Page 8 of Endless
“She thinks we’re raising degenerates.” Reaper crunched his bacon with a satisfied smirk.
"All this is telling me is Rori's the coolest kid in her class," Gunner concluded.
"And thank everything that Daren is polite and sweet andquiet," Mari punctuated the last word with a soft laugh. "Because I could not handle two Roris."
"Speaking of." I rinsed off my hands in the sink and dried them on a towel. "If anyone needs me, I'll be building a motorcycle with my son."
Fuck, it felt so damn good to say that.
Four
SHADOW
“How’ve you been, big man?” Declan removed his shirt and folded it neatly on a chair before lying down on my tattoo bench. “You look good.”
“Thanks. I’ve been great, actually.” I pulled on my gloves and wheeled up next to him on my stool, bringing my cart of supplies along behind me. “Business is good. I got a family now.”
“Good for you, man.” He turned his head toward the shelf on the wall of my tattoo shop. “Is that them right there?”
I followed his gaze to the framed picture of Mari and the twins, taken just last week at her graduation party. Mari was holding Rori, the two of them smiling brightly while Daren stood next to his mom and clung to her hip, his expression more shy and withdrawn.
“Yeah.” I cleaned Declan’s skin with antiseptic while my chest did that elated flipping sensation. It never ceased to amaze me that my entire world was in that picture. And that it was real. “That’s my wife and our twins.”
“Beautiful.” Declan looked away from the wall and relaxed while I began to sketch over his chest in pen.
“This has held up well,” I remarked on the dragon’s head on the right side of his chest, which I had done for him in prison around eighteen years ago. It was the first expansive tattoo I’d ever done, starting at his chest, then winding over his shoulder and down his back. I’d poked it entirely by hand over a period of several weeks. It looked rougher than my current style, but not as bad as I expected. I could sharpen up the lines easily, then add the color he wanted.
“Told you it still looked good.” Declan grinned. “I’m not surprised at all that you’re running a shop now. You always did good work.”
“Thanks. I couldn’t believe that was you walking outside. You bulked up, kid.”
“So did you, man!” He laughed. “I didn’t know whether to hug you when I saw you or run away shitting my pants.”
“You never gave me a hard time,” I said. “If you had been one of the guards, it might be a different story.”
I finished the sketch and got his approval on it, then proceeded to start the real inking.
“Are you staying in Four Corners?” I asked between the buzzes of my machine.
“Ah, I’m kind of all over the place.” A dismissive answer, but I didn’t pry. We had been acquaintances but not especially friendly. I never learned why he ended up in prison, especially so young. He’d been a wide-eyed teenager back then, thrown into a cage with some of the worst criminals in the world.
I was lucky that Jandro took me in with the Demons once the inmates started rioting and breaking out. In all likelihood, Declan was not as lucky.
“I’m spending a lot of time in Blakeworth these days,” he continued after a brief pause.
“Blakeworth?” I couldn’t hide my surprise. He was definitely not part of their elite class, which was still struggling after we kicked their asses, despite their best efforts to save face. We continue to see propaganda coming out of there saying that their wealth and prosperity were at an all-time high because they beatusin that last battle. A bald-faced lie to their own citizens, and a shitty one at that.
“My line of work is…not entirely legal.” I felt Declan’s eyes on me as I touched up spots on his dragon and knew he was gauging my reaction.
“As long as you’re not trafficking people, I won’t judge what you do,” I informed him.
He relaxed, taking a big breath. “Nah, nothing like that. I’m a cage fighter.”
“Really?” That surprised me too, but not in a bad way. “So getting scrappy in the yard turned out to be useful for you, huh?”
“You could say that,” he laughed. “It’s all underground up there. The fancy doodads made laws against it, but some of them come to every fight and they love to gamble. It’s very few rules, bare fists and shit. Andhugefuckin’ payouts.”
“Yeah? What’s your record?”
