by Huss, JA
Fuck that.
I’m the mature one on this team. I’m the one who has a real career. I’ve got three businesses, plus that little campground out in Nebraska. I’m on TV, I have my own line of custom bikes, and I’ve got the whole body art painting thing going. I’m bona fide. I’m on my way up. I’ve got plans, I’ve got big, big plans.
And Ron the Bomb has always been part of it. Shit, has that woman no memory? How could she have forgotten our first date?
“Shrike!” the burrito girl yells as she hands my dinner to Carla, the girl who runs the register.
I walk up to the counter and grab the bag. “Gracias, Carla.”
“See ya mañana, Spencer.”
She winks at me and I wink back and shoot her with my finger. “Tomorrow, baby. We’re on. Pick you up at eight.”
“I’ll have my boots on, handsome!”
I chuckle as I walk out. Fucking Carla, gotta love that girl. She makes all my Thursday nights better. We’ve had a Thursday night date for almost two months now. I kinda like it too. She’s one helluva cowgirl. Fridays I hang out with Renee from the Cat Call while she’s at work. I got a new regular for Saturday. Kim from the Harley store down south in Broomfield. I don’t usually go in there since I own my own bike shop and we sell or make everything I need custom. But I was looking for a specific set of pegs for the new bike I’m thinking about building, and I found a guy from Craigslist who had them, and he just happened to work at the Harley shop.
Sunday I go home to see the folks for dinner. It’s a thing I can’t get out of even if I wanted to. My old man would kick my ass if I didn’t show up for family shit on Sundays.
So yeah, I haven’t had much time for Ronnie, but I’m a busy fucking guy. What does she want me to do? Change my whole life around? I will, eventually, but not yet. I’m not ready for that yet. Too much shit to get done.
I get back in my truck and head home. Once I get past the little town of La Porte there’s nothing else around, so I grab my burrito and start chowing. When you live thirty minutes away from the nearest real town, you learn to eat your take-out on the road. By the time I get home and let myself into the kitchen, my food is gone, my mood is even more sour, and I’m totally unsatisfied. I will go see Ronnie at eleven when she gets off, I do not care what Vic says. Ronnie and I have history.
I walk down the hallway towards my office and key in the code that controls the locks. This was Ronin’s brilliant idea. And it is pretty brilliant. Key codes instead of keys. You always have a key and you always have a record of when the door is accessed.
I flip the light on and take it all in. Every wall is covered with pictures of Veronica. She was my body painting model for almost three years. I have touched every inch of her beautiful body with my paintbrush. And I do mean every inch. I even painted her hair once. She hated that and I laugh just thinking about it.
Our life together started the moment I saw her and Vic arguing outside the CSU bookstore. And while I did have to wrangle a gun out of her hand to get the first real date, the second time I talked to her, things went a whole other way.
Colorado State University - Three years ago
“Miss Vaughn,” I say sweetly as I saunter up to her. She’s walking fast because she’s late for her early morning art class.
“Go away, you caveman. I’ll fix your stupid tattoo, but I’m not going to be nice about it. You kissed me, you know. Without permission.”
“You liked it last night.”
“Yeah, well, I was tired. And caught off guard. And manhandled.” She quickens her pace to try and give me a hint, but I don’t take hints. Besides, my legs are longer than hers. She can’t out-power walk me.
“You liked all of that last night if I remember correctly.”
She pulls open the door to the art building and I follow her in. We weave through the various displays in the shadowed room. “I like the art building,” I tell her casually. Like we’re just friends walking to class. “It’s dark and moody. Like the artists who study here.”
“Why are you following me?” she stops and asks in a huff, her foot stomping on the polished concrete floors.
“I’m going to class. I’m not following you.”
She looks over at me and scowls. “You have class here in this building at seven AM? Not likely. There’s only one class in here and it’s by invitation only,” she says with an air of superiority as she begins walking again.
I walk again too, then smile at her when she checks to see if I’m still following. “I’ve been invited, don’t worry.”
This makes her stop and whirl around to face me. “You’re in my class?”
“I am,” I say smugly. “I’m a transfer from DU. I major in business, but I take art on the side.”
“Oh.” She flips her long golden tresses over her shoulder. “A hobbyist.”
“Yeah.” I smirk and shrug at the same time. “You could call me that.”
She turns again and resumes the power walk. I catch up, pass her, and then hold the studio door open and wave her through.
“Thank you,” she says under her breath as she passes close enough for me to breathe in her scent. She smells like sugar. Seriously, like a fucking cookie or something. I watch her head across the room to gather her things. The studio is filled with students. At least forty of them. Everyone is setting up, getting ready for life drawing.
“Mr. Shrike,” the middle-aged voice calls out to me from across the room.
I look over at Bombshell and she’s watching me very carefully. I wink and shoot her with my finger, then turn and walk towards the professor with a smile. “Miss Aberdeen, thank you for fitting me in the class. I can see what you mean now, it’s packed full.”
She blushes at me. Yeah, I have that effect on women of all ages, so I shoot her a winning smile and tilt my head a bit. Ronin taught me that move. I might not be on speaking terms with him these days, but that guy knows all the fucking charm tricks. He has the women lined up like groupies.
I’m not a groupie gatherer, but this head-tilt thing works well enough on the professor in front of me. Her look says, I’m an artist. She’s got the earthy clothes that hang off her skinny frame, the glasses, the put-up hair that’s falling out all over the place, and the Birks on her feet.
She’s so earthy, I was sorta shocked when she named her condition for letting me join this class.
“Mr. Shrike—”
“Please, Miss Aberdeen, call me Spence.” I smile again and chance a look over at Bombshell. She’s set up in the front row. I already knew this. I’ve been doing recon on the Bomb since I first saw her in that fight with her brother in front of the bookstore.
“Very well, Spence.” Aberdeen blushes when she says my name and that’s sorta cute. “Next week your space is next to Miss Vaughn—”
She continues talking about what will happen next week. But I’m more concerned with what’s happening this week to give a shit about a time so far in the future, so I tune the rest out. I’m too busy looking over at the Blonde Bomb as she tries to process what’s being said.
I chuckle as Aberdeen walks away and Veronica Vaughn walks up. “You planned this. You’re stalking me, aren’t you?”
“Recon, baby. Not stalking.” And then I grab the hem of my shirt and pull it straight up over my head. Not too fast, Ronin taught me this too. He said the slow-mo shirt removal was one of the easiest ways to snag a girl. When I look back at Veronica her mouth is gaping open.
“What are you doing?” she hisses at me. “Put your shirt on!”
I drop the shirt to the floor and go for the pants. Veronica gasps when I pop the button and downright chokes when I go for the zipper. I hear a few cat calls from the back of the room as I slip my pants down.
I’m commando today, so His Highness just pops right out.
Every girl in the room explodes in laughter. It’s the good kind though. I know the difference. This laughter says, Holy fucking shit, I cannot believe he just took off hi
s clothes!
“You look more like a cherry than a bombshell right now, Blondie,” I joke with her.
She shakes herself out of her silent stare and turns on her heel.
“Well,” Miss Aberdeen says as she claps her hands together in delight. “Mr. Shrike—err, Spence.” She smiles big as she says my name. “It’s too late now, obviously, but next time—”
“Next time?” Blondie says as she peeks out from behind her easel.
“—please use the dressing room over there in the corner. And put on a robe until we’re ready for you.” She bats her eyelashes at me, then steals a glance down.
“Sure thing,” I say as I wink and shoot. “Where do you want me, Miss Aberdeen?”
Veronica blushes the entire fucking class. Her face is this sexy shade of flush for ninety minutes. And every one of those ninety minutes, she thinks about nothing but me. She traces every line and curve of my body onto the paper in front of her. She licks her lips seventeen times. She sighs twenty-two times. She groans and whimpers when she makes five mistakes, and she even has a pouty frown on her face for the splittest of seconds when Aberdeen announces that class is over.
I wait for her as she cleans up. I’m wearing clothes again and all the girls, and a few dudes as well, are coming over to introduce themselves and ask who I am and where I came from.
I have that effect on people. I’m blessed in the body department. Ronin has his charm, Ford has his brain and I’ve got this beautiful body. Plus charm and brains. I’m the total package. Almost six foot three—I’m taller than both Ronin and Ford, and that’s all muscle. I played a little football in high school and got two scholarship offers. But I stayed in town with Ronin and we both went to University of Denver.
The team comes before everything else—and DU is a great school anyway.
Ford was already in Boulder studying film, he’s two years older. So Ronin and I started college together. He continued to model with Antoine, his sister’s lover who runs Chaput Studios out of a remodeled six-story building near Lower Downtown. I continued to build bikes and learn how to run the business so I could take over Shrike Bikes from my old man. My mom was desperate to get him to retire after a heart attack a few years ago.
We roped Mardee into doing some cons with us. Some basic shit. Little bit of hands-on stealing from scumbags. Then she overdosed on heroin and died.
We didn’t take it well, it was a huge blame game. Ford blamed Ronin, Ronin blamed me, I blamed—fuck. I blamed all of us. We were all at fault. We took it out on the local drug dealers using every skill we had in our arsenal. Namely Ford’s savant hacking abilities. And all that ended abruptly after the Boulder job. The job that would change our lives, send me to Colorado State in Fort Collins and Ronin to University of Colorado in Boulder after we were kicked out of DU.
Of course, DU never said we were kicked out. But there’s no way an institution of that caliber would allow us to stay. We saw the writing on the wall and Ronin and I don’t come from the big shots around town. We have money, but not that kind of money. Not Ford money. We can’t just donate enough money to purchase entire academic buildings to erase our mistakes.
I shake my head. I’m pretty surprised that these kids up here in Fort Collins have no idea who I am just by my face. I was all over the Denver news last spring. So were Ronin and Ford.
We fucked up. Bad. And the only reason we’re not sitting in prison right now is because the cops in Boulder fucked up worse. They accessed one of Ford’s computers illegally and obtained evidence that would put us away for a long time.
Luckily the grand jury was honest. They refused to allow that evidence and all the charges were dropped.
I let out a long breath at that. I hate thinking about it. It makes me sick. I close my eyes for a second to make those thoughts go away, and then continue playing nice with the art students. I love the art people. I’m a business major because my father was not about to pay exorbitant private university prices for an art degree. So we compromised. I’d take business—which I’m actually fucking stellar at—and he’d pay for a summer internship in France with a famous trompe l’oeil artist. That was two years ago. She taught me how to paint three dimensions in 2D and I used that to start my body art hobby.
I paint naked girls.
And that bombshell I’m waiting for, she’s about to become my new canvas.
Chapter Six
Veronica ditches me the second she leaves the art building. I let her go. I have a date with her at four anyway. Plus, she’s done for the day. She only has one class, but I have three and mine are all across campus, so I have no time to stalk her ass or chase her down.
I walk out of finance class at three forty-five and smile all the way to my truck. Bomb’s tattoo shop is just down the street, and technically I could probably walk to her shop faster than it takes me to get back to the parking lot over near the art building where my truck is. But that girl’s coming home with me tonight. I’d hate for her little feet to become weary after hoofing it all the way across town to get to my truck.
I pull up in a space in front of Sick Boyz at three fifty-nine.
Her brother is waiting for me when I walk in, giving me a not-so-nice look. “Hey, man,” I say casually. “What’s up? I have an appointment with Veronica.”
He gives me the once-over. Maybe the twice-over. He’s a big guy. Bigger than me, and that’s saying something. He might not be much taller, but his muscles say he works out daily. Possibly several times a day. He’s wearing a white t-shirt with the shop logo on it—which is a rockabilly guy and a pin-up girl who could be a redhead version of his sister or a biker version of Jessica Rabbit. And both figures are tatted up and sitting on a badass bike. There’s a few custom bikes out front, so I’m getting the feeling these guys are into the rides.
I make my befriend-the-brother move and stick out my hand to shake. He accepts it. “Spencer Shrike. That your chopper out there?”
He squeezes my hand, I squeeze back, then he drops it and nods. “Yup.”
“Nice custom work, you do it yourself?”
“Yup.”
“Cool, cool.” I want to get more into it, talk about the custom shit my dad and me do, but something tells me he knows who I am and he’s waiting for it. So I turn away and look at the pictures on the wall.
“I’m ready,” Blondie says as she turns the corner of a hallway. “Follow me,” she huffs as she turns her back and walks away.
I shoot Big Brother a smile, then do as I’m told. There are several tattoo rooms and hers is at the end. I watch her ass as she walks. She’s wearing those scrubs that doctors wear in surgery. Hers are pink. That makes me smile. She looks like a pink girl. A real girly girl. I bet she wanted to be a princess when she grew up. She turns the corner into her room and beckons me inside with a sigh.
I stop short. “What the fuck?” Every surface of her room is covered in plastic. It’s like the dentist, times a bazillion. The TV is covered, the chair is covered, the counters have plastic over them, and when I turn around to ask her what’s up, she’s got on a pink face mask. I laugh.
She flips me the finger. “Fuck you! You should be happy I’m so hygienic. You will never catch a disease in my room. Sit your ass down in the chair and don’t say another word unless I ask you a question.”
I chuckle under my breath and take a seat. The plastic crinkles underneath me and I slip around a little. “So, Veronica. I never properly introduced myself this morning. I’m Spencer.”
“I don’t need to know your name. Besides,” she says as she slips a visor over her forehead that has a long clear plastic shield attached to it. “I already know all about you.” Her last few words come out muffled and with an echo from behind the mask and the shield.
I smile and wink. “Don’t believe everything you hear, then, OK?”
She ignores me. “Take your shirt off and tell me what you want that awful thing you’re calling a tattoo turned into.”
I slip my
shirt over my head slowly, just like I did it this morning. She pretends to be busy with her machine and ink, but I catch her looking out of the corner of her eye. “I’m thinking I need a whole back piece to cover that little lady. I’m thinking ravens, and skulls, and smoke. I’m thinking Blackbirds, of the mechanical variety. I’m thinking all done up in black and red.”
“Ha,” she fake-laughs. “That’s a month’s worth of appointments. I want to know what you want me to do today.”
“A Blackbird, Blondie. I want a Blackbird today. The hula girl can wait until we get the design right. Today I want you to start the piece. Give me that paper over there, I’ll draw it out for you.”
She looks at me skeptically, removes her face shield and mask and walks over to the counter top where she’s got a spiral notebook. She grabs it, and a pen, even though there are pencils in the jar she’s keeping her writing utensils in, and hands them over.
I open the notebook and realize it’s her personal sketchbook. I look up at her and she’s got her hands on her hips, like she’s waiting on me to perform. I do the head-tilt smile and page through, trying to look at each of her drawings without being obvious. They are all very detailed with elaborate shading and perspective. She’s a talented artist and I’m dying to see the sketch she did of me this morning.
I find a blank page and uncap the pen with my teeth and start to draw. I can sketch this image with my eyes closed, that’s how often I’ve drawn it, both in real life and in my mind. I was drunk when I let Bobby Choo tat me up with a hula girl. Out-of-my-mind drunk, celebrating after the grand jury refused to indict me and my team for murder. That’s the only way I’d let his dumb ass tat me up. Especially my first time. Because I’ve been planning this bike since I was a little kid and I was still handing my old man tools in our garage as he was building the business.