Page 12 of Finding Hope

Tilting her head, deep blue eyes question mine.

“Your jewelry,” I clarify. “You have a bunch.”

Dropping her gaze to her stomach, then biting her lip, her eyes come back up. “I guess I do enjoy it. It’s a hobby.”

Our hobbies are somewhat similar.

“You got ink?”

Send her away!

Her plump lips, made plumper by my teeth, roll between her teeth as she studies me. Her eyes flick to my arms, at sleeves of ink I started on my eighteenth birthday and have continued and spent a small fortune on since.

Steph sat with me for hours and hours in Ian’s tattoo parlor. She said she wanted to come with me, shewantedto spend the time with me, watching the long process, but she never gave in. She never got any of her own.

I dared her a million times to tattoo my name on her ass. I promised she’d never regret it… even blushing until she was beet red, she stood her ground and said no.

Fuck! Stop thinking about Ste–

“I might have ink.”

Blue eyes. Not green. Black hair. Not brown. “You go to Inkalot?”

She nods thoughtfully. “I might know Ian…” Pausing, she studies my face and sets my gut on fire.Notthe good kind. “What’s your name?”

All sarcastic retorts freeze on my tongue and leave me gasping. I don’t even remember the last time someone asked me that.

I don’t mean to be a conceited jerk,mostly, but I’ve been on signs and magazine covers and in TV ads since I was seventeen.

It’s refreshing to be asked, instead oftoldwho I am.

But refreshing or not, it’s time to wrap this shit up. Shaking my head and buttoning my jeans, I open the office door. “Let’s go.” I don’t want to chit-chat with this chick. I don’t want to get to know her, and I definitely don’t want to study her ink or think of her as cute.

I just want to go home.

Taking her arm and walking her down the hall, I push her into the ladies’ bathroom, then continue walking down the stairs and out of the club.

I’m done.

4

*NOT* JACK

BACK TO REALITY

Waking up Sunday morning with a strange combination of dread and exhilaration coursing through my veins, I groan at my white pillowcase turned black from lack of makeup removal.

Stumbling into bed at three a.m. and doing nothing but tearing my clothes off and falling in face first, I’ve ruined a perfectly good pillowcase, and my hair has turned into a rat’s nest.

Awesome.

Sitting up, I grin at the dull ache pulsing between my legs and the memory of being fucked by, quite possibly, the sexiest man I’ve ever seen in my life.

It was exciting!

I was out with my girls, I spy a sexy guy across the club, there were no strings attached, just a good ol’ time and no consequences;exactlywhat this repressed little sister needs.

I wasn’t a virgin before last night, but neither was I quite ready for whathehad hidden in his pants.

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