Tyler (7 page)

I throw my gloves into the tail case, lock and secure my bike and make my way to the shop. Chimes jingle as I push the door open and enter, shoving my hair out of my face.

“Hey.” Zane is wiping his hands on a towel. His Mohawk is drooping, and his fingers are stained with black ink. “That’s a sweet ride you got out there.” He nods at my black Ducati, visible through the shop front window. “Must be worth a lot.”

I shrug. My bike’s the only thing that really belongs to me. “She’s not for sale.”

Zane clucks his tongue. “Didn’t think she was. How’s it going?”

I lick my chapped lips. The urge to start counting in my head—to start repeating her name over and over again until my mind blanks—is overwhelming. “Came to talk to you about the job.”

He grins. “Want it?”

“If you’re still offering.”

“Damn right I am.”

Some tension leaves my body, and I nod. “When do I start?”

“Today if you want.” He gestures at the desk. “Megan helped out as long as she could, but she has her job at the café. Welcome aboard, Tyler Devlin.”

That easy? I narrow my eyes at him. Why is he being so friendly? “Grayson.”

“What?”

“Tyler Grayson.” I scratch the stubble on my cheek. “I’m not Jake Devlin’s son. So I ditched his name.” And took Uncle Jerry’s family name instead. Why the hell not?

Zane is staring at me with those dark eyes that give nothing away. Then he nods. “Okay.”

“Okay.” I’m relieved he doesn’t ask any questions. “Anything I should know?”

“Appointment book is there. List of customer numbers and details. The catalogs you’ve seen already. I’ll be around, and you can ask the guys. There’s Micah, Shane, Ocean, Jesse and Seth. Micah and Ocean work here, Jesse, Shane and Seth are apprentices. Now he,” Zane points at one of the tattoo artists coming out of a booth, “can tell you more. Hey, Micah, come over here and tell Tyler a few things about manning the front desk, will ya?”

So Micah walks over, a tall, blond boy, his hair hanging in his face, tattoos swirling up his neck and down his arms. In his quiet voice, he explains to me what my duties are. All the while, Zane is watching us, thoughtful.

I’d worry, but I’ve seen Zane with my little brother, at the hospital and afterward, at Dad’s funeral. He’s a good guy. If anything, Zane has been more of a big brother to Ash than me.

And that, dammit, isn’t hard, because I’ve sure as fuck failed Ash and everyone around me.

***

I wake up in the middle of the night, drenched in cold sweat. My mouth’s dry. My joints ache. Cold shivers go through me.

Then my stomach cramps, and I double over.
Shit.
I barely make it to the bathroom before bile rises in my throat. Falling to my knees, I puke my guts out into the toilet.

Another crappy night. I grab the sink to rise to my feet and rinse the foul taste from my mouth. Then I splash cold water on my face and slump back against the tiled wall, exhausted.

How long?
I itch to have the drugs back, but I threw them all away, flushed them down the toilet.
Stupid.

The tap drips, and it’s like gunshots in my ears. My skin fucking hurts where it stretches over my bones. I sink down to the floor and fold my arms over my knees, resting my forehead on them. It feels like I’m dying, like my heart will give out. I know it’s not a panic attack; I know those way too well.

Not an attack, but I can feel the panic lurking at the back of my mind, waiting to pounce, a dark presence, a shadow waiting to sink sharp claws into my chest and try to rip my heart out.

Time passes in odd lurches and jumps. The sky is lightening outside the tiny bathroom window. Insomnia is another old buddy of mine. The pills helped with that over the years, as they did with the attacks, but now... Now it’s as if those years have been wiped away, and I’m back at the beginning.

Where I don’t wanna be. Stuck in the past, stuck in fear.

Finally I manage to get up and step into the shower stall. I slam my hand on the wall, trying to focus. Pain radiates down my hand to my elbow, clearing some of the haze in my head. I crank up the cold water, and the first splash jerks me like a puppet.

I’m too cold already, so I turn on the hot water and lean back against the tiled wall until the shivers stop. I clench my bruised fist as images flash through my head—Dad with a baseball bat, his eyes hard. The knife, glinting in his hand, then dulled with bright red. The pain. Small details—water dripping in a corner of the basement. The scratching noise of mice or rats in the walls while I was locked and left alone. Mom’s and Dad’s voices rising from upstairs in a fight.

Mom.
I never even knew she got sick and died until months had passed. Uncle Jerry dragged me into the kitchen one day—he wasn’t high, and that was rare enough that I didn’t fight him—and sat me at the dirty table. Told me without preamble that Mom had died of leukemia. A few months back. He hadn’t remembered to tell me. In fact, he’d been feeding me bullshit about how everything was fine at home, that Mom had called and told him things were perfect, and I’d believed him. Because I wanted to believe it. Needed it.

Turns out he’d dreamed it, made it up, thought it’d calm me down when I had panic attacks and nightmares.

Mom was dead.

I remember sitting there, numb, hunched over, trying to make sense of something so incredible, so unimaginable it wasn’t working. The only thing keeping me sane in insane Uncle Jerry’s house, far from the world and already hooked on pills, was that Mom and Ash would be okay. Because I kept my silence, kept away.

I had this fantasy that Dad would leave, or do something stupid and be locked behind bars. Then I’d go back. I’d get a chance to get back what I’d lost: see Asher grow. Help Mom with her vegetable patch. Live a last sliver of happy childhood. Mend the cracks in my sleep through which nightmares slipped.

No such luck.

And now I need to get my head straight, to rise out of this funk. I can hear my cell phone ringing from the bedside stand, and I turn the water off, but I can’t bother to move. Not many people have my number. Has to be Marlene, three-night-stand extraordinaire who doesn’t give up on the bastard who fucked her, then left without an address. I don’t feel flattered. I feel goddamn murderous. If she doesn’t stop calling, I’m gonna have to ditch this phone and get another number just to escape the constant ringing.

But the cold is getting to me. The windows are half-closed to keep the snow out, but they still let in a sharp breeze, and I’m wet.

Rubbing my head with a towel, I drip my way into the studio and glance at the phone screen. Huh, unknown caller. Not Marlene, then, unless she’s calling from somebody else’s cell.

I dry myself and get dressed in loose drawstring pants. My teeth are chattering, but no way am I closing the windows. Can’t stand the lack of air, the feeling of suffocation that reminds me too much of my time in the basement. Another thing I thought I’d gotten over and is now back with a vengeance.

Dammit.
Losing it now is not an option, not after everything—after giving up the drugs and hauling my ass back to Madison. Where Erin is, the one woman I want and can’t have. Where memories drag me down like chains.

The little box with the gift I bought her before leaving four years back is mocking me from its place on the shelf. I grab it and put it in the drawer, then push it shut and lean on the furniture for a moment.

Stop hoping. Stop thinking. Stop expecting good things to happen.

I start my exercises, pushing myself to go faster, to work harder. Push-ups until my knuckles bleed, crunches until my stomach aches dully.

Gonna work today. Gonna do just fine, be nice to the customers and pretend my head isn’t all fucked up. Then I’ll ask Zane for my brother’s phone number, work on an apology for him and get Erin out of my damn mind.

It had better work.

Erin

The kitchen is filled with the heavenly scent of fried
arepas
—small pancakes made of maize flour—when Tessa enters. I check the oven, where a tray of fried
arepas
is already baking.

“Babe, you shouldn’t have,” Tessa whispers in my ear, making me jump. She laughs. “Honey, I’m home.”

I snicker and take the pan off the stove. Perfectly round, golden
arepas
are ready to be dished out into the next oven tray. “We need boyfriends.”

“
You
need a boyfriend,” she counters and slides into one of the chairs at the table. “And I mean a real boyfriend, not the invisible Jax. As for myself, I’m perfectly fine on my own.”

“Yeah, right.” I pull out the ready
arepas
from the oven and push the new tray in. Wiping my hands on a towel, I sink into the seat across from her. I fought my Latino heritage all my life—hated how the kids teased me about it, how
Abuela
insisted I speak Spanish to her, how Mom always cooked traditional food and not what the other kids had for dinner.

But the support of my family in the past years convinced me of a couple of things: one, they are awesome people, and I don’t deserve them, and two, if they’re Latinos then I’m proud to be one. Once my resistance fell, I realized how much I love Venezuelan food, and Tessa was one of my first converts. She’d blow a night at the movies or out with her friends for a taste of my specialties.

Then again, she also knows more about me than I care to show.
Such as…

“So spill.
Arepas
and,” she pokes her finger at the plate of
tostones
, fried plantain chips, “this, I always forget its name. You’re in deep culinary heaven. Ergo, you’re in deep thinking hell.” She huffs and leans back in her chair. “I knew there was boy trouble.”

I roll my eyes and tug on my ponytail. Yeah, boy trouble.
Tyler
. I never felt pretty until he looked at me that way, and although Tessa always tells me the boys stare at me, and I get my fair share of compliments and being asked out, I only started to believe it when he held me and told me he loved me when I was fifteen.

He’d said that. But then he’d started acting weird and distant, and then I snapped. I know now about his Dad, and I also know why I said those things, why I snapped, but I wish… I wish I hadn’t. I wish I hadn’t hurt him like that. I wish he’d stayed.

I wish so many things.

Too late. I always see clearly when it’s already too late.

“Hey. Earth to Erin.” Tessa is waving a hand in front of my face, her blue eyes narrow. “Enough dancing around the topic, girl. Spill.”

Oh, what the hell.
I can’t deny it any longer. Tyler’s presence in town is screwing with my head. “I need to talk to Tyler. There are some things we need to discuss.”

“A few things.” Tessa takes a plantain chip and chews thoughtfully. “You want him. Admit it.”

So what if I do? It’s not happening again. “He just owes me an explanation.”

She licks her fingers. “You mean you still haven’t talked?”

I shake my head and get up to take the
arepas
out of the oven. “I called, but he didn’t pick up the phone.”

“Then call again.” She’s looking at me earnestly when I return to the table. “Seriously, Erin.”

“Says the one who refuses to even talk about her own crush.”

“That’s different.”

“No, it isn’t.”

She waves a hand dismissively. “We aren’t talking about me. We’re not even talking about you.
Tyler
, girl. We’re talking about him. I’m not into the dark, brooding kind, you know that, but come on, be honest.”

“What about?”

She winks. “You want him.”

“Whatever.”

“This Jax is mostly absent and sounds like a whiny brat. You need a real man in your life—and your bed. Someone to make you scream with pleasure, and I bet Tyler will.”

My face flames. “Stop it. That’s not what this is about.”

“Isn’t it? He looks smoking hot. Prime boyfriend material.”

“No, he isn’t.” I’m not ready to tell her everything, not yet. Not before I talk to Tyler—perhaps not ever. I’ve lived in my private little sphere for so long, behind a wall of white lies and pretensions, that I’m not sure I want to tear it down and start anew. The wall protected me from the world, ensured my sanity. Am I strong enough now to come clean? If you asked me a month ago, I’d say no way in hell.

And now Tyler’s here, and my walls are still up.

“Erin?”

“I’ve made a list for what I want in a boyfriend,” I say, hoping to distract her.

“A list,” she says flatly, studying her nails.

“Yes.” I’m not kidding. I made it as soon as I got my feet under me, a year or so after Tyler left. It got me through bouts of darkness I thought would never lift, gave me hope that I knew how to proceed in my life from then on. It worked, until now.

“Do share.” Tessa grins and grabs another chip. “Although I don’t see the connection to Tyler, I think
I
may be in need of such a list.”

Maybe. What she does need is to go and talk to Dylan, but who am I to give advice on such matters?

“Okay, so the list.” I draw a deep breath. “It’s quite short, really. My boyfriend needs to, one, tell me I’m the most beautiful girl in the whole world. Two, tell me and show me he loves me with actions, not only words. Remember what I like and give it to me. Share it with me. Three, love me for who I am—half-Latina, curvy and spicy, with my mood swings and my crazy moments. Four, he has to be honest with me, not hide anything from me.” I swallow hard, because these last used to be at the top of my list once upon a time, when Tyler left without a word. “And Five, his name can’t be Tyler Devlin.”

“Oh, girl…” Tessa’s eyes are sad now. “You’re so gone. Jax doesn’t stand a chance.”

I flinch and turn away. That’s not the reaction I expected. This was a mistake, telling her, letting her see how much Tyler’s absence has hurt me.

Especially as I realize with painful clarity that every single entry of my list has to do with him—his good and bad sides. He has been with me all along.

But Jax is more important; my love for him is different and just as strong.

***