The Devil's Tattoo

by Nicole R. Taylor

  I couldn't help arching my back, pressing myself into his hands, moaning into his mouth. This was going way too fast, but I couldn't stop myself. I was beyond stopping myself. Everywhere he touched burned. I was lost.

  My hands found the hem of his board shorts of their own accord and slid underneath, eliciting a sharp gasp for their effort. God, all this time I had wanted him, I never knew it would feel like this. So utterly uncontrollable.

  He buried his face into the crook of my neck and trailed kisses up towards my ear making my whole body tingle and I wanted him closer. Inside. I would have done anything.

  "Zoe, baby…"

  My eyes snapped open and suddenly I felt like I was back there. That one little word pulled me back into my reality so fast it was like it had given me whiplash. Back into the life where I didn't trust anyone. Pain from a long time ago shot up my right arm and I bit down hard on my lip. Automatically, I pushed my palms against Will's chest and his hands dropped from me, the phantom pain subsiding.

  "Zoe?" Will was looking at me, a frown creasing his forehead.

  A bead of water trailed down his cheek from his wet hair and I stared at that, because it was better than looking him in the eye. So close, yet so far.

  "Zoe?" he said again and it was enough to push me into action. He still had me against the mirror, so I wriggled away from him, picking up the top half of my bathers, an arm across my chest.

  "I can't," I said thinly, not trusting myself to look at him. If I looked at him he would see. We're in my hotel room, so I walked out and grabbed a t-shirt and dragged a pair jeans on, tugging my boots onto my feet.

  "Zoe?" Will had followed me. "Did I do something wrong? I'm sorry, I…"

  "I'm sorry, I can't," I said, picking up my phone and room key. "It's not you." I knew this was probably a stupid thing to do, but I couldn't stop myself. It's like a default setting with me. Things get good so go and shit all over it.

  "Zoe," he pleaded with me again. "What just happened?"

  I went to walk past, aiming for the door, but he grabbed my arm, forcing me to look at him. "I know a runner when I see one, Zoe." He said it like he knew, but I tried to ignore it. I just needed to get away and think about this.

  I felt tears stinging behind my eyes, threatening to pool and I tore my arm away. "I can't."

  He just stared at me with a mixture of hurt and disbelief and didn't try to stop me again.

  It's not until I was out the front of the hotel next to the taxi rank that I realised I had to get as far away as I could. No one else was waiting, so I opened the back passenger door of the first car.

  "You free?"

  The driver nodded and I slid inside.

  "Where to, love?" he asked and I faltered.

  "Is there a museum near here?" I asked. A museum would be quiet.

  "Yeah, there's an art gallery not too far."

  "Okay," I said before I lost my nerve, "take me there."

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Will

  I watched the door close behind Zoe with a look of disbelief. What the hell just happened?

  My lips burnt with the memory of her kiss. My entire body seared. I sat on the edge of the bed, my hair still dripping and took in heaving breaths, calming myself down.

  Had I pushed her too far too fast? When she'd stood over me like that, I couldn't control myself anymore. I had to have her. If I didn't kiss her right then, I would have exploded. She'd kissed me back, her hands had been all over me.

  Had I hurt her? I wasn't really dressed appropriately for chasing her through the hotel and by the way she'd run out, she didn't want me to. She said she couldn't, that it wasn't me, but I couldn't help but feel that I'd done something. This whole thing hadn't gone the way I'd hoped.

  Right now, there was only one thing I could do. I left Zoe's hotel room and went back out to the pool where everyone was still horsing around enjoying the sunshine.

  When I caught Dee's eye his smile fell. Gesturing to him, he came over, a scowl firmly plastered on his face.

  "I don't like that look on your face, Will."

  "It's Zoe," I started, not sure how to say it.

  "Where is she?"

  "She ran off... I..." I didn't get a chance to finish what I was trying to say. Dee pushed me hard against the wall, his expression dark.

  "What did you do to her?" he hissed.

  "Nothing," I spat, shoving him away. "I kissed her. That's all."

  "And she just ran off? Dude."

  "It's not funny, Dee. She freaked the fuck out and ran. I don't know where she went." I'm almost at the point of panicking myself.

  Dee frowned as if he understood her reaction.

  "What is it?" I asked. "Did something happen to her? Did I do something wrong?"

  "I have to go find her," Dee said, ignoring me.

  "Look," I said, running a hand over my face. "I care about her. A lot. The last thing I want is to hurt her."

  "Mate..." he began, but I cut him off.

  "I don't know what I did, but I'm afraid..."

  "Did she say where she was going?"

  "No. She just bolted."

  Dee regarded me for a moment, his expression conflicted. He obviously was torn between helping Zoe and letting me into their little world. "Look, I'm the first to admit that I thought you were a douche. I mean, you didn't help, but I believe you. I'm going to find her, but I think it's better you stay away for now."

  "Why?"

  "She'd probably kill me if she knew I was telling you this, but she's attracted to you. Has been for ages. She's been through a lot of crap in the last few years and I think the thought of you scares the shit outta her."

  "Dee..."

  "Mate, all I'm saying is just to give her a little space. Let me talk to her. I'll bring her back."

  "I can't just leave her," I argued.

  "Trust me." He put a hand on my shoulder to stop me from following.

  Grinding my teeth, I said, "I'd do anything for her. Anything. If you say she needs space, I don't like it, but I'll give her space."

  Dee sighed, his demeanour changing. "She's lucky to have someone like you who cares for her. You're alright."

  "I'm choosing to take that as a compliment," I said, thinly.

  He clapped me on the shoulder and left the pool, my head sagging. I couldn't face the others and their assumptions about what had happened, so I went back to my room to wait.

  Watching Dee leave without me was the hardest thing I'd ever had to do. Knowing that Zoe was hurting and not being able to do anything about it tore my heart in two. And the possibility that I'd done something to cause it cut deep.

  I just had to be patient and wait.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  ZOE

  Turned out the art gallery I was dropped off at was the National Gallery of Australia. I wandered through the collections, hardly taking in anything. The one saving grace of this place was that it was quiet like I'd hoped it would be. Being a weekday, not that many people were around. I didn't want to see anyone. Not even a bunch of strangers.

  Wandering into the Impressionist gallery, I stopped in front of a Monet painting of a haystack and stared at all the little brushstrokes, picking out the individual colours. I probably stood there looking like a zombie for a full fifteen minutes before I sat on the bench behind me. Luckily, the room was empty.

  I gathered it had been about forty-five minutes since I'd fled. What the hell had happened? My past had come crashing down so fast it had almost suffocated me. Things had been so good lately. So good in fact, all that crap had started to become a tiny blip on my radar. Now, it was the only thing on it.

  I couldn't do it. I couldn't. Wrapping my arms around my stomach, I tried to forget the feeling of Will's hands on me. His lips. His kiss. But I burned with the memory of it. I also burned with another memory.

  I wasn't going back there. So, I'd ran.

  My phone began to ring and it was shrill in the silence, making me jump. I fumbled i
t out of my jeans pocket and saw that is was Dee calling. Will would have said something to him. He didn't have my number.

  I pressed the green accept icon and pressed the phone to my ear.

  "Zoe?" Dee sounded frantic.

  "Yeah," I breathed, any energy I had suddenly fleeing the scene.

  "Are you okay?"

  I wanted to shrug, but it wouldn't have translated well on a phone call. Instead I grunted.

  "What happened?"

  "I can't."

  "He's worried about you, Zoe. So am I."

  "What did you say?" I asked thinly, the accusation clear in my voice.

  "Nothing. It's not my place to tell him anything."

  "You better not have."

  "Zoe, come back. He cares for you. We all do. Right now you're scaring the shit outta me."

  "I can't right now."

  "At least tell me where you are so I can come sit with you."

  "I can't keep draining your life, Dee. It's not fair."

  "Maybe not, but I want to. I love you, you know." The silence was deafening.

  "I'm at the National Gallery," I said numbly.

  "Where are you inside?"

  "I'm looking at Monet's Haystacks."

  "Don't move, I'm coming."

  I let the phone drop into my lap and watched the call disconnect.

  You know, what they say in books and movies, how people fall in love and it consumes them? I never believed it. Not for one second. That kind of love? I tried and tried and never found it and I can't believe anymore. It just hurts too much.

  My one true love is this silly band I'm part of. The Devil's Tattoo. And this Will Strickland thing? That was more trouble than it was worth. It would consume me and leave me broken again. I was fooling myself that I could go on and not have shit happen again. I wasn't going back there. I would never go back. Ever.

  We got through our show in Canberra the next night without incident. It wasn't one of our best, but I got up there and played and did my thing. The moment we finished, Dee let me go back to the hotel, telling me he would take care of our stuff. I was so thoroughly embarrassed, angry and overwhelmed after my freak out, I couldn't face anyone and hightailed it.

  Thankfully, Will left me alone. I knew Dee had something to do with it, but I didn't question anything. I just put my head down and went through the motions. The day before, Dee had sat with me at the art gallery in silence for an hour before I worked up the courage to go back. He did so much for me and I seemed to give him so little… I'd find a way to make it up to him. I couldn't keep this up.

  The next day we had another bus ride to endure. Simone sat with me in the car park as the trailer was secured and I stared at the asphalt.

  "Is there anything I can do?" she asked.

  I shook my head. "I just need some time."

  "Do you wanna ride with me today?"

  I looked up at her hopefully and she smiled.

  "Dean?" she called out and he wandered over, hands in his pockets. "Do you mind if Zoe rides with me today?"

  "I'll hang with the guys in the bus," Dean said, patting me on the shoulder.

  I didn't have it in me to argue as he wandered off to where I knew the guys were standing, loading up the last of the gear. I wanted to get away from Will. After running out on him like that, I couldn't look him in the face. Not yet.

  I had to apologise to him eventually. I had to tell him I couldn't… I wasn't ready for that yet. I'd made it so glaringly obvious.

  My phone buzzed in my hand and I looked at the text that had just appeared from Dee. I knew he was watching us from across the car park, but I was determined not to look.

  You okay? Do I need to smite anyone? xx

  I smiled a little at his reference to our first show, when I'd asked him to smite Will for being such a shameless man-whore. I thought Dee had been too drunk to remember. Apparently not.

  Not yet, I texted back.

  "Ready to go?" Simone asked.

  I folded myself into the front passenger seat and sunk into my hair as we followed the bus to our next destination.

  "Do you want to talk about it?" Simone asked once we were out on the open highway.

  "I'm sorry," I said. "I don't really have the strength to talk about much right now."

  "Okay," she replied, and I could hear the unmistakable note of concern in her voice. "But, I'm here if you want to."

  "I know. I appreciate it." The radio was playing softly, just loud enough to be heard over the road noise, but it was still painfully silent. "What's going on with you and Chris?" I asked it as much to fill the void as to try and come outside myself again.

  Simone glanced at me with a small smile and looked back out on the road. "We had a talk last night after the gig."

  "And?"

  "We talked."

  "About?"

  By the way her face reddened, I knew they must have come at least a little clean with each other. "Did you tell him?"

  "Yeah," she sighed.

  "Did he tell you?"

  "Not in so many words, but we're going to hang out more. See what happens."

  "That's good right?"

  "I suppose."

  "It's a step in the right direction," I countered her defeated sounding tone.

  "Yeah, but it's still friend zone material."

  I sunk back down in the seat and wondered if it was better if I remained back in the friend zone with Will. Then I remembered how I had struggled against it. Then I remembered my reaction to getting what I had tried to bury away inside my broken shell. When I couldn't avoid speaking to him anymore, how would I play it? Apologise and clamp down the ice walls again.

  "Chris is shy," I said, squashing my thoughts back down into the pit of my stomach. "He's a good guy and probably doesn't want to stuff things up."

  Simone's only response was to glance at me with a frown.

  "When I talked with him, he said he didn't know what to do. He just doesn't know what to say, so maybe it's a good thing. Hanging out."

  "Yeah," she sighed in reply. "The problem is, I'm just so damn impatient."

  It was like a light bulb flashed over my head when I heard those words. Maybe that was part of my problem? I'd crushed on Will for months, but I hadn't really got to know him that well outside of the band. It had only been three weeks. Three weeks in close proximity, but that was such a short amount of time and for someone like me, maybe it was too fast to jump into any kind of relationship above friends. Maybe that was what had triggered my reaction?

  Or maybe life had just broken me beyond repair. Maybe I wasn't meant to fall in love ever again. Maybe this was it.

  That night, we had another free one. I hid in the hotel room and ordered room service like the coward I was. I was still rooming with Dee and was thankful he was the only one who saw me like this. Behind closed doors, I had come apart. I couldn't help thinking that I was selfish, relying on him so much. I was selfish. As I'd thought that morning, I had to make it up to him, but I had no idea how.

  I could think of worse things than rooming with Dee. Like a hole in the head. That was worse. Sharing with him wasn't bad, he was my best friend after all, so it wasn't weird in the slightest. It didn't matter that I wore boy short underwear and a tank top to bed. He'd seen it all before and we were firmly in the friend zone. In fact, we were concreted there.

  The only thing that did bother me was that he flung his dirty clothes everywhere and left his damp towel on the floor. If it wasn’t for the hotel housekeeping on the nights we stayed more than once, I'd go stark raving mad.

  It was around eleven when Dee came back to the room. He took one look at me and lay down beside my rumpled form on the bed.

  "The guys wanna know if you're okay," he said.

  I shrugged. "I don't know."

  "C'mere," he mumbled, pulling me into a hug.

  We lay like that for a while in silence until I had to say something. "I'm sorry."

  "What for?"

  "I keep
doing this to you."

  "Doing what?" he sounded confused.

  "Falling apart."

  "Life wasn't meant to be easy, Zo."

  "I know."

  "You have to talk to him."

  "I will. Tomorrow."

  "Okay," he said. "Well, I'm just in the next bed if you need me, okay?"

  He slid into his own bed, and in true Dee fashion, he was asleep in minutes. But for me, it didn't come easy. When I finally managed to drift off, it was headfirst into a dream. You know that place where you still feel wide awake, but you're in a weird place and you know it isn't real? That's where I was and I couldn't do anything about it.

  The apartment I used to live in was made from brown brick and the stairs that led up to our floor were concreted. I'd run up and down them a million times. Carried boxes and groceries. For two years, I'd gone out and come home without a care in the world. That was, until the day I had run to get away. My face throbbed with unshed tears and the promise of a black bruise swelling up against my pale skin.

  "Get away from me!" I heard myself shriek.

  A strong hand grasped my upper arm, fingers biting into my flesh, another bruise added to the list. I had been happy. So happy, I'd been blind.

  "Don't fucking touch me."

  The hand let go and I wanted to run down those stairs, the stairs I had walked up and down a thousand million times. I didn't need to run. I didn't need to walk. There was a hand on my back that would help me get to the bottom faster than I could have ever let my legs carry me.

  The ground came rushing up towards my face and I let out a scream, like the sound of my own terror would stop my forward momentum.

  "Zoe," came the sound of a voice. It was small, like it came from a far away place and it took a long minute for it to register that it wasn't a part of my nightmare. My eyes snapped open and I gasped for air, my skin hot and sticky with sweat.

  "Zoe, fucking hell." A hand was on my shoulder and another came down on my forehead.

  "Dee?" I rasped.

  "It was just a dream," he said, his voice full of panic.