Page 27 of Karma

“I’m so happy you’re here,” she says and gives me a huge hug as soon as I’m off my bike.

“You live here?” I ask, looking over her shoulder at the mansion obscured by a couple of ancient looking trees. The house looks like something straight out of a fancy architecture magazine, complete with painted glass windows for decoration.

“Temporarily,” she says. “This is my… boyfriend’s, I guess, mom’s house. I’m set up in the apartment over the garage.”

“Sweet place,” I say as she entwines her arm with mine and starts dragging me towards the house.

“It’s a high-class suburban nightmare and it’s giving me all sorts of bad flashbacks from my childhood,” she says. “I can’t wait to get my own place somewhere downtown. But for now, I’m stuck here.”

“Right, you were some sort of mafia heiress,” I say, casting my mind back to all the stuff she told me about herself over the years.

She lets go of my arm once we reach the garage and leads the way up a set of dark brown metal stairs attached to the side of the structure. The two-door garage is not attached to the main house, but was made to look just like it, complete with wooden accents and even has its own small stained-glass window. Thelast time I was near this kind of display of wealth, the owners wanted to put me in a cage.

“Mafia princess, you mean,” she says. “But that didn’t go very well. And now I’m forced to hide out here until Blade and I figure out exactly how many people don’t want me back here. My father and brothers could be among them.”

“That bad, huh?” I say as we enter the studio apartment. The wide-open living room/kitchen area is bigger than most of the places I’ve stayed in lately. There’s a large sofa, a new TV and the kitchen looks so untouched and clean it makes me want to cook something. The bedroom is behind a partition made of multicolored glass squares and I assume the bathroom is behind the only door apart from the one we entered through. I bet that’s super clean and all new too.

All the furniture in the living room is sort of pushed to the side though, to make room for Isabella’s state-of-the-art tattooing chair and all her needles and inks and such.

“What are you complaining about,” I say. “This place is awesome. I could totally live here.”

She makes a face and it somehow makes her even prettier than she already is. “Blade’s mom is pretty cool, considering everything I put her son through, but this is so not my style.”

She walks to the sofa and taps the space beside her. “Come. I’ve made some sketches based on what you told me you wanted. I know you said we’d go over it again in person, but I was inspired and couldn’t help myself.”

“I like the sound of that,” I say and toss my jacket on the back of the sofa before joining her.

She’s mad talented and my most beautiful tattoos so far resulted from her strokes of inspiration with no additional input from me.

She picks up her sketchbook and opens it, showing me the most beautiful lakeside cabin scene I’ve ever seen.

“This is even more beautiful than it was in real life,” I whisper and take the sketchbook from her hands to get a better look.

The starry sky and moon are reflected perfectly in the calm waters of the lake, a faint orange light illuminates the cabin’s windows and the whole scene is surrounded by tall trees. How she was able to evoke such feelings of safety, belonging and security with this simple picture, I’ll never know. But here I am, smelling the lake water and feeling Scorpio’s arms around me, wishing we were still there.

“I was thinking we’d put it under your left breast,” she says. “There’s still some space there, right?”

I run my hand over the drawing, needing to be closer to the scene. “Everything is still exactly how you left it. I don’t let anyone else draw on me.”

She smiles. “I really appreciate that vote of confidence. So, do you want to add anything?”

“Maybe we could work in a sunset somehow,” I say. “That was always the most magical time at the cabin.”

“Your wish is my command,” she says and takes the sketchbook from me, reaching for a pencil case.

A few strokes later, she’s made it perfect by adding just a touch of dusky purple and orange to the edges.

“That’s it,” I tell her as she shows it to me. “I think he’d love it too.”

“Your new guy?” she asks. “The one you spent time at the cabin?”

I nod. “I don’t think anyone’s ever gotten a tattoo to honor him before. He seemed to really dig the idea when I explained it to him. But it’s all still so new… “

I want to stay excited about getting this gorgeous tattoo, but is it gonna just make me really sad every time I see it? What if Grim can’t learn to share me? What if Scorpio really does die inthis war they’re gearing up to enter? What if he grows tired of me?

But all those questions won’t stop me. I’m getting this tattoo to celebrate my own awakening too. I’m getting it as a reminder that life and love does go on, even when your heart has been ripped out, burned to ash and scattered all over the country.

“And for the other tattoo you wanted…” she says and turns the page in her sketchbook. The sight of it makes my throat close up painfully.

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