Page 65 of Freaks Of Nature

I roll my hips into her, then drawl in her ear suggestively, “My bed’s the same size, though.”

“Yeah,” she says with a laugh. “I figured.”

Emily turns her head to the bunched bandana beside her. “He used your bandana.”

She’s referring to the night Ash blindfolded her, so we could trick her into having sex with both of us. He said he took it out of the laundry when really I handed it to him as I waited in my room.

“How do you know?” I wonder.

“It smells like you.”

A genuine smile forms on my lips. “That’s my girl,” I say, my fingers tracing the curve of her cheek.

Refocusing on the cloth, I pick it up and loop it around her neck. “Now it’s yours,” I declare, tying it at the front of her throat.

I like to leave a little reminder for Ash that I was here without him witnessing the deed. I like having her to myself.

Emily’s eyes study my upper body, and I know what they’re zoning in on in the faint ambient light: my tattoos…

“Are those cigarette burns?”

…and the other marks.

I drop my eyes to her shoulder. Our father added just as many as hisfriends. We got the ink to cover them up, but could never escape the scar tissue underneath.

“I noticed them on Ash too,” she elaborates. “You didn’t do that to yourself, did you?”

I shake my head listlessly.

“Was it your father? Ash mentioned something.”

I bristle. “What did he tell you?” I know he wouldn’t say anything. But…

“Only that he thinks he’s in prison.”

I release a shallow breath of relief.

In the silence that follows, I feel her studying my face. Then her hand reaches for me.

“What happened to you, Mason?” She clasps my cheek, with a touch so tender, so caring… I can’t stop the words from spilling out.

“Our father wasn’t a good man, Em,” I say, meeting her hazel blue eyes. I know if I averted her scrutinizing stare, she’d only dig deeper.

“He was a gambler; dog races mostly,” I go on in a blithe tone. “But he couldn’t always pay up. We were a way for him to clear his debt. He would lend us out to the loan shark he owed.” I shrug a shoulder like the past is long buried and has no more hold on me.

But it does.

It made me what I am.

“You! Mason,” Ely’s gruff voice prompts where he sits in a chair.

They know how to tell us apart—something I’m not even sure our father can, and definitely not our mother on the rare occasion she’s lucid.

I assume they do by our wounds, the scars they leave in our skin. Ash has a cigarette burn on his left clavicle Ely put there himself a year ago.

“Take off your shirt,” he orders me, dropping the cigar from his mouth.

It’s not the first time, and I do as I’m told, pulling it over my head, and tossing it onto the table between us.