Page 78 of Asking for Trouble

I tried to breathe through my nose to stop the tears, knowing from experience that the saline water would sting the wounds, but it was a lost cause. When I opened my eyes, the first thing I noticed was the blue of my eyes.

It was vain, but I always tried to match my hair to the same shade, a rich cobalt blue. They popped even more vibrantly against the bloodshot white and the livid red wound stretching from the edge of my left ear to the corner of my mouth. Hazard’s hand was steady enough to make it seem like an exact straight line except for the end which flicked up beside the end of my lips. Aunt Rita had used butterfly bandages to close the wound, but some blood had sluggishly leaked from the edges, merging with my tears to drip pinkly from my chin into the basin.

“Fuck,” I cursed, squeezing my eyes shut again.

There were no clear thoughts in my head, only emotion that filled me to the brim until I felt like I couldn’t talk or think or even breathe.

Vaguely, I was aware of a knock on the door and Aunt Rita shuffling over to crack it open to speak to someone.

“How is she?” Cedar’s voice whispered.

My chest clutched, but I didn’t turn. It had been years since I last saw him, and the time felt like a chasm between us. We had been something like friends back then, but I had no idea what kind of man he was now.

Actually, I was inclined to think he wasn’t agoodone given the company he still kept.

“I’ll keep her in here tonight with the door locked so he can’t get to her again,” Aunt Rita was saying. “He did a number on her sweet face.”

“Goddammit,” Cedar cursed, his fist thumping against something. “I’m sorry, Faith. I should’ve stepped in.”

It went unsaid that unless he’d put a bullet in Hazard’s brain, he would have done as he pleased anyway, and Cedar would just have suffered for trying. Once, back then, he’d stepped in to stop Hazard from hitting me, and he was cut from the club funds for six months, not to mention the bruised face he’d turned up with the next time I saw him.

“He’s leaving,” he continued. “We’ve got a meet with the man who’s takin’ us on.”

“Who?” I asked, eyes snapping open so I could turn and drill them into Cedar. “Who is it?”

His mouth worked, pursing then flatlining before he uttered quietly, “A man named Javier Ventura.”

I had no recognition of that name, but I filed it away for later.

“Thank you,” I said because I had the feeling he knew exactly where I would take that information.

He’d always been too smart for this lot.

He dipped his head. “Take care’a yourself, Faith. We’ll be gone for hours, and we’re takin’ a few men, but it’ll still be a pretty full house. Don’t do anything stupid.”

His tone was all wrong, though. Not a warning, but a suggestion.

I shuttered my gaze and turned away with a small nod.

“If you cut across the left fields, you hit the road eventually,” he said even softer before disappearing behind the door.

Aunt Rita gripped my good hand. “Are you going?”

“I have to,” I admitted because it was the only light at the end of the tunnel illuminating a way through this darkness. “A…friend got Grouch and his family away today. I-I wish I could take you, but––”

She snorted, waving to her haggard face. “I made my choice a long time ago, ducky. I only wish I could help. I have some money saved––”

“No,” I insisted. “I kept my cash tips from Rooster so I have some, too. And I think, where I’m going, they’ll take care of me until I can get on my feet.”

In fact, I knew they were.

The Fallen took in strays like an animal shelter, cobbling together the kind of found family that shouldn’t have worked on paper but did beautifully in real life. Military veterans, orphans, black sheep, lost souls, the odd psychopath—all of them broken and made whole by their connections to each other.

A totally different organism than the blood family I had and the ways of this club and the one before that.

“Wait until they’ve left and everyone’s settled down,” she whispered. “And let me clean that cut again.”

I laughed, a shocked little bark because hope had momentarily blocked out my memory and the pain from the wound. And suddenly, it was a little more bearable because Iknew that I’d already taught myself to find happiness when life was hard, and a little scar wouldn’t change that.