Page 96 of Devilish Ink

But there was no avoiding it. No escaping it.

Hell, he already hated me. Why not let him hate me a little more if it gave me a chance?

“A paying customer,” I said.

Rian scoffed. He still thought there was a way out of this. Some way that I would just leave.

“Youwant a tattoo?” he said, spitting the words.

I nodded.

I didn’t think this was the right moment to show him all the ink under my clothes that his best friend had marked me with.

Rian shook his head, laughing bitterly. “Little goody-goody farm boy wants atattoo?”

“This is a tattoo shop, isn’t it?”

The sides of his jaw twitched as he looked outside. Dark was falling fast.

He looked back inside the shop. The black leather chairs. The metal tools flashing in the neon light.

“They’re permanent, you know,” he said, eyes filled with hatred as he looked at me. “They’re a stain you can’t wash out. A sin there’s no forgiveness for. There’s no coming back from it. Once it’s done, it’s done. I’m not sure you understandthat, Liam.”

I didn’t flinch from Rian’s death stare. Not even when hurt flashed behind his eyes like lightning in a turbulent grey sky.

That’s what stung my heart the most; the hurt I knew was hidden beneath the fury.

I kept my eyes fixed on my brother. “I understand.”

Rian’s arm fell from the door like a domino. It set everything in motion. The door slamming shut. The clanging and clattering of tools as he prepared. “Fuck,” muttered angrily under his breath. Him pounding his fist against the seat of a black leather tattoo chair.

“Well?” he shouted at me, barely keeping control over himself.

I slipped off my jacket as he watched me like a hawk. Careful to keep my shirt covered over the tattoos Ry gave me, I rolled up my sleeve to the elbow.

I lowered myself into the chair next to my brother carefully. Afraid that any jerky movement would send him running. Or stabbing. I knew tattoo artists weren’t afraid to turn their tools into weapons.

Rian looked like he wanted to spit onto my inner wrist much more than he wanted to tattoo it.

“Why do you want a tattoo there?” he asked, keeping his eyes shadowed.

I ran a thumb over my skin. My calluses caught on that papery flesh over blue veins.

It sounded like my voice got lost in the height of the atrium ceilings of the parlour as I said, “They remind me of the rivers on our land.”

Rian was silent for a moment. “That’s not my land anymore.”

“It’s not mine either,” I said, unable to keep the sadness from seeping into my words, as few as they may be. “Not anymore.”

If Rian was surprised by what I said, he hid it well beneath his stormy brow. He pulled on black latex gloves, snapping them loudly.

“I don’t understand,” Rian said, setting a fresh needle into his gun. “Do you want it covered up or highlighted? These ‘rivers’ of yours?”

The rage hadn’t subsided in him, though it burned lower. But even a fool knows embers hold their heat.

“Do you want to forget or remember?” he said.

“I don’t think forgetting is possible,” I replied.

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