Page 77 of Sliding into Home

Brandon took a sip of his coffee, then set it down and studied her for a moment. “So are you and Smitty a couple, or are you just here visiting as the mother of his child? He’s pretty tight-lipped about his relationship with you.”

That was a good question. What were they? Figuring things out? A couple in training? Delusional? Who the hell knew at this point? Yes, they were trying to figure it out, but so far, they weren’t announcing anything to the world because of Max. Yes, she’d put that rule in place to start, but Jeff had been fine going along with it. “Why does it matter?”

A slow cocky smile spread across Brandon’s face as confidence oozed out of him. “Just wondering if I had a shot or not?”

Wow, Jeff had been right about the way Brandon had been looking at her. She smiled to soften the blow. “Honestly, I’m not sure where things are at with Jeff and I, but either way I would never date one of his teammates. Or a client.”

Brandon nodded. “That’s cool. I can respect that.” He grinned again. “I’d have kicked myself if I didn’t take my shot.” He reached down and pulled his backpack off the floor. After digging around inside, he pulled out a firm cardboard folder and set it on the table. Suddenly, the confident baseball star was gone, replaced by an uneasy boy. He slid the folder toward her.

Curious about the change in Brandon’s posture, Kia pulled the folder closer to her but didn’t open it up. “Are these ideas you have for tattoos?”

“Sort of.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “Those are drawings that my mom did for me when I was a kid. I’m hoping maybe we can figure out a way for you to weave some of them together to make a sleeve.”

“May I?” Kia pointed at the folder.

“Yeah, please.”

She flipped open the folder and sucked in a breath. “Holy shit.” Inside were pages and pages of storybook drawings. Raising her head, she looked at Brandon. “These are amazing.”

“Yeah, my mom was ridiculously talented.”

She flipped through several pages. Her gaze lingering on a beautiful dragon soaring over a castle. Ideas immediately began flowing through her head of how she would position the dragon on his arm. “Tell me about the drawings.”

Brandon took another sip of his coffee. His cheeks turned pink as he looked at her. “Any chance what we talk about can stay between us a bit?”

“Of course.”

His finger traced the edge of the dragon on the page. “As you can tell, my mom was an artist.” He paused. “My… my mom, sh… she died when I was nine.”

“Oh my gosh, I’m so sorry.”

“Thanks.” He paused. “When she got sick, she drew these pictures for me, stories really. We’d sit on her bed at night, and she’d elaborate on them, or we’d do this choose your own adventure kind of deal with them.” His mouth curled up into a sad smile as he talked. “Sometimes the dragon was the good guy, sometimes the bad. Sometimes it was about love. Sometimes it was about fighting. I don’t know, every night was something different. It was sort of our thing.”

Without saying a word, Kia reached across the table and squeezed his hand.

“Thanks.” Brandon raised his head and smiled at her. “This is embarrassing, but I’ve always traveled with at least a couple of her pictures with me on every road trip. She never got to see me play. Never got to see me do much of anything honestly and I don’t know… just when I think of her stories and the messages, it just…” His voice broke. “It helps.”

Tears welled in Kia’s eyes. She blinked to hold them back as she watched this big, strong man open up and expose the raw wounds he still carried around about his mother’s death. “I don’t think that’s embarrassing at all. I think it’s sweet that you want your mom with you.”

He held her stare. “Yeah?”

“Absolutely.”

“Cool.” He exhaled with a laugh. “Traveling with them kind of sucks. You’re probably going to think I need fucking therapy or something. I become a bit of a basket case if my luggage gets lost or delayed and I can’t see them. I’m OCD about looking at them. So this is my pathetic way of dealing with that.” He laughed again. “And yeah, I know a therapist would probably say it’s unhealthy, but fuck it.”

Kia smiled. “Not my place to judge. I’ve tattooed people for all kinds of reasons.” She fingered through the drawings again. “And I have definitely tattooed a lot worse than these beautiful drawings.”

She laid a few drawings out side-by-side on the table. “So were you thinking of a full sleeve? Half sleeve?”

“Full. Obviously, I want the dragon.” He pulled the pages toward himself and pulled out a picture of a sea monster. “I know the drawings were all designed for me as a kid, but if you could figure out a way to make it look a bit more badass than Disney that would be good.”

She slid the sea monster picture toward herself and placed the dragon above. Flipping through the pages, she pulled out a man wielding a sword. Her mind raced as the ideas for how to create a sleeve out of the drawings swirled in her head. “I can definitely do that. We could do a couple of things. We could weave in your mom’s drawings into a design that is totally unrelated, or we could do a sleeve that tells the story of your mom’s designs. With the sea monster at the bottom. And work our way up to the dragon in the sky.”

“Both sound cool.”

Her eyes narrowed as she looked at the pictures closer. “What’s this symbol? It’s on every page.” She pushed the sheet toward Brandon and tapped the drawing.

He smiled. “It’s a little symbol my mom made that weaves together my initials, with hers and my dad’s.”

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