Tattooed Hearts

by C. A. Harms

  Tattooed Hearts

  Copyright @ 2016 C.A. Harms

  All Rights Reserved

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and other elements portrayed herein are either the product of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to real persons or events is coincidental.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, storied in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior permission of the author.

  Interior design and formatting by:

  Christine Borgford, Type A Formatting

  Table of Contents

  Tattooed Hearts

  Thank You

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Epilogue

  One Year Later

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  There is a charm about the forbidden that makes it unspeakably desirable.

  —Mark Twain

  THANK YOU, MELISSA Gill of MG Book Covers. Not only for the amazing cover, but for the assistance in naming Sean and Jenny’s story. It couldn’t have been more fitting.

  You are so awesome, and in a short time I have sort of grown an attachment to your creative abilities. Even though you torture me with your premades, and I may have to sell my firstborn to afford my cover addiction.

  Thank you for all you do.

  WHAT IS IT about the things we can’t have that make them so desirable?

  An unexplainable attraction that no matter how hard we try to ignore, only grows deeper with time. Each breath, each heartbeat only seems to enhance our desire to have it.

  Jenny Preston was my weakness. She had always been forever imbedded in my heart and soul. Her beauty was mesmerizing.

  Only I couldn’t tell her how I felt. I couldn’t tell anyone, because I was too fearful doing so would change what we had. And losing Jenny’s friendship by making things between us awkward was something I never wanted to face.

  She was my light, my happiness. She shined so bright that it was impossible to be around her and not feel light-headed and carefree. I knew without a doubt I would do anything for her.

  But she wasn’t mine to protect. She was married to my best friend.

  The three of us grew up together, sharing our childhood adventures and mishaps. In fact, I didn’t remember a time when Jenny wasn’t in my life. Robby and I fought over her attention well into our teenage years. He didn’t like to lose and played dirty whenever he felt threatened, and the idea of Jenny and me being anything more than just friends was the perfect motivation for him.

  I left for one summer to visit my grandparents, and when I returned things had changed between the two of them. Our late night conversations through our adjacent bedroom windows stopped; most nights I found myself looking at her darkened room and drawn drapes, feeling my heart break just a little more.

  Jenny was glued to Robby’s side almost as if she felt she had to be. It pained me to watch her look at him as if asking for his permission to speak each time the three of us tried to decide on what we wanted to do.

  She didn’t smile as much, or laugh when I did silly shit that would normally have her buckled over with tears rolling down her face. She and I had always shared the same sense of humor where we found something funny in everything, and Robby would be the one telling us to grow up. As we got older he changed too. But I still tried to see the good in him, because I knew it was in there somewhere, or at least I hoped.

  I was confused when I overheard my parents talking late one night about how sad it was that little Jenny would be forced to live a life of regret. I wanted to demand they tell me what the hell was happening, but deep down, I think I knew already. Robby grew up with an abusive father and seemed to be following in his footsteps instead of breaking the Whiteman family’s mold like we’d all hoped.

  The day I found out Jenny Preston was carrying my best friend’s baby, I learned what true heartbreak felt like. It was also the day I knew I’d lost Jenny for good.

  It was almost as if I couldn’t breathe. Each time I tried, I felt as if I was suffocating. Over the years, she had become so much more than just a girl to me. She was part of me, and I believed I was part of her too. But when that changed, it changed me, and I did what I had to do: I moved on.

  But the place that was reserved for Jenny in my heart always remained hers, even if it was now tainted by anger and hate—anger at myself for never telling her how I truly felt, and hate for the guy I thought was my friend, who had taken my Jenny from me and changed her.

  To be honest I felt betrayed by them both. And though on the outside I may have looked like I had life all figured out, on the inside I had never felt so lonely.

  SEAN

  “FIX THE FUCKING thing,” I snapped, slamming the door and turning to face my crew chief. “It’s running like shit.” I had just taken the car for a test around the track and nothing about its stability was comforting.

  “We got it, boss,” Monty shouted as he began directing the team. The guy was wet behind the ears, which made me nervous. But he had come highly recommended by Jimmy, who retired on me last year. He and I still don’t see eye-to-eye on that one. I’d told him he had a few more years left in him, and he’d disagreed.

  “You better have it,” I said, glaring at Monty. “We leave in forty-eight hours, and this type of shit is not what we fucking need.”

  I turned and walked back to the stadium, not giving him time to respond. Right now I didn’t care to hear any excuses; I just wanted it right.

  I’d been in one hell of a mood for the last week. Actually the last month. The closer this race got, the more agitated I became. Texas Motor Speedway in Fort Worth was in my opinion too close to home. To close to the one regret I still had been unable to shake. Being here meant my parents would expect me to stay with them, which meant I’d risk seeing Robby, and that meant seeing Jenny too.

  I wasn’t sure I was ready for that.

  It was crazy. Despite all the women I’ve been with over the years, no one had even come close to her.

  Six years ago, I left home with a dream of becoming a NASCAR driver and never looked back. I rarely visited, and my parents knew why. It was just too hard.

  Before I left, I’d watched the sweet girl I’d loved from the moment we met as kids slowly fade away and the light in her eyes that I’d always admired slowly dim. I knew she was unhappy, I think she had been since she started dating Robby, but it was too late to change that now.

  Shortly before Jenny gave birth to a little boy, her father insisted that Robby marry her. I sat in my room feeling as if my heart had been ripped from my chest as they left for the courthouse on a Friday morning. I watched from my b
edroom window as Jenny walked toward her father’s truck with her head hung. Just before she climbed up into the cab, she looked back over her shoulder at me. I had a strong urge to yell out to her, but it vanished when Robby appeared at her side. I was torn between the girl I loved and the guy who had felt more like a brother to me than a friend.

  Something inside me died that day. But that feeling, too, had faded over time.

  Robby changed too. Over the years, he became cold, distant, and smug, almost like he knew he’d taken something from me and was proud of it. And slowly, our friendship had faded. Now we were just two people who once knew one another, two people who might say hello in passing but nothing more.

  But this didn’t hurt me the way losing Jenny had.

  My phone rang in my pocket just as I reached my trailer. I wanted nothing more than to crawl inside and take a nap, but when I looked at the screen and saw my mother was calling, I couldn’t let it go to voice mail. I was still a momma’s boy through and through, and I was proud of it too.

  “Hey, pretty lady,” I answered.

  “Aren’t you the charmer,” she said, and I could almost see her smiling.

  “Only to you, Ma,” I assured her. “Ain’t met a woman that is more beautiful than you.”

  “Well from the looks of it, you’ve been looking through a wide range of ladies.” I cringed at the thought of my mother reading the stories those reporters print. They always had a way of making things look worse than they actually were. Yeah, I’m not a choirboy and I’ve had my share of one-night stands, but it seems as if I talk to a woman more than two minutes, they call her my next conquest.

  “Can’t believe everything you read, Mom.”

  Silence settled between us, and I knew she was thinking the same thing I was. My parents knew how I felt about Jenny. Hell, I think they knew before I did.

  “There’s been some trouble,” she said, and instantly my stomach tightened because I knew what she was referring to. “Robby got arrested a couple days ago.”

  Robby had been arrested more than anyone else in the city of Irving. I think they even have a designated cell just for him by now.

  “That doesn’t surprise me, Ma,” I replied.

  “Jenny said it was—”

  “Ma, listen, I gotta go,” I interrupted her. “Monty says the car is ready for another run around the track before we load up.”

  I hated lying to my mother, but I couldn’t talk about this, not now. Just the mention of Jenny’s name made me feel like I’d just taken a swig of acid.

  “Okay, but before you go, do you think you can get us a couple extra tickets for the race?”

  I’d given her three already: one for her, Dad, and old man Wickers, who ran the drugstore my mother had worked at for years. The guy was a NASCAR diehard. When the time rolled around for me to be in Fort Worth, it was the highlight of his year.

  “It’s just that I have a friend that would like to come, and she’d love it if she could bring her son too.”

  “Sure,” I told her, “that shouldn’t be a problem. I’ll leave two more at the window under your name.”

  “Okay,” she said happily. “We’ve got your room ready for ya, so you come find us after the race. It’s time you stay at home instead of those stale hotels you always choose.”

  The ache in my stomach returned at the thought of going back to Irving.

  “I will, Ma,” I assured her, even though I had every intention of coming up with a reason for not staying in Fort Worth. But I’d tackle that when the time came.

  JENNY

  “LANDYN,” I HOLLERED from the bottom of the stairs. I could hear his little feet pounding against the floor upstairs.

  When he appeared at the top of the stairway and flashed that innocent smile of his, I smiled back. My sweet little boy, who I’d vowed from the day he was born to nurture and protect, was the light of my life. He was kind and adventurous and had an imagination that wowed me every day.

  He was so unlike his father, but I guess that wasn’t that surprising. Robby rarely spent time with him, so the chances of Landyn gaining any piece of his personality were minimal.

  I was actually pretty thankful for that.

  I’ve made a lot of mistakes and a lot of bad choices, but I have never regretted my sweet boy. He was the reason I got up every morning and pushed through my day.

  “Hi, Momma,” Landyn said in his innocent voice. He knew his innocence had a direct line to my heart, and he played it up well.

  “Can you come down and clean up this mess you left behind?” I asked, refusing to give in and do what he wanted by cleaning it myself while letting him go off and continue to play.

  I couldn’t be deterred from being a mother because his father had placed the fear of God into us just two nights ago when he came home raising hell. The Robby I knew now and the Robby I knew when I was younger were like night and day. He drank entirely too much, and he was always angry. He treated me as if I had ruined his life, but in reality he started to self-destruct long ago all on his own. The summer I made the mistake of choosing the wrong guy was the same summer everything changed for the worse and I lost one of the most important people in my life, the man who up until then had never once turned his back on me.

  Robby was always so high strung. I never imagined he’d hit me, and he’d never lay a hand on Landyn, but the way he spoke to me sometimes made me feel as if he had. It saddened me that the kind boy I once knew had grown into such a hateful man. Even though we’d all hoped he wouldn’t repeat his father’s mistakes, Robby Whiteman had allowed himself to become a mirror image of the man he’d once said he despised.

  I’d decided my marriage was in shambles and a life of struggling to make ends meet would be more pleasant than another day as Robby’s wife. I’d gone to a lawyer and filed for divorce, and when the papers were served two days ago, all hell broke loose.

  Robby went crazy, saying he didn’t truly want me, or Landyn for that matter, but he didn’t want anyone else to have us either.

  And then he’d done something I could never forgive. He’d hit me for the first and for the last time.

  The look of horror on my little boy’s face as I cowered on the kitchen floor with his father standing over me was something I never wanna see again.

  Robby was taken away in handcuffs, and the next morning I filed for a restraining order.

  I think the most shameful thing of all was looking into the eyes of Molly Nichols as she handed the pills my doctor has prescribed for the anxiety the whole thing had caused. As I stood in front of Sean’s mother with a swollen lip, the strain of the last six years and the shame I’d felt hit me with a vengeance, and I broke down

  She rounded the counter in seconds and took me into her arms.

  I’d always admired Molly, but I was so embarrassed by my life that I’d distanced myself from her and everyone else that meant something to me.

  Including Sean. The boy that always made me laugh. The boy that made some crazy contraption that stretched from my window to his, which he would use each night, announcing that he wanted to talk by pulling the string and causing the metal can on my end to rattle against my window. The same device I disconnected after I’d made the mistake of giving myself to Robby the summer Sean was gone. I felt like I’d betrayed him even though we’d never truly been more than friends.

  Growing up, my two best friends just happened to be boys—two very different boys who I’d felt different things toward. My feelings for Robby were more nurturing. He was always having a rough time at home and needed someone to assure him that one day things would be okay. If only I had known at the time how big of a lie my reassurances would turn out to be.

  But my friendship with Sean was always full of laughter, sometimes to the point of tears. I’d always had a strong connection with him, but he never gave me any indication that our relationship could be more than that. He was a loyal friend; Robby not so much. Because the moment Sean left the summer before our seni
or year of high school, Robby flipped the switch.

  And I fell hook, line, and sinker for his charm—charm that faded long ago. Now I know it was just an act to trick me and get one up on Sean. I always knew Robby was jealous of him, yet I never brought attention to it because I felt like I was only rubbing dirt in the wound. Robby and Sean didn’t need the friction, and when they got along things were better for all of us.

  Maybe I should have. It could have changed everything.

  I stood at the bottom of the stairs watching Landyn walk down the steps toward me, obviously dreading the idea of cleaning up all his toys from the living room floor. He made what appeared to be ramps for his cars using my books and the pillows from the couch.

  Maybe it was wrong of me, but lately I found it hard to stop him from creating havoc. He was only having fun like kids do, but Robby always complained about the mess Landyn left. Everything always had to be exactly as he wanted it, which didn’t really work when you had a toddler.

  So for the last couple days, I’d neglected to stop Landyn from doing whatever he wanted, just because it felt nice to see my son playing with a smile on his face, instead of looking over his shoulder to make sure his dad wasn’t about to blow. Landyn would never again have to worry if he left his bed unmade or his room a mess.

  I had to draw the line with the living room though. Our house was too small for me to be climbing over couch cushions and stacks of books on the way to the bathroom.

  As he passed me, I roughed his blond locks with my fingers and he looked up at me. “Get this cleaned up, because I have a surprise for you.”

  “A surprise?” he asked and I nodded.

  He zipped around the living room in excitement, picking up his cars and putting the pillows back where they belonged. Wave a promise of something special in his face and my child turns into a cleaning beast.

  By the time he was done, he was out of breath as he stood before me, looking up at me with an eager expression.

  “What’s the surprise?” he asked.

  I thought of tormenting him, maybe dragging this out a little longer to convince him to clean his room too, but those hopeful, big, blue eyes made me cave.