“You’re gonna wear a hole through the laminate.”
Carmine appears at my elbow, holding two mugs of coffee. He sets one down next to my cleaning supplies and takes a long sip from his own, watching me closely.
I grunt and keep scrubbing. The motion is almost meditative, if you believe in that shit. Scrub, rinse, wring, repeat. As long as my hands are moving, I don’t have to think about the way her fingers trembled against mine.
She made my heart open, and it hasn’t closed since. I’m terrified of how raw and vulnerable I feel.
“So.” Carmine leans against the counter, settling in like he’s got all day. “The girl tapped out, huh?”
My jaw tightens. “She’ll be back.”
“You sure about that? She looked pretty shook up.” He scratches his beard.
“She’ll be back,” I repeat, throwing the rag into the bucket harder than necessary, making water splash onto the floor. “That design means something to her.”
He takes another sip. “Do you give all your clients your personal number? Because don’t think I didn’t see that.”
Heat crawls up the back of my neck, the warning in his voice clear. I grab a fresh rag and start wiping down the chair—my chair, the one she sat in.
“For aftercare questions,” I say, keeping my voice flat.
“Right,” Carmine draws out the word, vowel stretching into something that sounds a lot likebullshit. “Because she couldn’t call and talk to one of us. I’m sure you give all clients your personal number. Especially the pretty ones with big blue eyes who look at you like—”
“Carmine.”
“Just saying.” He holds up his hands. “I’ve known you eight years. Never seen you do that before, including for the hot babes you’ve had in your chair.”
He’s not wrong. I don’t have a good answer for that. My hands keep moving over the leather, but I’m not really cleaning anymore. I’m remembering the way her eyes went soft when I told her there was no shame in quitting. She had been lookingat me like she thought I’d be mad at her, but how could I be? Getting a tattoo can be intense, and some people get scared of the needle or the pain. There’s no shame in that. The guys and I joke about it, but when it comes down to it, the client is the most important priority, and if the client wants to quit, we quit. Respect is important.
Carmine sighs, and when I glance over, his expression has shifted. The teasing is gone, replaced by something that looks uncomfortably like concern.
“Look, I’m not trying to bust your balls.” His voice is quieter now. Serious. “But you’ve been hiding behind that grumpy bastard act for years. Something happened to you while she was here, and you need to figure that shit out.”
“I’m not hiding.”
“Brother.” He laughs. “Keep telling yourself that.”
I stop pretending to clean. Just stand there, rag clenched in my fist, staring at the chair where she sat yesterday. Where she pulled her collar aside and showed me her skin, trusting me to mark her with something permanent.
I’ve never told anyone about the Purrfect Kitten designs—not Clancy, not the other guys here, not my buddy Zane, not a single fucking soul. Anonymity is the whole point. Behind a screen name and a faceless brand, I can be vulnerable. I can be the person Grandma Rose saw when she looked at me, not the problematic foster kid everyone else expected to be a disappointment.
In my heart, I know that Carmine’s right. I am hiding.
And yesterday, for the first time in years, someone looked at me and made me want to open up to them.
“I’m fine,” I say finally. The words sound hollow even to me.
Carmine snorts. “Sure you are.” He claps me on the shoulder as he heads toward the front, coffee mug in hand.
I flip him off without turning around.
I should be sleeping.Instead, I’m sketching a new design on a blank canvas.
My apartment would look empty if it weren’t for the canvases.
They’re everywhere. Leaning against walls, stacked three deep in some places, propped on every flat surface. All of them variations on the same theme: cats with paws crossed in front of them, eyes expressing feelings I’ve never been able to say out loud.
The kitten tonight is soft, vulnerable, paws crossed in the familiar heart shape. But something’s different about this one. There are tiny glasses perched on the kitten’s nose.
