Page 15 of Fallen Ink

Her shop hadn’t even been open a full month before someone tried to ruin it. She did her best not to take that to heart.

An arm wrapped around her shoulders as soon as she hung up with her client, and she leaned into her big brother’s hold. She’d know his hugs anywhere. Shep was a few years older than Adrienne, and the only boy in their immediate family. He’d moved to New Orleans so long ago that it was odd seeing him back in Colorado Springs. He used to hang out with Austin in Denver on the weekends when they were growing up because he’d been so much older and hadn’t wanted to only play with his sisters. Adrienne hadn’t minded because that meant she could spy on what the boys were doing with Thea and Roxie whenever Austin visited them. It was what little sisters did, after all.

Now, though, her brother was all grown up and back home with his wife and child. Adrienne was so damn happy that she could be an aunt in person rather than through video chat, but even the idea of holding Livvy couldn’t really make her smile feel real just then.

“How you holding up?” Shep asked before kissing the top of her head. His beard was long enough now to tangle in her hair and she pulled away, squinting her eyes at him.

“I’m fine. We’re going to be fine. We just need to do the things on this list, and then we can open for the day.”

Shep shook his head. “I don’t think we’re opening today, hon. Tomorrow for sure, but today? I think by the time we get all of this shit off the walls and clean ourselves up, the day will be almost over, and we’ll be too physically and emotionally drained to do much else.”

“We’ll do a grand re-opening,” Ryan said, holding a stack of buckets with a hose wrapped over his shoulder.

“You can’t do that three weeks after the first one,” she said quietly, then moved to help him and take some of his load. “Where’s Mace?” She hadn’t seen him since he held her to his side when he’d first shown up. She’d had plans to talk to him today about what…well, she really hadn’t known how that talk would go, but now she was pretty sure it wouldn’t happen this afternoon. Maybe ever. Not with everything going on. Mace had been right, their lives were far too complicated already to add more things that could ruin everything.

Ryan lifted his head and pointed with his chin. “Getting the rest of the stuff out of his truck.”

“On it,” Shep said and jogged out of the store toward where Mace had parked. Others had started to come out and help as well, and as much as Adrienne was grateful for that, she also really didn’t want anyone else to see what had happened to her place. She hated that it was so public, and while some people were nice about it, others were giving her looks that were far too pitying for her state of mind.

And now she was just being whiny, and she hated that. So she rolled her shoulders back and headed out to help Mace unload his truck. He and Ryan had offered to gather everything while she and Shep worked at the store to deal with clients and starting the cleanup with what they had.

As soon as she held her bucket and sponge in her hand and Mace stood hip-to-hip with her, she let out a breath, staring at the words on her walls that seemed to grow larger and brighter against the cream color of the original paint job with each passing moment.

Mace leaned down and whispered in her ear, his warm breath sending shivers of sensation down her spine. “You’ve got this, Addi. You’re not alone.”

Unconsciously, she leaned into him, aware that her brother was staring at her but not truly caring at the moment. To the outside world, she and Mace were friends, and her leaning on him wasn’t unusual. At least, that’s what she hoped.

“We can do this,” she said. “Because we have to.”

“You know it, babe. You know it.”

* * *

By the time they’d cleaned every inch of the face of her shop as well as part of Teas’d that had been defaced, as well—something she hadn’t realized until they’d gotten a closer look—the five of them were dirty, grubby, and covered in filth and paint. Abby hadn’t backed away when Adrienne had told the other woman they would handle her cleanup. Instead, she’d gotten dirty right next to them and had only just left to pick up her daughter from the sitter’s. Adrienne didn’t know the woman well, but she knew enough to know that her daughter’s father was no longer in the picture, though she didn’t know the whys and hows of it. Only rumors and she wasn’t sure she could trust those.

Shep had been forced to leave as well because it was his afternoon with Livvy since Shea had to work, and Adrienne had told Ryan to go home, too. Her brother had been right. There was no way they would be able to open for the few short hours left in their long workday, so she’d given in and told herself she wouldn’t cry until she was home alone with some wine and her bathtub.

Soon, she found herself alone in her shop with just Mace, and though she knew they needed to talk, she couldn’t help but wrap her arms around his middle and bury herself in his hold. She needed her best friend more than anything after a day like this, and he knew it.

“It’s going to be okay, Addi. Everything looks brand new, and we’ll be back in business tomorrow.” He ran his hand down her back and kissed the top of her head. And though Shep had done the same earlier, there was nothing brotherly about the way Mace held and touched her.

“It just sucks. I want to wallow for a bit.” She clung to him harder and sighed. “Do you need to pick up Daisy soon?”

“She’s at school for a couple more hours, then my parents are picking her up. They like being more involved now that they get to see her more often, and Daisy likes the time with them. The routine is settling her because, sometimes, I have no fucking clue what I’m doing.”

She frowned and looked up at him. “You’re doing pretty good, Mace. You’re going from a weekend a month to full-time, and putting your all into it. And you’re letting your family help. I know those sisters of yours would be down here in a minute if you asked them to come.”

Mace had two sisters who lived up in Denver. They had already come down the weekend before to hang out with Daisy, but they worked long hours and couldn’t make the hour-long drive every night, though she knew they wanted to.

“You’re pretty smart. Did you know that?”

She batted her eyes. “Of course, I know that.”

He grinned then surprised the hell out of her by lowering his mouth to hers and kissing her. His tongue swept along the seam of her lips, and she opened for him, craving him more than she ever thought possible.

“The door locked?” he asked, his voice rough. His hands cupped her face, and she had to blink slowly so she could catch up with his words.

“Yes?”

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