My curiosity was more than simply piqued.
I followed Dagger out into the lobby, but then I immediately stopped cold. Because, standing there looking expectantly in my direction was Drew, alongside another man I remembered coming to get a tattoo months ago.
Suddenly, I couldn’t breathe.
Then Drew winked, and I doubted I’d ever be able to take a full breath again.
RAVYN LOOKED AT me like I’d just run over her puppy—not exactly a stroke to my ego, but I hadn’t come here for a boost in confidence.
I also hadn’t come for a tattoo, but if it meant getting the chance to talk to her again, I’d absolutely take a seat in the chair and let her etch something into my skin. The place seemed clean—I’d seen a couple of the other tattoo artists taking needles out of packaging—and she and I both knew about my HIV status.
If I was ever going to get a tattoo, this was the place, and she was the artist. I didn’t even need to see any of her work to know it, either.
But she looked like she was about to bolt, her blue eyes shifting between me and Razor before she turned to stare toward a door in the back.
Today, she had on a pair of jeans that hugged her ass in ways that sent my brain into a tailspin along with another brightly colored tank top. I could get used to seeing her in tank tops like that. They showed off her curves and made my mouth water.
Probably not what I should be thinking about at the moment, but I couldn’t help it. Just like I couldn’t stop myself from getting hard from thinking about curling myself around her sexy body again.
Fuck, I was a mess.
“Long time no see,” Razor said, his tone relaxed and cocky, just like always.
The guy was a smooth operator. I was still in shock that he was settled down and married these days, because he’d always been such a player until his Russian ballerina had come onto the scene last summer.
He walked over and planted a kiss on Ravyn’s cheek, a move that startled her enough to keep her from running off. Then he turned her around, one steady hand on the small of her back like he was her best friend in the world, and started leading her into the room she’d just come out of. “My buddy here needs to get some ink, and I told him there was no one better than you.”
Cool as a cucumber, that one. Maybe it wasn’t a bad idea to bring him along, after all.
I followed them in and closed the door to her room behind me.
“What are you doing here?” she demanded once it was just the three of us and no one else could overhear. Or so I assumed. I took a quick glance around, debating the thickness of the walls, not that I could do anything about it if someone overheard us. She was staring straight at me, ignoring my teammate, even though he was the one who’d guided her back here.
I shrugged, trying to play it off. Too bad I’d never been as cool and collected as my teammate. “Getting a tattoo, like Razor said.”
“You don’t have any tattoos.”
Razor popped up a brow. “How does she know that?” he asked. “You said you just met her once, at that meeting you go to.”
I ignored him. He didn’t need to know that I’d fudged the truth. I was only trying to protect Ravyn, anyway. Why should my teammates know I’d hooked up with her? “I don’t have any,” I agreed. “Yet. You can help me correct that.”
“Why do you want a tattoo?”
“Do I have to give you a dissertation on my motivations in order to prove I’m a worthy candidate? I want one. I want you to do it.”
“Bullshit.”
I rolled my eyes. This wasn’t working out the way I’d imagined it.
“Why are you here?” Ravyn asked again.
Hell if I knew, other than the fact that I hadn’t been able to get her out of my head since the moment I’d watched her drive away from the hospital a few days ago. “Don’t tell me I’m the first person who’s ever come in here asking you to get their first tattoo.”
“That’s not what I mean.”
“I know it’s not.”
Razor plopped down on the chair in the middle of the room, propping his elbows up on the metal supply table next to it and resting his chin in his hands, settling in like we were his own private soap opera. He passed his eyes back and forth between us like he’d never witnessed anything more entertaining. Bastard.
“I just…” I dragged a hand through my hair and let out a frustrated sigh, much to Razor’s amusement—there was no missing the delighted gleam in his eye. “I got the sense that you wouldn’t be back to the community center.”
Ravyn blinked a couple of times, her face an unreadable mask.
“And I wanted to see you again.”
Still nothing.
I glared in Razor’s direction, angling my head toward the door in a not-even-remotely-subtle indication that he needed to get the fuck out of here. He wasn’t supposed to stay. I’d only asked him to show me where Ravyn worked so I could come talk to her, but he was supposed to go home to his wife once he brought me here and was sure it was the right place.
He winked in response, his grin as wide as the Mississippi, but he didn’t move an inch. Fucker.
Ignoring his presence was my only option. I’d clean up whatever mess I created later. If needed, I could threaten to rip off his balls and shove them up his ass if he said a word to any of the guys. Something like that.
For now, I focused entirely on Ravyn. “What we did the other day… That’s not my MO. I don’t jump in bed with women I don’t know—”
“Wait, you two hooked up?” Razor cut in, somehow grinning even wider than before.
“—and I definitely don’t just move on like nothing ever happened,” I finished, pretending the son of a bitch wasn’t here. Easier said than done, though.
“You fucking hooked up with a single mom?” Razor continued, but now he sounded kind of pissed. I vaguely remembered his mother had raised him on her own—his father wasn’t in the picture. Of course, he would feel strongly about something like that. Hell, I did, too. Like I’d told Ravyn…that wasn’t the way I did things, single mother or not.
“I didn’t know she was a single mom,” I said feebly.
“I’m not,” she cut in, and both Razor and I turned to question her with our eyes. She didn’t give us the answer we were looking for, though. “You don’t have to feel guilty. It was my idea. No strings, remember?”
The thing was, guilt played no part in this. I wanted there to be strings, not that I could explain that desire. I could blame it on the way my parents raised me, but there was something more to it than simply that. I wanted the chance to get to know her better. To understand what it was that drew me to her.
Don’t get me wrong, the sex had been phenomenal. Better than any I’d had in years, and surely miles better than anything I could expect to have for a long time to come. But it wasn’t just about sex.
The frightened-rabbit look in her eyes—especially during those moments when I’d been inside her and she’d been on the verge of orgasm, and again when we’d arrived at the hospital—was such a startling contrast to the image she presented to the world, with her purple dreads and using her body as an artistic canvas.
But then again, maybe her look achieved the desired effect with most people. She seemed as if she wanted people to stare, to see her boldness, and cower away from her, thinking they could never have the confidence she possessed in spades.
Something told me the bold look was nothing but a show, a front to keep people away. If so, it was having the opposite effect on me.
“No such thing as sex without strings when there’s a single mother involved, sweetheart,” Razor said, and Ravyn’s gorgeous blue eyes shot over to him for the first time since I’d closed the door.
“I’m not a single mother,” she said, but then she clammed up, refusing to explain.
Which was all the explanation I needed. “So you’re with someone,” I bit off. “You cheated with me.” I felt sick to my stomach all of a sudden. For so long, I�
�d been furious with Chelsea and the son of a bitch she’d had her affair with during our marriage. That had eventually fallen off to a sort of numbness. But the idea that I had in any way been on the wrong side of that equation made me hate myself.
Ravyn blinked at me a few times, struggling with keeping her emotionless mask in place. The frightened-rabbit look was inching back into her expression, which left me feeling like an ass. I didn’t want to scare her, damn it. But I sure as fuck didn’t want to be used, either.
I shook my head and ripped open the door, ready to leave without getting either a tattoo or answers, but Ravyn put a hand on my elbow and I stopped. It was just a simple touch, not nearly enough to prevent me from leaving if that was what I really wanted.
But I didn’t turn around.
“I’m not with anyone,” she said quietly. It felt like an eternity before she said anything else—so long I was sure Razor would break out with some stupid wiseass crack to break the tension, because the guy couldn’t handle awkward silences. In fact, there was a part of me hoping he’d get on with it already, because I wasn’t doing so well with the silence, myself. But Ravyn spoke again before Razor could get to it, her voice carrying a hell of a lot more emphatic strength than I could ever recall hearing out of her before. “I’m not a mother.”
“Bullshit,” Razor said, and I spun around to search Ravyn’s eyes. “You were so pregnant you were about to pop when I was here before.”
“I was.” She nodded. “But I’m not a mother. Now, are you here for a tattoo or not?”
I supposed that was the end of that, at least for the time being. If she was willing to give me a tattoo, though, I needed to stay and get one. There was no telling what I might get out of her if given enough time. “Let’s do it. Show me what you can do.”
Suddenly, she was all business, moving over to remove a portfolio from a drawer and hand it to me.
Razor gave me a questioning look that was on the verge of being comical, but I gave him a slight shake of my head. I sure as hell wanted to get the story, probably a hell of a lot more than he did, but pushing wasn’t going to get us any answers.
I needed to chip away at her, a bit at a time, or else she was going to push back so hard there’d be no more forward progress. I flipped through Ravyn’s portfolio, taking it all in. Her work was gorgeous, but not exactly what I had in mind for my first tattoo. It was all too…
“Flowery,” Razor muttered. “Soft colors and shit.”
Not something I could walk into the locker room wearing on my skin, unless I wanted to hear about it for the rest of my life.
“What did she do for you?” I asked.
With no hesitation at all, he dropped his shorts and pointed to the angel with phoenix wings on his thigh. It was a hell of a lot less flowery and…well, pretty…than the ones we’d been looking at in this photo album.
Ravyn took a quick look. “Healed well. So did he tell you the right Russian words, or did you have to rearrange his face?”
He winked at her. “Tori swears Dima told me the right words. No need to murder him. I’m sure his wife appreciates that, too, since they’ve got a new baby and all. But you know all about that.”
She blinked a couple of times and shook her head.
“London’s his wife. The one whose wheelchair you took to the hospital the other day?”
With that, she sobered up instantly, giving a curt nod. “I can do other styles, too,” Ravyn said, back to business.
I wished she still had that playful tone she’d had only moments before, and I wondered what I could do to bring it back.
“Those at the front are all done in the watercolor style, which is what I’m best at. But if you look back here”—she flipped back to the midway point of the massive photo album—“you can see some of the other work I’ve done. My mentor taught me a bit about nearly every style imaginable. I can do traditional, new school, even some trash polka…”
“Trash polka?” I asked, more curious than interested. I’d never heard of it before, and I had no earthly idea what it meant.
Ravyn flipped a few more pages and pointed to some wacky, bold designs in black and red. “They’re similar to my watercolor work in that there aren’t necessarily hard lines and edges, but there’s a lot of saturation. They’re strictly black and red, though, and kind of abstract.”
And they were very appealing to my eye. “You did these?” I asked, running my finger over a combination of a raven, a clock, a gun, and some bold lettering on some guy’s back.
She nodded.
“So could you do something along these lines for me? I’m thinking about a red ribbon…”
“For HIV? Yeah, I could do something with that.” Before she’d even finished speaking, she took out a sketch pad and a pencil and started drawing. “Where do you want it?” she asked, not looking up.
“My biceps?” I suggested. Because I sure as hell hadn’t thought this through. I wasn’t entirely sure I wanted to get a tattoo, but I did want to spend more time here with Ravyn. And maybe see more of what she was all about.
She glanced my way, her gaze falling on my upper arm. “Lift up your sleeve and show me how big you want it and where.”
I did as she asked, and a slow grin came over her face.
“What’s that smile about?” I asked.
“Just got a great idea on how we can show off those guns.” Then she ducked her head down and went back to scratching her pencil over the paper.
Razor snorted, but I didn’t care that he was getting a kick out of this.
Because I’d gotten Ravyn to smile.
I’M NOT A mother.
My own words haunted me while I silently bent my head over Drew and inked the design onto his arm. Haunting or not, they were true. To be a mother, you had to have a child. One that you were responsible for.
Getting pregnant didn’t make me a mother.
Giving birth on the apartment floor on Christmas Eve didn’t make me a mother.
Walking into a hospital and passing my newborn baby into the arms of a nurse before walking out again definitely didn’t check the boxes needed to put me into the Mother category.
I was glad that Drew and his friend were busy talking while I worked, because it meant they were ignoring me, and there was no need for me to keep up a conversation with them. I worked better when I didn’t have to talk, anyway. That allowed me to focus on the art I was creating and not on idle chitchat with someone I might never see again.
“Hunter and Tallie are supposed to be back in town tomorrow,” Razor said, now straddling a folding chair in the corner with it turned around backwards so he could face us, his muscular arms folded over the back providing him with a chin rest.
“How soon do you think Tallie’ll be dragging your wife to garage sales?”
“Tori doesn’t need to be dragged.” Razor winked at me when I made the mistake of glancing up at him. “But I’d guess they’ll be at it by tomorrow if Tallie can find one that soon. And I’m sure Tori intends to take Svetka with them, too.”
“She and Sergei are still here?” Drew asked.
With all of these Russian names, they had to be related in some way to the Russian friend who’d come in with Razor months ago. The new father. Or maybe in some way related to his wife, since apparently she was Russian, too. I had hoped I could just listen in on their conversation and zone out to do my work, but everything they were talking about kept reminding me of London. And the baby. And the hospital. All things I’d rather banish from my mind.
“Tori says they’re going to stick around for about a week before heading back to Siberia. She’s trying to talk Svetka into staying longer.”
“Hell,” Drew said. “They might as well just move out here. Then Svetka could play the full-time grandmother. Dima and Sergei could go back to being best friends. Sergei could play with London’s sled team…”
“Good idea all around, but no one asked the two of us. They should really do that,” Razor add
ed, catching my eye and winking again.
I dipped my head lower and focused on the chunky, solid black plus sign I was filling in, doing my best to tune their words out.
“Spurs said a couple of the new guys should be in by next week,” Razor said. He didn’t seem affronted that I was studiously paying him no attention, or at least doing my best to do so.
But my efforts at ignoring them had come too late, because now my thoughts were racing through my head at breakneck speed. Babies. Hospitals.
Memories.
“Wait,” the nurse called after me. “Come back.”
So I slowed down and let her catch up to me, tears streaking down my cheeks and threatening to freeze to my skin.
We’d had a freak snowstorm just before Christmas. The whole city had shut down for a few days. That was how it always went when there was any frozen precipitation anywhere in the South. Since it usually only happened once or twice a year, it was safer for everyone to stay home than to try to go out in it—southern cities didn’t have the snowplows and other equipment needed to handle it.
The roads had been beyond awful, which was just one more reason I hadn’t made it to the hospital in time. That was the cause of the massive fifteen-car pileup on the interstate, which prevented the ambulances from getting to me. I’d only arrived at the hospital now because Rick insisted on bringing me.
So there I was. In the snow. Trying to get away before my emotions got the best of me, and I allowed them to change my mind for me.
“I have to ask,” she said, huffing for breath in the cold winter air, holding my little boy tight in her arms. I’d wrapped him up in two big, fluffy towels to keep him warm, and she tucked the ends tighter, a natural, motherly move, like it was something she did every day. For a moment, I wondered if she was a baby nurse. That single action was enough to make me breathe somewhat easier. He would be safe here. Safer than he’d be with me.
“This is legal,” I spit out, choking up before I could even finish the single sentence. “A hospital is supposed to be a safe place to—” But then I cut myself off, unable to force out the words surrender a child without falling apart.
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