Page 61 of Driven By Impulse

Hanna nodded, knowing the kind of stories that followed Ash and Nicco, and knowing that for a man like Jinx to be so care-free and easy-going, it had to be a choice. “I appreciate it,” she said quietly. “You know, Rose loved to blow bubbles. She was always popping her gum.”

Jinx gave her a strained smile. “I promise to carry on that very annoying legacy.”

He gave her a quick wave, then the three of them were off, back on their bikes and heading back down the mountain, leaving Hanna very, very much alone with Nicco and Ash, just as the sun was beginning to set over the horizon.

“I can cook.” She said it a little too loudly.

“No,” Ash replied lightly. “You cannot.”

“I can cook,” Nicco murmured. “Come on, I’ll show you both.”

They settled into a surprisingly comfortable rhythm in the kitchen, Hanna slicing tomatoes and Ash cutting up onions, as Nicco started seasoning ground beef and sausage. Soon the room smelled of warm, earthy spices, and the world narrowed down to just the three of them, easily moving between each other in the kitchen, a dance not entirely different than the one they had done before.

But when Ash broke the silence, it wasn’t to make use of the time they had while the sauce simmered. “What did Jinx want to talk to you about, Hanna?”

Hanna settled down on one of the stools at the counter and took a deep breath. “He…learned about Rose, last night, when he was digging up recon on Karter Vance.”

Nicco poured three large glasses of wine and handed her one, carrying the other two over to the small living room. “The sauce needs time to simmer.”

They followed him, and to Hanna’s surprise, Nicco tugged her down on his lap. Her wine sloshed slightly in the glass, but it settled without spilling. Hanna only wished she could say the same for her pounding heart. Perhaps it had been naïve to think they could have a single night together, no strings attached, no awkward conversations, but now the current racing through her mind had much more to do with repeating and then some than having a difficult discussion.

She leaned into Nicco’s strong chest, and let Ash take her feet across his lap, that innate need for the three of them to be connected, tethered together every chance they got.

“Jinx has his own stories,” Nicco said quietly. “But I’m not surprised he would…mention Rose.”

Hanna was starting to get the impression that all of the rough and tumble men who rode with The Princes had their reasons for doing so.

“I’m sorry, Hanna.” Ash stroked her leg, soft and reassuring, and somehow so much more intimate than anything they had already done. “For all of it, but especially for whatever this Iron Daggers shit stirs up.”

Hanna sighed. “Rose was all light.”

She remembered her sister on lazy summer afternoons, the glow of sunshine and sparkle of the sprinkler. Rose had been older sister, stand-in mom, best friend and everything in between. “She was three years older than me, but that never stopped her from taking me out with her friends, to the movies or the ice cream shop. We didn’t have a mom, but we had each other.”

“Dante and I were the same,” Nicco murmured, spinning loose curls around his fingers. “Like life rafts in the ocean.”

Hanna nodded. “I don’t know if the…pressure of being the older sister got to her, or there just wasn’t anything else waiting for her in Bitterroot, but that all changed when she started going out with Karter Vance. Then there wasn’t time for me, you know, no watching movies together or practicing for one of my games, or even homework. She had pushed so hard for me to go to college, to give myself options, and then one day she just…stopped caring.”

Ash knew the story, at least the broad strokes of it, but Hanna didn’t think she could bear the look of sympathy on Nicco’s face as she shared the rest, so she spoke into his chest, instead. “It took my dad six months to figure out why Rose had…changed overnight. If she hadn’t been his daughter, it probably would have taken five minutes.”

Nicco just played with her hair and Ash stroked her leg. “It’s hard to confront the truth when it’s the people you love,” Nicco murmured. “She was using?”

Hanna swallowed around the hard lump in her throat. “Vance got her into the world, though Dad could never prove it. He got her in and then one day, not even he could get her out. No one could.”

She had sat in that hospital room for four days, waiting for her sister to wake up. But Rose never had.

“When Ash showed up the next year, I think it might have saved my dad,” she admitted. “Scrappy, angry kid, looking for any reason to get into trouble.” She smiled sadly, remembering the boy he had been. “Gave him a distraction, something to keep fighting for.”

“He kept fighting for you,” Ash replied. “Wil loved you more than anything else on earth.”

Hanna nodded. “I know. But we were drowning together that year, pulling each other into the grief, not the other way around. You helped, Ash. I know… I know how absolute shit things were, but you should know that.”

“I got away,” he said quietly. “Most of the other boys weren’t so lucky. And when I told your dad about that…place… I’d never seen him so angry.” He sighed softly. “Until then, every adult in my life had gotten mad at me. But he got mad for me. That changed everything.”

“We make for quite a set,” Hanna said with a laugh. She looked up at Nic. It was incredible, the stories in his eyes, how subtlety and mystery could draw her in so deeply, make her want so strongly. “I…know what happened with your father last year. That…couldn’t have been easy.”

Understatement of the fucking millennium. But what exactly did you say to a person who killed their own father in self-defense, a father with a terrible reputation, who had abandoned him for the mafia when he’d been a kid, who may or may not have been responsible for killing Niccolo and Dante’s mother?

“Thank you,” Nicco replied softly. “To keep Dante safe, it was worth it.”