The Darkest Link (Second Circle Tattoos) (30 page)

Lizzie and Beth—Thank you for your faith in me from the beginning and for helping me bring this story full circle.

Scarlett’s Stars—I’ve loved getting to know you all this year. You make me laugh when it gets bumpy. Huge thanks especially to Tanya Baikie for being so generous with your time and talents.

Brad Sears at
www.allexperts.com
, and Simon Freebrey—Thank you for helping me with details about Lia’s Plymouth Fury. If I still wrote it wrong, that’s on me, not you.

Dr. Vanessa Clay—Thank you for being an awesome neighbor and for helping me with all things medical.

Sidney Halston—For being awesomeness personified and for taking the time to read this story. It is stronger for your feedback.

Amanda, Michelle, and Gina—Thank you for helping me keep the home fires burning when I was too far away, or too buried in words, to do it myself. Oh, and for giving me alcohol and laughs when I needed them most. I love you, ladies!

Tim—I’m not going to thank you for looking after the kids when I was on a deadline, because you’ve been leaning it since way before Sheryl Sandberg made it cool. But I am going to thank you for being a good man all these years, for your undying faith in me, and your limitless supply of encouragement.

Finley & Lola—Thank you for writing your own stories while I was writing mine. Yours were way more entertaining than mine
☺
I love you.

Read on for a sneak peek of Scarlett Cole’s next book

JORDAN RECLAIMED

Available from St. Martin’s Press in early 2017!

If it got any fucking colder his ass was going to freeze off, hit the sidewalk, and become a special feature in next week’s
People
magazine.

Jordan Steele, bass guitarist for the metal band Preload, should have worn a hat to protect his ears from the biting minus temperatures. Since the decision to undercut his hair on one side of his head, he’d felt even colder. Usually he embraced the bite of cold, but the windchill tested his own limits. He could feel frost gathering on his short beard.

He studied the narrow Cabbagetown Victorian house with the steeply pointed gable and gingerbread trim. Colorful lights twinkled on the small Christmas tree perched in the three-sided bay window. The softly falling snow made the imposing three-story Toronto group home look picture perfect, masking the anger and sadness that festered inside.

A small wreath decorated the front door he’d been delivered to at the age of twelve. While he’d been in care since the age of ten, this was the only home he’d ever known. It sucked balls when he was forced out of the very same door at eighteen. Crown Ward status had its limitations, and even though there had been some ongoing assistance until he was twenty-one, he couldn’t continue to live with Ellen. And the thought of living without the friends he thought of as brothers had driven him to . . . he shook his head to shift the melancholy thought.

God, it was good to be home.
Toronto felt millions of miles away from the glass mausoleum the band had recently called home in L.A. He’d felt a sense of relief when they’d decided to put the house on the market and resettle back in Toronto permanently. And it was hard to believe it was Christmas Eve already, another year almost done.

“Incoming,” someone yelled from behind him.

A solid ball of snow whizzed past Elliot’s ear. “Lennon, you jackass,” he said without truly knowing who’d launched the missile. Of the four other members of his band, Lennon was the only one who started that kind of shit.

“I remember the day you arrived,” Nikan said, walking up next to him. “You were a scrawny shit and your stuff was packed into one Canadian Tire bag.”

What he’d never revealed was that the Canadian Tire bag still sat in a box in his bedroom. Elliot looked down at the large bag he carried, filled with thousands of dollars of gifts. Funny how life, and more importantly music, had changed them. Now he benched well over his own body weight, which was a lot given his six-foot-five frame, and brought home six figures a month, which for the most part disappeared into a bank account that he rarely touched except for living essentials like bills.

Nikan, originally from a reserve north of the city, slapped an arm around his shoulder. “I scared the crap out of you back then. Admit it.”

“Not so much now, eh?” Jordan asked, knowing he could take any of the guys in a fight if he needed to. As he had plenty of times over the years.

“When you ladies are done sharing your feelings and shit . . .” Dred said, handing him Petal, Dred’s nearly nine-month-old daughter, before trudging to the front door and grabbing the snow shovel. Holding Petal was the only thing that made the grind of life worth anything. When her dark eyes looked up at him, he saw glimpses of a path that might lead him out of his daily hell. When Dred took Petal to go stay with his girlfriend, Pixie, in Miami, it felt like somebody had stuck a knife through his chest.

As Dred made short work of clearing the pathway to the gate, Jordan made a mental note to ask Ellen if she wanted them to hire a snow-clearing service for her. They’d gone around the city council and financially supported the home for years.

He gazed up to the tiny attic window that once was his room. Nobody had ever really understood his need to live in the undecorated and poorly insulated attic when a perfectly good bedroom was set up for him on the first floor. It didn’t even make sense to him that the only place he felt safe was a place that looked exactly like where he had been locked away. He remembered the paralyzing fear when the time had come for the rest of the band to start moving out. How the thought of living in a house without them had driven him into such panic that he’d reached for a packet of razor blades to escape the misery.
Fuck.
He hadn’t even done that right. Which was why at the age of twenty-seven, he still lived with the rest of the band in a sprawling home a few minutes south of the group home he’d grown up in. They could afford better, had even looked at homes in Baby Point and on the Bridal Path, but this was their ’hood, where they’d fought against, and ultimately for, each other. Toronto social services had thrust them together, but Ellen, their group home leader, and Maisey, her social worker wife, had made them brothers.

Lennon packed another snowball, and it hit the back of Dred’s head.

“Fuck you, asshole.” Dred dropped the shovel and scooped up snow. With aim as true as his pitch, the lead singer nailed Lennon on the side of his head.

“Guys, can we not act like total douchebags?” Nikan tilted his head to the window where a group of young boys looked at them with fake disinterest. Jordan knew that look. Pretending you didn’t care meant it didn’t hurt so much when you were let down. It was a look the five of them had worn often. The kids changed, but the look remained the same.

Ellen opened the front door. “You never could stay dry, Dred,” she said. “Come on inside, and leave the snow on the sidewalk please, Lennon.”

Lennon immediately dropped the snowball he held behind his back.

Dred jogged up the steps and kissed Ellen’s cheek. “Sorry, Ellen. You look lovely by the way.”

“Where is that precious baby of mine?” she exclaimed.

“What? You used to be so excited to see me, and now I’ve been relegated to baby carrier, have I?” he asked. “Jordan has her.”

Ellen wore a red velvet jacket, black pants, and the same practical shoes as always. Christmas on the top, group home leader on the bottom. She’d worn the same outfit when they’d invited her and Maisey to L.A. to celebrate her fiftieth birthday the previous year.

“Merry Christmas, boys. Nikan, we can talk about
that
press report after dinner.”

Nikan looked back at Jordan and rolled his eyes. One minute with Ellen and they regressed from fully-grown men to adolescent teenagers. None of them knew how the photographs Nikan had taken with his own cellphone had ended up with the media. Fans had instantly recognized the tattoo across his stomach. It had taken a few more days to identify the barely-legal girl on her knees in front of him.

Elliot flicked his lighter open and closed, repeating the action over and over. His nickname, Pyro, was based on more than his ability to set fire to a seven-string. Ellen’s happy smile faded to concern. The manias weren’t usually allowed to slum it in a standard group home, but Elliott had been a temporary emergency placement who had never left.

“I’m fine, Ellen,” Elliot said. “It’s under control.”

Jordan watched his brothers enter the house as they had thousands of times before.

“Always lost in thought, my little dreamer. Come inside, Jordan, before all the heat disappears, and bring that little girl to me.”

Jordan walked up the steps and hugged her tightly. “Merry Christmas, Ellen.” He handed Petal over as he was expected to, unable to put words to the feelings of anxiety that washed over him as he did so.

Maisey walked toward him from the kitchen, wiping her hands on the bottom of her apron. “My boys are home. Let me take a look at all of you.”

They removed their coats, unbundled scarves, stashed their gloves, and hurried to hug her.

“Come on in. There are nine boys in here desperate to see you.” Maisey ushered them into the living room.

Their ages ranged from about thirteen to seventeen. Once the introductions were done, Maisey and Ellen left with Petal to tend to the traditional Christmas Eve brunch. It was always one of the few meals of the year that Ellen hadn’t expected them to cook.

Dred pulled a brightly wrapped gift from the bag and handed it to a quiet redheaded boy kneeling near the fireplace. “Andrew, right? Merry Christmas.”

Andrew ripped into the package and jumped to his feet. “You got me the racing car game I wanted. No fucking way.”

“Language!” Ellen and Maisey’s voices echoed from the kitchen at the rear of the house, and Jordan and the rest of the band laughed.

“We used to get that, too, bud,” Lennon said as Andrew blushed. “You’re welcome.”

When all the gifts were unwrapped, Ellen called them all to the extra-large table. Just like old times, Lennon and Elliott jostled each other, elbows raised, to get to the dining room first.

Silence engulfed the living room with the exception of the odd crackle of the fire. Jordan stood and faced the window. They’d dealt with so many hard times in this room together. Adam’s death, his own suicide attempt . . .

“Stop whatever morbid fucking cog is turning in your head and get your ass in for dinner. Ellen’s asking about our plans for New Year’s.” Dred stepped back into the living room. “Think she wants to relive her glory days and all that.”

Jordan laughed. “She can come with us if she wants but she might get an eyeful of shit she shouldn’t.” Things often got a little out of control when they really decided to go for it. And quite often, way more women than men made their way back to the house. Although Pixie was back at the house getting things ready for the huge Christmas they had planned. With Dred now having a baby, the house looked like Santa’s grotto. And if she and Petal were home, then the usual debauched celebration probably wouldn’t fly. But,
shit
, he really needed to burn off the low-grade buzz he had going on in his head, and no-strings, anonymous sex was one of the best ways to take the edge off.

Because it was dirty, just like him.

Scarlett Cole is a writer of contemporary romance and a two-time RITA finalist. Her debut,
The
Strongest Steel
, was a Best Debut Goodreads Author Finalist 2015. Born in England, Scarlett traveled the world, living in Japan and the United States before settling in Canada where she met her own personal hero—all six and a half feet of him. She now lives with her husband and children in Manchester, England. Visit her at
scarlettcole.com
or on Twitter
@ItsScarlettCole
.

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THE STRONGEST STEEL

Book 1

THE FRACTURED HEART

Book 2

THE PUREST HOOK

Book 3

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