Spider: A tattoo romance (Rough Ink Book 2)

by MV Ellis

  “I don’t understand where this is coming from.”

  I did. It was a moment of startling, depressing clarity. One I wished I didn’t have to have but deep down knew I needed.

  “It’s coming from me. That letter just reminded me of how utterly fucked up my life is. All these months we’ve been waiting for trial dates, I’ve allowed myself to live in this bubble of fake happiness. I mean, it was real happiness, but I should’ve known it wasn’t reality. It was a temporary high while I played make-believe. Who the fuck was I kidding? Anyway, the bubble just burst, and I’m back with my feet on the ground, where I belong.”

  “Don’t do this. Emi—”

  “No, Chris. I’ve made up my mind, and there’s nothing you can do to change it. The sooner you realize that and get on with your wonderful life, the better it’ll be for both of us.”

  37

  Spider

  I’d always thought of myself as this laid-back, chill guy, maybe a bit too dudebro even, who required a lot to rile him up or piss him off—shit like a guy abusing his girlfriend, holding her hostage, and then taking her to brand her as his property, for example. But listening to Emi’s words, I was angrier than I’d ever been. Even angrier than I’d been with her ex. I was so pissed I couldn’t even see straight, let along think rationally.

  I knew if I tried to reason or argue with Emi—heck, I wasn’t above begging—I was likely to make a bad situation worse. Even in my own head, any of the shit I wanted to say would be like dousing an already burning building in kerosene and walking away while it burned all the way to its foundations. So I did the only logical thing, which was in so many ways completely illogical.

  I stood up and dressed in silence. When I was done, I approached Emi’s chair again, crouching in front of her and waiting for her to meet my eyes. When she still hadn’t moved even a fraction of an inch, I leaned forward and slid my hands into her jet-black mop of bed hair and drew her to me. I aligned my mouth with her ear, kissing her hair before I spoke.

  “I love you.”

  Walking through that door was one the hardest things I’d ever had to do, but I forced myself to put one foot in front of the other until I was out of her apartment and in my car. I drove angrily and pulled up outside the shop exactly how I’d pictured Emi’s festering dick sore of an ex doing the day they came into the studio, jacking my car up across two spaces. I’d probably get a ticket later, but that was the least of my worries. Kota’s smile mutated into a frown when she saw me barging through the studio door, raging bull style.

  “What’s eating you? No, scratch that, what are you even doing here? I thought you had the day off.”

  “Zed here?”

  “Yeah, he’s—”

  I was out of the small reception area before she had a chance to finish her sentence. I tore down the hall and out the back into the garage behind the shop. Zed’s head bobbed up in surprise as I kicked at the cardboard props I’d made for our date the night before, which now seemed like a lifetime ago. He took one look at me and stopped in his tracks.

  He’d agreed to come in to help paint over the scene I’d created, getting it ready for the kids in his outreach program to work on during the coming week.

  “What the fuck’s with you?” He was up his ladder, paint roller held in the air like Excalibur.

  “Everything.”

  “Care to be a little more specific? That’s a big ballpark.”

  “Emi.”

  “And that’s very specific. With the fire in your face, I should’ve guessed as much.” He climbed down from his ladder, sighing loudly. “Tell me.”

  So I did. I recounted our date, skimming over the details my boss, mentor, and friend didn’t need to know, then told him about the letter and Emi’s reaction to it.

  “She’s scared.”

  “I know she is. That bastard terrorized her for years and then threatened to blow her brains out, and that was the last time she saw him. Now she has to get in the witness box and tell the world what he did, with him looking on. It’s only natural for her to be apprehensive. I mean hell, it’s not like I’m looking forward to it, and I’m sure Kota, Jorja, and Kian aren’t either.” I made a mental note to ask Kota if she’d received her court information yet.

  “Not about the case. I mean, sure she’s worried about that, but that’s not what’s caused this flip-out.”

  “I’m pretty sure it was. She was holding the subpoena in her hand.”

  “That was the catalyst, or maybe the last straw, but that wasn’t it.”

  “What the fuck was it, then?”

  “You. The two of you.”

  I scratched at my stubble while I took in what he was saying.

  “You think I did something wrong last night without realizing? I mean, it was my first time at her place, and she hadn’t wanted me to even know where she lived at the start of the night, but then she changed her mind. Do you think she regretted it or something?”

  “It could be something like that, but I doubt it.” He frowned, a deep furrow appearing between his eyebrows.

  “Man, what the fuck, then? I don’t have the patience right now for this talking in riddles bullshit. I get it, you’re older and wiser. Congratulations. Now if you could just put me out of my fucking misery without me having to drag it out of you word by word, that would be most fucking appreciated.”

  “Jesus. She’s really ruffled your feathers, huh?”

  “Something like that. So…?”

  “So speaking as the person who was the Emi in my situation not too long ago, I’d say she’s terrified she’s not good enough for you. Or worse, that she’s bad for you. That you’ll wake up one day and realize what a giant mistake you’ve made by being with her, and that by that point, she’ll be attached because she’s already falling for you. So she’s decided she’d better rip off the Band-Aid now and end it before you do, saving both of you more pain down the track.”

  “Really? That’s what you thought about you and Vivi?” He nodded slowly.

  “What the fuck? For a smart guy, that is some dumb bullshit right there.”

  “I know that. Now. But at the time, not only did I think I was sparing myself a whole bunch of heartache, but I also figured I was doing right by her in not allowing her to get tangled up in the bullcrap mess of my life.”

  “That’s epic.” I couldn’t wrap my head around the warped logic.

  “I’ll say.”

  “But so wrong it’s not even funny. So what made you see sense?” I needed to know what I could do or say to talk Emi down from the ledge.

  “It was a bunch of things, including some wise words spoken by a certain Norse-god-looking motherfucker.”

  I laughed at that, remembering giving him a pep talk when he was being hardheaded and blind about Vivi.

  “Well, I’m sure she’s not in the market for that kind of ‘charm,’ at least not from me, so that’s not an option. What else?”

  “I’ll be honest. It took me way longer to get the memo than it should have, but the advice I gave you at the funeral is still good. You need to be there for her in whatever way you can until her head and heart catch up with each other, even if that means not being there, if you know what I mean?”

  I knew, but I didn’t like it. Putting distance between us felt like the worst of all the options on the table.

  “She doesn’t want to see you right now. I guess she needs time to process what’s going on, and I don’t think it’ll do you any favors to hurry that or interfere with her process. You just have to leave her to do her thing and hope she can feel you sending positive vibes from afar.”

  “That seems like the worst outcome. It’s been less than an hour and I’m already at the end of my rope. How the fuck am I supposed to just sit on my hands and wait? And for how long? What am I even waiting for? A sign from the heavens, an act of God? What? It’s not my way to sit still and do nothing. You know that better than anyone. I like to do shit. Get shit done. Have some kind of con
trol. I like to talk. I want to talk to her.”

  He flicked his wrist my way as if swatting an annoying fly—probably not too far off from the way he thought of me, in fact. Always buzzing around, pissing him off. Most of the time he needed to loosen the fuck up and relax a little. A tiny proportion of the time he had a point, but I wasn’t about to tell him that in a hurry. I preferred to watch his blood boil while I talked shit and he tried not to wring my neck.

  “You talk way too fucking much. Maybe she just needs a little silence. No doubt she’s going through some heavy shit in her head that this letter has stirred up.”

  “I get that, and I want to be there for her through it.”

  “Listen, you may not have noticed, but not everyone’s like you. We don’t all want to hug it out and talk about it. Maybe she’s more like me. She wants to keep her shit hers. It’s not like you’ve known each other long. She doesn’t want to burden you.”

  “It’s no—”

  He waved his paint roller at me again, shutting me down.

  “Again, if she’s anything like me, it won’t be about whether you say she’s a burden or not. It’s not even about how you make her feel—I know you well enough to know you wouldn’t intentionally do anything to suggest that—but that’s the way some of us have been programmed by other people. You can’t undo a lifetime of conditioning with a few kind words and a mind-blowing fuck.”

  That statement immediately dropped a visual of him and Vivi screwing into my mind. As hot as she was, it was the last thing I wanted to think about. I shook my head, trying to dislodge the image.

  “Yeah, it’s hard for people like you and Vivi who’ve grown up in happy homes with supportive parents and families around you to imagine, but it’s not like that for all of us,” he continued.

  It didn’t seem like a good time to mention the real reason I was shaking my head so emphatically, so I let that one slide, and Zed carried on.

  “The trial will be here in the blink of an eye, and whether she knows it now or not, she’ll need support through it. Be there. Unconditionally. That’s it. Like I said, it’s how we react in the bad times that shows people who we really are.”

  “Yeah. Okay. I can do that.” I’d had every intention of supporting her through the trial anyway, so that was in line with my thinking. “Question, though.”

  “Yeah, shoot.” Zed looked me up and down, waiting for my response.

  “Is it normal that this whole thing is making me want to fucking tear the world up? I feel like a goddamn caveman. I just want to break shit.”

  Zed shrugged. “I don’t know what’s normal. Who does? But if it helps, I felt the same with Vivi. So either it’s normal, or we’re both fucked in the head.”

  “Hmmm.” At that point I didn’t know what to think, but I felt a little nuts over Emi, for sure. “So what am I supposed to do while this all plays out?”

  “Well, for me it was to work off as much as I could on a punching bag—I actually couldn’t trust myself not to lose it against an opponent—and when that no longer worked, jerk off until I almost gave myself RSI.”

  “Yeah, that’s not an image I needed in my head.”

  “You’re welcome. Now, unless you’re about to pick up a roller and help me cover over the scene you created for the date of the century, you need to go so I can get it done.”

  I sighed and grabbed the second roller, figuring it was better to put my brain and body to work there than to go home and start the jerkfest I was likely to embark on. We worked in companionable silence, and for once, I didn’t feel the need to fill it with the random contents of my brain, which I was sure was a relief for Zed. He made no secret of the fact that he thought I was too happy all the time and talked way too much.

  He needn’t have worried; there was no chance of my being too happy at that point. Or happy at all. I had a sneaking feeling that all the meat-slapping in the world wouldn’t fix that, though in absence of any other options, I was prepared to try it. Worst-case scenario, I’d get my rocks off, at least. Under the circumstances, that was a better option than any of the other non-Emi solutions on the table.

  38

  Emi

  I must have looked like shit on Monday morning, as I hadn’t been in the office for five minutes when Stacey dragged me from my desk and into the communal kitchen, closing the door behind us and securing it with a dining chair. Then she pointed at another chair.

  “Sit!” She barked the word in such a way that suggested I had little option than to do what she said, so I sat. She pulled up a chair in front of me and sat also.

  “So, you look like crap.” As I suspected. “Has this got anything to do with that gorgeous guy from the night of Sienna’s pre-bachelorette party?”

  Huh? How the fuck did she know about that?

  “Don’t look so shocked. Did you think it would slip under the radar completely that you got hauled out of the bar by a guy who looked like a Greek god? ”

  “Norse.”

  “Hmm?”

  “It’s a Norse god that he looks like, not Greek. It’s the tall, ripped, blond thing. Norse.”

  “Right. Well that’s not the point, here, is it? The point is that you disappeared with him, then sent a message saying you weren’t feeling well, and you’ve never mentioned him or it again.”

  “Why would I? I thought nobody even noticed what went down.”

  “I saw the two of you kissing through the window”—damn—“and waited for you to say something about him, tell me what was going on. I dropped hint after hint”—she did?—“and nothing. I figured if you’d wanted me to know, you’d have told me. So just like everything else in your life I knew you were keeping from me, I let it be and yet again tried hard to bury my perpetual disappointment that you don’t trust me enough to share that side of yourself with me.”

  “I’m sorry, what?”

  “What, what? Do you think I’m stupid or just completely oblivious? It’s clear you have things going on in your life. Serious things. But you’ve never opened up to me about them, so I’ve just learned to accept that despite being friends on some level, you were probably never going to see me as someone you could confide in with that stuff.”

  “Shit. I’m so so—” I stopped short, Chris’s words about constantly apologizing ringing in my head. “I didn’t mean to make you feel that way. In fact, I feel horrible that you ever did. I want you to know that my weirdness was never about you.”

  “I kind of figured, but it still smarts a little when I think too hard about it.”

  “That really sucks.” I could add it to the list of ways I’d failed the various people in my life I cared about. It was getting longer as the days went by.

  “I’ll get over it. In fact, I’m already over it. What sucks more is that you were going through some heavy shit, and I’m guessing you didn’t have many people you felt you could offload to?”

  “Nobody.”

  “Which makes me feel like shit, because it was on the tip of my tongue to just ask you so many times, but I pushed the thought away. I told myself it was for your privacy, yadda, yadda, yadda, but if I’m honest, more than anything, it was pride that drove me to stay away. I wanted you to want to tell me, not to feel like the friendship equivalent of some needy stalker weirdo. Stupid when I say it aloud now, but that’s how I’ve felt all this time.”

  “It’s not stupid, and honestly, I don’t know how I would’ve handled it if you had said anything. But in all likelihood, I would’ve shut you down before you even got half a question out of your mouth. The reason I never said anything was because I didn’t want to talk about it.” I paused for a second. “No, that’s not quite right. I wanted to talk about it, but I also didn’t want anyone else to know. Obviously those two things aren’t possible at the same time.”

  “But now you’re ready to talk?”

  “I don’t know if ready is the right word. You dragged me in here and locked the door, remember. But I’m prepared to, I guess. Willin
g. Kind of.” Stacey’s face was the picture of shock and surprise. Her eyebrows had risen so far I wasn’t sure they’d ever come back down.

  “That’s a big difference from before. What’s changed? Wait, don’t answer that. It’s something to do with the tattooed Norse supermodel dude, isn’t it?”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “Well, at the risk of sounding like the skeevy creeper that I so obviously am, I’ve just kind of been observing your ups and downs and trying to read between the lines of what might be going on. I don’t know if my hunches are right, but seeing you with Thor that night, and then how happy you’ve been since then, I figured that maybe he had something to do with it. So then when I saw you looking more like your sad old sad self again, I figured he might’ve had something to do with that too.”

  “I admit, your instincts are faultless, skeevy or not.”

  “So then the other hunch I had, even before Thor entered stage left, was that Tommy’s no longer on the scene. Was that correct too?”

  “One hundred percent.”

  “If I’m wrong about this, please forgive me. I’ve been making huge assumptions and could easily have put two and two together and come up with zebra, but am I right in thinking that Tommy isn’t an engineer, and his long absence from your life wasn’t due to him working away on oil rigs?”

  Shit.

  My first thought was that if she’d worked out that I was full of crap, it was quite possible that everyone else I’d ever spun my web of lies to had seen right through them as well. I felt like a total moron.

  “Yeah.” My bottom lip started to quiver.

  Even admitting that aloud was more of the truth than I’d ever revealed to anyone apart from the police, my bosses, and Chris. As ever, I felt vulnerable and stripped bare, open to her judgment and pity. On the other hand, having told Chris and him showing me nothing but love as a result gave me strength and confidence I’d never had before.