Page 9 of My Revenant
I’d never seen anyone like him.
His hair was a dark blond—long, curly, soft—pulled back in a half-up, half-down style that exposed the shaved sides of his head. His skin was golden, sun-kissed and flawless except for a scar on the curve of his left eyebrow.
He was the sun, and his eyes were the sky. The lightest shade of blue I’d ever seen. It was like looking at an overcast sky through the clouds. No, that wasn’t right. Clouds were soft. His eyes were likeice. Sharp. Dangerous.Beautiful.
It wasn’t until he took a seat in the booth across from his annoying buddies that I could bring myself to break away from those eyes to take in the rest of him. He had a Roman nose, perfectly curved over the bridge, full lips, a sharp jawline, wide shoulders clad in a faded leather jacket… and the most appalling tattoo I had ever seen scratched across his neck.
I didn’t know it was possible for a tattoo to piss me off, but this one did right away. A weird skull with round teethand no bottom jaw was right in the center of his neck, over his Adam’s apple, and what seemed to be angel wings extended out on either side of it, tracing the sharp edge of his jaw as they fanned out to the back of his neck.
It looked like someone with zero artistic ability had scrawled it on in Sharpie. I really hoped that’s exactly what it was, because if it really was a tattoo and he hadthatpermanently scarring his beautiful skin, I was going to murder something.
He had other tattoos too—something small on the left side of his face I couldn’t make out from here and what looked like a spider web in his left ear. There were also letters inked onto his knuckles that I read as he tapped them against the table: HELL BENT. A rose decorated the back of one hand, a spider on the other. Thankfully, all the rest of his tattoos that were visible seemed better than the atrocity on his neck.
“Who is that?” I asked Becca, subtly tilting my head in his direction. The sound of her voice filtered back in, along with the rest of our environment. I took a deep breath, like maybe I hadn’t done that in a while and not even noticed.
Becca being Becca, and lacking any sense of subtlety, turned her whole body in her seat to look in the direction I’d gestured toward. “Jesus, don’t look,” I whisper-yelled, as I grabbed her arm and forced her to face me again in a sudden and irrational panic.
“How am I supposed to know who you’re talking about if I don’t look?” she asked, rolling her eyes. “We’re in a public place, JJ. I’m allowed to look around. You’re the one being weird and attracting attention to us.”
I looked around us and noticed that a couple of people at nearby tables were glancing in our direction.Act natural. Releasing her arm, I sat back in my seat, then snatched up her milkshake to take a sip. Strawberry milk hit the back of my throat so fast and suddenly that I choked on it.
“Smooth,” Becca said, with brows slightly raised, before softly shaking her head at me. She turned again, and this time I didn’t stop her.
I didn’t look at the three of them on the chance they had noticed us, and I was by no means ready to make eye contact with Mr. Ice-Eyes over there.
“Those are Archer’s little minions,” she said as she straightened in her seat once more.
“What do you mean?”
Becca leaned forward a little, and I copied her. “Archer Kovats, you remember him?” she said with a slightly lower tone, and I frowned, combing through memories until the name slotted into place. I remembered Archer all right. One half of the terror twins.
“You mean that kid who bullied, like,everyonein elementary school?”
Archer was a couple of grades higher than us in elementary, but he was pretty notorious, and every kid had known to stay out of the way of the Kovats twins. Archer was the main problem; he called the shots. But Henrik was at least twice as frightening, he was just quieter.
Becca nodded. “Yeah, well, he’s a bit more than a school bully these days.”
She gave me a look as if I should know what she meant by that. Ididn’tknow what she meant by that. Becca sighed, shuffling closer again. I copied her. “He like, runs a gang, or whatever.”
“A gang?” I repeated, and it was my turn to give her a look. “In Port Skelton? You seriously think this town is big enough for a gang?”
“Yes, Mr. City Boy, Skelton is plenty big for a gang. Besides, they have bikes, and I heard they travel over to Deltran too.”
I frowned at her, still not sure I believed her, though I guess I didn’t have a reason not to. If anyone was going to start a gang, it would be Archer Kovats and his creepy twin.
My eyes drifted over to the group of guys again. The idiots were wrestling on one side of the booth while Ice-Eyes seemed kind of bored as he watched them, arms folded like he was too good for this place.
“So… who are they, then?” I gestured to their table once more. Thankfully, Becca was less obvious when she turned to look in their direction this time.
“Toby Attwood, Bryce Masters, and Dex Weller,” she said, lowering her voice even further.
I recognized the first two names, and as my gaze drifted over to the table again, I could see the resemblance the two messing around had with the Toby Attwood and Bryce Masters of my childhood. Even if Bryce’s hair was now bright blue.
They weren’t really bullies like Archer had been, but they weren’t exactly model students either. They came from Meadow Park, by far the roughest part of Port Skelton, and it had showed in their behavior back then. Apparently it still showed.
Process of elimination meant that Ice-Eyes’ name was Dex Weller.
I ran it through the faded memories I had from back then, but couldn’t match it up with anything I’d known before.
