One day we could have a real road trip. Big Sur. Lake Tahoe. Wherever she wanted to go. People did that stuff, right? Went on road trips together, visited each other’s families. She still hadn’t met Mom. We had time to do all that now. Once we got to LA, we’d hit reset, and it would start over for real. I was tempted to drive really slow, get back to LA as late as we could. Detour to Portland, or Yosemite.
I knew we couldn’t, but it was nice to know that if I wanted to do that with her, I could. I didn’t have to worry about when she was leaving because she finally wasn’t. She was coming with me to stay.
It was nighttime when we pulled up to the shop, so we didn’t have to try to look for parking in the back. I got a good street spot and looked over at Felicity. She hadn’t said a word the entire trip. She’d sat there like a statue, anxiety rolling off her so thick it was stinking up the car.
“Ready?” I asked her.
“No. Let’s turn back.”
“I’m not the only one who’s been waiting to see you again.”
“That’s why I’m nervous. Have you told them anything?”
“Only that you were moving back. It was Mal’s idea to have a welcome back party for you.”
“You didn’t discourage her?”
“They’re your friends. They missed you.”
“They’re going to hate me,” she whined.
“It’s okay, I’m right here,” I said, taking her hand.
“What if they hate me for not telling them my real name?”
“Then I’ll fire them,” I said. She pouted, sensing that I was teasing her. “Come on. You aren’t even giving them a chance. Let’s go.” She sulked, opening the passenger side door. I came out of the car and held her hand. “Everything will be fine,” I said, squeezing it.
“If they hate me, I’m going back to Seattle,” she muttered. She hesitantly followed me towards the door of the shop. It was ten. We were closed, but the guys had wanted to see Felicity again. She wasn’t working at the shop anymore, but as far as LA went, these guys were her crew. They liked her. I’d come so close to cracking when they’d asked me about her, especially Mal. I’d gotten to today somehow without telling them everything.
I was trying to make it seem like it wasn’t that big a deal, but I was pretty nervous. I knew they were all eager to see her again, but I wasn’t sure how they would react to the news. I hoped it would be good. I wasn’t really going to really fire any one of them if they couldn’t take it, but it would suck if one of my artists didn’t like my girlfriend. We got to the door.
“Ready?” I asked. She sighed and looked at me.
“Let’s get this over with,” she said. I kissed the back of her hand that I was holding and opened the door, pulling her in beside me.
“Well, well, well,” Devon said, from his station, seeing us first. Jun was sitting up on his massage chair. Mal was up on the desk Felicity used to use. “Look who’s back.” Felicity turned red, looking down. She turned to look at me, worried. I kept holding her hand so she wouldn’t try and escape.
“Hi, Dev,” she said quietly, “hi, guys.”
“Guys, this is my girlfriend, Felicity,” I said. “Liss, this is Devon, Jun, and Mal.”
“It’s great to meet you,” she squeaked. Mal came first and grabbed her tight, in a hug I would have broken up if Mal was a dude.
“You bitch, what took you so long to come back,” she said. Felicity giggled, hugging her back. Devon and Jun came up next, hugging her one by one.
“Felicity, huh,” Jun asked. “Where’d you get Jenny from? That your middle name or something?” I shot him a warning glare.
“I wish it was,” she said. “It was the name I told the guy who picked me up when I was hitchhiking,” she said.
“How did you manage to do that without getting murdered?” Devon asked. “Who picks up hitchhikers?”
“People who want stories to tell?” she said shrugging. “He was okay. He gave me drugs though that made me sick.” Felicity told the story I’d already heard about how she had taken enough MDMA to rocket her to the moon but stayed sober because it wouldn’t work with her meds. Jun brought the tequila out, and we all had shots. A few more people ended up coming, and by the time we were heading back home, she was totally fine.
It was the last night we’d spend at my place before she moved into her own apartment. It had gone better than I thought it would go. The whole thing, not just that night. Our entire relationship up to that point. There were things I knew I shouldn’t have done and a lot of shit I wished she hadn’t done either, but fuck it; we were here. We’d gotten here, anyway. It was nice to think that we were starting over and could think of everything that had happened as water under the bridge, but I sort of liked it. Nobody else met the person they fell in love with like that.
What were the fucking chances that it was her that Ryan brought into the shop? I was going to say it was more than just good luck. If it was every little thing that had happened between us that meant we’d gotten here, then I was taking it. It was a… maybe not good story to tell, but it was our story to tell.
I couldn’t wait to see what happened next.
Epilogue
Felicity
Ten Months Later
“I’m nervous,” I said.
“Don’t be, just relax. Follow the line around. You can do it all in one pass.”
“What if I fuck up?”
“I believe in you,” he said, kissing my shoulder where he sat behind me.
“You’ll have to live with this for the rest of your life.”
“Not if you puss out and don’t do it,” he taunted me. I looked down at his right hand in my left one. He said he had been saving that spot, the back of his right hand because it was the part of his body he saw the most when he drew. His tattoos only came up to his wrist, and it had been that way since his sleeve had been completed three years ago.
So, like, no pressure. Every time he was doing his job he’d be reminded of the horrible mistake he’d made letting me tattoo him. His right hand was his bread and butter; what if I caused, I don’t know, nerve damage or something because I let the needle in too deep? What if it was just ugly, and he hated me for doing it?
I put the tattoo machine down and held his hand in my gloved ones. I had to turn my head to try to look at him at the same time because I was sitting between his thighs.
“You don’t have to let me scar you permanently for me to believe you love me.”
“It’s permanent, that’s why I want it.” I sighed and looked back down at his hand. It was just a little outline of a heart. Smaller than a quarter, on the skin between his wrist and his thumb. I had drawn it on him freehand, and he had been trying to get me to tattoo it for the last ten minutes.
It was Monday, so nobody was in the shop but us. He was sitting behind me instead of on the massage chair in front of me. There must have been some sort of rule against this somewhere. I had watched him and the rest of the guys at the shop give tattoos enough times to know that the needles in the machine delivered ink under the skin, but tattooing wasn’t something you learned just from looking. Even the stick figures I drew were wonky; this was a terrible idea. I ran my thumb over the skin: one of the few, precious tracts of virgin skin he had, and he was giving it to me.
“If it’s really bad, it probably won’t be that hard to laser off,” I suggested.
“I’m not getting it removed if it’s from you,” he said. He picked the machine up and put it in my hand. “Come on. You can do it.” I sighed. The first time he’d suggested me tattooing him I had been certain it had been a joke. The more he talked about it; I realized he was serious. He probably wasn’t going to let it go.
“Okay. Here goes.” I revved the machine, carefully bringing it to his skin before smoothly, as smoothly as I could, following the first curved line of the heart. I stopped the machine looking back at him.
“Wipe,” he instructed. I gently wiped the excess ink off his hand,
buzzing a little when the tattooed line didn’t budge. “Next one. You’re almost done.” I did the second one faster, with a little more confidence, meeting the second line at the bottom of the heart—most nerve-wracking twelve seconds of my entire life. I put the machine down and wiped again.
The outline was very obviously done by an amateur. A few wobbles, not a very good freehand sketch to even begin with and lines I wasn’t sure were dark enough. He lifted his hand and looked at it.
“I love it,” he said, kissing the back of my neck. I rolled my eyes, pulling the gloves off. I knew for a fact that he rubbed shoulders with some of the most legendary tattoo artists in the country and some had tattooed him. Good tattoos costed money. He hadn’t had to pay for all his ink because some had been done as gifts, but the dollar amount on all the art on his body was likely about the same as a reasonably priced house in the Seattle suburbs. There was no way my wobbly heart outline came close.
“Your turn,” he said.
“I’m sorry?”
“Your turn. Let me give you one.”
“No way,” I said shaking my head, “this wasn’t part of the deal.”
“You don’t want any of my art on you?” he asked, with comically exaggerated dismay.
“It’s not like that, Asher. If I wanted one, I’d come to you, but I don’t.”
“One day,” he said.
“Maybe,” I said. He looked down at the heart smiling.
“I want to give you something too.”
“What? Are you going to pay me for my work? I can’t accept money for that.” He smiled.
“Just wrap me up. I think the Saran wrap’s in that cabinet,” he said, pointing to the cabinet on his right where he kept his inks and machines. I stood and crouched down to open it, immediately puzzled.
It was empty.
I was about to tell him before I realized there actually was something in there. A small velvet-covered box.
“Asher?”
“Did you find it?” he asked lightly. I reached for the box and opened it. Inside was a brilliant white stone set in a thin rose gold band. My breath became shallow when I realized what I was looking at. I mean you think about this day coming, and you think you know what you’re going to do, but then it actually comes, and you’re speechless. Had he planned this?
No, no, no. Who even said that what I thought was happening was even happening? With any other guy, I’d know what the score was, but Asher wasn’t typical, or predictable. I closed the box.
“Nope,” I said, breathily. “I’ll go check the storeroom for more.” I clutched the box a little tighter wanting to open it and look at that ring again. My back was to him, so I ventured another peek. It shone like it had its own light. It was oval shaped, and I wished I knew something about jewelry so I could appreciate it more.
“Lissa,” he said. I felt him come up behind me. His arms went around me, and his hands took the box gently. He pulled the ring out and held my left hand. “I’ve never really seen you wear a lot of jewelry, but I thought you might like this. Do you?” I turned in his arms to face him. I reached for his hand to grab the ring, but he held it away.
“Not so fast,” he smirked. “You have to agree to marry me first.”
“You haven’t asked me yet,” I said, smiling up at him. He held my hand and pulled me closer to him gently. The warmest, mushiest fuzzies coursed through me. I felt nervous and excited and giddy.
“Felicity,” he said grandly. I watched, feeling myself well up as he got down on one knee. My heart was thumping so loud I could hear it. “I’ve never met anybody who has tried to stay away from me as much as you have,” he started. I laughed, feeling tears prick my eyes. “I could take it as long as I knew you were coming back to me. I want your heart because you’ve always had mine. I love you, and I want to spend the rest of my life loving you. Marry me,” he said. I couldn’t say anything. He hadn’t really asked a question, but the answer was still yes. Of course it was. I nodded through my tears.
He slid the ring onto my finger and stood, hugging me, lifting me off the ground. I squeezed him as tight as I could. I couldn’t believe it. I was crying, but only because I couldn’t smile or laugh hard enough.
“One more thing,” he said. Oh my god, what else? What next? I couldn’t imagine what the ring had cost, what else could he have to give me? He put a hand in his pocket and pulled something out, placing it in my hand and closing my palm around it before I could see what it was. I opened my palm and smiled, seeing a set of keys.
“Keys?” I asked innocently.
“Your lease is almost up.”
“I know, but who said I wasn’t renewing?”
“You’re not. We’re moving in together.”
“Hey Liss, since we just got engaged I think we should start to talk about the future, maybe living together, where our wedding’s going to be,” I said pointedly, everything he’d neglected by choosing to announce our cohabitation.
“How much longer, babe? You practically live there already,” he whined, making me smile. I wrapped my arms around his neck.
“Just till I get word on the research fellowship.” He shook his head.
“How long will that take? Two months and your lease is up,” he urged. He had a point. Rent was expensive, and we spent so much time together, anyway. He had been patient with me, and I was grateful. He had a life in LA, and all I had wanted was a chance to build one too before we built one together.
“Just two months then. I don’t want to break the lease,” I compromised, leaning up to kiss him. My fiancé. My future husband. The rest of my life. He was mine. He wore my ink, and I wore his ring. Both of them meant forever. I didn’t know how long that would be, but it started today.
Every day.
Every single today of my life—that’s how long it would be.
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Introducing… Vann
The subsequent novel in the Heartbreakers & Troublemakers series. Available on Amazon.
About the Author
Hope Hitchens is a rising star author who exploded onto the scene in 2018 with her debut series of scorching hot contemporary romance novels entitled Heartbreakers & Troublemakers. You can find her work exclusively on Amazon in both Kindle and Paperback formats.
www.hopehitchens.com
Asher (Heartbreakers & Troublemakers Book 6) Page 19