“Yes, what you said. My foster sister said the same thing, so I just want to know what the two of you meant by that.”
Luke stopped to level a hard stare at her. “Again, I need a clue, Alice. I’ll be happy to explain what I said once I know what the hell you’re talking about.”
“Love.” She practically yelled the word at him, then dropped her face into her hands when the word reverberated throughout the lower level. “Okay, you know what? That straitjacket was a great idea. Go get it before I start frothing at the mouth.”
“I was wondering when you’d circle back around to that subject. Looks like you’re ready to have the talk.”
She dropped her hands to flail them uselessly. “What talk? I don’t even know what love is.”
“Exactly. That talk. The talk of what’s going on with you. You bottled up your emotions and put them on a shelf a long damn time ago, Alice. That means you’re going to suck when it comes to figuring out the complex emotions you’re dealing with now.”
She sighed and looked to the ceiling. “There are times when I really hate you.”
“Lucky for you, I’m not going to take that personally, because I know I’m fucking awesome. Now,” he went on when she sighed again and continued to trudge toward the gift shop. “Let’s talk about symptoms.”
“Symptoms?” Great. Now she sounded like she was diseased.
“We can check being distracted off the list,” he nodded, ticking points off on his fingers. “It was like you forgot how to punch in, you were so distracted. I would suggest you’re irritable when you’re separated from your bae, but since you’re irritable with me all the time, that might just be you being you.”
“I don’t want to talk to you anymore. You said bae.”
“You feel the world has changed, but the change is in you, not the world. No one has the power to alter worlds unless you give them that power by opening up your heart and soul to make room for them. No wonder you hardly recognize yourself. Half of you is now taken up by Loki.”
She almost stumbled. “That’s…not true.”
“Okay, let’s try this. When you wake up, is your first thought about Loki?”
“Well, yeah. Probably because I’m sleeping in his bed.”
“What about your last thought before drifting off to sleep? Is it about Loki?”
Damn it. “Same answer.”
“What about making it through the day without thinking about him? Or an hour? Or five minutes?”
“I…” Again she came to a halt, this time in the gift shop’s threshold as the question hit her hard enough to steal her breath. “Holy crap.”
“Yeah.” He offered a sympathetic nod. “It really does have a way of sneaking up on a person, doesn’t it?”
“I never even realized…” Dazedly she put a hand to her head. “Everything circles back to Loki. When I’m hungry, my first thought is to see if he’s hungry too, so we can eat together. If I have to be out of this shop for a few minutes, whether to talk to you guys or go to the bathroom or whatever, I text Loki, because I don’t want him to freak out if he decides to head down here and can’t find me. And then there’s this.” She pulled out her keyring and held it up for Luke to see. “This is from Loki, and it’s more precious to me than diamonds or rubies. And I know that for a fact, because he’s also given me those, yet I can’t stop melting over this little biker Badtz-Maru. It’s silly and ridiculous, and so beautiful it brings tears to my eyes, and when I think about it, it makes my chest swell to the point where I can hardly breathe.” As if to prove it, she took a shuddering breath. “Either I’ve got terrible allergies to this keychain, or this is something… more.”
“Something more? Come on, Alice,” Luke drawled, those all-seeing eyes of his taunting her. “You know what it is. Say it. Own it. You’re not that much of a coward, are you?”
“Seriously, I hate you. But I love Loki.” She took another shuddering breath as a weird kind of internal quake rattled through her. Frantically she pressed a hand to her chest and stared at him, eyes wide. “Oh, shit. Did you hear what just came out of my mouth?”
“Yep. Say it again.”
“I…” Holy crap, holy crap, holy crap. “I love Loki.”
“Yeah, you sure as hell do. You have for a while. Welcome to your emotional awakening. It’s been a long time in coming, but allowing yourself to be happy and feel love is something you deserve, dummy. Took you long enough to realize that.”
That made her eyes narrow. “Are you sure you didn’t talk to my foster sister? Even the dummy part?”
“Obviously she and I are just stating the obvious. I guess what you told Richardson Womack was true. You finally decided to stop punishing yourself for being the kid of a good man who woke up one day and went horribly wrong.”
The hand at her chest pressed harder. “I guess I did.”
“I’m happy for you. Even if it did take you for-fucking-ever to get to this point.”
“Yeah, I hate you.” With a laugh, she surprised them both by throwing her arms around his neck and giving him a quick hug before turning back toward the stairs. “I’m just going to buzz upstairs real quick to see if I can seduce Loki before he’s socked in with a client. Best way to celebrate, in my humble opinion.”
“After some rando parking garage and a kitchen table, getting some action in a tattooing booth is downright romantic,” he agreed with a nod.
Alice was still chuckling as she topped the stairs to the mezzanine. But her humor did a fast fade when she heard raised voices coming from the tattoo booths. The tattooists weren’t scheduled with clientele for another half hour, so an upset customer couldn’t have been the source.
Then she heard Loki shout, and without another thought she took off at a run.
“…see you near my tattooing booth, I’m not going to give a flying fuck what my contract says about playing nice with others under the House’s roof,” Loki was yelling at another tattooist, and Alice’s heart sank. Styx Hardwick, the House’s cover-up specialist, stood toe-to-toe with Loki in the center of the wide hall that ran between twin rows of frosted-glass tattooing booths. A neon sign overhead read “From Pain, Beauty is Born,” but there was nothing beautiful going on between these two men. There never had been, as far as she knew. She’d been at House Of Payne long enough to know that Styx, whose family was lousy with cops, and Loki the Gravedigger legacy, turned into steely-eyed gunslingers whenever they got near each other.
Apparently, the wide hallway—much like the Old West’s Dodge and Tombstone—just wasn’t big enough for the both of them.
Great.
“If you had a brain in your head instead of epic piles of shit, you’d realize I’d never voluntarily darken your fucking doorstep.” Styx had a Joker-type smile all over his face, and Alice had to take a moment to admire Loki’s restraint. She could only imagine the pleasure it would have been to smack that infuriating grin right out of existence. “Do yourself a favor and focus on upping your tattooing skills instead of obsessing about me. Maybe then I might take you seriously.”