Page 67 of Diary from an Inked Throne

Impulsively, I hugged him. It wasn’t just his words that got to me. It was the fact it could have so easily been Nyah, Luca, and Lynx getting into that car. It was the fact that the odds all four of us would have noticed the ticking and backed off, rather than ignoring it, were slim to none. It was that the mother of my child would probably be dead right now if anyone but X had gotten in that car tonight.

I think the hug took us both by surprise, but he hugged me back.

“Dax?” he whispered as I held on to him, all the things I could have lost tonight running through my mind.

“Yeah?”

“Does this mean you’ll do my next duck tattoo for free?”

I laughed and pulled back. “Yeah, buddy. Your next duck tattoo is on me.”

He fist pumped the air with the arm that already had a very obnoxious design I’d inked into his skin a while back.

Violet and Nyah hugged for a long time, and then they got into their car, and we caught an Uber back to the Guerra mansion.

For some reason, all four of us were slow to get out. The mansion loomed over us, dark and eerie, despite the entrance light that came on as Bruno came to open the door for us.

I knew how the others felt, even though they hadn’t voiced it. “We don’t have to go inside. We can go to my place.”

“Or the clubhouse,” Lynx added.

Nyah sighed. “Or anywhere but here. But what’s the point? The house isn’t the problem.”

“We are,” I said softly.

No one argued with me, which wasn’t surprising but kind of sucked.

I took Nyah’s hand, and she took Lynx’s. Luca’s fingers found his other hand, and I led us all to the door, the four of us walking in as a singular unit because that suddenly felt like the only way we could.

Despite the ungodly hour, we all beelined for the nearest living room, flopping onto couches, while Luca asked Bruno to go get us some drinks.

My head buzzed with an incoming hangover, and a hair of the dog as the sun rose sounded like exactly what I needed.

I didn’t want to sleep.

There were things that needed to be said before I could go to bed. I wasn’t in the mood to sugarcoat any of them. “Should we start a betting pool on how long it’ll be before one of us dies?”

Nyah looked over at me with tired eyes. “Dax…”

Luca sighed. “Ten on within the week.”

Lynx lay back across the couch, putting his head in Nyah’s lap and his feet on Luca’s. “I’ll put my money on two weeks.”

Nyah pulled his hair. “I should tell you not to talk like that, but…”

Luca grinned at her. “You want in on the bet, don’t you?”

“Twenty on within five days.”

I leaned forward, resting my elbows on my knees so I could scrub my hands over my face. “This is so morbid.”

“It’s dark humor. It’s a tried-and-true coping mechanism.” Luca tugged at one of Lynx’s shoelaces, releasing it from the knot.

Lynx pulled his shoe off the rest of the way. “Maybe we need to actually discuss this without the humor though?”

“And without getting naked,” Nyah added wryly. “I feel like every time we go through something, we get over it by getting horizontal.”

“That’s my favorite way of communicating,” Luca complained.