by Lyssa Layne
God, why do I feel like I’m fucking melting again? The AC is running on full blast and unlike every other encounter I’ve had with Lucas lately, today I’m not wearing a hundred layers of clothing. I’m barely wearing one. Of all the days to raid Madi’s closet for a summer dress, today is probably the worst one I could have chosen. I’m never putting off doing laundry ever again.
“Why don’t you come on back. We can take a look at your shoulder and talk about what you want to do to fix it.” I turn back toward the girls. “Anyone hear from Cherry yet?” She’s the youngest of us all and only been working at the shop for a little over a year, but she’s already the best piercer I’ve ever had here. Recently, she’s started working with Sketch and me to start tattooing as well. This would be an excellent teaching case, if for no other reason than I don’t want any alone time with Lucas. At all.
“She called a few minutes ago. Trouble with the old man, can’t come in until later,” Princess fills me in from her corner station where she’s huddled up with Mouth, probably making fun of me.
“Too bad. This would have been a good one for her to work on.” I shrug, acting as though I had no ulterior motive when inquiring about her whereabouts. I nod toward the station in the back beside Sketch to let Lucas know where we’re headed, and he follows me there.
I take my seat and wind up getting a semi-obstructed stare down from my best friend. “You were going to let an intern fix his piece? Are you insane?”
I screw up half my face in response. “I was going to watch her.”
Lucas clears his throat, reminding all of us that he’s still here and can hear everything we’re saying. “Um, I’m starting to not feel so hot about this.”
“Well, there’s still time to back out,” I offer happily, honestly hoping he’ll take me up on it, but he just laughs.
“Forget it, Heartbreaker. No way you’re getting rid of me that easy.”
It’s weird hearing him call me that. It shouldn’t be – people have been calling me Heartbreaker since I was sixteen – but Lucas isn’t people. He’s Lucas. And he shouldn’t call me that.
I smirk. “It was worth a shot.”
“You know, I talked to Memphis last night. I feel like maybe he should have warned me about your girls here. They’re a little scary.” He chuckles softly, but given his deep voice it sounds raspy and hot as hell.
“Probably.” I laugh. “He must think pretty highly of you not to. Either that or he hates your ass and hopes an afternoon here with us will be hell for you.”
“He definitely doesn’t hate me,” he assures me, in his annoyingly confident way.
“I know.” I search the top drawer for a pad of paper I haven’t already scribbled on and sit back in my seat.
“Is it that obvious that I’m not in hell right now?” He flashes me an all too familiar grin. It’s the kind that sends heat rushing to my face and makes me temporarily forget ninety percent of my vocabulary. He really needs to stop doing that.
To buy myself time and give the blood in my system a chance to return to its regular process of circulation, I turn my head and pretend to look for a pen until I come up with a semi-witty response I can deem acceptable.
“Purgatory can be deceiving.” I’m fairly certain it’s safe to face him again. “But you’re right, if Memphis really didn’t like you, he would have told you to go across town and have blind as a bat Bart work on you instead.” I like Bart well enough, but I’m pretty sure minors and drunks are the only ones still keeping him in business.
I notice Lucas drop a guilty glance toward his left bicep and I bite back a snide smile, realizing he’s already familiar with Bart’s work.
“Don’t worry, I can fix that too.” Pen and paper in hand, I exhale loudly. “But first, let’s take a look at the damage. Time to take off the shirt and give me a peek at that tat on your back.” Given his constant need to hit on me regardless of how uncomfortable it makes me or how inappropriate it is, I fully expect him to make ample use of his dangerously adorable dimples while making some cocky comment about how he’s more than happy to get naked with me. But, to my surprise, and slight disappointment, he’s more mature than I am and simply slips off the cotton shirt and drapes it over his knee.
For the last five minutes I’ve done everything within my power to avoid looking at him. Now, that’s not exactly an option, and I can tell half a second into viewing his tight, toned torso again that my instincts to look anywhere but at him were dead on. He’s fucking beautiful and my eyes can’t help but drink him in one delicious drop at a time.
I don’t know how long I’ve been staring when I finally register that I’m supposed to be checking out his shoulder…not his abs. Or that torturous V that disappears right below the waistband of his low hanging jeans. The boy needs to start wearing a belt, for my sake.
I cough, choking on my own spit. It could be worse. I could be wiping drool from my chin.
“You alright there?” He reaches over to pat my back.
“Uh-huh.” There’s no way I’m looking him in the eyes. Not now, probably not ever again. “Let’s see what’s happening back here.” I roll my stool around the chair he’s sitting on and I feel instantly cooler, no longer burning under the heat of his gaze. Of course, it doesn’t hurt either that I’m right beneath the AC vent now.
“Wow. This is pretty shitty looking, and not just because of the scarring. Who did this piece?” It’s amateur at best. My guess, some jackass who shows up to tat teens in their mom’s kitchen when no one else is home. It’s not even Bart bad. It’s horrendous.
“Some dude Memphis knew. I know it’s shit work, but I was a day away from being eighteen and I paid fifty bucks for it. I wasn’t expecting much.”
I sigh, shaking my head at the abomination on his shoulder. “I would have waited another day. Also, you should stop being friends with Memphis. I don’t think he likes you after all. Either that, or he’s head-butted too many bulls to know better anymore.”
He laughs. “Must be the bulls.”
“Must be.” I release a deep breath. Things are finally starting to feel a little normal between us again.
Lucas
The next twenty minutes or so pass in silence while she examines my scarred skin and evaluates the ink half covering it. She doesn’t say anything at all when she starts sketching a rough design on her notepad while I watch her, equally tightlipped. It’s better than what my mouth was doing before, when the words were just sort of shooting out of it. It’s not like I have a hard time talking to women. I’m not stupid. I know the sort of impression I make when I first show up. I’m tall, I work out like it’s a second religion and the military instilled a strong belief in always presenting myself at my best. Plus, I have the added benefit of taking after my grandfather in the looks department. I’ve been told the man had a wife who needed to beat the other women away with a stick just to land him. I’ve also been told I have his green eyes and smile often enough to know some of his more handsome features trickled down to me. I’m not arrogant though. I don’t expect that initial interest in my looks to get me far. I’ve got schmoozy charm too, compliments of my father, but I hate it. Not that any of it matters a damn with Liv. She’s known me since I was eleven, saw me through puberty. Then she disappeared off the face of the earth until our paths crossed again five years ago, under the worst possible circumstances, but it didn’t matter. The shift happened. We were both adults. Finally. My attraction to her was no longer one-sided, even if it still wasn’t welcomed.
“What about something like this? I’ll clean it up some of course, but this gives you a rough idea of how I could implement what’s already there and turn it into a bigger, more dramatic piece.” She hands me her notepad and I’m actually speechless. She didn’t ask me one single question about the design; didn’t ask if it meant anything beyond the stupid decision Memphis and I made to get a tattoo together when we were still minors, or whether I wanted to keep the original or go for something compl
etely new, and it doesn’t matter. She nailed it. Nailed it in a way I didn’t even know could be done.
“Wow.” I run one hand through my hair, rubbing my scalp as if that will somehow help reactivate my brain below it. “I don’t know…how did you…it’s perfect.”
She smiles, and it’s uncharacteristically sweet. “And, it’ll still match the one Memphis has.”
“He told me you’d blow me away with your design, but I didn’t expect this. I don’t even know what I was expecting. “
She twists her fingers back and forth in her lap, a sort of quiet sadness moving in over her. I remember it. I’ve seen it before. “He came to see me the night he heard your Humvee was hit.” She shakes her head, her lips pressed into a thin line. “Of course, it wasn’t until I saw your tat the other day that I realized it was you. I still can’t believe it. No one ever told me.”
“I don’t think my dad told anyone. Military notified him when it happened. He called me a few days later, told me not to bother calling home, just because I was hurt. If I couldn’t manage to keep my mother informed of my wellbeing, I had no business worrying her now when I’d gotten myself blown up.” I snort. My father is a real class act behind closed doors.
Liv looks like she’s about to go off on a rant, then swallows it down with a fierceness in her eyes that would scare even my old man.
“Memphis came in like a man on a mission that night. He said he needed something stronger, something powerful enough to save a soldier. I worked on it for seven hours straight. He wouldn’t leave until it was done. I think he felt helpless and completely out of his element for the first time in a really long while and it scared him. I mean, it’s Memphis. He’s a fighter. Fearless. But this was the only thing he could think to do for you that night.”
Ironic, really, that my dragon being destroyed is essentially what brought his to life. Liv took the small, generic tattoo we’d both gotten the night before we both got the hell out of Dodge with the intention of never looking back and turned it into a majestic masterpiece that spanned over two thirds of his back. And now she’s about to do the same thing for me.
“When do you think you’d be able to get to work on it?” I’ve never had anything this intricate or this artistic done before, but I’m assuming she’ll need some time to finish up the design before she can get started putting it on my skin.
She shrugs. “Twenty minutes?” She stands from her chair to peer over the divider and toward the front of the shop. “Anyone make more coffee yet?”
“Percolating as we speak,” the blonde with the Johnny Bravo hair shouts back. “Your super Spidey senses must be slacking. Usually you can hear that shit from a mile away.”
“Or smell it.” The girl Liv referred to as Princess earlier giggles and I get a sudden sense as to how she acquired the nickname. There’s something stereotypically prissy and girly about her. Princess fits. Of course, this makes me wonder what they call Johnny Bravo, but I don’t ask, because I’m pretty sure the answer’s not sweet, or prissy, or girly. Not to mention likely to come with a punch to some part of my face it the words come out wrong.
“Excuse me for being a little distracted,” Liv huffs, slamming her notepad down on her desk.
“Since when does a little bare flesh get you all hot and bothered?” Princess continues to tease her.
“It doesn’t. But Marcus and his bullshit usually do the trick.” As soon as she says it, her head whips back toward me. She didn’t mean to use his name in front of me.
“Marcus is back?”
“I’m handling it.” She glares at Princess, as if it’s her fault Liv slipped up and forgot to call him dipshit, a codename which now seems glaringly obvious.
“Does Madi know?”
She scoffs haughtily. “Of course she knows. Just because I haven’t sent out a newsletter to your entire family, doesn’t mean I’m keeping things from my niece. She’s seventeen. She’s old enough to understand the unfortunate truths about her fucking sperm donor.”
“What does he want?” Because Marcus always wants something, and usually whatever it is winds up costing someone else big time.
She rolls her stool back toward her desk, pretending to busy herself with organizing her work space, something from the looks of it she never really does. “He’s here for his inheritance.”
“What are you talking about? I thought your father left everything to you.” I remember. I was there the night she found out. It’s what triggered her meltdown.
“He left me the house. Everything else was only mine as long as Marcus didn’t come to claim it. He has rights to half of everything, and right now, he’s interpreting half as the warehouse and parking lot out back.” She slams her pen into the jar on the corner. She’s done talking about this. For now. I fully intend to revisit the issue.
Marcus is dangerous. There’s no way in hell I’m letting Liv deal with him on her own. Brother or not, he’ll take her down without even blinking. I learned that when my aunt died of an overdose in the backseat of his fucking car while he was standing less than three feet away, busy wheeling and dealing with the drug dealer who supplied her.
“You said there was coffee?” It’s the only thing I can think to say that will take us both out of the ugly past and bring us back to the present. It’s still got Marcus in it, but it’s a hell of lot prettier when I’m sitting here looking at her.
She sighs and even smiles slightly. “There’s always coffee.”
CHAPTER SIX
Heartbreaker
I could kick myself. I can’t believe I let slip that Marcus is in town. All I need is for Pru to work herself into a tizzy over the news. It doesn’t thrill me either having him here, but I can’t do anything about it. He has just as much of a right to be here as I do, only I have a hell of a lot more to lose if things go bad for him than he does. So, I’m sitting tight. Watching him. And I’m not rocking the fucking boat, because getting screwed over by Marcus is basically a given, but getting screwed on purpose because he’s pissed is a hell I’m not equipped to survive. Well, I am. My business is not.
“So, tell me how you and Memphis know each other.” It’s the first thing I’ve said since I first started working on his shoulder nearly half an hour ago. I’ve been busy stewing in silence, and Lucas, in all of his annoying understanding, let me.
“We’ve known each other since we were kids. Parents have been friends since way back when, dads worked together at the same law firm when mine was still practicing…but we never really had much use for one another until the week of graduation.”
I adjust my hand on his skin as I continue to work on the new outline. “Oh, yeah? What changed at graduation?”
I can feel his muscles tighten as if he’s fought the urge to shrug. I’m glad he did, considering I’ve got a needle spitting ink moving over his shoulder as we speak. I don’t really want to mess up my masterpiece because he’s doing something as stupid as shrugging.
Then his body relaxes again, having dodged that bullet, and he continues, “We were both in a really fucked up way, so when our paths crossed at the country club for the graduation party of some poor schmuck whose parents our parents knew, we both wound up getting shitfaced in the parking lot with a keg we swiped from one of the bar stations. By the end of the night, we’d determined that the easiest way to solve both of our troubles would be to just get the hell out of town and away from everything here dragging us under. We were drunk when we concluded this, of course…but that didn’t stop us. Ten days later, on my eighteenth birthday, I marched straight into the recruiter’s office. Same day, Memphis loaded up his pickup and took off for Wyoming where his grandfather knew a guy that could put him to work. We’ve been best friends ever since, even though we haven’t been in the same place for more than a few days at a time in seven years.”
“I can see how that would bond you two. That and getting inked by the same amateur in his mom’s kitchen.”
He grins. “Yeah. And that.” He paus
es, then, “So, how do you know Memphis?”
I knew the question would come, and I could give him a shit answer that would make total sense – I own a tattoo shop; he has a boatload of tattoos – but I can’t get myself to do it.
“Riot.”
He gets quiet. It’s probably not the answer he was expecting. “You knew his girlfriend?”
I glance over at Sketch’s station. She’s not in it. She’s at the other end of the shop, busy bullshitting with Princess. It’s good. I don’t want her to hear this conversation. We don’t talk about Riot unless she brings it up. That’s the rule.
“She’s Sketch’s sister.”
I can hear Lucas exhale with force. “Shit. I didn’t know that.”
“Why would you?” I’m still wrapping my brain around how much our worlds have overlapped without my knowing it over the years. His best friend dated my best friend’s sister. It’s weird. It also reminds me of the gap in our ages, because Riot was a baby back then. Not that I needed reminding. “Sketch was long out of the house by the time you knew Riot, and besides, it’s not like you’d ever know they were related by looking at them.”
He laughs. He’s probably thinking the same thing. “Are you sure one of them isn’t adopted?”
“Pretty sure.” Sketch hoped for a long time, but all of her detective work always came back with the same results. Her mother had actually given birth to her. There was no way around it. “But enough about them, let’s get back to talking about you.” I don’t even care if he misconstrues my desires to hear more about him as some sort of interest. I can’t be talking about Riot when Sketch walks back over this way, and that’s just a matter of time.
“Were we talking about me?” He sounds doubtful, and I can see why. I’ve been making it a point to talk about anything and everything that doesn’t lead back to either one of us.
“You were telling me why you decided to join the army.”