“Umm?” She turned to glare at her sister where she sat with her back against the headboard, magazine forgotten against her chest. “My world is ending, and all you have to say is, ‘umm…’?”
Mac rolled her eyes, then poked Willow in the side with her toe. “I hardly think your world is ending, Will. Dramatic much?”
“Sure as hell feels like it. Especially when Finn won’t stay out of my life!”
“Uh oh…you had another run-in?”
Saturday night at the bar, Mac and Avery hadn’t questioned Willow’s urgent plea to bail immediately. They had, however, cornered her the following day and asked what the hell had happened. She’d spilled all the details, cringing as she’d relived every minute of having Finn’s body pressed against her own. Avery’s and Mac’s faces had been sympathetic, and they’d agreed they’d do what they could to minimize the time she’d need to see Finn while he was in town. So freaking much for that plan.
“Yep. Bastard made me go over to his building so he could sign some papers. He’s just tryin’ to mess with my head.”
“Oh, honey, c’mon now. I love you, but you’ve gotta get a grip. I highly doubt that’s what’s goin’ on. We didn’t tell anyone where we were goin’ on Saturday, so him bein’ there was just a coincidence. And today…well, I’m sure it was innocent enough.”
More snippets of a bare-chested Finn flashed in her mind, and no. There was definitely nothing innocent about that man. He’d been downrightindecent. He’d managed to render her speechless, her jaw nearly unhinging as she’d stared at him dragging that old cotton shirt across his muscle-packed chest, down the washboard ridges of his abs…
“Um, Will? I know we’re close and all, but I don’t wanna know what your sex face looks like, so I’m gonna have to ask you to stop thinkin’ ’bout whatever you are.” Only a second passed before Mac gasped, her eyes going wide as she flew up from her reclining position. “Did you sleep with him?” She hissed the question, like they were seventeen and eighteen again, back in their parents’ house while divulging all the sordid details of Willow’s whirlwind romance with the bad boy of Havenbrook.
“Lord, no.” Willow squeezed her eyes shut against the remembered flush of awareness that’d flooded her body in Finn’s presence. Mac didn’t need to know the thought had crossed Willow’s mind too many times to count since he’d made his appearance back in town. Honestly, she didn’t even want to admit it to herself, let alone say it aloud to someone else.
“Okay, then everything’s fine.” Mac waved a hand in the air. “There’s no need to panic. I know Havenbrook’s small, but that doesn’t mean you’re gonna be running into him every day or anything.”
Except, if the past week was anything to go by, she would be. She took a deep breath and sat up, tucking her ankle under her leg as she faced her sister. “He seems hell-bent on making that happen. And since Gloria’s on maternity leave until August, I’m the one and only person he’ll be in contact with as they renovate. I don’t know how long they’re plannin’ on staying, but according to Rory’s latest voice mail, the Thomas boys have taken up residence in the apartment above the storefront.”
“Oh shit.”
“Yeah, oh shit.” Willow pushed up from the bed and walked across the hall to her own room as her sister continued with platitudes that were doing exactly nothing to reassure her. She whipped off her sleeveless blouse, then unzipped and tugged off her skirt. As she went to her dresser to grab a pair of yoga pants and a tank top—screw doing anything tonight but bingeing on Ben & Jerry’s—she caught a glimpse of herself in the floor-length mirror that stood in the corner of her room. A tiny fleck of black peeked out of the waistband of her low-cut bikini panties, and she tugged them up her hip—a force of habit as she hid the last bit of Finn Thomas she still had in her life.
The tiny bit of Finn Thomas she’d carried on her skin every day for the past decade.
And maybe that was the problem. Maybe that was why he still affected her so much—because no matter what she told herself, no matter how many different men she’d tried to have a relationship with, she’d always had thiswhat-ifin the back of her mind, courtesy of the brand she wore of his.
You still have my bird on you, Willowtree?
She closed her eyes against the whispered words he’d said to her in Ropers, wanting desperately to blink and have this thing off her body. She walked over to stand in front of the mirror, then tugged down the front of her panties until the entire tattoo was visible.
It might’ve happened ten years ago, but she remembered it as clear as if it’d been last week. The weeks leading up to it, all the planning that’d gone into them—both hers and his. Sketch after sketch after sketch until she’d gotten them just right. This act—getting tattoos together—was symbolic of so much more than the actual symbols on their bodies. It was the physical representation of them starting their life together, taking the leap with nothing but their love and a few prayers setting the foundation.
What a fool she’d been.
She’d willingly marked her body forever for a boy it turned out she’d never really known at all. Because when he’d walked away, he’d negated every word he’d ever said to her, every whispered confession of love, every promise of a future.
So now, when she looked at her tattoo—a bird in flight on her hip—instead of reminding her of everything she should soar for as intended, it only served to remind her of all the flying Finn had done to get away from her.
Well, no more of that. She’d lived with this for far too long, and it was time to do something about it. She snatched her phone from the pocket of her discarded skirt, then queued up Ty’s name—Finn’s friend who’d done the tattoo in the first place—and shot him a quick text. She hadn’t talked to him other than a hello around town for so long, she hoped it was still his correct number. But she hadn’t needed to worry. His reply came almost instantly, letting her know she could swing by his place tonight and they’d talk about her options.
Whether she covered it up with something else or removed it completely, she didn’t care. As long as it got the image of Finn’s bird off her body once and for all.
* * *
Lord,why was she so nervous? This was her choice—a decision long overdue, to be honest. She’d lived with that black mark on her skin for too long, and now that she’d finally decided to do something about it, butterflies battered her insides. Placing one hand over her stomach hoping to quell her nerves, she clutched Mac’s hand with the other as they walked up the front path to Ty’s house.
“I feel like we’re doing some kind of shady drug deal, going to his house after hours instead of the tattoo shop,” Mac said.
“Yeah, well, you know as much as I do if I even stepped foot in that shop, the entire town’d be talkin’ about what Willow Haven was doing in a seedy place like that. It’d get back to Daddy in a heartbeat.”
It was a miracle she’d managed to keep her little act of teenage rebellion a secret as long as she had. The handful of souls who knew about the tattoo she’d gotten with Finn were Mackenna and the men Willow had been intimate with—which, admittedly, hadn’t been many.
“Yeah, yeah. Gotta keep up the image,” Mac said. “I get it.”
