Sexy and dangerous.
Yeah. I guess he is that.
“Lucifer?” he prods me, as if I would have forgotten. How can you forget a name like that? The boy with black hair and blue eyes. Also sexy. With all that coke on his coffee table and the threats he snarled to Maverick, probably also dangerous.
Maverick didn’t say anything about him or Sid when we left. But I remember what he’d called him: His brother. He’d called Sid his sister.
But Lucifer had said, You’d know all about fucking my wife.
I don’t ask. I don’t know if I want to know.
Now, I just nod slowly.
“He’ll be there. Maybe.” He shrugs, twirls the joint in his fingers, looking down. “Ezra. My other…friends.”
I swallow, look down at my hands clasped together on the blanket thrown across my bare legs. I don’t like going out. I like being in this bubble with him, as if we’re the only people in the world. As if I’m not throwing my life away by staying holed up here.
“It’ll be low key,” he says, as if he knows what I’m thinking.
“Why?”
“Why will it be low key?” He sounds confused.
I wring my hands, shake my head. I meant why am I going, but I don’t want to ask that. Instead, I offer up, “I’ll go home.”
He grabs my chin in his hand and I meet his gaze. “No.”
I have to go back there eventually. He knows it. I know it. My mother is probably scared enough of him and his threats that she’ll leave me alone for a while, but we both know I can’t just hole up here forever.
Forever.
He’s not a boy that does forever. I’m not a girl that deserves it. We don’t really know each other. It’s been about a month, and we’ve spent most of that time together, but forever? I can’t move in here, and besides that, he hasn’t asked me to.
I’m nineteen. He’s twenty-four, with the world ahead of him. I still don’t know what he does for work. I pressed him, and he gave me some bullshit about working for himself.
But he’s spent most of this week with me, on this couch. In his bed. Against the wall. In the shower.
Sometimes he slips off into his office. Sometimes I peek inside, and he’s writing letters. I’ve caught him folding them up, stuffing them into plain white envelopes. I don’t know who he’s writing to or why.
“Why do you want me to come?” I ask him quietly.
He pulls me close, kisses my nose. “You wanna know the truth, kid?”
I nod.
“I don’t want to be alone.”
The bar is nearly empty.
I’m dressed in a tan corduroy skirt, black booties, and a long sleeve black shirt. Maverick picked it up for me at the mall. I didn’t want him to buy it, didn’t want him to buy anything for me, but then he reminded me his car is worth more than my house so… I let him pay.
So far, it is low key, like he promised. He orders drinks at the bar, comes back and hands me a beer. I frown, glancing around the dim room. There’re a few pool tables, one occupied, and a couple of guys already at the bar.
None of them look like cops but…I’m still underage.
He seems to get why I’m not taking the drink and he leans in close, his lips against my ear. “No one is putting cuffs on you, baby. No one but me.”
I feel warmth spool in my core at the same time I think about my mother. About the hunger. How she used to restrain me when she left the house, when I was a kid. How my stomach ached, and time passed so slowly. How I disappeared into my own head, and sometimes got stuck in there.
My skin feels itchy and for a second, I think about running out of here. Getting fresh air. Maybe even walking home.
This life isn’t for me.
I don’t deserve it.
“Drink up, Ella.” He straightens, bringing me back to the present.
I take the beer, love the way it’s ice cold against my sweaty hands. I take a sip, glance around again, like someone might come card me at any second. No one does, so I take another gulp.
Maverick smiles but doesn’t touch his own drink. He just holds it, almost like a prop. And then he looks over my head, and his smile falters.
“Ah,” he says softly, “Lucifer is here.”
I stiffen for a second, but he doesn’t move. Doesn’t leave me. I down the rest of the beer just before I hear a girl’s voice behind me.
“And who is this?”
I turn, not expecting a girl. She’s shorter than me, petite with dark circles under her eyes. But even so, she’s pretty, with grey eyes and short, brown hair. She’s wearing what looks like a leather tank top, dark jeans.
She offers me her hand.
Maverick puts his arm around me, and she looks momentarily shocked, but she keeps the soft smile on her face. “This is Ella.” Maverick nods toward the girl. “Ella, this is Sid. Lucifer’s wife.”
Lucifer is beside her in a leather jacket and dark jeans, the same skeleton bandana I’ve seen on Maverick around his neck. He nods toward me, his dark blue eyes locking with mine for a few seconds.
He looks annoyed.
I drop Sid’s hand. “Nice to meet you,” I murmur. I wonder if she knows, about the other night.
She tucks a lock of hair behind her ear and I see a scar on her palm. “You, too.”
“Where are they?” Maverick asks Lucifer.
Lucifer wraps an arm around Sid, tugging her back and pulling her close. She lets out a little laugh but glances down at her feet, like she’s uncomfortable. I’m still clutching the empty beer in my hand and Maverick takes it from me and replaces it with his full one, all without looking at me, still talking to Lucifer.
“On the way.” He’s tall and lean just like Maverick, and the two of them together are a little overwhelming. They’re like gods in this bar, and I gulp down the beer in my hand to steel my nerves.
A few minutes later, when the silence between me and Sid becomes strained and the tension between Lucifer and Maverick is getting thick enough to choke on, more people show up.
I’m introduced to them in rapid succession, and I feel a little relieved when Atlas and Natalie come in, Natalie dressed in a flowery orange dress, her hair up in a braided bun on her head.
She pulls both me and Sid into a hug, and Sid seems startled but then just as relieved as I am.
I meet Cain, a big guy with light brown skin and dark eyes. His nose looks swollen, like he got punched in the face, but he seems nice enough. In the lights of the bar, I see Ezra has dark greenish eyes and his muscles are clearly visible in the grey sweater he’s wearing, his bicep flexing as he shakes my hand politely, as we officially meet. As if he didn’t have his hands on my…
I refuse to think about it, even as a small smile plays on his lips.
Neither Cain nor Ezra have girls with them, but it doesn’t take long for the girls that filter into the bar to start eyeing them.
Natalie drags me and Sid over to a small table. She waves a waiter over and orders tequila shots for each of us.
“Oh, no,” I say quickly, shaking my head. I’m two beers in and already feeling a little lightheaded. “I can’t do shots.” I can, but I don’t want to get arrested for drinking underage and downing tequila shots might get me just that.