Brazen Mistakes (Brazen Boys #3)

53. Clara

Chapter 53

Clara

R J stays quiet, holding me loosely in his arms, enveloping me in his citrus and sage scent. My mind wants to spiral, to tell me everything I did right or wrong in the last hour, all the ways I probably ruined his first time, all the ways I could have eased him into this. But then I remind myself that while he’s been quiet, he gave me a “perfect,” and an “amazing,” so I shouldn’t worry. Not unless I have a reason.

Do I have a reason?

Needing something to occupy my brain, I break the silence. “What’s the story behind your back tattoo?”

An unexpected laugh escapes him. “You’re not the only one who’s had stupid fun with Jansen. After our first big job last year, he talked me into spending some of my portion on this tattoo. Honestly, I don’t know how he managed it, but within two weeks, I had a stylized version of the Hyrule shield on my back, coupled with a teleportation crystal from FF and the Assassins Creed logo.”

I must look as confused as I feel, and his lips give a rueful twist. “Hyrule is the magic world from Zelda, one of many video game franchises that got me through my preteen and teenage years. FF is short for Final Fantasy, an MMORPG…er, an online game where I found my first good friends, and Assassins Creed is another video game I played a bunch. Basically, it’s the nerdiest tattoo anyone could have gotten.”

“Roll over,” I say a second before I realize how demanding it sounds, but he does, and I inspect his back for the first time in full light without distractions. “But it’s so pretty.” I trace a wing of what must be the emblem of the shield, grinning as his muscles twitch under my touch.

“The artist Jansen knew was amazing. Even Walker was impressed, although he was pissed he had nothing to do with the design.”

I trace the lines of the art for a while, knowing even with my limited understanding of art that this is a good tattoo. I never would have guessed it was a bunch of nerdy pop culture references. It looks meaningful and aesthetic. But then I find a patch of darker skin, and when I brush my fingers over that, RJ hisses in a breath.

“Are you hurt?” I ask, my suppressed panic immediately spiking.

RJ rolls to his side, tugging me down. “It’s nothing. I probably should have iced it when I got back, but I wanted to get down here to you.”

I find three more dark patches across his side and chest. “RJ, what the hell happened? ”

“Trips and I sparred. Trust me, I have fewer bruises than he does right now.” He pauses, pressing a finger into one of them, then grimacing. “But mine are probably deeper.”

Capturing his hand in mine, I drag it away from where he’s pressing on the dark spot. “Why the hell were you two beating each other up?”

“It was that or stalking the stalker and jumping him in a back alley. Trust me, sparring was the better choice.” Something dark crosses RJ’s face, and I feel like there’s more to the sentence, but he doesn’t continue.

“Did you have to hit each other so hard?” I gripe, pushing RJ onto his back so I can see the damage clearly.

He laughs. “Sugar, it was my own damn fault for not blocking fast enough.”

I shake my head, rolling off the bed and pulling on the dress I was wearing earlier. “I’m getting you ice,” I state, and he doesn’t stop me as I march out to the kitchen.

Jansen’s sitting cross-legged on the counter, a tub of ice cream in his lap, his phone in his hand. “Hey,” he says, before nodding toward my hallway. “Sounds like RJ’s first date is off to a great start. But I don’t think I can send those kinds of photos to his sister, so you should go do ordinary date things soon. I’m almost out of ice cream, I’ve been waiting so long.” He holds out a spoonful for me, and I can’t help but roll my eyes as I lick the spoon clean.

“You’ll be waiting for a while longer,” I say, moving past him and pulling out an ice pack from the freezer, wrapping it in one of the kitchen towels.

“You fucked him so hard he hurt himself?”

Taking off the other towel from the stove, I throw it at Jansen, but it flutters down a good two feet from him. “No, of course not! Apparently, he and Trips were sparring.”

“Fun.”

Shaking my head, I turn back to my room. “Why are none of you worried about friends beating each other to the point of possible broken bones?”

“Because sometimes the adrenaline is worth it, beautiful,” he says, hopping off the counter and trailing me down the hallway.

“Of course you’d say that.”

He shrugs, then hurries past me to open the door, diving over RJ onto the other side of the bed, almost falling off the edge while RJ scrambles to cover his junk in the blanket. Both of them avoid the wet spot.

“Jansen!” I scold, but he shows no inclination to leave. Getting him out of here would be harder than just letting him stay.

RJ scoots back until he’s leaning against the wall, my sheet draped across his lap. “I don’t need ice, sugar. Trust me, I’m fine.”

Ignoring him, I drop to my knees next to him, carefully pressing the ice against the worst-looking bruise.

“Maybe on your balls?” Jansen asks, waving his spoon at RJ.

RJ swats the spoon out of his hand, and it shoots across the room, clattering under my desk.

“Hey,” Jansen cries, scrambling to get it. “Now it’s all dirty.”

“And you weren’t invited in. So get out and don’t talk about my balls. ”

Jansen sits back on his heels, half under my desk. “What about if I were complimenting your balls?”

“Jansen!” RJ and I both shout, and he cackles, retrieving the spoon.

“Fine, I’ll just wait in the hallway for the rest of your date to start. I want some nice candid shots, hand holding, maybe a kiss under a streetlight. Think you can do that for me?”

RJ points at the door, and Jansen saunters past, stopping to press a kiss to my head.

“Don’t forget to smile,” he says, the door clicking shut behind him.

RJ slumps back, tapping his head against the wall. “I guess I found the downside.”

“Downside to what?”

“To dating the same girl as my friends. Boundaries are nebulous.”

I chuckle. “I guess that’s something we’ll have to figure out.”

He watches me as I ice his chest. “Is it difficult?”

“What?”

“Balancing it. Us.”

His skin feels appropriately cool, so I move to the next bruise. “I don’t know. I don’t think we’ve been trying this out long enough for me to really know where we’ll struggle. But I want you all to feel as special as you each are to me. And I hope if ever I’m dropping the ball, you’ll feel comfortable saying something to me.” Peeking up at him, I find him with one hand behind his neck, the other hovering a few inches from my side, like he still isn’t sure what touches are okay and when .

“I feel like I can tell you anything,” he says, dropping his hand on top of my own.

“Good. Because, if we’re getting serious here, I’m coming to you with my thoughts first. Once they’re straightened out, I’ll share them with the others. But with you, I feel safe to let them out in a tangled mess without you judging me or jumping to conclusions.”

“Like the FBI thing?”

I fiddle with the towel. “Yeah, like that.”

“When are you going to tell everyone else?”

“Hopefully never. I’m already on the team. It’s not like I’m backing out now.”

“You always have a choice, Clara. That’s the whole point of the probationary period. It’s not just for us to be sure of you, but for you to be sure that this is the life you want.”

“That’s the problem—I know I want this life. I just, I don’t know. I’m not Bryce’s broken girl who submitted that application back in September, hoping to feel powerful instead of fearful. But I’m not the leader Jasmine thinks I am, or the ice princess your dad saw me as, either. And, I guess, I don’t want to make any life-altering decisions when I don’t even know who I am.”

RJ takes the ice from his chest, setting it aside, circling my wrists in his long fingers. “Clara, you just described yourself by how other people see you. How do you see yourself?”

I flop my forehead down to his chest, avoiding any bruises. “That’s the problem. I don’t know. How can you see yourself when you’re stuck inside yourself?”

His silence isn’t scary. I concentrate on his fingers sliding over the back of my hand while I wait .

“Maybe see isn’t the right word. Of course, seeing includes others’ perspectives. Maybe feel is a better word. How do you feel yourself?”

Having been crunched up on my knees for too long, I crawl so I can rest my cheek on his chest, not wanting to look at him, not when I’m so confused. “I don’t know that I can answer how. But maybe when? But even that is hard. How do you know what’s a stupid chemical reaction in your brain, and how do you know what speaks to your soul?”

“I don’t think you can separate the two, Clara. Our thoughts are hormones and electrical impulses. And our souls theoretically reside in these hormonal meat sacks controlled by the central nervous system.”

The longer I lie here, the more I’m certain that I have no idea who I am and what I want.

I thought I wanted Bryce. That was obviously a mistake.

I was certain I belonged at the FBI. But I’m actively pursuing crimes now, so, yeah. That’s out.

I tried to be a badass bitch, a budding criminal savant. But after every stressful interaction, I fall to pieces, terrified that I’ve been mean, unruly, unlikable.

Do I even want to be likable?

And if I do, who do I want to like me?

I can count on fewer than ten fingers the number of people in this world whose opinions matter to me.

Disturbed by the direction of my thoughts, I sit back up. “I’ve distracted you long enough. You had a date planned?”

RJ’s grin eases a little of the tightness in my chest. “It might be too late for dinner and a movie. I think the film I was going to take you to starts soon. ”

“I mean, we already started at the end. Maybe we should just do the whole date backwards.”

“Movie, then dinner?”

“Why not?”

He thinks for a second, then nods, pulling himself from the bed and getting dressed. And as sad as I am to see him cover up, I’m excited to see what a date with RJ will be like.

His lips twist as he stares at my mattress. “We should clean that up, shouldn’t we?”

I shrug. “I have laundry to do tomorrow anyway. And it’s not like I don’t have other bed options. Maybe yours? If that’s not too much, of course. If you need time to process, that’s fine, too.”

He pulls me to him, kissing me soundly. “I guess we’ll see how this date goes and take it from there.”

Popping up on my toes, I kiss him back, leaning into him, needing his calm, rock-steady self. “I can deal with that,” I say, my heart full.