Hard As Steel: A Hard Ink/Raven Riders Crossover (1001 Dark Nights) (11 page)

Because it was show time. She had to make good on what she’d told him because there was no freaking way she was letting last night harm their friendship, no matter how difficult it was to bury her more-than-friendly feelings.

While Ike was still on the call, Jess hopped off the couch and checked on the frozen lasagna she’d put in the oven over an hour before. She wasn’t sure if Ike would be up for real food yet, but she’d made it just in case, and she could always reheat it for him later.

Plus, after a
whole night
of incredible sex, Jess had been ravenous all damn day.

Her ears listening for the sounds that revealed Ike was making his way downstairs, Jess set the table and sliced up part of a loaf of Italian bread he’d bought. She needed to be ready to act normal. Annnd even thinking that almost guaranteed that she would fail, didn’t it?

She sighed.

Footsteps on the stairs.

Jess turned to find Ike stepping down into the living room wearing jeans and a ratty gray Van Halen T-shirt. At least most of that delicious inked skin and hard muscle was covered. That helped.

“Hey,” she said. “How ya feeling?”

For a split second, she felt him analyzing her, like he was wondering if things were truly going to be normal between them. It made her think of that look he’d given her in the bathroom mirror this morning—after he’d carried her downstairs and washed her freaking hair. How she was supposed to keep her stupid heart out of things when a guy did that for her
after
giving her a crazy number of mind-blowing orgasms, she didn’t know.

“Better, actually.” His gaze slid from her to the oven to the table. “Smells good.”

“Think you can eat? I made the lasagna.”

He nodded. “I’m actually kinda starving.”

“That’s how I was, too.” She waved him closer. “Let’s feel that forehead.”

He eyeballed her like he was suspicious of her intentions.
Soooo
glad things were totally normal. Jess just barely refrained from rolling her eyes. Finally, he closed the distance between them.

She pressed her hand to his face. Much cooler than it had been. Relief flooded through her, easing some of the tension in her shoulders. “I think it’s gone. At least for now.”

“Yeah,” he said, taking a step back. Away—from her. “Good news, huh?”

“Yup.” She turned and peeked in the oven. The cheese was bubbling and brown. Perfect. Look at her being all domestic. She lowered the door and grabbed two hand towels, and then she lifted the pan with the lasagna out of the oven and rested it on top the stove’s burners. “Aw, look at that.”

He came up next to her, but not so close that they were touching. “I’m going to demolish that.”

Jess chuckled. “Good.”

“Lemme go get cleaned up while it cools,” he said, already heading to the bathroom.

“Okay,” she said, grabbing a diet Coke from the fridge.

The minute he closed himself in the bathroom, Jess sagged against the kitchen counter. Was that awkward or was that awkward? Or did it just feel awkward to her because she felt all different around him now?

Jess wanted to bang her head against a wall.

Instead, she finished taking everything to the table, grabbed a drink for Ike, and then sat her butt down to try to chill the fuck out.

He came out seconds later and joined her at the table. “Thanks for doing all this.”

“No worries. Neither of us have eaten much this week so I thought we could use a real meal.”

Nodding, he scooped her a big portion, then gave himself an even bigger one.

“I don’t mean to be nosy, but was your call news from back home?” she asked.

He cut a piece of lasagna with his fork. “Yeah. The team confirmed that their former base commanding officer lied about why he was in Baltimore, and a tracking device they put on his car showed that he went to a location known to be part of their enemy’s business. They also found a tracking device in Becca’s purse after she met with the guy, and the Ravens had to provide a diversion to keep her from being followed.”

“Oh, my God,” Jess said. “Is everyone okay?”

He nodded. “The team also got their hands on some new incriminating documents, so things are coming to a head.”

“Well, I guess that’s good news.” She took a bite of food that she barely tasted.

“It is. But this Army officer is a highly decorated general with all kinds of political connections. Who the hell knows what kind of resources someone like that might have. Shit’s about to get real.”

God, if it wasn’t real already, Jess didn’t want to know what real looked like. After all, two Ravens died when the roof at Hard Ink collapsed last weekend. And it didn’t get any more real than that.

“You know,” she said, the words getting all tangled in her mouth. She rarely talked about her dad to anyone because his memory was all caught up in the worst mistake of her life. But this whole crisis had her thinking about him more and more recently.

“What?” Ike said, studying her.

She shrugged. “Was just thinking that I wish my dad was still around. He would’ve been able to help Jeremy and Nick. I know he would. And then they would’ve had someone in the police department they could trust for sure.” Early in the team’s investigation, they’d found solid evidence that the people they were fighting had at least some BPD in their pockets. “Dad is probably rolling in his grave knowing there are dirty cops working in the department he loved.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever heard you talk about your father before,” Ike said as he took a bite of bread. “Were you close?”

Jess smiled. “We were. My mom split when I was eight, so it was just the two of us.”

“Probably explains why you eat like a guy.”

She laughed. “Probably. He wasn’t much of a cook either.” She pushed a piece of noodle around on her plate, then she took a deep breath and let the words fly. “I don’t talk about him that much because…it’s my fault he’s dead.”

Ike froze with his fork halfway to his mouth. His gaze narrowed. “I don’t believe that.”

She dropped her fork and sagged against the back of her chair. “It’s true,” she said, twisting her paper napkin in her fingers. In her mind’s eye, scenes from that night took form like some macabre silent-era movie. “I’d fallen in with a bad crowd. I didn’t realize how bad at the time. I just thought they liked to party. They seemed cool, fun, like they didn’t have a care in the world. After living at home with my super serious, everything-by-the-book dad—even while I went to college part time, I was itching to be more independent. I made every wrong choice you could—loser guys, getting drunk, trying drugs. I was working all day at the tattoo parlor where I first met Jeremy and partying all night. My dad and I fought all the time. I was actually planning to move out of the house.” Jess shook her head.

“What happened?” Ike asked in a quiet voice.

“I came home one night after work and walked in on two of my so-called friends robbing my house. They’d broken into my dad’s gun closet. They had my mother’s jewelry and her rare coin collection, and a bunch of rare comic books I’d picked up over the years.”

Jess rubbed her hand over her left forearm, where her rose-and-vine tattoo surrounded a tattoo of Harley Quinn, a comic book villainess with red and black hair who wore a red and black costume. She’d been driven mad by the Joker and fallen in love with him, and then devoted her life to making him happy. It was one of Jess’s earliest tattoos, one inspired by her love of comics and this dark character in particular.

“I was arguing with them and threatening them. I felt so betrayed because I’d told them about these things in casual conversation, never thinking twice about it or that they’d violate my trust like that. Hell, if I hadn’t come home then, I never would’ve known it was them who’d done it. This guy named Marx pulled one of Dad’s guns on me and threatened to shoot me. He said they needed the money or someone would hurt them. I learned later that they’d been dealing drugs and someone had double-crossed them and stolen some, which put them in debt to the dealer above them. I had no idea they were dealing.” She looked at Ike. “I mean, I get it, using is bad enough. But I didn’t know that.”

Ike nodded. “And…your dad walked into the middle of this fight.” He didn’t phrase it as a question.

“Yeah,” she said, her gut clenching. “I didn’t even hear him come home over all the commotion. Marx shot first, and Dad dove in front of me, taking the bullet. He knocked me down in the process and managed to get off a shot and hit Burton. When Marx raised the gun to shoot again, my dad threw himself on top of me.”

The memory sucked her back into the past, right back into that horrible moment. Jess smelled the hot scent of the gunfire, tasted the tang of iron in her mouth from where she’d bit down on her tongue when she fell, and heard its deafening thunder and the screams and shouts.

“Two shots went off at the same time, but my dad was on top of me and I couldn’t see what was going on. And then it got very quiet.” Jess met Ike’s solemn gaze, a knot lodged in her throat, tears burning the backs of her eyes. She blinked again and again to keep them from falling. “My dad was dead before the ambulance arrived.”

“Aw, hell, Jess. I’m so fucking sorry.” He reached out and grabbed one of her hands. “Yeah, you made some mistakes, but it’s not your fault he died.”

Jess shook her head. She’d heard it all before, and the repetition didn’t make it any more true than the first time someone had tried to convince her. “He told me my friends were trouble. If I’d listened, he’d still be alive.”

“Every parent in history has probably said that about their kid’s friends at some point or another. Trust me when I say I know what it is to be responsible for someone else’s death. And you absofuckinglutely were not.”

* * * *

Aw, fuck. What the hell was Ike doing? Besides Dare and Doc, no one else in his life now knew about how he’d failed to protect Lana. Which meant, honestly, no one else really knew him.

“What do you mean?” Jess asked in a quiet, surprised voice.

Ike debated for a long moment, and then he decided that if she could lay her greatest failure out on the table, so could he. And doing so had some extra benefits. First, it might alleviate some of the guilt she carried for her father. Second, it might make her look at him in a way that wasn’t so damn affectionate—because if she thought she’d been hiding her emotions from him since he’d come downstairs, she was all kinds of wrong. And, third, it would make her see that Ike wasn’t a good person—that he was
just like
the people her father had warned her away from. The first one was all for her, but the latter two were things he really needed to have a chance to put the colossal misstep of last night behind him, to get them back on the track they should’ve stayed on.

Sonofabitch.

As if Ike could have that taste of her and not want more. As if he could make it just about the fucking and keep his emotions separate—problem was, the whole time he’d been operating on feelings, not thoughts, and it was his goddamned feelings that had led him to give in to his body’s demands in the first place.

As if he’d be able to stand any other man looking at her, let alone having her.

Jessica Jakes was
his
. Only she wasn’t. And that mindfuck had no cure.

He pushed his plate away and folded his arms across his chest. “My father was trash. Working with Mexican cartels, he made his money as a coyote smuggling Mexican migrants into the country across the Arizona border. That was his business. And the expectation was that it was the
family
business. Me and my two older brothers were all to work for him. I hated it. I hated the intimidation, the exploitation, the separation of kids and parents. I wanted no part of it. One time, I got up the courage to tell my father I wanted to leave after I graduated high school. He beat me so bad I couldn’t see for three days because of the swelling.”

“Oh, Ike,” Jess said, her expression so full of sympathy.

“Senior year, a girl came through on one of our transports. She stayed with some cousins in Tucson, one of whom was my girlfriend, Lana Molinas. Lana and I had been together since freshman year. I loved her,” Ike said, nailing Jess with a stare.

Jess didn’t flinch at that information. She just nodded.

“Lana’s cousin started talking all over town about having been raped and purposely separated from her parents and little brothers. Lana supported her and went to the authorities, which was the right thing to do, of course. But it put her on my father’s radar. On the cartel’s radar. Bad shit started to go down. My father told me to break it off with Lana or he would. If
I’d
listened, Lana would still be alive. But I loved her, and I didn’t want that life anyway. So we planned to run away.”

“Jesus, Ike. I had no idea,” Jess said. “What a horrible position to be in.”

He frowned. She still wasn’t getting it, but she would. “I promised her I’d keep her safe until we got out of town. She trusted me.” Ike hated the sympathy he saw on Jess’s face. That wasn’t the reaction he was going for. He didn’t want her to feel bad for him—he wanted her to be pissed at him, disappointed in him, repulsed by him. All the things he felt about himself. His words came out clipped and angry. “My oldest brother, Aaron, called Lana and told her I wanted her to meet him. She probably thought he was helping us escape. But my father sent Aaron to rough Lana up, scare her away, intimidate her into doing what he wanted and shutting her cousin up while she was at it. I found out about the meeting from my middle brother, David, but I got to her after it’d started.”

Ike shook his head as the images of Lana’s bleeding lip rushed to the fore. She’d been sprawled in the middle of an abandoned barn about a mile from their school, crying and clutching at her stomach. God, the sight had felt like a jagged blade to the gut.

“Aaron and I got into a knock-down, drag-out fight, and he pulled a gun. I hit his arm as he pulled the trigger and the bullet went wide.”

Fists and jaw clenched, Ike could still see the slug tearing into Lana’s throat, the blood pouring from the wound.