He was silent for a long moment, clearly deciding how much he could, or would, say. The bed shifted as he bent an arm up behind his head and used the other to stroke his beard. I wanted to knock his fingers away and sink my own into the dark fur. I liked guys with facial hair. I was a Colorado native, that meant finding a nice beard attractive was practically a requirement for any single, straight woman from my state.
I wasn’t lying when I told myself that I liked Ben’s beard more than most.
“It happened around four months ago. I was locked up. When my old boss went down, the feds scooped up his entire crew on RICO charges. They tried to flip most of us, but didn’t get the chance. The old boss did business with the worst kind of people and they weren’t going to give any of his lackeys a chance to throw a wrench in their operations. Most of the crew got whacked while they were waiting for their trials or working on making deals. They never got the chance to rat the boss’s suppliers out.” His fingers moved to the scar on his neck and I couldn’t resist the urge to touch anymore. I stretched my hand out and brushed my fingertips along the raised, smooth line along his neck. It felt hot to the touch. I wasn’t surprised at all when he dropped the bomb that he was an ex-con. I knew he was dangerous and he’d been disarmingly honest about the man he was before he was an executive lumberjack.
“I was never going to turn on anyone. I knew it was going to mean life in prison, or as long as I lasted, but I’m not a rat.” He chuckled into the darkness and wrapped his fingers around my wrist, where my pulse was thundering as I traced that wicked scar over and over again. “I thought I was doing an alright job watching my back. I was in for a couple months, had an in with one of the gangs we did business with on the outside. This kid—and I mean he literally was a child, no more than eighteen—I didn’t see him coming. He got me when the guards were doing cell checks and distracted looking for contraband. Filleted me open like I was a fish, with nothing more than a razor blade from a plastic razor. He could have been working for one of the crews that was worried I would turn. He could have been trying to earn his prison cred by taking out a big fish. He might have owed one of the guys I pissed off on the streets a favor. Who knows why he did it, because one way or the other it was coming. The prison doc did his best to save my life but it was the feds who came in and really made sure I didn’t kick it. They got me to a hospital and put the best otolaryngologist they could on my case. When I pulled through, they told me I owed them and I couldn’t argue. I sang louder and prettier than a choir on Sunday.”
I went to pull my fingers away from where his pulse was strong and steady under my touch, but he trapped my fingers in his and I sucked in a breath as he brought them to his lips. He brushed a kiss across the tip of each digit before letting my hand fall so that it was resting on the spot in his chest where his heart was beating.
“How much of that am I not supposed to know?” The words whispered out and disappeared into the darkness.
“All of it.” There was humor in his tone. “But I’ve never been very good at following the rules. If you want to sell me out to the highest bidder you can find, more power to you. As it turns out, I’m pretty fucking hard to take down. I’ve got more lives than a cat.” I’d already wasted more than one of those lives and I wasn’t about to squander any more.
I curled my fingers into the warm skin and lulling beat they were resting on. I wanted to hold his heart. I wanted reassurance that it was as strong as it seemed to be.
“I’m lucky I never ended up in jail. I’m even luckier I didn’t end up like my best friend. I have a habit for drifting toward things that aren’t good for me and a lot of those things could have gone much worse than they did.”
He turned his head to look at me and even in the mellow darkness I could make out the sharp edge of his nearly silver gaze. “How long have you been clean?”
I barked out a laugh that had no humor in it. Of course he would be able to spot an ex-addict when she was in bed with him. From the sounds of things, he used to be the reason people like me could feed that kind of habit.
“Almost a year. When Halloran, my friend that got killed, hooked up with her last boyfriend and started making choices that were really dangerous for her kid, it was a wakeup call. That little boy needed someone he could rely on and that someone was me. Plus, my sister moved out of my parents’ house finally and in with me. I needed to get my act together for her as well, but in both cases, it was too late. I lost them both while I was sober, so there was no hiding how bad that hurt or drowning out every regret and mistake I made along the way.” I had been tempted…so tempted to go back to my old ways. I could numb everything eating me up inside with a single hit, but then I’d need another and another. It was an endless cycle and I knew the only way to deal with the pain was to confront it head-on. I couldn’t be afraid of it; I had to face it.