She shook her head without looking at me.
“Not a fan of Latin?”
“Tattoo artists have opinions on all styles. None of which is the concern of our clients.” A light rip whispered through the air as she pulled out an alcohol swab to prep my arm. “So, where do you usually get your work done?”
“Tell me your opinion on Latin tattoos first.”
Her movements on my arm slowed, and Sage looked up at me with a sigh. “It’s pretentious. Clichè. People trying to seem deep or intellectual, or whatever. If you don’t speak the language, why permanently scar your body with it? Your turn.”
I bit back a smile, my gaze dragging over her bare arms. “What kind of a tattoo artist doesn’t have any ink?”
“Who said I don’t have ink?” She smirked, lining up the stencil over the patch of skin we’d agreed on.
There was nothing to it. I got my first tattoo at sixteen, and had been steadily adding to the tapestry without ever shying away from pain. It was the good kind. Addictive. But for whatever reason, this specific outline burned before she’d even picked up a needle. It just felt wrong. All of this did.
“Nervous?” she asked, readying the ink.
“Do I look nervous?”
She gave the machine a few test spins, letting the tip hover over the tray. “Honestly? You look like you’re about to throw up. Something tells me it’s part of the reason you’re not as excited as the rest of your team in there.”
Astute. She had that much going for her.
“Look, I don’t know much about hockey,” she said when I stayed silent, eyes tracking the ink as she loaded it into the needle. “But I know this trophy means a hell of a lot to you guys. So whatever’s got your panties in a bunch, suck it up. This is meant to be a celebration. You beat out the best teams to lift this thing. Twice, apparently.”
Except, I hadn’t beaten any of them.
Grayson carried us. Tucker threw himself into blocks that would’ve taken out my front teeth. Shawn couldn’t even finish the season because of his injury, but he had more in his highlight reels than I did. Landon missed most of the playoffs, and still ended up a hero.
But me? I dressed for every game, taped my stick, and watched them do it all.
“They don’t get it,” I said eventually.
Sage touched her needle to my arm with the motor buzzing to life, her focus one thousand percent on the task at hand. Her voice threaded through the motion almost absently.
“Get what? That it’s different for backup players?”
“Something like that.”
The needle scratched over my skin and I flinched, more from nerves than pain.
“I hear a lot of stories in this chair,” she said. “The guys on the bench don’t get the credit, but a team’s nothing without them. If that’s what you’re hung up on.”
I said nothing for a beat, my arm tight under her grip. “I guess.”
“You guess?”
The vibrations coursed through my arm in sync with the quiet spaces between words. I didn’t owe her an explanation, and I sure as hell didn’t want this to turn into a therapy session. The stories she’d heard meant nothing to me, because they weren’t mine.
I looked down and saw the outline taking shape, the cup materializing from the stenciled lines as if it were something alive. Something kicked loose in my chest, and my heart hammered like it was nobody’s business. It felt too real. Too permanent.
“I—” I swallowed, then reached over to grip her wrist tightly. “Stop.”
She startled a fraction, eyes wide, but leaned back with the needle idling harmlessly over the tray. “Everything okay?”
“I’m fine. I just…” T-shirt on. Fuck the hoodie. I didn’t want to spend more time in there than I needed to. Every step toward the curtain felt urgent and uneven, as though I were trying to outrun the outline on my own arm.
“It’s not finished,” she called after me.
