Page 102 of Devilish Ink

Before I could answer Aurnia, Rachel sucked in a breath as two little lines appeared.

Liam had gotten his wish.

I was pregnant.

RY

Icould feel my friends’ eyes on me. I knew they were waiting for my response.

Should they be happy for me? Draw me into an embrace and jump for joy as we squealed like teenage girls?

Or should they start on the reassurances. Next steps. Promises that everything would be alright. Tight hugs that try to communicate the incommunicable: unwavering friendship.

I knew they were searching my face, judging every blink, scrutinising every beat of my heart. But all I could do was stare.

There it was. The future I’d feared. A tether. A new life chaining me to Dublin. A baby I didn’t know how to keep safe.

My friends collapsed in on me like a wave. The weight of their arms and chests and cheeks felt so real that I clung to them as the tears came faster.

For so long I’d moved through foreign cities like a ghost, kept away like I was something haunted, that I’d started to believe that maybe it wasn’t even possible to be embraced.

But at that moment, wedged in tight in my tiny bathroom, my friends were solid. I was solid.

They held me as I laughed and cried.

When I finally pulled away, we all had to wipe our eyes. My own fingers shook as I dragged them under my eyelashes.

“I guess… I guess I need to tell the father.”

Aurnia grinned. “Mr Tattoo?”

I raised an eyebrow at her. “‘Mr Tattoo’?”

“It’s our name for the mysterious client who keeps coming in for only one artist,” Aurnia said. “And only when the shop is empty.”

Obviously Rian hadn’t told them. But I’d expected this. Admitting that his best friend and his estranged brother were fucking around together behind his back was too painful to say out loud.

“Aurnia thinks he’s a spy,” Rachel said, rolling her eyes.

“AndRachelthinks he’s a celebrity,” Aurnia retorted.

Only Eithne chewed her bottom lip, her silence telling that she knew. She knew but she was my friend anyway. She knew but it wasn’t her secret to tell.

“So it is Mr Tattoo then?” Aurnia said, eyeing me excitedly.

I almost lost myself in the moment, in the fantasy of this playful girls’ night in. Gossiping about lovers and fights and fucks. Playful teasing, the way only family can. I felt for a second like I really was one of them. A part of the group. A member of the family.

I even fell into the trap of imagining Aurnia bouncing Liam and my baby on her hip, Rachel squeezing its tiny toes and fingers as she sang, Eithne painting its nursery.

But then Eithne asked carefully, “Does Mr Tattoo…have a name?”

My smile fell as I looked to her. She was giving me an opening. A way of admitting the truth.

But I panicked as her soft eyes bounced between mine. I wasn’t ready. For any of this. I wasn’t ready to admit the truth. I wasn’t ready to be a mom.

I scratched at the back of my neck. “What? You don’t like Mr Tattoo?”

Rachel saved me by saying, “Mrs Tattoo does have a nice ring to it.”

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