"Coffee?" I croaked back. My throat felt raw and hoarse with disuse.
"I'll take that as a no." His ruined face crinkled into a wide smile and he slid off the stool and patted it. "Have a seat."
"Thanks," I whispered and settled into the stool, grabbing an orange from the fruit bowl across from me. "How about you? Did you sleep okay?"
"Like a baby," Diggs chuckled, grabbing the coffee pot. "Doctor's got me on these new pain meds and they knock me the fuck out."
"Your hand looks good!" I suddenly noticed.
"Yeah?" He smiled proudly, gripping the coffee pot in his right hand and extending his arm straight out at the shoulder. "Can barely see it anymore, can you?"
There was a ghost of a tremor, but that was it. "Wow, that's a whole lot better. You're barely shaking at all."
"Grip's stronger, too."
"You finally found a doctor who doesn't have his head up his ass?" I accepted the mug gratefully and cupped my hands around it."
Diggs leaned against the counter. "New guy, young, barely out of diapers. Hell, he might be your age." I swatted him and he chuckled. "Doesn't seem right to call him ‘Doctor’ since he's barely old enough to shave, but he listens and he's willing to try new things. Turns out I had nerve damage in my wrist, of all the shit luck." He shook his head ruefully. "Falling off rigging will fuck you up pretty properly, you know, but no one took the time to really figure up how properly. He's the one that discovered the nerve damage that caused the tremor in the first place. Everyone else wanted to believe there was something wrong with my head."
"Well, there is something wrong with your head," I teased.
"Ooh, good burn. Where'd you learn to roast a guy like that?"
I grinned at him. "From the best."
"Damn straight," he puffed proudly. "Now how's my girl?"
I sipped my coffee and considered. "Really fucking confused, Diggs."
"Yeah? About what."
"Pick a topic."
"Heh, yeah, being young sucks that way."
"How would you know?" I smiled.
"Little shit. I was young once, you know. I remember how it felt."
"Did your dad suddenly decide to get married when you were nineteen?"
Diggs inhaled deeply. "Nah. Never had that to deal with, thankfully."
"What the hell, Diggs?"
He shook his head. "Guess they figured it was time."
"It just seems so… out of the blue."
"Well, you know Annie; that's how she works. Makes a decision one day, and suddenly, that's how things are going to be forever more. My guess is that she woke up one day and told Nails to either get a ring or get the fuck out. And we both know your dad ain't going anywhere."
"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."