Page 5 of Beautiful Lies
I stood, and she stared at my chest for a few seconds before she lifted her gaze to my face. “I’d hug you but… probably not a great idea.”
My eyes locked with her green ones. “You okay?”
She nodded and exhaled a breath. “Yeah, I’m good. Killian and I went to the cemetery this morning.”
I rubbed the back of my neck, knotted with tension. I haven’t been to the cemetery since the day we put my father in the ground, and I had no intention of ever visiting his grave. His funeral had been a circus—thousands of police officers had lined the route we’d traveled to the church in Bay Ridge. A sea of blue paying their respects to a man who had hidden his dirty little secrets underneath his badge. Seamus Vincent had been one of NYPD’s finest. What a sick joke.
“I’m surprised Killian went,” I said.
“Killian is full of surprises these days,” she said. “He talks and everything.”
We shared a laugh over that one. Prying open Killian had never been an easy task, but Eden did it. She cracked him wide open, then she gathered up all the broken pieces and helped him glue them back together.
When Eden left, I exited through the back door and leaned against the brick wall next to my Harley to smoke a cigarette.
“That shit’s gonna kill you,” Jared said, joining me in the fenced-in vacant lot with weeds pushing up through the cracks. It always amazed me that weeds had such a strong survival instinct and managed to thrive in the most unlikely places. “Give me one.”
I shook a cigarette out of the pack and handed it to him, along with the lighter. “Thought you quit.”
“I did.”
I eyed him as he took his first drag. It’s the best one when the nicotine hits your bloodstream and gives you a rush. He closed his eyes and exhaled. “Damn. Why is all the bad shit so good?”
I took another drag of my cigarette and tipped my head back, not bothering to answer. The clouds looked like brushstrokes painted on a hurt-your-eyes blue sky, a day so like last year it was almost eerie.
“I’m thinking about opening another shop,” Jared said.
“Where?”
“California.”
What. The. Fuck.
“Winter’s coming. I hate the cold. I’m thinking San Diego. All-year-round perfect temperature.”
It was the end of September, and on a day like this, winter seemed like a long way off. The air smelled like hot tar and garbage, an odor intensified by the heat. “When’s this happening?”
“As soon as you can get me the money.”
I tossed my cigarette on the ground and crushed it under the sole of my motorcycle boot, thinking about Jared’s words. Killian and I had inherited money from our old man. Seamus never spent a penny he didn’t need to, and after thirty-plus years on the force, with a chief’s salary for the last five years of it, and a mortgage-free house in Bay Ridge, we’d ended up splitting a shitload of money. A hell of a lot more than I’d expected him to have or ever give us. Blood money, I called it. Killian used his money to fund programs for at-risk youth. Mine was still sitting in an account untouched. When I offered my share of the money to Killian, he refused to accept it. I wrote him a check for the money I owed him, but he never cashed that either. But, then, we weren’t on speaking terms at the time.
“You want me to buy you out?” I asked.
“Yep.”
“What happens if I don’t?”
Jared rubbed a hand over his blond buzzcut, his eyes narrowed as he took another drag and exhaled. “I’ll sell it to someone else.”
He’d been talking about leaving Brooklyn for years, but that’s all it had ever been. Talk. This time, it was more than just talk. He was ready to get out. “What about the building? You looking to sell that, too?”
The tattoo parlor was on the first floor and Jared lived in the apartment above it. His grandfather bought the building fifty years ago, back when real estate was cheap in Williamsburg before the hipsters had invaded and prices skyrocketed.
“I’ll keep the building. You can move into my apartment and pay rent.”
He was offering me first shot at something I’d always wanted. I scrubbed my hand over the stubble on my jaw. Was I ready to run my own shop? Sink money into a business that tied me to this neighborhood? Even though I was done running, the thought of putting down roots put me on edge. But what scared the shit out of me was that I might fail. Failure was not an option. I’d burnt too many bridges already, and I’d spent the better part of a year trying to rebuild them, not always successfully either.
“Lee and Gavin aren’t interested?” I asked, referring to the other tattoo artists.
