Page 15 of Dark Ink

I could lose my scholarship.

Shite. My scholarship.

My future. My job prospects. Safety. Security.

What the fuck was I doing risking all that?

“What do you need, Eithne?” he whispered, his breath, sweet from spearmint and marijuana, caressing my forehead.

“I—I need what Professor Levine was teaching. Advertising Design. That’s what I need.”

“Why?”

His question was like a prickly thorn in my side. I wanted to pull it out and throw it far, far away. I knew that discomfort well, though. I’d asked myself the very same question during a million sleepless hours.

“Because I’d like some stability in my life,” I answered irritably as I pushed past him. “I want a well-paying job with a reliable paycheque,” I rambled—to him, to myself—as he chased me down the stone path. “I want to know I can pay rent and buy groceries and care for— I just want some stability. Is that so fucking wrong?”

“Yes,” he said, and blocked my path with his wide frame. Damn his long legs. Damn his rounded shoulders and his eyes and the “black hole” of him sucking me in.

I stepped back because I didn’t want to collide with him. Couldn’t risk the brush of skin against skin. I was afraid he was contagious. His madness. His craze. His devotion to beauty and love and all things impractical in this world.

“It’s the worst fucking thing I think I’ve ever heard,” he said.

I wanted to punch him square in the face. He didn’t know me. Didn’t know my life. The burdens I shouldered. He couldn’t know how heavy they were for me. How much I wanted to set them down. And couldn’t.

At the same time, I wanted to throw myself into his arms and moan, “I know. It is fucking wrong. It is. Please show me. Open me up. Strip me down. Tear me in two. I want to create art with you. Make love with you. Leave some sort of impression on the world with you.”

But I couldn’t admit that. Could I?

“Worse than tattooing a random student’s face onto another random student’s arm?” I challenged.

“You’re not some random student.”

He sounded so sure. I didn’t know why.

“We don’t even know each other.”

“I know you.”

Rian looked at me with arms crossed. A challenge in his eyes. A dare in the drum of his tattooed fingers along his sweater pushed up his muscled forearms. An urgency in the unblinking of his eyes.

“You don’t—”

“I saw you across the street the other day.”

We were alone on the stone walkway. It was cooler than the hazy auditorium, high arching columns shading the path, the stone remembering winter in its depths.

“I heard you,” he said. “Your body, your soul. Singing to me. Calling to me.”

“You’re insane,” I told him. “And I don’t need insane right now.”

But I did, my soul moaned. I needed stupid and crazy and reckless and him. I needed him to tear responsibility and real life from my shoulders. I needed a mad man—this mad man—inside me.

I needed to get ahold of myself. Kop on, Eithne.

“And I think you know me.”

“I don’t even know your name,” I said. “I wouldn’t even know who to report to the Garda for stalking me and tattooing my face onto everyone.”

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