The Strongest Steel

by Scarlett Cole

  “This being dinner, or this being us in general?” Using his thumb and forefinger, he lifted her chin.

  “Both. It’s not you. Shit, I sound like a cliché. It’s just. Shit … shit…” Tears glazed her eyes.

  “Wanna get out of here so we can talk?”

  “Yes.” She sighed. “Yes, please. I really do.”

  * * *

  They walked down the tiled pathway, the light coating of sand crunching underfoot as they passed the evergreen shrubbery and headed toward the beach. On a rock just off the boardwalk, Trent let go of her hand and unbuckled her shoes. It felt oddly intimate. Surprising. But nice. He slipped off his own, carried both pairs in one hand, offering her the other.

  Taking comfort in the way his hand enveloped hers as they walked slowly to the edge of the water, Harper tried to organize her thoughts. The hustle and bustle of the thriving streets faded the closer they got to the ocean, replaced with the soft shuffle of palm trees and sounds of gentle waves breaking on the sand.

  “Today, I had to write a victim impact statement. I had to relive every detail of what happened and then write about how it affects my life now.” Harper paused, grateful when Trent said nothing and just continued to rub small circles on the inside of her wrist.

  “I ended up looking at the photographs from the hospital and went for a walk down memory-fucking-lane.” Harper let out a frustrated sigh. “Sorry. I don’t usually swear. Well, maybe I do. I don’t know.”

  Trent laughed and pulled her into his strong arms to hug her. “Seriously, darlin’, you never have to apologize to me for that.”

  Walking along, smelling the sea air and hearing the calming whoosh of the waves helped Harper center herself, push herself to keep speaking.

  “It happened four years ago.” She stopped, shaking her head. “I still don’t understand how I allowed myself to get to that place. I’m still mad at me.”

  Trent stopped, then helped her sit in the sand facing the water. He joined her, stretching out his long legs. There was hardly anybody else on the beach, and the few people around were either too far away or too engrossed in their own lives to pay them much attention.

  Harper’s mind raced. How much should she tell him? She still wasn’t sure. Enough to maybe understand where she was coming from—which could also be enough to scare him away.

  “It wasn’t a random stranger,” she began, poking the sand with a small stick. “It was someone I’d been with for two years. My brother’s best friend.”

  The waves lapped slowly up the beach. Harper watched them intently, trying to ignore the sickening feeling growing deep in her chest.

  “They worked together as mechanics at a custom bike shop. My brother introduced us.”

  Harper threw the stick into the water and watched the ebbing tide pull it out to sea. She wiped the sand from her hands onto the sides of her legs.

  She let out a staccato laugh. “Did you know two out of three acts of violence against women in the United States are by someone they know? I’m a walking statistic.”

  Trent put his arm around her shoulder and pulled her toward him. She jolted at the contact, but his arm felt warm against the cold chill that enveloped her.

  “The first year was great. I was finishing up college. Our first date, he bought me an old version of Boggle because my brother had told him I loved word games. He’d pull all kinds of crazy shit. Like on Valentine’s Day, he hacked into the campus computer network and changed all the screensavers to a romantic quote anagram he knew I’d crack. The guy was a computer genius, but somehow couldn’t function in school. The second year … not so much. He started spending less and less time with me.”

  Nathan’s words still stung her. The small digs about life passing her by, soothed with whispered sweet nothings about how much he’d miss her if she didn’t join him, swiftly turned into outright barbs: She cared more about kids at school than him. She was getting old before her time. She was no longer fun to be around.

  She wiggled her toes in the cool sand and sighed, instinctually moving closer to Trent.

  “His behavior became more erratic. I didn’t know what he was doing anymore. He never hurt me physically, but his mood swings and anger dominated our relationship.”

  Harper felt relieved to get it all out there. There was something about sitting on a quiet beach with Trent that made it easier to say. “Then he passed a tipping point. We became more like roommates, and fraught roommates at that.

  “I’m not sure how many women he cheated on me with. In the span of thirty minutes, my whole life changed,” she continued quietly. “It’s hard to figure out where to go from there. Trusting someone is impossible.”

  How had the person who had left a trail of anagram clues to her Christmas gift throughout their condo one year turned into a psychopath? It still didn’t seem real.

  Fleeting memories of deep-dish pizza and beer, a walk along Navy Pier, and of talking until the early hours of the morning brought a sad smile to her face. They’d been good together once. The summer she’d caught that awful stomach bug that had knocked her down, he’d cleaned up when she was sick, held her up as she tried to shower, and washed the bedding every day so she’d have nice, clean sheets to fall into. The day he took her to the Chicago Newberry Library and kissed her, telling her it would be the perfect place for their wedding.

  Awareness of Trent’s strong body alongside hers brought her back to the present. “If the person you loved, who was supposed to have your back…” She laughed sadly at her ironic choice of words. “If you can’t trust that one person, where do you go from there?”

  The uninterrupted view of the constellations was majestic, their brilliance amplified in a cloudless sky the color of black ink. The slow crescendo of waves the perfect soundtrack to the incredibly romantic setting but here she was, reliving her past.

  “Anyway,” she said, dropping her gaze to the sand around her feet, “he’s eligible for parole after only four years because he completed some courses. There’s a hearing. And they want me to attend, to try and articulate to a group of people how badly he has fucked up my life—when I can barely get my own head around it.”

  Trent rubbed her shoulder softly. “What do you want to do?”

  “I don’t want to ever see him again. There’s an out clause. I can write a letter, an impact statement, so I don’t have to go in person, but revisiting it hurts all over again. It feels like I’m getting sucked back in every time I try to break free.”

  He kissed the top of her head. “‘The more a thing is perfect, the more it feels pleasure and pain.’ Dante.” He laughed. “Not to imply that you are a thing, of course. You must be pretty damn perfect, Harper.”

  Harper let go of the breath she was holding. She’d been expecting the usual platitudes. Those simple, yet highly unexpected sentences meant more than any she had heard before. To think how she had misjudged Trent just because of his ink, dismissing tattoo artists as uneducated before she’d ever met one. Teaching 101—never judge a book by its cover but that was exactly what she had done. A ripple of embarrassment threaded through her.

  She turned to look into his eyes, which were as dark as the night sky.

  “You really are a Dante nut, aren’t you?”

  “Roll it out when I need to sound clever, which doesn’t happen too often. Usually I stick to metal lyrics, and I’m pretty sure I can’t think of an appropriate one at the moment. Didn’t think you’d appreciate being likened to a fast machine who kept her engine clean—even if I ended by saying you were the best damn woman I’d ever seen.” He shrugged his shoulders.

  “AC/DC?” Harper laughed. “So, anyway, that’s why I’m a mess. You’re the first, you know.”

  “First what?”

  “The first person I’ve kissed since then.” Embarrassing or not, she might as well put it all out there. She scooped sand into her hand, and watched it sift through her fingers.

  “I’ve been all over the place today, not tha
t I want you to think I’m an emotional wreck.” Tears threatened, but she pushed on. “I say I want to move on, but then when the chance comes, I freeze. I know it’s going to be difficult. I just don’t know why you would want to make that kind of effort.”

  “Want to know what I see?” Trent said close to her ear.

  She turned to look at him. “A crazy head case?”

  He shook his head, and spoke with a quiet firmness. “I see a woman who made it through whatever she had to do to put him away. I see a woman who created a new life for herself somewhere else so she could feel safe. I see a woman who is getting past this one step at a time, doing the best she can, and who, with each step, reclaims a little bit of herself.”

  Her eyes stung with unshed tears. His words warmed her, overwhelmed her.

  “Wanna know what else I see?” Flashing both of his dimples, he cocked an eyebrow, and Harper felt compelled to nod.

  Trent leaned in and breathed into her neck as he spoke.

  “On the surface, and I’m just being honest here, I see a smokin’ hot woman with the most passionate eyes, deep pools that reflect her mood.”

  He nuzzled the sensitive spot under her ear, making her shiver.

  “On the inside, I see a woman who is witty and clever, who is using ten percent of her brain to work in a coffee shop when she is clearly capable of so much more.”

  He moved to kiss just under her jaw as he gently nudged her backward into the sand.

  “And I see a woman I really wanna kiss again, and I’m kinda hoping she’ll let me.”

  He rose above her now, his lips inches away from hers, waiting for her permission. Her heart raced, whether from panic or passion she wasn’t quite sure. She could feel his soft warm breath on her mouth and she shivered.

  “Yes,” Harper whispered. Trent slowly lowered himself and brushed his lips across hers softly as a whisper.

  She felt his hand reach up her side, move along her waist and over her shoulder in a slow trail, and slide into her hair. His eyes remained open, holding her gaze, terrifyingly intimate. He pulled back slightly and studied her.

  “You’re beautiful,” he whispered.

  As his mouth met hers again, she felt the defensive walls of ice inside start to melt a little as she opened up to meet him.

  The soft brush of his tongue across hers sent shivers down her spine. His hand sliding through her hair, his actions becoming more urgent as her tongue moved along his upper lip, desperate to taste him. The pressure of his mouth on hers intensified, sensations flooded to parts of her dormant for too long. She felt his erection against her leg and her body responded, pushing gently against him.

  A soft moan escaped her as he kissed her one more time before he lifted away and raised himself on his forearms.

  “I am seriously crushing on you, Harper Connelly.” He trailed a finger across her forehead and down her nose before running his thumb along her lip.

  He groaned, leaned in for one more kiss before smiling and getting to his feet. He dusted the sand off his seriously fine ass. “Before you totally make me forget we’re on this beach, though,” he said, reaching a hand down to her, “I think it’s time I took you home.”

  Harper grabbed the hand he offered, relishing that she actually craved his touch.

  Chapter Seven

  Trent zoomed in on the logo on the front window, adjusting the lens until the angle was perfect. He smiled as his handiwork came into focus. It had been worth every hour he’d spent finding the right shades of black, silver, and gray. The perfect circle holding the words “Second Circle Tattoos” was simple and bold. Cujo still ripped on him for the days he’d taken fiddling with the font and size of the text. But the image the circle contained—a stylized real heart being ripped apart by tornados of air—was his masterpiece. The contrast of true love and lust against a backdrop of the winds of unquenchable desire was his personal favorite out of all the art he had created.

  He fiddled with the exposure settings to see if he could get more light into the shot, wanting the silver highlights to reflect more. He hated lying to the team about why he was all Annie Leibovitz this morning—he’d told them he wanted new shots for the Web site, though in fact Michael had asked him to bring a series of pictures of the studio with him to LA.

  He checked the image again, liking the contrast between the logo and shining glass. His mom had been, and still was, a Dante nut, an English major with a specialty in Italian poetry. Christ, their home had been filled with graphic images from the texts. He’d grown up learning about Dante’s pilgrimage through Hell. Guided by Virgil, he’d had to go through all nine circles.

  The First Circle, limbo, was for those whose only sin was rejecting Christ and the Church. Boring to a boy who wasn’t remotely religious.

  The Second Circle, however, was lust. Far more interesting to his horny fourteen-year-old self. A place for people who let their appetites sway their reasoning. For those overcome by the need for sensual love in their life. Plenty of people would think lust was worth being punished by a violent storm blowing them backward and forward forever.

  Who didn’t like a bit of sensual love in their life? Trent’s mind wandered back to Harper on the beach. His thoughts over the last twelve hours could definitely land him there.

  Heading back inside, he noticed that Eric and Lia were just wrapping up clients. As he walked back to his office to ditch his jacket, he heard Pixie holler her arrival. For a tiny thing, that girl certainly had pipes.

  Fridays were always busy. Maybe not quite the manic craziness of Saturdays, but still all hands on deck. If he didn’t save his thoughts of Harper for later, he wouldn’t get anything done.

  * * *

  The buzzing surprised her. Harper took a quick look at her phone.

  What you doin’?

  Smiling in the mirror, she carefully finished applying her lipstick, thinking about the person who had inspired this new habit. It was eight o’clock, punching-out time at José’s.

  Just getting ready to go to Drea’s for dinner. You?

  Don’t mention dinner! STARVING! Still at the studio.

  Ouch. Sucks. Be there long?

  Hours yet. Wish you were back on my bed!

  Wow. It would be a lie to say she hadn’t thought exactly the same thing … perhaps without the machine-powered needles ripping up her back.

  Is that the only place? she typed, holding her breath as she hit send.

  Did you just flirt with me?

  Maybe. Obviously doing it wrong if you need to ask. It’s been a while.

  Like it, Harp! We’ll be sexting before you know it. Have fun baby.

  Will think of you when I am eating.

  Cruel woman!

  With a laugh, Harper dropped her phone into her purse. Trent worked so hard. He was practically always at the studio. He hadn’t asked her out on another date yet, but maybe it was her turn to do something nice for him.

  When she opened the door to Second Circle fifteen minutes later, Harper was hit by a wall of sound that nearly knocked her off her feet. What was it with boys and their metal played at a Spinal Tap eleven?

  The studio was a zoo. People waiting to get tattoos, people in the process of getting tattoos, people with people who were getting tattoos. People in various states of undress occupied every corner of the store.

  Looking down at her frayed, white, skinny jeans and pale yellow T-shirt, she felt like a soccer mom who had just wandered into a frat party. Maybe, once more of the tattoo was completed, it would be time for a shopping trip.

  Cujo saw her first and gave her a smile, tilting his head in the direction of the window before returning to the sleeve he was working on.

  As always, Trent had his baseball cap on backward. He was taping a dressing around the upper thigh of a woman who looked old enough to be her mother.

  Taking a deep breath, she walked over to his station. “Couldn’t have you dying of starvation.”

  He started to smile before he loo
ked up. A dimple formed on the side of his cheek as he pressed the rest of the tape down on his client’s thigh.

  Spinning on his stool, he turned to look at her, taking his hat off and smoothing his hair back before putting it back on. He looked at the bag in her hand, his grin widening.

  “Go on back to my office. I’ll be there in a second.”

  Harper used the time it took Trent to finish up with his client to pull the panini and salad out of the bag. She was fighting with the plastic bag containing the cutlery when he walked into the office.

  “You,” he smiled, punctuating the statement with a kiss on her cheek, “are a godsend.” He took a gargantuan bite out of the panini.

  “Who’d finish up my tattoo if you died of hunger?”

  “Mercenary,” he mumbled with his mouth full.

  When she was done opening all of the packages, including the pastries that made his mouth water at the sight of them, she let him grab her arm and pull her down next to him.

  “This place has been crazy all day, so I’ve got like five minutes max before I need to get back out there. Seriously, it was really great of you to do this.”

  By the size of the bites he was taking, he was only going to need three.

  “I wasn’t sure what you liked, so I played it safe.”

  “I’d have inhaled dirt if you’d put it on a sandwich,” Trent said. “I’m seriously that hungry.”

  They sat in comfortable silence as he devoured the rest of the food.

  “That was so freakin’ good. I owe you one, Harp,” he said, leaning forward to put the empty container on the table.

  He picked up a mini éclair and took a bite, flakes of the choux pastry falling onto his Pixies T-shirt. Taking a moment to chew, he inhaled slowly and then turned to look at her. “Open.”

  His easy smile had disappeared. Her heart quickened.

  “Please, open.” His voice roughened. He held the pastry to her lips.