“Good morning, Octy, Knight,” Sully says from his seat on the couch in the waiting area.
Sully, Jed, and Brooks are the three local artists who moved from a shop that was doing some shady stuff with the local gangs. From what I’ve seen of their work so far, they’re all talented and seem like three nice guys, even if they give off serious dude bro vibes.
Sully is thickset and built like a heavyweight boxer. If I didn’t think that Knight would lose his shit, I’d ask Sully for a hug just to see how it felt to be wrapped up in his massive arms. Jed is the epitome of tall, dark, and dangerous. His skin is covered from head to toe with black and gray tattoos that give him an air of danger that is completely diluted when he smiles. Brooks looks like he should be on a beach with a surfboard. His easy, laid-back personality would be annoying if he weren’t so nice.
The three combined have clearly been friends for a long time, and it shows. They laugh, smile, and act like three dudes having the time of their lives, and even after a couple of weeks, they’ve become the levity that the studio needs to counteract Cyrus’s permanent black cloud personality.
“Hey, Sully,” I greet, hearing the curt tone in my voice.
Trying to pull my hand free from Knight’s, I head for the stairs that lead up to the stage that holds the tattooing stations, but Knight’s grip on me tightens, refusing to release me. The moment I reach my chair, I lift our joined hands into the air and look from them to Knight, arching my eyebrow at him and silently shouting at him to let me go.
Instead of loosening his hold, he uses our joined hands to reel me in, curling his arm around my back the moment I’m close enough. “Kiss me,” he demands, his tone calm, his body language anything but.
Sighing, I lean into him, not pushing up onto my tiptoes, but willing to meet him halfway. Exhaling, he dips his face and presses his lips to mine. It isn’t an explosive kiss, but the moment our skin touches, some of my annoyance fades.
“I’ll help. Tell me how,” he whispers against my lips.
I’ll help. Why do those two words always disarm me? When he showed up in Rapid City, he told me he’d help me. That day, he helped by putting me back together. He bathed me, did my hair, then dressed me in an outfit that made me feel more like me than I had in weeks.
Now his offer to help is an olive branch to close the distance our argument has created, and even though a part of me wants to be a brat and pout and bicker, the majority of me knows he is the key to my happiness and that letting him help reconnect us will make me feel better.
Pushing onto my tiptoes, I lift my arms and curl them around his neck. His exhale of relief makes tears fill my eyes. “Can you see if there’s any chocolate in the break room, please?” I ask into his neck.
“Let’s go and check,” he says, scooping me off the ground and into his arms.
“Jesus, that fucking dude is going to ruin it for the rest of us. I’m a motherfucking tattoo artist. Women fall over themselves to fuck me because I’m a bad boy. But if they see him in here, carrying her around like she’s a fucking princess, every other fucking woman is going to expect that too,” Jed moans loudly.
“You wouldn’t carry your woman around or treat her like a princess?” Betty asks him, amusement clear in her voice.
“Hell, no. I’m all about equality. If I walk, she walks. Don’t see no one offering to carry me anywhere.”
“I’ll carry you, bro,” Brooks says, marching over to Jed and attempting to pick him up.
“You going to call me princess too?” Jed laughs.
“How ’bout I call you fat ass? I can’t move you, bro,” Brooks moans, rubbing at his back as he straightens.
“When you meet your woman, you’ll carry her and call her your queen,” Knight says quietly, silencing the guys’ banter as he carries me through the studio and into the break room.
Armed with a handful of Hershey’s Kisses, Knight carries me back into the studio, sitting down in my chair and positioning me on his lap. The chocolate lightens my mood a little, but when my first client of the day doesn’t show up, my annoyance levels triple, and I end up snapping at everyone who attempts to talk to me.
“Can you check my DMs and see if the client from this morning has messaged to say why they no-showed. If they have a decent reason, I’ll let them rebook, if not, I’ll push them to the back of the line and tell them they have to pay the remainder of this missed appointment and all the money up front for the next one if they want to rebook,” I hiss, making the client I’m tattooing, chuckle beneath his breath.
Nodding, Knight pulls my cell from his pocket—he’s started holding on to it while I’m working, so I don’t get distracted—and taps at the screen. I finally charged up and changed the SIM from my basic model back to my old cell phone a week or so ago, and although it’s better to have all the functions of a smartphone, I do miss the simplicity of the basic flip phone I’ve been using.
“No messages from Coral, but there are three new ones from Abel,” Knight says, his voice taking on the über-robotic tone he defaults to when he’s not happy but doesn’t want to show it.
“Can you delete them and block the accounts they’re from?” I ask him.
“Abel?” Betty asks, obviously listening to our conversation. “As in…” She trails off, like she isn’t sure what Knight knows.
“Asshole ex,” I finish for her. “Yeah. I changed my number back in Rapid City, but since I posted about being here, he’sbeen messaging me,” I tell her, glancing her way, only to find her expression worried, looking between me and Knight.
“What are you going to do?” she asks, but her gaze is bouncing between me and my husband, so I don’t know which one of us she’s asking.
“Keep blocking him and hope he gets the hint,” I tell her, not wanting to make my ex Knight’s problem.
“Hmm,” she says, clearly not impressed with my suggestion.
