Today & Tomorrow by Susan Fanetti Read Free Book Online Page B

he was hot for her, too. And he felt fairly sure that made him an asshole. She was dying, and it was getting to the point that all he could think of was getting her naked.
     
    He’d taken her to get her tattoo and piercing. The tattoo, he’d watched her get—more than watched. She’d given him her phone, and he’d recorded it for her movie. It wasn’t much of a tattoo: two stars, one inlaid in the other, with the words We are star stuff which has taken its destiny into its own hands circling the stars in script. Right between her shoulder blades. It had taken a couple of hours, mostly for the script. Nolan had spent those hours thinking about how pretty her back and shoulders were, her freckles heavy over her shoulders and then fading out by the time they got to the bottom of her ribs.
     
    He loved those freckles. Far too much. Her pale, pale blue eyes, her sun-dusted skin, her blonde hair, her long neck—all of it. The more he got to know her, the more gorgeous she became.
     
    She was thin; her ribs and the beads of her spine showed through her fair skin. But she hadn’t reacted at all to the tattoo machine, not even when it was right on her spine. When he’d asked if she was hurting, she’d laughed.
     
    She’d gotten the piercing right after the tattoo, and for that, she’d taken her phone from him and shooed him away. He still had no idea what she’d gotten pierced; when he’d asked, she’d laughed again and called him a perv.
     
    Which was clearly true. Seriously. Who went sniffing after a sick girl? A perv, that was who.
     
    He spent some time at night, every night, imagining where her new piercing might be.
     
    Since then, she hadn’t told him any more of her list, and as far as he knew, she hadn’t crossed anything else off. He’d taken her for a ride up the PCH. They’d spent a day with her playing tour guide for him around L.A. He’d had a couple of family dinners with the Winters.
     
    It was so weird that he’d been hanging out with Donovan Winter. Donovan fucking Winter. He’d spent one evening talking at great length about motorcycles, Donovan asking question after question as if he were honestly interested in the things Nolan knew. Donovan fucking Winter. Who’d turned out to be a cool guy.
     
    Her brother was cool, too, and almost exactly Nolan’s age. Nolan’s geek side had gotten buried since Havoc’s death, but standing in Tris’s room, seeing hand-painted D&D and Warhammer figurines, shelves of fantasy novels and comics, and an impressive game and film collection, his inner geek had risen from the dead. Analisa had walked by the open door and rolled her eyes at them.
     
    So, no. Nolan didn’t want to avoid her or any of her family.
     
    Not until that ambush on the Rats a couple of days before. They’d killed seven men—all that had remained of the most-local Rats charter. Then they’d burned and buried them, standing around a deep grave and watching until the fire had consumed everything it could. The smell of cooking flesh had been so strong that Nolan had wondered if they’d attract man or beast to the scent.
     
    Nolan had killed one man himself. That in itself didn’t fuck with him; he was getting used to killing. None of what they’d done had caused him much concern.
     
    And that was what was fucking with him. On the ride back to the clubhouse, his mind had been loose in his head, teasing at whatever thought it wanted, and the thought it wanted was this: he was a killer. Even more, he didn’t care.
     
    He still didn’t care. But he cared that he didn’t care.
     
    And, God , he wanted to talk to Havoc about it. He knew Havoc had killed, too, of course he had. Multiple times. Nolan needed his father. He needed to know how to be a good man and also be a man who could blow half a man’s head off and not give a shit.
     
    There were other people he could talk to; he knew that. Badger. Show. Even Bart, who’d spent the past ten months trying to stand in for