Page 25 of Dirty Tricks

My stomach jostles with nerves as I stand back, the red mask and voice changer held loosely in my hands.

I bare my face to her curious eyes, and it’s like I’m baring my soul.

I want to beg her to be gentle, but I don’t need to. She stands, still pulling her kilt into place as her eyes flick over my body, my ruined features.

Then she steps forward, her hands cupping my face between them, eyes still devouring the scarred wreckage of my face.

“You’re so beautiful,” she whispers, and I must have misheard because that’s pure insanity. Nobody visits an art gallery to stare at the cracks in the paint. Nobody stares at my slashed mouth and chin and thinks I look good.

Except her eyesarestaring at me, feasting on my appearance like they’ve hungered to see the gaping white stretches of my jagged scars.

They devour me while her fingers trace the outline of my fat lips and my cheekbones, touching gently to my cheeks, skirting my wide nostrils to land on the twisting lines that cut through my flesh in three long wounds, which didn’t heal the way the first surgeon assured me it would. An infection damaging his careful stitches until not even his skill could hide the laddering and puckering, the bumps and lumps of scar tissue and hard gristle.

My chest loosens as her exploration continues. I inhale and I can breathe for the first time since the wounds were inflicted. Like her acceptance is the air I’ve been desperate to draw into my lungs.

“You’re my beautiful badarse,” she whispers, then giggles but not in a mean way. In a delighted way, like she found a new special treat.

Her thumb traces one of my twisted lines, brushing against my lower lip until I suck it inside my mouth, stroking the rough pad of her thumb with my tongue, tasting the salt of her skin and the harsher salt from our earlier cocktails. Tasting, too, the sweetness underneath, drawing her farther and farther into my mouth, sucking her like she’s my pacifier against a cruel world, finally releasing her with a pop and bestowing a hungry kiss in the centre of her palm.

I’m about to reach for the doorhandle, get us back to the real world, when my phone rings. Three buzzes and it stops. A second later, it rings again.

No.

Fuck no. Not now. Not when my life is so perfect.

But when I pull my phone out, I see the truth on the caller display. “I’m so sorry. I have to take this,” I mutter, lifting it to my ear, already knowing what I’m going to hear. “Mum?”

“Xander,” she whispers, then shrieks at a loud boom, like a heavy boot crashing into a door. “He’s here. I can’t—”

Her voice cuts off. I hear a faint stomp of feet, then the horror-movie sound of the wardrobe door slowly rolling back.

“I’m coming,” I say, trying not to shout, trying not to give away her location if there’s even the slightest chance she’s still hidden.

That my evil fuck of a stepfather doesn’t know exactly where she is.

Lexa collects her phone, opening the door, reacting to the panic in my voice. “Can I help?”

“I need to get home. My stepfather is—” But I break off.

She’s already taken my subterfuge and my scarring in stride. To reveal the evil underbelly of our family is one step too far.

“Will you be safe here?” I ask, scanning her face for a sign before she can say a word.

I can’t take her with me. Not when I’m driving to the loose cannon that is my stepfather.

“Don’t worry,” she reassures me, squeezing my arm and turning towards the nearest side exit, letting me know it’s okay to leave her, to go.

And I cup the back of her head, pulling her towards me for one last kiss. One final touch of joy from the night that’s been a thousand times better than I could have hoped.

A shard of pure hatred zaps through me, directed at my stepfather. A hatred worse than any I’ve felt for him before.

If he’s wrecked this, I’ll kill him.

But Lexa doesn’t look like I’ve wrecked anything. The only emotion on her face is concern.

“Go,” she says, shooing me ahead of her. “Get home. Don’t worry about me.”

“I’ll call you when I can,” I say, accepting the phone she offers me while striding towards the side door, slipping outside. I grab her number before handing it back. “Find your friends. Stay with them.”

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