by Ophelia Bell
But Gustavo was right. Toni and Manny’s relationship doesn’t give me the right to touch Celeste, much less want her as much as I do. That doesn’t stop my driving need to protect her from assholes like Gustavo, who just see her as a status symbol or a way to get closer to her father.
“Papá Flores would rip you to pieces if you hurt his daughter,” Maddox says with a hint of bitterness. I read between the lines. He doesn’t mean me, but any man. Gustavo too. I let out a muffled grunt of agreement and finally relax, lulled by the steady rhythm of his tattoo machine and the monotonous dig of the needles into my back. Arturo “Papá” Flores doesn’t hesitate to protect what’s his.
Maddox’s tone sinks in further, and I twist my head a little, eyeing his profile sideways. “You sound like you know them.”
“Anyone who grows up on the dark side of LA knows Papá Flores.”
I narrow my eyes at his bullshit reply. After a second, he catches me staring at him and puffs out a breath.
“Fuck. Fine, yeah, I’ve met them before.” His head tilts toward the doorway. “Mom was Celeste’s dance teacher for years when we were kids. You could say we grew up together, but I only ever saw her when I was here helping Mom out. Papá Flores came around once in a while to pick her up after class. I learned the hard way how dangerous it is to get close.”
He stops tattooing, and I roll onto my side. I follow his gaze to the doorway and beyond the bat wings. The shop shares a windowed wall with the dance studio next door. Before Maddox took over this space, it was the reception area and office for his mother’s studio, but a shit economy and downsizing required some compromise. I think it’s part of the reason Maddox keeps the front of his shop so trendy with the artsy photographs. The walls in his mom’s studio are also covered with photographs of dancers he’s taken over the past year. The man is all about the side hustle and apparently earns a fair bit of extra cash shooting rich ballerina wannabes for their parents.
But now he has that thousand-yard stare like he’s lost in the past, and I wonder if it’s a good memory or a bad one. He doesn’t share much about his time in Afghanistan, but every now and then his rigid control over his features shatters and some of the damage he hides peeks out. It’s not that hard to tell that the sleeve of tats that covers his left arm is meant to conceal some serious scar tissue. Sometimes I wish he’d share more, but he’s cagey as fuck about his past. This new tidbit promises to be revealing, but for the first time I’m not sure I want to know.
“You saying you got close?” I ask, jealousy twisting my gut. I’ve known the Flores family since I was a kid but only ever from a distance, until about five years ago, when La Valla officially became part of Papá’s empire. If Mad Dog knew Celeste before that, my admiration for him will probably turn into full-on hero worship.
His expression grows thoughtful. He turns back to me, dips his needles into the ink and taps my shoulder with a black-gloved hand. I lie down again, itching to know the story, but it never pays to push Mad Dog Santos into doing anything he doesn’t want to do.
“This fucking stays between us,” he says in a low voice. “But Celeste was my first kiss.”
I’m so astounded by the confession I don’t reply. He works for a few minutes, and my jealousy is eventually overrun by curiosity. “Jesus, man, you can’t just leave it at that. What happened?”
Maddox snorts. “Papá Flores happened. I was seventeen, she was a couple years younger. Usually it was some meathead in a suit who drove her home from dance class, but her dad would come once a month to pay the bill, did so for years ever since his wife died. I came after school back then to help clean up, and Mom always roped me into leading the last few dance routines.”
He pauses, and I try to imagine the big hulk of tattooed flesh as a fresh-faced teen showing off his dance moves to a bunch of rich girls in leotards.
“Did you wear the tights?” I ask.
“Hell yeah I did. I had an ego the size of Jupiter at that age and loved being the center of attention for all those girls. The dance gear highlighted all my best assets. I was such a fucking tool.” He laughs, and I curse myself for putting that image into my own head. Now I’ll never unsee it. “Anyway,” he says after a breath, “the other girls and their parents had already cleared out. Celeste was usually the last one left. Papá Flores had disappeared into the office with Mom to pay the bill. I’d gone back to the dressing room to change. As much as I loved the outfit, I wasn’t about to be caught dead in it around my brothers.”
“So, you were alone with Celeste and made a move?” My gut clenches as I think about how that kiss must’ve gone down. It isn’t too difficult to picture a younger version of Maddox as the cocky charmer that comes out on the rare occasion now. Picturing Celeste as a young woman falling for that act is a lot harder. She’s been aloof and quiet as long as I’ve known her, just as stoic as her father, with the same piercing hazel eyes that make you feel guilty as fuck even if you know you haven’t done anything wrong.
“That’s the crazy thing,” Maddox says. “I was standing there, half-dressed in my jeans and nothing else, when she just walks in, wraps her arms around me, and lays one on me. Blew my poor little teenage mind. Then she was gone before her dad could catch us.”
“She came on to you,” I say, having just as much trouble wrapping my head around the idea.
Maddox grunts in reply, as if he’s still just as surprised. “The next week, she cornered me again, and I was ready. Hell if I was going to just leave it at a kiss. I needed to know why.”
“Did you find out?”
“Yeah. I should have known already, but I guess she’d been stoking a crush for years and it just came to a head. Or her hormones finally got the better of her. She said it was a thank-you for being so sweet to her when she was a kid. That she’d always remember me because of that. That was enough of a reason for me. After that, we had secret make-out sessions regularly. We got reckless, so naturally, her dad eventually caught us.
“Nothing happened at first. He quietly pulled her out of dance class, but a few days later, I got cornered after school by a trio of bangers who made it crystal clear that I should stay the fuck away from Celeste Flores. Gustavo was their leader. I never thought I’d say this, but that moment was the first time I’d ever been glad my dad taught me how to take a fucking beating. I never saw Celeste again until tonight.”
“Fuuuck.” I want to ask more, but I’m too conflicted, torn between envy that he’d had those moments with her and satisfaction that he took a beating for it. Also a little sympathetic, I have to admit. “You’re probably lucky he didn’t kill you, you know.” I don’t say as much, but there have been rumors about men who get too close to Celeste suddenly disappearing.
“Don’t I know it. I think the old man has a soft spot for my mom, though, so that was probably my only saving grace. My point is that she’s dangerous.”
“It’s Gustavo who needs to watch his back.” Gustavo plays with fire every time he bosses Celeste around. I can’t help but wonder if he does it to her when her father’s present. Doubtful. The man might be a cocky shithead, but he is far from stupid.
“You watch yours too, Leo,” Maddox says in a gruffer voice than I’ve heard from him before. “I’d hate to see you hurt. Arturo’s not the only one whose attitude toward her is a little possessive.”
I’m hung up on the weird heat that spreads through my chest at the obvious care in his tone. This is the first time I’ve thought of the guy as a true friend, despite spending hours in this very chair under his needles. Ever since he opened his shop a year ago, half the gangbangers on the west side have frequented it, and now more than half my ink is thanks to him. It’s rare enough to find someone I trust in this city, much less someone I’d consider a friend.
We don’t speak for another twenty minutes or so. He moves down to my lower back, where the previously inked lines disappear past the edge of my low-slung jeans.
“Time for the grand finale. Show me you
r ass so I can finish this bad boy off.”
“Man, if I didn’t know better, I’d think this whole tattoo was a scheme to get into my pants.” I wink over my shoulder, but he just regards me with his arms crossed. He twirls his fingers in a “get on with it” motion, and I lift my hips to unbutton my jeans, then shove them halfway off my ass so the tattooed outline he’s already done of the lion’s tail is visible. It extends just past my hips, stopping before the really fleshy part of my ass, and I brace myself for more pain when he digs into the muscles over my hipbones. My ass clenches, and I grit my teeth.
“Relax and it’ll go easier,” he says.
“This is a testament to how much I trust you, you know.”
“I get it, but I’m serious. You’re clenched so tight you’re going to hurt yourself. What do I need to do, sing you a fucking lullaby?”
Before I can tell him to spare me, he launches into a perfectly pitched rendition of “Sweet Child O’ Mine,” which has the desired effect. I’m too stunned by his pretty voice to remember he’s digging needles into my ass. Instead, the lyrics evoke an image of Celeste, and my insides erupt in molten turmoil over how I’ve felt about her for months. Halfway through the song, it hits me that he’s probably singing about her. How could he not be after the story he just told me? And I can’t help but wonder how many times over the past decade he might have sung this song while thinking about their trysts. I would have.
The sense of brotherhood only grows, despite the fact that I hate him a little for the stolen moments he shared with her. Not a single man has gotten close enough to Celeste Flores to be considered her boyfriend in the entire time I’ve spent within her circle.
He finishes the song, and we say nothing for the rest of the evening. I doze off and on, my brain fabricating confounding images of the grown-up versions of Maddox and Celeste kissing, and I hate like hell how she looks at him, but I’d never come between them.
It’s close to midnight when his stool creaks and he leans back with a groan and a stretch.
“You know the drill,” he says after covering my tattoo and standing.
I follow him out to the front counter while slipping into my shirt. Sam’s conked out with his head on his arms, his sketchbook underneath his hands catching a puddle of drool that’s soaked into one of the pages. Maddox kicks the stool the kid rests on. “You’re up, ese.”
Sam’s head jerks up, and his gaze darts blearily around. “Time is it?”
“Time for you to clean. You wanted to learn what the job was like. This is part of it. I’ll settle up with Leo, then I’ll take you home.”
Sam looks like he wants to give his brother lip, then thinks better of it and trudges off. I peek at the sketchbook and my eyebrows shoot up. “Kid’s got talent. You going to put him to work with a tattoo machine?”
“He needs to make his own way. But we agreed that as long as he graduates high school next summer, he can spend evenings here learning the business side of things. After that, he needs to find someone else to take him on as an apprentice.”
I’m flipping through the sketches, page after page of mind-blowing artwork. “Why would you want to let this talent get away from you?” On the next page I pause, suppressing a laugh at the face that looks back at me. It’s my brother’s girlfriend in one of her publicity shots from the popular video blog she stars in. Looks like Sammy Santos has a little bit of a celebrity crush on Toni Valentine. No surprise there; Toni is as gorgeous as she is talented.
“Because he’s too fucking good. He’ll make me look bad.” Maddox chuckles, then shakes his head. “Nah, he’ll have more self-respect down the road if his big brother didn’t give him a handout. I don’t think he needs it anyway. If he stays here, I’ll always treat him like an employee, and that’s no environment for talent like that. If only he’d get his head out of his ass about school.”
“Some lessons a kid has to learn the hard way,” I say, unable to tear my eyes away from the designs as I keep flipping, but a thought occurs to me, and I go back to the drawing of Toni for a second before landing on the first drawing that caught my eye: one of an elaborate tree of life. “There’s another tattoo artist I know who’d jump at a chance to work with him. Mind if I snap a shot of this to share?”
Maddox shrugs. “It’s up to him. Hey, Sam! Leo has a friend who might want an apprentice.”
It takes the kid two seconds to appear like an eager pup with a big grin on his face. “Hell fucking yes! Anyone I know?”
I laugh and shake my head. “Why don’t we take it one step at a time here. I’ll share your art first, and we’ll go from there, all right?”
“Our deal still stands,” Maddox says in a stern voice to his brother. “You graduate first.”
“You got it, boss,” Sam says. I’m reminded of how Manny used to talk to me when I was younger. The difference is Manny joined a gang to help pay the rent our single mom couldn’t keep up with. He was desperate to keep me on the straight and narrow so I wouldn’t have to follow in his footsteps. The Santos brothers have two parents with good jobs as far as I can tell. His mom’s dance studio has been a fixture in the neighborhood for as long as I can remember, and his dad is career military—an aviation mechanic who takes assignments wherever and whenever he’s needed. Not exactly rolling in money, but they’re honest people who work hard for what they have. I doubt Manny and I will ever get out from under Papá Flores’ thumb. It’s the only world we know.
Yet to hear some of Mad Dog’s stories, it’s apparent his dad isn’t in the picture nearly as often as he should be, and when he is, they probably wish he weren’t. Maddox acts more like a father than a brother to Sam. Is he like this to his other three siblings? I’ve never met them, but I hear about them every time I get tattoos. Julian Jr.—J.J.—and Marco sound like night and day. The black sheep and the angel, and their little sister, Elle, is an enigma.
I’m a little grateful it’s always just been Manny and me. We’re as close as two brothers can be and always have each other’s backs. That’s the biggest reason I need to stay the fuck away from Celeste Flores. If I piss off her father, that could ruin things for Manny because Toni Valentine is way too close to Arturo’s family for there not to be blowback on them.
In the interest of maintaining friendships, I pull out my phone and snap a photo of Sam’s drawing. This kind of artwork isn’t my style, but it’s right up Toni’s alley. I got a few token tattoos from her early on but haven’t been back to her shop in San Diego since Mad Dog set up shop closer to home.
I have no idea if Toni’s looking for an apprentice, or even if she’d accept me as a reference for the kid. But in the tattooing world, Toni Valentine is a household name, so giving him that chance would be worth it.
I pay Maddox, and we bump fists. His steel-eyed gaze is fixed on me. “Photo shoots happen on Sunday afternoons. When it’s healed enough, give me a call and I’ll set you up.”
4
Maddox
Sam’s found his second wind and is scrubbing down my shop like there’s no tomorrow when I lock up. I eye the bright yellow rubber gloves he wears as he wipes down the chair with a damp rag, pauses to play air drums to whatever music is blasting through his earbuds, then spins on his heels and bobs his head on the way to the sink. He belts out half a lyric to “Lonely Boy” by The Black Keys, peels off his gloves, and turns, stopping cold for a second when he finally sees me leaning in the doorway.
“Cute,” I say, nodding to the gloves. Sam shrugs.
“You’ve drilled into my head how important my hands are if I want to do this. I figure if they work for Mom, they’ve gotta work for me. She always has soft hands.” His eyes brighten, and he grins. “You think Leo can really hook me up with someone? Any idea who it is he’s referring me to?”
“No, but you’ve seen his ink. He’s a fucking connoisseur of tattoos, if those exist.” I’m not about to tell him who I suspect Leo intends to talk to, or that one of the man’s closest tattoo artist friends is
the same woman my youngest brother has had wet dreams about ever since he hit puberty.
“Man, that would be the bomb if I can get an apprenticeship somewhere in the city when I graduate. I’m thinking maybe I sell my designs while I’m honing my skills. When I get good, maybe you’ll even change your mind about going in together on this place.”
I chuckle. “We’ll see.”
He goes back to work, but when I continue to stare, he tugs one earbud free and gives me an inquisitive look.
“How the hell did you know Celeste?” I ask.
Sam straightens up. “Seriously? You don’t think I’d remember the girl who earned you a beating worse than Dad ever gave you?”
“You were six years old. It was more than a decade ago.”
He shrugs. “I don’t know. I just remember shit. Like how you and Mom both left me alone a lot when I stayed at the studio in the evenings. She had meetings with Celeste’s dad, and you had meetings with Celeste. That’s what you always called it when you two disappeared into the locker room, anyway: meetings. You were supposed to be watching me and Elle.”
I grit my teeth. The only thing I really remember from that last night is Celeste. How she felt, how she sounded, and then the whirlwind of rage from her father when he found us in the middle of it all.
“I remember every detail if you want me to remind you. At the time, I thought it was gross, but I’ve had time to learn different.” Sam gave me a knowing smirk. Then he sobers and sighs. “But it did give me a healthy sense of caution when it came to sex. Never fuck a girl if her dad’s in the next room.”