and jeans she’d been wearing to move. His skin was warm, and his body was contoured and firm.

  She’d rejected his advances for excellent reasons. She was trying to set her life on a particular path, and a biker was not somebody who belonged on that path. If she didn’t learn the many harsh lessons being with Lucie’s father had offered, then she was an idiot. She owed it to her little girl to find success and stability.

  Because of Lucie, she didn’t play around, either. She intended to date only men who could offer the things she wanted for herself and her daughter. Stability, not struggle. Happiness, not heartache. So her attraction to a man like Trick—growing by leaps and bounds during this night, while her brain was rattled and her defenses were down—was irrelevant. If he couldn’t be a candidate to join their lives, then he wasn’t a candidate for anything.

  “You should lie back down.” They were still so close that she could feel his breath as he murmured the words, and she found herself focused on his lips. His mouth, surrounded by that beard, was gorgeous, with a full lower lip that she felt a strong impulse to touch—an impulse she resisted. Barely.

  She blinked and made her legs steady. “I need to pee. You can’t do that for me, can you?”

  He chuckled, and she felt it against her chest. “Guess not. Will you let me help you get there?”

  Insisting she could make it on her own while she still had her hands clenched over his shoulders would have been absurd, so she nodded—carefully, so as not to shake her sore head—and he turned and slid an arm around her waist so that he could escort her to the toilet.

  As they cleared the doorway into the hall, Juliana turned and looked into her daughter’s new room. It looked different from when she’d last seen it; the bed was fully built and made, with her nightscape comforter and bedding, and even her black tulle canopy draped over the top. All that was missing were the little glow-in-the-dark stars they hung from the tulle to dangle over her while she slept.

  Trick had done all this. He’d more than tended to her daughter. He’d taken care of her. Of them.

  Lucie lay curled in her usual tight ball, Mr. Bananas tucked under her chin. On the dresser next to her bed was a little stack of books and her nightlight, sending spinning stars around the room.

  Her daughter had no patience for pink, or princesses, or any of that. What she liked was science, especially, in the past year or so, astronomy—though dinosaurs and paleontology still got some attention.