Bad Things (Tristan & Danika, #1)(51)

“Be careful about that. I know you aren’t dating, but it feels…messy to me. Those two are close. It would be a pity to drive a wedge between them.”

I sighed. “I know. I thought about dating Jared, but I’ve decided tonight that it’s not happening. It just feels wrong. I don’t want to come between them, and I don’t want to lead Jared on.”

“Have you told Jared that? He seems to be sporting a big crush.”

“I told him. It was awkward, but he was very nice about it.”

“He’s the nicest guy in the world, but I worry about him.”

That surprised me, but before I even asked, I knew what she was referring to. “Why?”

“I worry about both of the Vega brothers, but I especially worry about Jared. He’s just too open to anything, you know? He doesn’t seem to have a slow down button when it comes to drugs and alcohol. Neither of them do, but Tristan at least sticks mainly to the booze. I don’t think there’s anything Jared hasn’t tried, and at some point, you can’t just call it all experimenting.”

“Does Tristan know?”

Frankie sighed, looking like a worried mother in spite of her age. “He knows. He’ll be the first to say it’s normal to try things. When you’re smoking joints with your mother before you’re twelve, it’s hard to get perspective about it.”

I grimaced. “I went to dinner at her house, and saw some of that. I’m a total prude about drugs, and I know they’re grown-ups now, but that raised some red flags for me.”

“Don’t get me wrong, I love that woman to death, but that’s just messed up, and it isn’t even the half of it.”

“Dean handed Jared a baggie of something the second he showed up,” I told her, my voice pitched low, since Jared was approaching the pool.

“See now, that’s the shit that worries me. Dean will get him anything he wants, with no thought to what’s good for him. And I can guarantee that wasn’t just a baggie of weed.”

We dropped the subject as Jared joined us in the pool, and Frankie went over every piece of ink she’d done on his skin, which was considerable.

“Mama’s boy,” I teased him gently when she pointed out a tattoo for his mom that he’d done on his chest.

It was an anchor with the word mother etched into it. I thought it said a lot that he’d chosen an anchor to represent his mom, though to me it said something far different than what he thought it did. Lucy had trained me to look for signs of codependency, and permanently marking your body with the fact that someone was dragging you down was about as obvious as it got.

“Absolutely. Until the day I die, I’ll be a mama’s boy. She’s my best friend.”

In spite of my reservations, a little ‘aww’ escaped me at such sweet words coming out of a grown man.

“Tristan is a mama’s boy, too, but not as bad as this one,” Frankie told me, as she ran her hands down Jared’s abs, tracing over the scaled dragon she’d done.

My brow furrowed as I studied the intricate dragon. It was golden, and so elaborate that I had to study it carefully to catch all of the details. It was a lot like one she’d done on Tristan’s shoulder, but Jared’s dragon had one extra quirk that made me roll my eyes.

“Is that dragon smoking a joint, or a cigarette?” I asked, my tone wry.

“Guess,” Jared said playfully.

“Well half of it is in the water,” I complained.

“Here.” He hopped out of the pool, perching on the edge so I had a better view.

I moved close, getting between his legs to study the smoking dragon. “I can’t believe you put a dragon smoking a joint on his stomach,” I said to Frankie, my tone accusing, when I saw for certain what it was.

“I tried to talk him out of the joint. But he insisted. There’s also a marijuana leaf on his hip, though that wasn’t me. I explained to him that people almost always regret drug tattoos. When he’s older, with kids of his own, he’ll never be able to tell them to say no to drugs without looking like a hypocrite.”

“I wouldn’t tell them to say no. I’ll be a cool ass dad.”

“See now, everyone says that, until they have children,” Frankie explained. “Your priorities will change, I guarantee it.”

I glanced up at Jared when he had no response to her statement.

He was looking towards the house, an expression of frozen panic on his face.

I knew who it was before I turned to look. My hands fell from Jared’s stomach, where they’d been innocently tracing a tattoo.

“Fuuuck, he’s going to kill me,” Jared said softly.

Tristan had arrived, and he was striding towards us with a look on his face I’d never seen before.





CHAPTER TWENTY





Tristan didn’t even spare me a glance, his cold eyes all for his brother. The color gold had never looked so icy.

He barely paused when he reached us.

“A word, Jared,” he said tersely, striding right past us.

Jared ran a hand over his damp, inky black hair, his expression tight. “Wish me luck, ladies,” he uttered softly, before following his brother.

“This is an unfortunate development,” Frankie said, watching the brothers stride away.