Page 3 of Just Between Us

She. Was. Pissed.

In the chaos, I couldn’t make out my sister’s frantic words, but her eyes flashed with anger as her head whipped around, searching. Sylvie was smart enough to know one of her idiot brothers was likely behind the prank gone awry.

It didn’t take long for her death stare to pin me into place through my storefront window.

Feeling like a child, my feet rooted to the ground. My lips pressed together, and I offered a half-hearted, sheepish salute through the window.

With a sigh, I stepped toward the door, wholly unprepared but willing to face the angry women.

“No.” Luna stopped me. “I’ll go. You have an artist interview in ten minutes.” She pulled a King Tattoo T-shirt from the merchandise shelf and shook her head at me before rolling her eyes. “Men.”

I swallowed hard. I probably should have sucked it up, admitted that the prank was for Beckett and that I’d fucked up. I always seemed to get the blame, even if I was innocent.

Though, let’s be real, I was rarely innocent.

It would be unlikely Sylvie would want to hear my side of the story, so instead I opted to find solace in my work. Diving into new designs would help me forget that I’d managed to make things impossibly worse by forgetting to take stock of my surroundings before jumping into action ... again.

TWO

ROYAL

After the prank,my day continued to be an absolute clusterfuck.

The artist interview turned out to be a dud, so the shop would still be short-staffed until I could fill the chair. Given the influx of tourists, that undoubtedly meant longer hours for everyone. Sylvie had bent Luna’s ear about me beinga man-size child, and Luna had taken it out on me the rest of the afternoon with heavy sighs and eye rolls. She even ordered Momma Faye’s Barbecue for dinner without asking me if I wanted any.

Admittedly, that stung a little.

At the end of the night, I also had to turn away a group of young women celebrating a bachelorette party. They were all visibly intoxicated, and I refused to give them matching finger tattoos of a cartoon penis wearing a top hat.

First of all, finger tattoos fade, and they fade fast—I would know. Secondly, while the design was funny as hell, no one gets inked at King Tattoo drunk or high or otherwise incapacitated.

The decibel of shrill, unhappy screeching that occurred when I broke the news that they’d have to come back sober was deafening. In fact, my head was still throbbing.

All in all, it had been a shitty day.

Karma is such a bitch.

Well into the evening, my thoughts had wandered to the mysterious woman from the morning. I felt like a grade-A asshole for how that whole scene had shaken out. She was the unwitting victim of my childish impulse, and I couldn’t help but let the guilt wash over me in the quiet comfort of my truck as I pulled into my driveway.

I lived on the outskirts of Outtatowner, and my neighborhood was a quaint mix of dated historical houses and newly built luxury summer homes. It was close enough to town that I could pop into the tattoo shop whenever I needed to, but far enough that I could take off on a run and get lost for a while.

I pulled my truck down the long driveway as my house came into view. My smile pulled up at the corner. The cobalt-blue home sat on a bluff that overlooked Lake Michigan. It had a rounded arch-top front door and flower boxes overflowing with blooms beneath the dormered windows. The white picket fence was a detail I’d added after I moved in, and it still made me smile.

No one expected a man often described asscaryorimposingormenacingto live by the lake in a cute blue house with a picket fence—and yet there we were.

I fucking loved that house.

I unlocked the door to let myself inside and allowed my keys to skitter across the shiny white quartz of the kitchen island. The windows had been left open, so the soft lake air wafted in. I sucked in a lungful and listened to the quiet hum of my home.

It was a place where I could shed the stress of the day and take a quiet break from chiseling away at the daily expectations of others. I rolled my shoulders and let out a groan. Tattooing meant long, weird hours hunched over random body parts, contorting to get the angles just right.

If the knot in my lower back was any indication, I’d be sore in the morning. I may only be in my thirties, but damn if I wasn’t starting to feel the effects of a physically demanding job.

I needed a drink, maybe a good lay—anything to dissolve the tension in my body and help me forget the fact that it seemed like the lives of everyone around me were barreling ahead full steam and I was merely treading water.

My eyes flicked to the ring light tucked into the corner of my living room. For the past few years, my personal life had veered into a strange and wonderful direction that shocked even me sometimes.

I swiped my hand across my eyes and opted for a shower before hunkering down on the couch. Too worn out to create any new content, I grabbed my phone to check my messages.

---