I’m laughing as I head back to the couch, deciding that spending the day here might just be the plans I needed.
Chapter Thirty
Ryan
Glancing at the text once more, Rayne’s words cryptic and unlike him, I unbuckle my belt and ready myself to climb out of the car I’ve parked directly beside Maddie’s Jeep.
RAYNE: Come to Blackline, and be quiet about it. I’m in the Twilight Zone.
Curiosity and concern got the better of me, and two minutes after receiving the text, I was driving directly to his tattoo studio with my mind running over every scenario that could be playing out that warranted my presence. I know he didn’t tell Bax and Caid to come, since they’re at work, so it can’t be anything bad, right?
Tucking my cell into the pocket of my loose-fit jeans, dressed more casually today in a branded T-shirt and a pair of sunglasses, I head straight for Blackline’s front door. I’m quiet as a church mouse as I open the door, only to find the entire reception area empty, sound coming from the open door that leads upstairs the only thing indicating anyone is even here.
Sticking to Rayne’s request, I’m quiet in my boots as I walk across the lounge, and quieter still as I head up the stairs, removing my sunglasses and tucking them into the collar of my shirt. As I walk up each step, the sound grows louder, and I start making out the individual voices, catching a conversation that has question marks appearing above my head.
“...saying she’s a raging twat or anything, because she’s not. She’s just a little sassy, and I think people mistake that for being a diva.”
I’d recognize that voice anywhere, Maddie’s words floating through the doorway that opens into the workshop.
“If you say so. I heard some mean rumors about her, though,” a voice lined with an Irish lilt I don’t recognize comments, disbelief tinging his words.
“I don’t think they’re all rumors, bro. There’s no way,” another stranger’s voice chimes, a recognizable tone to his words that is heavily influenced by the same accent as the first guy. Where have I heard that voice before?
“That’s on you if you want to believe the press. You should know better, though, given your career choices,” Maddie snorts, and my lips twitch, my breath coming a little easier now that I finally hear her voice after a week of radio silence. A week of misery for all four of us, something that doesn’t feel so heavy now that I can hear her again.
“All right. Before you three start bitching again, give me another celeb you’ve met that Rayne has tatted,” I hear Billy demand.
And then a parroted word spoken by a sweet voice I know to be little Laylah. “Start bitching.”
“Fuck’s sake, Billy,” Mikey growls, the sound of a tattoo gun pausing before it starts up again.
“Gabby Alverez,” Rayne throws a name out there, a well-known influencer’s name that skyrocketed on a dancing app, the little pop princess wannabe already written on his blacklist after she made a stink over a fine-line tattoo Rayne did that she changed her mind about halfway through.
There’s a very brief pause before Maddie and the unknown voices claim in unison, “Total bitch.”
“Total bitch,” Laylah echoes.
And then there’s laughter, and I can’t help but sneak into the room, my need to see Maddie overcoming the want to listen in on a conversation I would have loved to hear more of.
As I step into the workshop, my sight goes into overtime, scanning everything in quick succession and cataloging it allbefore my brain can fully catch up. I’m not sure if that would do me any good, given what I’m currently looking at, but my brain sure does give it a valiant try.
Sitting in a rolling chair with his back to Maddie is Billy, his long red hair clutched in the fingers of the woman who has my every thought in a chokehold, her ass perched on top of a tattooing table to give her more height to twist the man’s hair into what looks to be intricate Viking-style braids. Behind her is Laylah, standing on the table and roughing Maddie’s blue strands into a bird’s nest, a studded belt wrapped around Laylah’s lower back and Maddie’s chest in order to, I assume, keep Laylah secure and upright.
Mikey is at his station beside where Billy has turned his into a makeshift salon, tattooing the back of a shirtless man whose arms are already decorated heavily in ink. I’m pretty sure I recognize some of that work, too, but I’m a little too sidetracked to place them.
Instead, I clock where Rayne is wiping an ink-stained rag over the thigh of another man, this one I recognize instantly.
“All right, how about Joey Ruben? You’ve tattooed him, right, Rayne?” Ronan Moore asks, the UFC’s current middleweight champion and one of my clients, reclined in the tattoo chair without a care in the world as Rayne permanently marks his thigh with his artwork.
Rayne nods distractedly, right before his eyes dart up and connect with mine. His lips twitch, and he jerks his head at the woman who has had us out of sorts all week, then shakes his head before focusing back on his work.
“Dude, he’s actually one of the funniest people I’ve ever met, and his wife has the exact same humor. We did their home tour photo shoot for a magazine two years ago, and it was actually one of the best afternoons of work I’ve had in my entire career,” Maddie gushes, right before she tugs Billy’s head backby his hair and commands, “You need to stop moving, otherwise you’re not going to look like a Viking at all. You’ll just look like a douche with braids.”
Billy flashes her a grin, but he does as he’s told, freezing as soon as Maddie positions his head where she needs it, completely uncaring that the almost-five-year-old strapped to her back is making a tangled mess of her own hair. I do notice that Laylah is sporting her very own complicated braids, though, and I can’t help but smile.
“How about Sasha Fowler?” the guy I still don’t recognize quips from Mikey’s station, and Maddie pauses, turning to glare at the face I still can’t see.
“You keep my mama out of this, you boneheaded shit-for-brains, or so help me, I will Photoshop a tattooed dick where Mikey is working really hard on gifting you with a masterpiece you don’t deserve,” she warns, and I realize then that she clearly knows these two men if she’s so comfortable threatening them.
