by Jamie Canosa
I scanned the depictions of gothic crosses and reapers and snakes and swords and broken hearts. I wasn’t convinced Caulder was right, but I was willing to go on a little faith. “Okay.”
“You’re sure? This is what you want?”
“Yes. I’m sure. Really, Cal.” He’d only asked me about five-hundred times on the ride over.
“Alright. Here we go.”
Behind the counter was a bald man with enormous holes in each earlobe. He had tats covering both arms as far as I could see and some peeking up from beneath his shirt collar. A bit much for my taste, but I couldn’t help being intrigued. In a welcome contrast to the smoky black dragon wrapping around his left forearm and the blood dripping skull on his right, he was actually a really nice guy.
Glancing at the appointment book, he smiled at me. “Jade, I assume?”
“Mm-hmm.”
“Well, I’m Steve and I’ll be your artist for the day.” He had a bit of an accent that I couldn’t place, but it distracted me enough to ease some of my nerves. “Just a guess, but first time?”
“Mm-hmm.” Evidently not enough to form any actual words, though.
Caulder and Steve shared a laugh that I couldn’t quite find the humor in and then he pushed open a door beside the counter. “It’s a little less . . . overwhelming, back here.”
Caulder stayed by my side as Steve led us into a back room that was bright with plain white walls covered with a few posters here and there. Stainless steel counters ran alongside several black padded chairs that looked like something you’d see in a dentist’s office. My warped brain immediately sought out implements of torture, puddles of blood, or other screaming victims—I mean, human canvases—but there were none. We were alone.
“Trent will be in soon.” Steve said this to Caulder, who nodded as though he knew who Trent was. But I guess that made sense seeing as Caulder had obviously been there before. More than once.
“Why don’t you hop on up and we can discuss design ideas.” This was to me.
I complied, climbing up onto the tall cold plastic chair. The thing was wide with a partially reclined back and full footrest. I opted to sit up straight sideways across it with my feet dangling a solid foot above the floor until told otherwise.
“Okay, so what were you thinking?” Steve pulled up a rolling stool and plopped down on it with a pad and pencil in hand.
I gnawed at my lip as my eyes darted between the two guys. Caulder was standing directly behind me, a heavy hand resting comfortingly on my shoulder. The last thing I wanted was for him to leave, but I’d intended to have this done alone so I could surprise him with the final product.
Don’t chicken out if this is something you really want. Trust me, it’s worth it.
Caulder was right. If I was really doing it, then I was doing it the way I wanted to. I wasn’t going to let fear get in the way. That was kinda the whole point, anyway.
I twisted to look up at Caulder and saw the question in his eyes. He thought I was backing out.
“Would you mind if I did this alone?”
Surprise flashed over his face. “You’re sure you don’t want me to stay?” His grip tightened slightly around my shoulder.
“This is something I want to do for me. And I want to surprise you when it’s done.”
Hesitation held him rooted to the spot for several long moments before he nodded. “Alright. I needed to talk to Trent, anyway. But I’ll be right in the office. If you decide you want me, just tell Steve. He’ll come and get me, okay?”
“Thanks, Cal.”
With a quick peck on the cheek for me and a nod for Steve, Caulder disappeared through a second door I hadn’t noticed earlier.
“So . . .” Steve leaned back against the steel counter, rolling the wheel of his stool with one foot as a mischievous grin stretched his lips. “What is it we’re surprising the boyfriend with?”
If he was expecting something sleezy, he was going to be disappointed. This tattoo wasn’t for Caulder. It was going on my body. It was for me.
Steve’s playful nature took a backseat as we got down to business. I described what I wanted, even going as far as to give him a minor insight as to what it symbolized, while he scratched feverishly away at his sketchpad. He kept at it long after I ran out of words, scribbling, erasing, blending. Molding lines into an intricately beautiful design before switching to colored pencils. There wasn’t much color involved. Mostly tinting. A bit of green. But it wouldn’t have been complete without the purple.
When he finished, the image he laid out before me was . . . incredible. It was absolutely perfect and I fell in love with it in every way.
“Yes. That’s it. That’s exactly what I want.”
Steve beamed with pride and that gleam came back into his eyes. “Now the fun part. Where do you want it?”
Strangely enough, I hadn’t actually considered that. “Um . . . somewhere I can see it.”
I wanted it to be a daily reminder of who I was. Not who others made me feel like I was.
“Alright. That leaves us with several options depending on how visible you want it to be.”
“That doesn’t really matter.” I didn’t plan to put it on display, but I wasn’t going to try and hide it either. And it wasn’t like I had the kind of job where I’d need to cover it up.
“It’s not really a good shape for your foot, but there’s your ankle. Your arm. Your wrist.”
“Wrist.” I almost always wore pants to cover up my chicken legs, so if it was on my ankle it would rarely see the light of day. And the arm seemed more like somewhere a guy would get a tattoo. But the delicate skin on the inside of my wrist felt like the perfect location. Vulnerable and yet tough enough to withstand the process. A lot like the design itself.
“Alright, then. Let me scale this down a bit and we’ll get started.”
Nerves took a backseat while we worked out the image that would be permanently printed on my skin, but as Steve worked scanning and resizing the image on his computer, they came rearing back with a vengeance. The printer whirred to life spitting out my tattoo on some special kind of paper and then he set to collecting items from drawers beneath the counter. Items that looked a lot like those implements of torture I’d been searching for earlier. Sneaky little bastard. Now that I’d seen the completed design, I was hooked. There was no way I was backing out.
Steve helped me get comfortable in the chair—comfort being a relative term in my case—and laid my arm across the padded armrest. He twisted it until it sat, palm up with my hand dangling slightly off the end of the rest and pinned it in place with an iron grip.
“Let me know if I’m holding you too tight. Keep your palm open, just like this.” He tapped my hand and I let the muscles that were beginning to curl, relax. “This part won’t hurt. I’m just placing the design before we ink it.”
Using the special paper he’d printed the design on, he applied the image to my skin almost like a temporary tattoo. It took a few attempts and some scrubbing with a washcloth to get it in a position that Steve approved of, but when he did I knew it was right. I could just feel it.
“Are you sure you don’t want me to go get Caulder? We can surprise him with this one and then he can hold your hand while I do that hard part.”
“No.” I didn’t know why, but this felt like something I needed to do on my own. “I’m okay.”
“Alright then. It won’t be so bad. Just try not to tense.”
Won’t be so bad, my ass. The needle-gun started buzzing and the moment it touched my skin, my entire arm lit up like fire.
“Don’t move.” His grip tightened around my arm, immobilizing me.
Holy hell. People did this more than once to themselves? Were they insane? It took all of my self-control to keep my legs from thrashing. My fight or flight response was kicking in and I wanted to run for the hills.
“You’re doing good.” Steve mumbled some textbook assurances, while his focus remained solely on his work in p
rogress, but the sound of his voice helped distract me and I hoped he kept it up. “It looks really good. I like this design. Did you think it up yourself?”
“Ye-yes.” I forced the word out through gritted teeth.
“Nice. You’re creative. Are you an artist?”
“No.” I wasn’t exactly the best conversationalist at the moment either.
“Photographer? Writer?”
“I like—” deep breath. “—to write.”
“I knew it. It takes a creative mind to come up with something like this. What do you write?”
“Um . . .” Nothing I wanted to admit out loud, but he was successfully taking my mind off of the pain. “Whatever I feel like, usually.”
“Do you write often?”
“Not recently.” I hadn’t written a single word since the story I wrote for Kiernan. I hadn’t felt inspired by anything the way he inspired me. But maybe . . . someday.
“Well, when you’re a famous author, I’ll be expecting my own autographed first edition.”
“If you can make this pain go away, I’ll give you anything you want.”
Steve laughed and snapped off the gun. “Wish granted.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
“It’s done?”
“Almost. But you get a break while I switch colors.”
I groaned, watching him reach for another, equally sharp needle. That no-good tease.
“Relax. That was the long part. Now it’s just highlights and accents. You’ll be out of here in no time.”
The buzzing that I knew would haunt my nightmares came back and so did the fire in my arm. I fisted my pant leg with my other hand and held tight. Almost done. It was almost done.
The next break came quickly and was over just as fast.
“Last part,” Steve assured me and I took a deep breath to hold myself over.
One, two, three . . . Steve wasn’t talking anymore, so I counted tiles in the ceiling above me to distract myself. Twenty-two-and-a-half per row and thirty-four rows. The mental math that required was more than enough to get me through the last bit. Before I had a solution I couldn’t have cared less about, Steve shut off his torture device and set it aside.
“You’re all done. You did it.”
I did it? My gaze zeroed in on my wrist and the beautiful, meaningful artwork on my reddened skin. I did it. I couldn’t believe it. A laugh bubbled up from somewhere inside, bursting free of my smiling lips. “I really did it.”
“You really did. Ready to go show your boyfriend?”
That was twice he’d called Caulder my boyfriend. And I supposed he was. I mean, we did everything together. We loved each other. Hell, we lived together. But it just felt strange hearing it out loud like that. Strange . . . and really, really nice.
“Yeah. Let’s show him.”
Caulder still hadn’t emerged from that side room he’d gone into earlier and he wasn’t in the lobby when we remerged.
“Wait here. I’ll go tell him you’re ready.” Steve left me alone with the skulls and the snakes and the swords, but they felt less intimidating now. Like I’d been initiated into the club. Like I belonged. A moment later, he was back sans Caulder. “He’ll be out in a sec. He’s just finishing up.”
“Finishing up what?”
“Let’s just say you’re not the only one with a surprise up her sleeve.”
My brain juggled that little morsel of information, paying absolutely no attention whatsoever to the aftercare instructions Steve was giving me. I assumed everything I needed to know was in the booklet he handed me and anything I didn’t know I could ask Caulder.
Steve abandoned the attempt altogether when Cal stepped out into the lobby. He was shirtless, but that wasn’t what had snared my attention. It was the thick black lines curling across his left pec. A fresh tattoo. Another of those Chinese characters.
I approached slowly, captivated by the graceful design. My fingers fluttered through the air, tracing it without coming in contact with his raw skin. It was beautiful, the marks flowing and elegant. “What does it mean?”
“It means . . .” he paused until I lifted my gaze to his, “Angel.”
My breath caught and I felt the sting of tears welling fast in my eyes.
His knuckles trailed down my cheek before his hand twisted, wrapping around the back of my neck. “I told you, Jade. I’m not going anywhere.”
He’d made me a permanent part of himself. Right over his heart.
Mine could have burst with how much love and pride I felt in that moment.
“Where’s yours?”
I almost forgot I’d even gotten one of my own. Lifting my arm I suddenly felt incredibly nervous. What if he hated it? What if he thought it was ugly? Or conceited?
Caulder’s hand cradled my arm as he examined the rectangular block of blue-tinged ice inked into my skin. His gaze moved slowly, taking in each of the cracks, tracing the small green vine fighting its way free all the way to the tiny purple flower, blooming in the face of adversity.
“This is . . .” His eyes lifted to mine, and in them I saw something new. Something intense. Something that lit my heart on fire. I didn’t need to explain it to him, at all. He understood exactly what it meant. “Absolutely perfect. I love it.”
He loved it. And he loved me. That was all I needed to know. “I’m ready now.”
“For what?”
I took a deep breath and released it on a rush of words, afraid I’d change my mind if I didn’t get it out there right away. “To see my mother.”
Twenty Three
“Why here?” I scanned the park near the center of town. The dirt bike paths, the swing set, jungle gym, see-saws, and the tall slide I fell from when I was about five. It had taken two weeks for the swelling in my wrist to go down and it still ached sometimes when it rained.
It was nearly dinner time, and absolutely freezing. All of which lent to the fact that there wasn’t another soul in sight, besides Caulder and I.
“You wanted to see your mother. And there’s no way you’re setting foot back in Halfmoon. Not with DJ and Stryker and Michael still around.”
I got that, but . . . “Couldn’t we have done this somewhere indoors? With heat?”
Rubbing my hands together, I puffed a cloudy breath into them.
“We could have, but I thought you might like some privacy.”
The realization that he put a lot of thought into this hit me at about the same time Mom’s car came squealing into the lot and slammed to a stop. I could feel the heat of her glare through the windshield. It only grew in intensity as she marched her way toward us.
“What the hell is wrong with you? Having this one call,” she flipped an accusatory finger in Caulder’s direction without bothering to look at him, “and demand that I come meet you here. At this hour! You know I can’t drive after—”
“I offered to pick you up,” Caulder interceded. A fact I hadn’t been aware of, but appreciated immensely—even if she hadn’t accepted.
“Don’t do me any favors. I’m not some stupid, pathetic little girl. I don’t need your damn hand-outs.” Dismissing Caulder as nothing more than an insect crawling in her path, she returned her attention to me. “This had better be about the money you owe me. Give it.”
“Money?” I owed her? “What money?”
“Gee, I don’t know, brainless. Maybe the money that’s supposed to keep the lights on and food on the table? Where is it?”
“I don’t . . . I don’t have any.”
“What do you mean you don’t have any? You had better not be holding out on me, you selfish little—”
“I’m not holding out on you. I don’t have any money because I haven’t been working.”
I could practically see the steam billowing from her ears and I was pretty sure the red tint to her face wasn’t from the cold. “You lazy, useless—”
Caulder stiffened beside me and I plunged in before he could get involved. “The cru
tches, remember? I couldn’t work on crutches. They took me off the schedule.”
“Well, you’re not on crutches now.” She had a point there.
“No. I know. I just . . . That’s not why I wanted to talk to you. I . . .” I didn’t tremble. I shook. Violently. My hands. My voice. My body. My heart. I could feel it ping-ponging around my chest like a pinball.
I stood in a public park, facing down an intoxicated woman smaller than myself, with a wall of pure muscle with a fierce desire to protect me at my side. And still I knew terror in that moment in a way that I’d never known it before.
“It’s about Michael.” Caulder’s hand slid into mine and held tight. A silent reminder that he was there with me just as he promised he would be. As the marking on his chest promised he always would be. “He’s bad for you. For us. I know you can’t see that, but I can, and I’m telling you I can’t live like this anymore. Not with you . . . with you like this. The drinking has to stop and Michael—”
“Michael,” she hissed, “is your father. Is your family not good enough for you, Your Highness? I kept your lazy ass around for eighteen years. Eighteen years I carried you like a goddamn lead weight around my neck. Always dragging me down. Why the hell do you think it is that I have to drink? And now . . . now that you may actually be good for something . . . you’re leaving? Abandoning me? You ungrateful bitch . . . What about this?”
Slapping her purse down on the picnic table beside us, she dug through the decade’s worth of bills and receipts she had accumulated in there until she found what she was looking for and waved it wildly in my face. Her movements were too disjointed for me to get a good look until she shoved it in my hands. A glimpse of the official header was all it took.
Farnel and Associates.
Where did she—? She’d been in my room? Through my drawers? Why?
I didn’t get the chance to ask her. She wasn’t finished.
“How am I supposed to pay that? You’re a leech, Jade. You’ve sucked me dry and now what? You’re moving on to the next sucker dumb enough to take you in? How long will that last? You may despise me and what I provide, but you need me. Without me, you have nothing. Because that’s what you are. Nothing. What you’re worth. Nothing. You are—”