"No." I shook my head. It was true. For all his faults, my father loved Annie—worshipped her, even. "Guess you're never too old to change the path you're on."

Diggs raised his one good eyebrow. "Listen to you, all philosophical. You're too smart to be hanging around the likes of me."

"Shut up." I smiled, pride pinkening the tips of my ears. "I like hanging around you. You're not an arrogant asshole."

Diggs smirked. "I'm guessing you're talking about someone in particular?"

"I plead the Fifth."

"He got worse when you left, you know," Diggs confided. I looked up sharply. That wasn't what I was expecting to hear. "No, it's true. Jax and your dad got into this huge-ass argument right after you left for New York. None of us heard what he was saying, but we could hear the crashing and we saw the broken furniture afterward. Ever since then, he's been a real little shit to deal with… I mean, more so than normal. Annie was really hoping you coming home would settle him back down again."

I slowly sipped my coffee, hoping like hell that my pounding heart wasn't as loud as it was in my ears. My dad and Jax had fought? About me? He wasn't supposed to know—no one was supposed to know about what had happened, about Jax and I getting together. No one was supposed to know why I left. I had announced that I was eighteen and ready to strike out on my own and that was that, they had accepted it. I had cut ties, cleanly and easily, or so I thought.

"Well it isn't working," I said lightly, or so I hoped. "He came home drunk the other night. Said some stuff…"

"Ah, shit. Sorry about that, Lily. He can be really mean when he's drunk, takes after his mother that way. The two of them drunk together… boy, batten down the fucking hatches."

I flashed back to the broken chair, Jax and his mother staring each other down, each ready to draw blood and my heart did a funny sideways flop. "Must make for interesting dinners around here."

Diggs shrugged. "Nah, we're used to it. Hell, I used to wipe that kid's ass. I watched him grow up in all this craziness. He's a good one, if you look past the surface. Way, way past the surface."

A noise in the doorway made us both look up. "Mornin'," Jax rumbled, rubbing his hair as he walked into the kitchen.

I had no idea how much he had heard. His face was impassive, his eyes bloodshot and still at half-mast. The knuckles on his right hand were still scraped and reddened, and seeing them gave me a small, private shiver.

"Mornin'," Diggs said calmly. "You just get home?"

"Yep."

"Did you take an aspirin?"

"Yep," Jax said, reaching for a coffee mug. His rumpled sweatpants were slung low across his waist and he wasn't wearing a shirt. I tried my best not to look at the rivers of ink that spilled across his broad back, but they were so intricate and detailed that I had to.

A parade of animals marched across his lower back, wolves and tigers and lions ready to snarl and pounce. Winding up from the menagerie was a tangle of thorns twining upward into a profusion of roses, deep red and dangerous as they opened up into blooms across his shoulders. When he turned to the side, I saw they continued onto his biceps, the dark red fading into brilliant blue as the roses morphed into something else.

I was squinting, leaning forward in my stool. If he would just turn, I could make out the rest of the tableau. "Jax?" I said, in spite of myself.

"Yeah?" he turned and faced me and I saw it: the blue lily emblazoned down his shoulder and onto his left pec.

A lily.

"Uh, can you grab the sugar bowl for me?" My mouth was completely dry.

He narrowed his eyes at me. I licked my lips and tried to look innocent, staring past him to the cabinets and clicking my nails against the granite counter.

"Sure." He smiled lightly and brushed his hand over his chest. Right over the lily. And that's when I knew he had seen me staring. He set the bowl down in front of me. "Here you go, Lily."

Chapter Eighteen

Jax

My tattoo artist had raised his pierced eyebrows when I told him what I wanted. "Are you sure, dude? It's not really fitting with the rest of the piece."

"It's a flower. You can make it work," I’d told him grumpily and laid back in his chair. He had sighed and started up the buzz of the needle and I closed my eyes as he tattooed a lily over my heart.

Did I regret getting it? Not really. Most of my tats were impulsive—fleeting notions that got under my skin. Of all of them, at least the lily meant something. I had never really given that meaning much thought until right now as I watched Lily's startled face take it in.

She knew exactly what it meant to me.

But what did it mean to her?

"You going to be around later?" Diggs piped up. "Your mom's got a list of things she needs done."

"Nah," I told him, still staring at Lily. "I got a show tonight, man. Need to rest up."

Lily looked even more startled.

"Ah, shit, man. I'm sorry. Completely slipped my mind."

I sipped my coffee. "No big deal," I told him breezily.

"You want me to stop by?"

"Nah, it's nothing. I'll see you later, Diggsy." I headed out of the kitchen.

"Later, man."

I mounted the stairs, waiting. Half of me wondered if I had fucked things up too badly, worrying that maybe she wouldn't follow me, wouldn't ask any questions. I've always been an asshole, but she had me feeling actually bad about it. It's one thing to joke around, it's another to say something to deliberately cut another person down.

But the pad of a bare foot on the living room floor made me smile in spite of myself. Yeah, I was an asshole to her. But she was a curious little kitten and wasn't about to let me get away without explaining my tattoo.

"Hey, Jax?" she called up the stairs.

"Yeah."

"Can I talk to you?"

I turned to look at her. "Why would you want to do that?" I was being honest. I really didn't know.

She stopped and bit her lip. "You're right. I really don't want to," she said frostily.

"But you're going to anyway."

"I just wanted to know something."

"What is it, Lily?"

She ducked her head. "So, it is for me?"

"What is?"

Her eyes smoldered. "Are you really going to make me ask the question? You know what I'm talking about."

I tapped my pec. "Puppy love and teenage hormones," I snarled. "That's all it was." I turned and headed for my room.

Her little feet pounded across the hallway floor, and I suddenly found myself yanked away from my door. I was surprised by her strength, but I was more surprised to see that she didn't let go of my wrist as she hissed at me, "You're a piece of fucking work, you know that? This?" She stabbed me in the chest with her bitten fingernail. "This was not on your chest when I was with you. Which means you got it after I left. Why?"

Two spots of color flamed on her cheeks and I could see the pulse on her neck. Everything inside of me wanted to pull her to me, to press my lips to that throb, trace a line of sucking kisses down to her perfect breasts. "Because," I told her truthfully, "at least this Lily is in my life permanently."

Her breath caught just as my lips found hers, so I wasn't sure if it was my words or the kiss that startled her. I snaked my hand under her hair and cupped the back of her head, loving the way she fit in my hand as I drank her in as deeply and fully as she would allow.