The scars were pink and shiny up the side of his neck to his ear. The scar tissue spread across the left side of his face like kudzu, touching the corner of his mouth.
But the rest of his face was the same as those pictures in the articles. Striking. Masculine. Those lips…oh God, those lips. The shiny taut edge only made them more compelling. More beautiful.
“Happy?” he said, tilting his head so I could see the extent of the scars. He was uncomfortable, standing there like that in the light. On display.
“No,” I whispered. “I’m not happy.”
I’d thought, somehow, that it would be so much worse. Because the news coverage just stopped. Because he was shrouded in mystery.
But they were just scars. I’m sorry, I wanted to say. I’m sorry for the pain you must have felt. And the fear you must have lived through. I’m sorry that happened to you. But those scars did nothing to change my feelings for him—conflicted as they were.
“Is that why you stopped talking to me?”
He shook his head, the shadows shifting over his face.
“You’re not going to tell me anything, are you?” I asked, knowing the answer before he said a word.
I’d told him things I’d never told anyone before. Things I hadn’t even conceptualized. But he’d shared nothing of himself, because that made sense. I was the one who’d reached for more. Who’d felt so alone that he’d seemed like a friend.
I had no reason to feel betrayed, but I did.
I looked down at my hands, the calluses on the tips of my fingers. Part of my thumbnail was turning black. I’d smashed it the other day trying to get the damn engine on the mower to work. But this…this thing/not-thing between us. It hurt worse.
“Is Ben okay?” I whispered. “Will you at least tell me that much?”
“Probably; he usually is.”
“Who is Max?”
“A dangerous guy. A…very dangerous guy.”
“You know a lot of dangerous guys.”
Something hard slipped over his face. Something…scary. And I stiffened. An old instinct braced me.
“You should go back to your room, Layla,” he said, sitting back down on the stool, rolling belly up to the bench. I was being dismissed and frankly, he was probably right. But I was pretty done with being bossed tonight.
“I’m not going to do that, Dylan. You don’t have to tell me anything about yourself, but I deserve to know what is happening at the trailer park.” My home.
He spun back out and his eyes, full of hot knowledge, touched me. My shoulders, my stomach. My bruised knees. My breasts.
For a second I thought he was trying to scare me away. With sex. Like he was threatening me. If I stayed, he’d what? Fuck the hell out of me?
Stupid man.
That was not going to scare me away.
Interest, sexual and sharp, flooded me. Warmed me, from the inside out.
“Max is a part of the same motorcycle club Ben used to be a part of,” he said.
“The Skulls.”
He nodded.
“Did you…are you in the club?”
“No, I have nothing to do with the club.” He picked up a little screwdriver and fiddled with it like he was bored or needed distraction, and I wanted to stomp across that floor and shake him. “Most of the time Ben and Max have nothing to do with each other either. I don’t know why he was there.”
“Joan, my neighbor? Do you know her?”
“The stripper?” he asked with that crooked smile. “I only know what you’ve told me.”
“She’s actually a DEA agent. Undercover. Did you know that?”
The screwdriver clattered against the bench when he dropped it and I wanted to smile at him. At his surprise. It was nice to know something he didn’t. “No. I had no idea.”
“Do you know why she’d be undercover?”
“Had to be something about the club,” he said with a shrug and then winced, reaching up to pinch the muscles at the base of his neck. I fought the urge to ask if he was all right. I fought the urge to care.
“She said I should call you. She knew about you.”