I held his gaze, lifting my chin. I had nothing to be ashamed of. Nothing. “A friend of mine said you specialize in covering scars?”
He didn’t flinch or even blink as his gaze slid over me, like he was trying to see right through my clothes to where I hid the marks on my body. “Yeah.”
Don’t chicken out. “I’d like to get some work done, and—”
“Botched plastic surgery, huh?” Mr. Blue Hair said, still standing at the counter, that smirk firmly back in place.
Anger shot through me so fast I felt dizzy from the spike of my blood pressure. I didn’t deserve that. I was done letting people treat me like shit because of who I was, where I lived, because I looked the way I did. Especially this kid who knew nothing about me.
Cal’s expression turned thunderous, and his head twisted to the younger man before I could open my mouth. “What the fuck did you say?” he growled.
I felt it in the pit of my stomach…lower.
Blue Hair shrugged. “Come on, Cal, look at her—”
“I was burned…in a car wreck,” I said.
The room went silent, deathly so.
The younger man paled. “Shit. I’m sorry…I—”
“Out,” Cal said to him, voice lower than before and full of so much aggression and rage, even I took a step back.
“Cal, man…I’m—”
“Warned you, Dane.” Cal pointed to the door. “Get the fuck out.”
The younger guy stiffened, then he walked around the counter, and after cursing several more times, left. The bell above the door jingled as it shut behind him.
I turned back to the wall of muscle across from me. “You didn’t need to do that.” The boy was rude, sure, but firing him seemed a bit extreme.
Cal walked to the door, slid the lock, flipped the sign to closed, then turned back to me. He took a slow breath and his jaw worked. “That idiot was my brother.” Another breath. “He’s gone. Until he learns not to run his mouth.”
“Your brother?”
He dipped his chin and that stare turned probing. It unnerved me.
“Oh…well, I…” My eyes darted to the bolted door. Were we alone? My flight instincts heightened. I wasn’t completely sure why I had the sudden urge to run. I swallowed audibly and looked back at him.
“I look like a monster,” he said, reading my thoughts, eyes getting hard. “I don’t act like one.”
“Of course, I would never think…” I shook my head, not sure what to say. I’d offended him.
He kept distance between us when he walked back, and I felt ashamed of the way I’d reacted. I, of all people, knew what it was to be judged by appearances.
“Ready?” he asked.
“Yes.” I knew what I wanted. And something about the man in front of me made me feel…okay. Mainly he made me feel off balance, but suddenly, despite the way I reacted to him, he also made me feel…safe. That I was in safe hands. How could that be?
There was a tension sliding through my body I didn’t know what to do with, had never experienced before, and it got more intense every time Cal looked at me.
I didn’t know what it was, but it definitely wasn’t unpleasant. The man looked like a street thug, especially with all that ink and those wicked-looking scars, but something about him fascinated me.
He walked to the curtained-off room and held it open. “Through here.”
This guy was a professional. Like a doctor. He would have seen this kind of thing before, worse. He wouldn’t be disgusted or repulsed. At least, he wouldn’t show it. He’d keep his thoughts, the looks, to himself, like all good professionals did, right?
“All right. Let’s do this.” I hated that some of the strength in my voice had drained away.
I followed him in and watched as he sat on a stool with wheels. I got the feeling he did that for my benefit. That he was well aware his size, his looks, were more than a little intimidating.
There was a padded fold out table on one side of the room, and a massage chair on the other, the kind that you sat on backward and there were pads for your shins and arms, and a place to rest your head.
“Where’s the scarring?” he asked matter-of-factly.
“My back and side. But mainly my back.”
He stared at me, and when I didn’t do anything, he said, “Need to show me, babe.”
Babe.
I’m sure he called lots of woman that, but the endearment sent tingles across my shoulders and up the back of my neck. The good kind. I ignored them and turned to lift my silk shirt but couldn’t get it high enough.
“Lose the shirt,” he said.
I paused, that rough, dark voice making me shiver. Suddenly, I was incredibly nervous. Only one man had seen me with my shirt off, had seen what I had hidden under the perfectly put together exterior—it hadn’t ended well.
“So is Gloria your girlfriend?” I blurted for some unknown reason.
His lips curled slightly, the scar slashing through them making it look like he was almost sneering, but I knew he wasn’t because his eyes were steady, showing no emotion. “No.”
“Oh, but you…you were…” My face heated.
He was quiet a beat. “Some women…have a thing for monsters.”
The room became silent, uncomfortably so. I didn’t know what to say to that. Still, I opened my mouth to say something, anything to end the oppressive silence.
“Can’t ink you through your clothes.”
His voice rumbled through the room like an incoming storm, and I shivered before I could stop myself. What the hell is wrong with me? “Right.” I shook my head, face getting hotter still. “Of course you can’t.”
Sliding my fingers down the front of my shirt, undoing the buttons as I went, I took a steadying breath, slipped the last one free, and let the silk drop from my shoulders. I had on a white lace bra. It was modest and covered everything, which was why I’d selected it and not one of the beautiful sets I usually wore, but still I felt exposed.
I’d spent all my life trying to be perfect, pretending to be something I wasn’t. Now this ruggedly beautiful, terrifying man was seeing me without my designer armor. I felt ashamed over my vanity. He couldn’t hide his scars. He couldn’t pretend they weren’t there. It was stupid, I didn’t know him, and after this was done, I’d probably never see him again, but right then I was glad it was him who was seeing me like this, that it was him seeing me for who I truly was.
This was me. This was Cassy.
Right then Cassandra was nowhere to be found. Her armor had disintegrated at her feet.
I felt more vulnerable than I ever had in my whole life. I was putting my trust in this man’s large, brutal-looking hands, and hoping like hell he didn’t crush me. Something inside me broke when it had happened the first time, when the guy I’d been seeing looked away from me in disgust.
If Cal flinched away, if he cringed at what he saw…
I straightened my shoulders.
The stool squeaked and I heard the thud of his boots as he rolled up behind me.
“You thinking a full back piece?” A pause. “Or something…just down the side here?”
His fingers slid over my bare skin, over the scar tissue marring my flesh from shoulder to waist on my left side. Goose bumps rose on my arms. “I, ah…I thought down one side.”
My brother and his friend had been in a car wreck a short distance from our ranch. I’d been behind them in my own car, which meant I was first on the scene. His friend, who’d been in the passenger seat, had been lucky—he’d been thrown from the truck and knocked unconscious. My brother had been trapped. I’d tried so hard to pull him free, but his truck had exploded into flames before I could drag him from the twisted steel trapping him.
The scars brought back those painful memories every time I saw them. The truth was, I’d lost my brother long before that night. These marks were just another reminder of how I’d let him down. I needed to let the pain and guilt go, for my own sanity. And if I didn’t a
t least try, I’d never break away from my father or the guilt and blame he wielded against me whenever I tried to gain the slightest bit of freedom.
“Do you think you can help?” My vocal cords felt unbearably tight.
He didn’t answer. Instead, I felt a rough-tipped finger on me again, this time sliding across my shoulder blade. I jolted. No one had ever touched that ugly damaged skin, no one but me since I left the hospital. It was a shock to the system.
He didn’t comment on my overreaction. “The scar tissue is dense in some places, but I can cover them.”
I noticed when he said more than a few words he spoke slower, like he was measuring each one. His voice also sounded deeper, rougher.
I shivered and quickly dragged my shirt back on and buttoned it up before turning back to him. “When can you start?”
He sat back on his stool, those dark eyes locked on mine again. His lashes were thick and black, gorgeous. The only soft thing on him.
“Day after tomorrow. This week’s booked solid. Can fit you in after hours, though. Ten?” he said in that slow measured way again.
“Yes. That’s perfect. Thank you. I really appreciate it.” Knowing my scars were finally going to be covered somehow cast light on the shadows that had been following me around. For the first time in a long time they weren’t quite so dark, so menacing.
His hands went to his thighs. Long, thick fingers, skin rough and dark. Big, like the rest of him. Nothing like my father’s hands or his friends’. They hired people to do the hard work, running their properties from behind desks instead of on the back of a horse.
Cal did his own dirty work.
“You know what you want?” He paused. He seemed to do that a lot as well. “I can get started on a sketch.”
“Yes, I know exactly what I want.”
“We can refine…make changes when you come in.”
I pulled out the pictures I’d found online and handed them to him. “I want something bright and beautiful. Lots of flowers. I especially love pink roses, so if you could add a few of those.” A smile tugged the corner of my mouth before the sadness could crowd in and ruin the memory. And the reason I’d chosen what I had—covering the bad with the good—my ugly scars with beauty. “My brother always gave me roses on my birthday. He stole them from our garden. It was always the pink ones.”
He didn’t reply, or really look at the pictures I’d given him, and instead grabbed a sketch pad from the small desk behind him and, head dipped, started moving his pencil across the page.
It was mesmerizing to watch the sure, confident strokes of his pencil, those huge hands creating beauty right before my eyes.
I forced myself to look away and took a step toward the door. “I should get going. I guess I’ll see you Thursday?”
He lifted his head. “I’ll have something ready…to show you then.”
More goose bumps lifted across my skin. God, his eyes were intense. Not quite black, but the darkest of dark chocolate. Rich and decadent. An image of him kissing that woman earlier flashed through my mind, along with some unsettling emotions.
Jealousy, all curled up and twisted with the kind of heat that had me squeezing my thighs together.
My lips started tingling, my body joining the party a second later. What would it be like to be with a man like him? I wasn’t tall by any definition of the word. How would it feel to be kissed by someone so big and muscular, so gritty and rough?
My face flushed hot when I realized I’d been staring at him. Because he was watching me as well, that look back on his face like he was waiting for me to say something more, like he was waiting for…
I had no idea what.
“Well…I…I guess I’ll go.” For some reason, I didn’t want to.
He didn’t say anything, just continued staring at me.
My face got even hotter. “Um…thanks again.” I awkwardly waved at him like a complete idiot, then fumbled with the curtain, trying to find the opening. I finally managed to fling it back and walked out of there so fast I nearly fell over my own damn feet.
I unbolted the door, the little bell above it jingling as I rushed out. I strode across the street to my car, my pulse racing, my skin feeling too tight for my body. I’d never felt anything like this. Excitement and fear all twisted together. But the good kind of fear, the kind that, if you did what you feared most and succeeded, you’d reap the best kind of reward.
I’d never taken any kind of risk in my life. I’d always done what was asked of me by my father, and for the first time, I was taking something for myself.
But this feeling, it wasn’t just about the tattoo, was it?
I looked back over my shoulder to the small shop across the street—while loud voices and music echoed out from the bar just down from me, a soundtrack that seemed to throb through me—and I sucked in a sharp breath.
There was a large shadow at the window, a dim outline through the pictures taped on the glass door, but I knew what it was…who was standing there.
Cal.
Chapter Two
Cal
She didn’t recognize me.
But then my name wouldn’t have tipped her off. Cal was a nickname, a shortened version of my surname Calero. Cassandra wouldn’t know that, Chris had called me by my first name, Joel.
Through a small gap, the only piece of glass door not covered in pictures, I watched Cassandra Deighton get into her car and shut the door.
Jesus. Even after ten years she still seemed as untouchable as she had then. That coating of frost she’d made sure I felt whenever I was around her hadn’t thawed. The only time I’d seen her soften was around her horses. Daddy’s perfect angel. She’d been an ice queen in the making back then. Is that who she was now?
What would her father say if he knew she was getting inked up? If he knew who was going to be decorating her rich-girl skin?
I gripped the handle. I needed to go out there before she left, put a stop to this, tell her that I’d made a mistake, that I couldn’t fit her in after all. But I couldn’t make my damn feet move. I fucking stood there and watched her drive away.
The last time I’d seen her she’d been walking up the stairs in her house, dressed to the nines, dolled up for one of her father’s fancy dinner parties. She hadn’t seen me, had missed the night’s entertainment when I’d been escorted from the property, whispers and looks of accusation following me as I was dragged out and told not to come back.
The poor Rocktown kid, the bad seed who had led Lyall Deighton’s perfect son astray then dared to show his ugly face at their doorstep and remind them of what had happened. All I’d wanted was to see if Cassandra was okay. I knew she’d been hurt, but I had no idea how badly.
That was the first time her father publicly blamed me for Chris’s death.
My fist collided with the doorframe, a rough growl erupting past my lips, rage a twisted knot in my gut. I should have followed her from my shop. I should have told her not to come back.
Would you be able to even form the damn words to tell her to take a hike?
I felt my skin heat and gritted my teeth. Yeah, I’d seen the horrified look on her face when she’d gotten a good look at me, the tilt of her head when my speech was slow, measured. It pissed me the fuck off. Frustration, the kind I hadn’t felt in a long time, settled in my gut. The TBI—traumatic brain injury—I’d suffered when I was thrown from the car had changed my whole life, and even after all this time I still had moments when I struggled with my speech. The words didn’t always come easy, and I had to think hard, get them right in my head, before I spoke.
“Fuck.” Of all the tattoo shops Cassandra could have strutted her snooty ass into, she’d chosen mine. Why did I agree to work on her? I’d lost my motherfucking mind. Shit, if she knew who she’d asked to cover those scars…
An image of her smooth porcelain skin, the burn scars marring that perfect flesh, flashed through my head. I tried to shove the image from my mind and strode back to my room to
start cleanup, but it wouldn’t leave me. I kicked my stool across the room and dragged my hand over my cropped hair.
Goddammit. I never thought I’d see her again.
I’d met Chris, her brother, in a club one night. He’d come to me, looking for a dealer, and I’d been only too happy to be his supplier. My grandmother had been raising us, doing her best, but could barely put food on the table. So when my brother had gotten sick, really sick with pneumonia, and we’d needed money fast, I’d done what was necessary to cover the medical bills. Chris was reckless, always trying to prove something. Soon the weed I sold him wasn’t enough, and he got what he needed elsewhere. There was nothing I could do to stop the road he’d headed down. No one could have.
But Chris’s family, Cassy—her brother had called her—they’d blamed me when I knew damn well the guy had been acting out long before I came along. It was easier to point the finger at me than admit they’d ignored the warning signs, that Chris’s fate had been written on the wall a long time before he’d gotten in that car, stoned and drunk, and driven us into a tree.
They’d had no trouble pinning Chris’s death on the punk kid from the wrong side of the tracks, a kid who had no one on his side and no one to stand up for him against a wealthy family in need of a scapegoat.
His father was angry that I’d lived. He’d wanted to hurt me—so he had, the only way he could. He went to the authorities about the drugs and about my younger brother and the conditions we were living in.
My grandmother had been raising Dane and I since our parents abandoned us, along with our cousin Logan after his mom proved time and again that she cared more about her next drink than her son. Our grandmother did her best, despite having nothing. No, some days we didn’t eat, but we still had each other, and we were with someone who loved us.
The end result of Lyall’s interference was Dane being taken away, put into foster care, and Logan, who had been helping pay the medical bills by doing the same as me, had been arrested and sent to prison. He was the oldest out of the three of us, and was always trying to look out for us, protect us. Because of that, he’d stashed the weed in his room, and had insisted he take the fall for the drugs that were found completely.
Beg For You: Rocktown Ink, Book One Page 2
