Page 41 of Coco and the Misfits

I crave it.

Crave her.

But what can I offer an omega? I don’t have a pack. I’m not cut out for family life. For cozy evenings. For children. For love.

I’m a black crow fluttering over the city, never landing. Never belonging.

I shouldn’t have talked to her, kissed her. Tasted her pain.

I can’t take her down with me.

The thought of her torments me, though, and her fear… feels off. It doesn’t have to do with the wound I sensed in her. It’s something else.

She talked of that night at the bar. I asked what happened to the happy, fizzy girl I knew, and she said… She said, “She had the shit scared out of her.”

What the fuck happened then?

None of your fucking business, Ry. None of this has anything to do with you. She’s on a different level. Let her go. Someone else will hold her hand, kiss her mouth, and soothe her nightmares.

Not you.

I’ve got work to do. Customers to ink. They seem to like my dark, twisted designs. I’m making a name in the tattoo world. Who would have thought? Sometimes I think it fills me, fills the hole in me. It keeps me busy, that’s for sure. Puts food on my lonely table.

It has to be enough.

I hear voices from the reception area and check my schedule. I usually get girls, though that night… that night Coco was talking about, I had those three guys come in.

Zach. A new addition to my fantasies. At least Coco won’t be lonely in my thoughts anymore.

And let’s not forget the growly alpha at the bar. That was… interesting.

Fucking hell, what’s the matter with me these days? It’s not only Coco I can’t have. I can’t have anybody. So why am I dreaming of more than I’m allowed to have?

After what I did, I don’t deserve anything.

Anything good.

The customer is a goth lady who wants to have roses and thorns inked on her forearm and I oblige. She tries to chat me up but my mind is a million miles away. I’m not chatty on the best of days, and today I lose myself in the hum of the tattoo gun and the design.

The piece finished, I give her the aftercare instructions and let the next customer in. The customers blur, the designs bleed into one another. The afternoon stretches into evening.

I wonder if Coco made it home okay. The question whether she was hurt in some way torments me.

Fuck, what am I gonna do? I sweep a pile of designs off my desk and kick at the chair. I can’t focus. Can’t eat. Can’t breathe since I kissed her.

I stole a kiss, but she stole my soul. An artist’s black, fragile soul, kept inside a locked vault, the key lost.

Pulling another cigarette from the pack, I go out and light up. Once upon a time, I had promised to give it up. To give up drinking, partying, and fucking around.

It had been my punishment, and to get back what I’d lost, I was willing to try. To fight.

And I did fight, dammit, with all I had. I fought to change, to become a better person. A better brother. A better son.

You don’t appreciate something until you lose it.

Funny how I feel like I’ve already lost it all.

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