BLACK CRIMSON (Fairy Tale Quartet #4)

16. Camille

16

Camille

I don’t know how long we ran. But by the time we stopped dodging and ducking and backtracking, and all the sounds of pursuits had gone quiet behind us, I was too winded to even call for a halt.

I merely stumbled to a stop and leaned against the building we’d been running beside.

Brick said nothing as he paused next to me and glanced around.

“I think we lost them,” he said, staying alert as I continued to gasp for air.

It was another thirty seconds before I could nod and ask, “Who was that?”

“No idea,” he murmured, keeping his gaze vigilant. “Neighborhood gang, I’d say. They didn’t seem to like outsiders trespassing on their territory and tagging their shit.”

“Oh my God.” I pressed a hand to my heart and panted rapidly. “I thought we were going to die. Do you run into gangs a lot when you’re painting?”

He shrugged. “Occasionally.” Finally glancing at me, he waggled his brows. “Never been caught by one, though.”

“Wow, Brick.” I straightened and shook my head. “That is so dangerous.”

He only grinned. “I warned you it would be.”

“Yeah, but…” I blew out a breath. “I don’t understand. Why do you keep doing this when you know the risks?”

“Adrenaline rush,” he answered easily and went back to playing lookout. “It’s like winning that dare of spending the entire night in an abandoned haunted house, only there’s some kickass graphics to show off afterward.”

“Hell,” I muttered, shaking my head and wincing through a stitch in my side. “I can think up a hundred legal and safer things to do to get an adrenaline rush.”

He grinned at me and waggled his eyebrows. “Yeah, but you didn’t want to do that, so here we are. Come on. In here. I’m pretty sure we lost them. Nice running skills, by the way. No wonder why you have such a nice ass.”

And… Flirty Brick was back.

I huffed out a breath and rolled my eyes, then had to bite my lip to hold in a grin because I’d kind of missed his constant s****l cracks.

Keeping hold of my hand, he led me through the broken gaping doorway of an abandoned warehouse.

“What is this place?” I whispered, hoping to God he didn’t say it was haunted.

“No idea,” he answered.

I sniffed because I bet he knew exactly where we were.

To keep myself from panicking and thinking about the gang who was out there right now, possibly still looking for us, I bumped my shoulder into his to get his attention.

He glanced down and lifted a single eyebrow. “What?”

“So I was able to link most of your pieces back to you, except the one on the side of the historical museum,” I said.

“Ah.” His lips spread with amusement. “That’s where I lost my virginity.”

My mouth fell open. “At a historical museum?”

“Yep.” He lifted his hands in a helpless gesture as if he’d had no control over the location. “Her dad was the curator, and she wasn’t exactly his fan. For her big act of rebellion against him, she stole a key to the place, and one night after hours, we snuck in so we could do it on some bearskin rug that was laid out in the back of this wagon left over from the Oregon Trail.”

“Oh my God.” My eyes flared wide. “I know exactly what exhibit you’re talking about.”

“I bet you do.” He nodded with a self-satisfied grin. “My bare ass has been on that very bearskin.” Then he turned solemnly thoughtful before he added, “It’s not as soft as you’d think.”

“Holy hell,” I murmured in disbelief. “How the hell old were you?”

His brows lifted as he met my gaze. “Seventeen.”

“Really? Huh.” I frowned in thought. “I would’ve guessed you started a lot earlier than that.”

“Meh. I was kind of a late bloomer. Took me a bit to shed off the buck teeth and pimples before I actually interested the girls. But once I got started…” He let out a low, approving whistle. “Whoa, baby. There was no stopping me then. How old were you?”

“Me? Oh…” I cleared my throat and shook my head. “Nineteen. I waited until college.”

“Hmm.” He grew quiet and contemplative again before saying, “He was a senior, I bet.”

I made a face and shook my head. “More like the young greasy mechanic who fixed my car for me.”

“Ah. So he wouldn’t accept Visa or MasterCard, but he gladly took Camille Express, huh?”

“What? No! I did not give him s*x for services rendered. He didn’t even ask me out until after I paid for the repairs.”

“Wow. Really? See, I would’ve only charged you for the parts and not the labor, hoping you’d tip with the naked variety. That i***t sounds like an ass.”

“He was,” I muttered dryly before changing the subject. “What about the piece you painted on the pharmacy in my neighborhood? Did you really put that one there because you went to school with the owner of the building?”

He shrugged. “Basically. I was bored and needed a place to paint. Then I remembered overhearing him talk a year or two back at my ten-year high school reunion about how he’d love to have Black Crimson tag his place to get him a little attention and stir up business, so I figured it was pretty much like having his permission.”

“Is that how you’ve chosen most of your places?”

“Nah. That was the first time I’d ever overheard someone say they wanted their place tagged. Usually, I’ve put my work in places I’ve wanted a specific person to see them.”

“Like your brother.”

He glanced at me in question. So I said, “Isaac.”

“Ah, him.” He nodded. “You mean, the man who screwed his young stepmother behind his dad’s back, and nine months later, I was born. Yeah, I suppose I wanted to send him a message about honesty, but I don’t typically think of him as a brother.”

For a moment, I could only stare at Brick, not understanding. Then I yelped, “Oh my God. So wait. Isaac Carmichael is your dad. Not your brother? That’s not what it says on your birth certificate.”

He lifted a curious brow.

Flushing, I explained, “Yes, I got a copy of your birth certificate. I was researching you.”

“And you really researched the hell out of me,” he admitted.

“This isn’t common knowledge, is it?” I asked, moving past my own researching obsessions. “I mean, about Isaac.”

“Nope,” he murmured, growing somber. “Hayden just found out recently. I doubt my dad—er, make that my grandfather, Charles—ever even knew.”

“And Kaitlynn?” I asked.

He shook his head.

My eyes widened. “Then why did you tell me?”

“I mean, you are kind of obsessed with me, Mayhem,” he started with a roll of his eyes, though it was obvious he was teasing. “Do I need to mention that entire wall in your living room? I figured you should at least have your facts straight. Besides, I can trust you.” He looked me dead in the eyes. “Can’t I?”

“O-of course.”

“Good.” With a grin, he clapped his hands together and slowed us down to stop. “So here we are.”

I looked around, taking in a stairwell in the corner where one wall was brick and the other was made mostly of dingy, twelve-inch windows. Pointing at the black and red letters B and C with a bit of white glowing around them, he explained, “This was my first tag. When I was fourteen. I’d just met some thug kids I’d bought some pot from, and one guy let me have a go with his paint can. This is what I made before the cops showed up and escorted me home.”

“Oh wow. Busted on your first try, huh?”

“It wasn’t an accident. My mom had just started dating some new douche, and I was supposed to meet him that night. But when I went out instead, he called in a favor to his friend, the chief of police, to have me found and brought home. And that douche ended up being Arthur Judge, Kaity’s dad. I didn’t tag anything again while he was in my life.”

I nodded slowly. “He was strict, huh?”

Brick shook his head. “No. Not really. He just had this seven-year-old daughter who immediately looked up to me like I was some kind of a big brother who, you know, deserved to be looked up to. And she had the most innocent, big, blue eyes. I swear to God, she melted the bad in everything by just looking at it with those damn eyes. I figured if someone could ever dare to let her down, they had to be completely lacking a soul.”

With a smile, I hooked my arm through his and bumped into him meaningfully. “So Kaitlynn’s the one who guided you back onto the straight and narrow, huh?”

He pointed at me sternly. “If you tell her that, I’ll deny it until my dying breath, but yeah. Upsetting her was never an option for me. Which gave me some mad respect for her dad. And that’s the reason I came back here the day of his funeral and made…that.”

When he pointed up, I tipped my head way back, and my mouth fell open in shock. On the bottom of a concrete staircase, about twenty feet up was a Black Crimson original.

Depicting Jack and the Beanstalk, it showed a boy climbing a building that was covered in vines. And in the clouds above was the quote that went with it.

No one knows how many steps there are on the stairway to heaven. We just know that it’s one hell of a climb.

It was painted in his signature red, white, and black, and even had his initials B.C. scribbled in the top left-hand corner where he always signed his work.

“Oh my God. Wow. How did you even get up there?”

“You mean, get down,” he countered. When I gave him a funny look, he shook his head. “I didn’t go up; I came down and hung from a rope I secured to the railing.”

“That you secured to the railing?” I gawked in disbelief. “Of the staircase? That staircase? But that railing looks as if a stiff breeze could knock it down.”

He shrugged. “Well, it did rattle and sway a lot. I’m probably lucky to be alive.”

I held up a hand. “Okay, no more. I can’t handle hearing about your death-defying—”

“Because you care about me, huh?” He grinned and tipped his chin, nudging my arm as he tried to get me to claim that he was in any way important to me. “Come on. You can admit it.”

I rolled my eyes, then refocused on the mural. “This is called a heaven spot, isn’t it?”

“Hmm?” He blinked at me in utter confusion.

“I came across a couple of graffiti terms while I was researching you,” I explained. “And a heaven spot is supposed to be a dare-devil, hard-to-reach place. It earns you a lot of respect in the graffiti world.”

“Huh,” he said, glancing up as well. “Too bad I’m not involved in the graffiti world, then.” Waving a finger up at the underside of the staircase, he explained, “I just put it there because I didn’t want it to be easily removed. Arthur deserved something permanent, you know?”

I nodded, murmuring, “I get it. You picked a good place.”

“Not everyone would, though.”

Not sure I understood him, I shook my head.

“Not everyone would get it,” he clarified. With a sigh, he spiked a hand through his hair. “Arthur’s impact in my life was good and positive and permanent, you know. He gave me a solid foundation that’s going to keep me going in the right direction for years to come. He gave me Kaitlynn. But after he was gone, my mom made some kind of degrading comment about how often he demanded s*x from her, and…” With a disgusted shudder, he shook his head. “That probably should’ve soured me to the man altogether. That he actually wanted anything at all to do with such a woman. She was just so cruel and vindictive and mean. Yet a man I admired still wanted her. Except, it couldn’t completely ruin my perspective of him, you know. I couldn’t hate him for it. There were just so many other things to respect.”

I nodded, thinking that would be a hard thing to deal with, knowing someone you admired did something you couldn’t admire. “People are complicated, aren’t they?”

“They are.” He glanced at me. “That’s not the first time that’s happened to me either. In school, when I had to research some historical figure who made this huge, influencing impact on the world we live in today, only to realize how personally unfavorable they were, like they never took baths or they just did something disgusting and wrong in their private life; it…”

He shook his head and winced. “Learning too much about an icon can ruin the illusion. Everyone’s human, you know. They’ve got some flaw—major or small—that would turn someone away from them. But when they go and do something big and meaningful that helps so many people and makes things easier for the next generations to come, I think I’d just as soon not know their baggage. Because it’d only let me down.”

“Yeah,” I murmured softly. “I know what you mean.”

His gaze turned hopeful as he answered, “Do you? Do you get why I can’t give you an interview, then? When you convinced me that my work helped people get through their day, I realized I couldn’t spoil that image of me by showing them how pampered and privileged I look on paper. Because the message I’m sending is still the same, whether I’m some poor, hard-knock guy down-on-my-luck or I’m driving the nicest car in the city. And people would be ruined by the truth. So I just can’t give it to them.”

Well, hell.

I stared at him in stunned shock because I actually understood his stance. And I totally respected it.

Dammit, I wasn’t going to get to publish an article about Black Crimson, was I? I was just going to have to find another dream to shoot for. Another amazing, exclusive article to write.

“Okay,” I agreed sadly. “There are a lot of amazing and wonderful things out there that have been tainted because someone’s pointed out the dirt behind them.” I shook my head, realizing, “I don’t want Black Crimson to be contaminated too.”

He was too much of a positive force for good, and many would destroy the Black Crimson name if they knew he was Lana Price’s son.

Tucking a piece of my hair behind my ear, Brick said, “So you’ll drop this whole notion of an interview?”

With a slow nod, I looked up into his eyes. “Yeah. I’ll drop it.”

“No article at all?” he clarified.

A part of me was depressed that my dream of getting Black Crimson’s exclusive and making it into the editing department at the paper wasn’t going to happen, not anytime soon anyway, but I also felt a bit flattered that only I got to know the mystery behind the spray paint can.

“No article at all,” I assured.

A relieved smile lit his lips. Taking my hand, he squeezed my fingers. “Thank you.”

Keeping hold of me, he playfully swung our hands between us as we left the old warehouse together before he announced, “We should seal the deal with a rousing round of s*x, don’t you think?”

“Um… No.”

“Oh, come on, Mayhem.” He teasingly tugged me toward him until I bumped into his side. “It’ll be fun, I promise.”

I pulled away and shot back, “Yeah, well, I like to safeguard my fun times with a little thing called commitment.”

“Gah.” He hissed at me and shied away even as he continued to hold my hand. “Alright, alright. Point made. I’m backing off now.”

I grinned, feeling triumphant, and relaxed my grip in his.

This was nice, I decided. I really liked hanging out with Brick. Even in scary neighborhoods.

Glancing around me, I took in my surroundings. One side of the alley was lined with rick after rick of cut firewood that someone had piled along the outer wall of the building. The handwritten sign above the piles said each cord was for sale for three hundred apiece.

I breathed in the scent of pine and oak just as half a dozen figures stepped into our path, blocking the end of the alley.

Brick and I pulled up short.

Noticing one person was menacingly slapping a pipe into the palm of their other hand, I gripped Brick’s arm in worry. “Oh no.”

“There you are,” the guy standing at the front of the pack announced. “We found you.”