Tattooed Hearts

by Jessie Cooke

  Tattooed Hearts

  A Bad Boy Fighter Romance

  Jessie Cooke

  J. S. Cooke

  Contents

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  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Acknowledgments

  Latest Updates

  Also by Jessie Cooke

  Copyright © 2017 by Jessie Cooke

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

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  1

  Megan

  I sat up in the bed and swung my legs over the side. My feet hit the carpet and a radiating pain ran up from my heels into my calves and all the way up through my thighs. After months of experiencing it, I was still not used to it. The fact that I only weighed ninety-eight pounds meant I had no cushion anywhere any longer, not even in my feet. I’m twenty-six years old, and before I was diagnosed with the big “C”, pain was almost an unknown to me. I reached for the wig that I’d laid on the night table the night before and slapped it onto my bald scalp. My best friend Lillie was the only one who might see me this morning, but even that was too much for me. If these were my last days on earth, I didn’t want my white, bald head to be one of the last things anyone noticed about me.

  I stood up slowly, more used to the shakiness than I was the pain. Holding onto the nightstand I stood still until the wave of dizziness and nausea passed and then I slipped on my robe and made my way out to the kitchen. I moved so slowly these days that the walk down the hallway that took me four steps when I was healthy took several long minutes these days. I went straight to the refrigerator and grabbed a bottle of water out of it. Taking off the lid I stood next to the fridge and downed half of it. I knew as I felt the cool liquid bathing my dry throat that I would regret it as soon as it hit my stomach, but I was too thirsty to care. As soon as I put the lid on the bottle and sat it on the counter my stomach grumbled. I waited next to the sink to see if it would pass or if the water was going to come back up. After a few seconds it settled down and I made my way from there to the pantry. As soon as I opened the pantry door the nausea hit me hard. It wasn’t the water; it was the smell of the food assaulting my sensitive nose. My doctor and Lillie were both always bugging me about eating, but how was I supposed to do that when simply the smell of it made me want to vomit?

  I grabbed a box of saltines and took them to the center island. Pulling up one of the stools I sat down and began to munch on the cracker around the edges like a mouse. The nausea was still there, but it wasn’t growing. Hopefully it would go away once my stomach had something solid to digest. I had an appointment this morning that I wasn’t about to cancel. I sat there munching on the cracker and wondered if the doctor would tell me what I wanted to hear…where do I even begin living my life again?

  I was diagnosed with an aggressive tumor in the center of my brain nine months ago. I’d been having headaches and fatigue was attacking me left and right…but I’d made excuse after excuse to keep from going to the doctor. I was busy. I didn’t have time for a doctor to tell me I was overwhelmed with stress and needed to slow down. I had a flower shop to run and a wedding to plan, and I wasn’t willing to slow down on either.

  My mother raised me on her own while running the flower shop that she’d been left by her parents. Growing up my life was filled with the sights and smells of flowers. I knew how to plant them and make them thrive. I knew their names and varieties, what colors they came in, and how to cut them so they wouldn’t die right away. I attended weddings and funerals and learned how to arrange the flowers for each. I made corsages for Mother’s Day and the prom, and in spite of the fact that Mom and I didn’t have much money I was a happy girl at the end of most days. I had a “normal” childhood, I’d say, right up until “C” came along and threw a wrench in the works. I was sixteen when my mom was diagnosed and seventeen when she died. Instead of locking myself in my room and dying myself the way I’d really wanted to, I arranged the flowers for her funeral. When the funeral was over and the only person I ever really had in the world was in the ground I applied for emancipation, got my GED, and took over the business. For nine years I worked twelve hours a day and now I had the busiest, most popular flower shop in the entire state of Rhode Island. The flower shop literally saved my life but now once again I was fighting for it, and this time I wasn’t sure there was anyone who could save me.

  I took another drink of the water to wash down the crackers. I only allowed myself a sip this time. I stared at a spot on the wall and tried not to picture my mother in those last days. I knew that I couldn’t go out like that. She was weak and helpless and she didn’t even know my name. She spent her last morphine-riddled hours sleeping or babbling incoherently. She was suffering and I should have been happy for her when it was over, but selfishly I was the one that urged her to hold on for so long. Now I sometimes felt like karma was still punishing me, and maybe I deserved it.

  After Mom was gone work became my life, until I met Lillie. She had a zest for life like nothing or no one I’d ever known. Her enthusiasm slowly began to rub off on me, and with her help I was able to realize there was more to life than working around the clock. I was twenty-one years old when I went out on my first date. Over the next three and a half years I dated mostly casually, and then I met Tyler. He and I were both at a florist convention in Vegas and I was taken with him right away. He was charming and sweet and sexy and gorgeous, and I was completely consumed by him and how he made me feel. When I found out that he only lived two hours away from me in Connecticut, I thought it was fate. The fact that his family owned a large wholesale cut flower farm only intensified that feeling. I started buying most of my flowers from them and that gave me more excuses to see him. We started dating and I fell hard and fast. Tyler told me he felt the same way and he proposed to me on my twenty-fifth birthday. It was the happiest day of my life. Lillie had some misgivings about our going so fast and about Tyler in general, but she loves me so she did her best to be happy for us. Things were great…fairy-tale great, I thought, until my diagnosis.

  Tyler was with me when the doctor spoke the words that would alter the course of my life forever. To this day it’s all a little fuzzy in my mind. Words like “tumor” and “glioma” and “very aggressive” stood out. I remember looking at Tyler’s face that day and feeling in my gut that he wasn’t going to stick around. The doctor scheduled me for surgery the next day, and Tyler and I went home together that evening to prepare. He was with me when they rolled me into the operating room…and I told myself I was being silly about him leaving me. Love was about sticking out the good and the bad. My absent father who took off as soon as my mother found out she was pregnant was the exception, not the rule.

  Twelve hours later when I woke up in the recovery room, Lillie was the only one there. By the time I completely recovered from the surgery that had only aggravated the tumor, my fiancé had left me a handwritten note telling me he wished me luck and he hoped I made it but he couldn’t stick around and watch me die. I suppose he worded it nicer than all that. He tried to say it was because he loved me so much and it would kill him to watch me suffer. What I saw was a big bunch of bullshit. He loved himself too much.

  Even after Tyler left I kept on moving forward, because what choice did I r
eally have? That’s not to say I didn’t have nights and days where all I did was cry. It’s not to say I didn’t think about just ending it all and getting it over with. It’s not to say that I didn’t rail against a God I wasn’t even sure existed in the first place…but in spite of it all, I kept going. I did four rounds of chemotherapy. I had six blood transfusions. I had two more surgeries. I had to stop working completely because the smell of the flowers made me sick, and six months after the initial diagnosis I sat in the oncologist’s office and listened to him tell me that the chemo hadn’t worked and the tumor was still growing. Once again all I heard was, “…maybe three months to live…” and “…it’s the only approved treatment we have for this type of tumor…” and then, “…there is a doctor running experimental treatments who would be willing to see you.”

  I left there that day determined to say the hell with it all and just die already. The only thing that stopped me was Lillie. She tried being positive and when that only pissed me off she got mad and did something completely out of character…she reminded me of how much I owed her. Lillie was right out of college when she started working for me. She’d gotten a degree in business, and the job was only supposed to be temporary until she figured out what she wanted to do. We had bonded instantly and she became the closest thing to a sister I would ever have. She also fell in love with the business and five years later she was still with me. When I got so sick that just the smell of the flowers made me violently ill, she stepped up and took over. The business thrived even as I wilted.

  The other thing Lillie did was go to every doctor’s appointment with me. She sat in a chair next to me during my chemo treatments and got me whatever I needed as the poison dripped into my veins. She forced me to eat when I was on the verge of passing out and she made sure I didn’t mix up my pills when I was too out of it to know any better. She never asked for anything in return…until that day. That day she told me I owed it to her to at least try to live.

  So here I am three months later after another horrifying two rounds of chemo hoping that this time she’ll understand when I tell her I can’t do this again. If the chemo didn’t work this time, I will die, period. I’m done.

  I heard Lillie’s bedroom door and seconds later she was at my side. “Crackers? You cannot eat saltines for breakfast. You need energy, especially today.”

  In my most cynical voice I said, “I weighed my choices and decided I’d rather taste the crackers going down than the eggs and toast coming back up.”

  The smile that she’d had on her face when she came out of her room faded. “I’m sorry, honey, are you feeling sick this morning?”

  I feel sick every morning. Whoever decided that putting poison in someone’s body to kill a tumor was a good idea should be shot. I hate the way I feel. I hate my life. I was on the verge of saying all of that out loud when I really looked into Lillie’s green eyes. What I saw there was the hope she’d had since the first day. I saw the hope that I’d lost the ability to cling to. Once I did, every pain became more intense, even the one in my soul. I didn’t want to be the one to take that away from Lillie. I forced as much of a smile as my tired face could handle and said:

  “I’m okay. The crackers helped. I’m sorry I was short with you.”

  She put her arm around my shoulder and her long red ringlets fell in my face as she gave me a light squeeze. It was at that moment that I realized just how lucky I was. She was right next to me, touching me, and yet I didn’t smell a thing. To a “normal” person that might sound like an odd thought. But to me it meant that I had the best friend that ever existed. One of my first thoughts about Lillie when I met her was that she always smelled like coconuts and lemon. I found out later that she was self-conscious about the dark freckles that peppered her pale Irish skin during the summer, and the only thing she’d found to diminish them were the lemons she rubbed on every night. The coconut shampoo she used meant even more to her since it reminded her of the mother she’d lost when she was only seven years old.

  The smell of them both made me sick, so she’d just stopped using them. She uses the “all natural” soap that I buy now, unscented and impossible to work into lather. She does all of that and so much more because she loves me, and some days I forget not to be an ungrateful bitch.

  “Don’t apologize,” she said now. “I can’t even imagine what you’re going through. I have a good feeling about this though, Meggles. I think we’re going to march in there today and the doctor is going to tell us you’ve finally kicked that cancer’s ass.”

  I forced another smile and said, “I’m sure you’re right.” I wasn’t, but I owed it to her to at least pretend. In the first few weeks after the diagnosis I had resolved to make this cancer my bitch, but somewhere along the way the tables turned. I was its bitch now. The cancer owned me. I had a hard time believing it’d ever be willing to let go.

  2

  Six Months Later

  I sent Lillie on a lunch break to meet her boyfriend Dalton, and I was about to sit down in the back and eat my own lunch when I heard the bells jangle out front. With a sigh that came with being the owner of a busy florist shop two days before Valentine’s Day I set the sandwich back into its container, wiped my hands and face, and headed out front. As I passed through the curtain that hung between the front counter and my silent haven in the back, a piece of my soft brown hair fell down into my eyes. With a smile I pushed it back. Only a woman that had experienced being bald would appreciate my downy, annoying hair. I personally loved it with a passion.

  I could just see the bottom of a pair of faded jeans and black boots behind a display of roses that Lillie and I had just set up that morning. “Hi there, can I help you find something?”

  The jeans and boots emerged from behind the display and, God help me, for a second the earth stood completely still on its axis. My heart crashed into my ribcage at breakneck speed as I drank in the sight of him. His dark hair was so inky black that under the fluorescent lights it shone like glass and he had the lightest blue eyes I’d ever seen. The day the doctor told me I was in remission, but at high risk of the tumor growing back at some point in my life, I’d built a wall around my heart. I didn’t date and I rarely allowed myself to look at a man with anything more than an appreciative glance. But I’d be willing to bet my right arm that no red-blooded woman over the age of sixteen could walk by this man on the street without her panties getting just a little bit damp.

  As if the hair and eyes weren’t enough, he had a five o’clock shadow covering his chiseled jaw and his body was pure muscle dipped in ink. The brightly colored tattoos started at his wrists and disappeared underneath the sleeves of his t-shirt, leaving me aching to see the rest. I was trying desperately to keep that wall up when he cheated. He let those intense blue eyes sink into my brown ones and for the next several beats he held my gaze like an old lover. My body was on fire. The wall was crushed underneath those clear blue eyes, and that was even before a slow, sexy smile spread over his face and he revealed two perfect, deep dimples on either side of his mouth. I was honestly having trouble catching my breath and I didn’t even have enough oxygen in my lungs to chastise myself about it. He took a step toward me and I actually thought about running. As stupid as that sounded, I knew that I needed to put as much distance between this man and me as I could. If my legs hadn’t been quivering like they were made of rubber I might have made a break for it. He continued toward me with confident, purposeful strides and stopped in front of the counter…close enough to reach out and touch. I had to look up when he stood that close because he was at least a foot taller than me, and when I tipped my head back I actually had an image of him lowering those full lips and sucking on my neck. What the hell is wrong with me? I’m standing here mutely staring at this stranger and thinking about sex. God, I hope he can’t read my thoughts on my face.

  “Hi there,” he said, parroting what I’d said to him when I was still capable of coherent speech. This time I only nodded, or at least I tho
ught I did. I wasn't sure if I was capable of movement either; I felt like he’d completely paralyzed me. He let that blue gaze travel slowly across my face like he was memorizing it, and as I looked into them it took me way too long to realize he was holding out his right hand. I forced myself to pick up my shaky and possibly sweaty hand and put it in his. Touching this man, even in a handshake was a Very. Bad. Idea. “Are you the owner?” His voice was as deep and sexy as his dimples. I was embarrassed by my muteness, but scared to death to try and speak. As breathlessly as if I’d just ran a marathon I said:

  “Yes.” It was another several beats before I realized he was still waiting. Shit. “Megan Brown,” I said. I wanted to ask his name, but I was afraid once I heard it I’d never be able to close my eyes at night again without screaming it out in ecstasy before morning.

  “I’m Noah Michaelson.” Noah. It couldn’t have been Bob, or Tom, or even John. No, it had to be something as sexy as he was.

  “It’s nice to meet you,” I said. “How can I help you today?” At least my voice was less shaky and it didn’t sound like I’d been working out. I can do this.

  “I need a lot of flowers,” he said.

  “A lot?” Of course he needed a lot of flowers. There was no way this incredible man was single. He probably had six women to buy Valentine’s gifts for.

  “Yeah, they’re for a birthday party. She loved roses, a lot. I need a roomful of them.”

  Shit. He wasn’t just the sexiest man alive, he was the most romantic. I wondered what this woman must be like and look like to warrant that kind of attention from a man like him. Fuck. My wall was dust. “Oh, that’s nice. How big is this room?”