Page 21 of Puck

I eyed him. “You’re thirty-seven?”

He nodded. “Yes ma’am. Thirty-eight as of November third.”

“You seem younger.”

He grinned. “I’ll take that as a compliment.”

“It was one.” I glanced down at our hands, still joined. “Why does it make you nervous?”

“Because I like you. You make me nervous, just in general, and I don’t know why. Because I like you, I suspect. You’re different. You’re playing a hell of a game of hard to get, and that turns me on, and I’m not totally sure I’m gonna win this game, and that would be a first, which also scares the hell out of me. But mainly because I’ve never wanted anyone as badly as I want you.”

“We’ve known each other for a matter of, what, two hours?”

“And here we are holding hands.”

I nodded. “I’ll concede that point. I’ve never held hands with a guy on the first date before, let alone within hours of meeting him.”

“See? There’s a thing. Sparks, or whatever you wanna call it.”

I poked him in the shoulder. “The trade, Puck. Stop trying to divert the conversation.”

He laughed. “Can’t get anything by you, can I?” Puck turned back to me. “So, heavy shit first. Which of three options do you want to hear about?”

“The tats.”

He blew out a breath. “Shit. You’re good, Colbie.” He reached up, touched his shoulder where the tattoos began. “This”—he indicated a classic car—“is a 1939 Ford Coupe. My old man owned one when I was a kid. It was his pride and joy, his baby. He named it Evelyn.” His voice took on a gruff, scratchy drawl. “‘You and Evelyn, Puck. You’re it, you’re all I got.’ I’m not sure who he loved more, me or that Ford. So the tattoo of the car is in memoriam of Pops.”

“What happened to him?” I asked.

Puck didn’t answer immediately. “That’s the danger of telling you about the tats—each one has a meaning and memory.”

“Thus the reason I asked about them—I’ll learn more about you.”

He nodded. “Pops was murdered. It was . . . ugly.” Puck paused, tugging on the end of his beard with his free hand. “He was a gambler. A good one, most of the time. Only, one night he got involved in a game where the stakes went a little too high for his blood, but he wouldn’t back out, wouldn’t fold. Knew he could win, because Pops was that good. Only, the guys he was playing against didn’t play fair. They cheated, and my old man . . . he didn’t take that shit lying down. Didn’t go well. They roughed him up, forced him to take them to our house. I was there, saw them coming. I hid. Watched them rough him up so he’d tell them where he kept his valuables. He didn’t fucking have shit, of course, but that didn’t stop them from trying. So he gave them the keys to Evelyn, the only thing he had of value. They took the keys and shot him.”

I squeezed his hand. “Jesus, Puck.”

“I was seventeen. Just graduated high school. He was gonna give me Evelyn as a graduation present.”

“What happened? Did the police ever find them?”

He was quiet for a little too long. “Nope. But I did.”

My blood ran cold. “You did.”

He nodded. “Found them, all four of them. And Evelyn. Seventeen . . . and I waspissed. Never really been completely stable, you know? Growing up with a hard-drinking gambler dad as my only parent, no mom, no real supervision? It wasn’t a recipe for a nice, well-adjusted kid, let’s just put it that way. So yeah, I found the fuckers, and I killed them. My dad had guns, and I grew up shooting. It was . . . easier than it should have been. And in that part of Arkansas, a few gunshots weren’t going to worry anyone, so nobody called the police. Put the bodies in Evelyn, drove it to a spot I knew, an old quarry turned into a lake. Sent it over the edge, just like in the movies. Only, unlike in the movies, as far as I know, nobody ever found ’em.”

“Jesus.”

“And that was that. I bought myself a one-way bus ticket to Los Angeles, as far from Arkansas as I could get, joined the Army, and never looked back.”

“You killed four men at seventeen years old.”

He eyed me carefully, warily. “Might be worth mentioning that literally nobody else knows that story. Not Harris, not Layla, not Duke or Thresh, or anyone.”

I let out a slow breath. “Wow. Um. I’m . . . I don’t know how I feel.”

“Scared of me now?” He sounded . . . resigned.