She speaks softly as she pulls line after line on my arm. “I think you’re going to cry.”
“I look cute when I cry.”
Someday, she’ll give me her tears too, and I’ll earn them. One thrust at a time.
“Are you ready for a break?” she asks at the two-hour mark. The past couple hours have flown by, thanks to conversation. Though even in the spans of silence where I simply watch her work, the minutes pass like seconds.
“Why? Is your hand getting tired?”
She sits up and raises an eyebrow with a little feistiness. “Are you patronizing me?”
I chuckle. “No, just asking if you want a rest.”
She returns to my lower bicep. “Please. You’ll break before I do,” she says slowly, keeping her anchor point while she shades the lower part of my arm. She’s right, the elbow is going to hurt like a motherfucker.
Her phone buzzes from across the way. I know it’s not Jason because I took care of that. I can see the notification that pops up on the screen from here.
“Someone sent you a DM on Instagram.” I glance over at her. “Have you been getting a lot of requests for Bozeman openings?”
She gives an exaggerated huff. “Yeah.”
I cock my head to the side. “Then why the big sigh?”
“Nothing,” she says, but there’s an awkward pause after her words.What is she not telling me?“I’ve been getting these weird messages lately. They are starting to get on my nerves.”
That has my attention. My shoulders automatically square, my molars compressing until my jaw aches. Every muscle is coiled tight as I attempt to remain calm.
“What do you mean? Who are they from?”
“I dunno, they come from different accounts. I block them and then a few days later, there’s another message. They all say the same thing:You will never replace me.Might be Jason, or who knows, maybe somebody’s trying to fuck with me before the convention or something. You know they bumped us up the list at the expo, maybe we took someone’s place and they’re pissed about it? I know it’s a long shot, but those are the only things I can come up with.”
What the fuck?“How long has this been going on?”
She shrugs, swapping out needles for a bigger shader. “Few weeks.”
“A fewweeks?”
“Since we split up.”
Would Jason really be that fucking dumb to send her messages after the warning I gave him? Looks like I might have to pay him a visit after all . . . The organizers for Bozeman moved Black Rabbit into a headliner spot on the website, noting Kelly’s name. It’s her first time tattooing at a convention in front of an audience, and with tattoo royalty in her bloodline, of course the organizers wanted to showcase it. The posts have been spreading like wildfire. Kelly is hot news right now. The other option is . . .Billy.
“I’ll look into it,” I assure her.
“It’s fine, Logan. Really. They’ll probably stop after we return from Bozeman . . . Just don’t do anything until after. Please don’t give me more to think about. I’m sure it’s nothing.”
I purse my lips at the request, annoyingly aware that if I push too hard right now, it might scare her away. I’ll give her till we return, but after that, I’m taking it into my own hands.
“All right, time for the elbow,” she warns, adjusting the armrest and putting me in a new position that gives her better access. “Deep breath.”
I lean back in my seat. The only thing bringing me unease are these messages—and the occasional tweaked nerve that shoots up my spine while she paints the cluster of needles over my bone. I stare down at her thick black lashes as she works with laser focus, letting her beauty distract me from the protective impulse to hide her away from the world.
After crisscrossing lines again and again until they blend in with my blackout, Kelly goes in with white ink to touch up areas where there should be more brightness. When she uses it on top of my existing ink, I give her some direction, as the white is simply mixing with the black pigment already deposited into my skin, giving the appearance of slices of negative space cutting into the once-covered area. She takes my instruction andimplements the design like a pro. The white on black has a bit of a learning curve—it forces you to invert the design in your head, sort of like figuring out if zebras are white with black stripes or vice versa. She manages just fine, like I knew she would.
After eleven hours, with a few intermissions in between, she finally sits back, peels off her gloves, and gives the finished piece a once-over. A few tremors roll through my sensitive flesh. It’s been a while since I’ve had a session this long; I’m probably going to feel like shit later once the tattoo flu sets in.
The silence settles between us, and I catch the moment she realizes how beautiful it is. Her eyes soften and her lips part. “Wow.”
“See it now?”
