Chapter 10
CHAPTER TEN
WILLOW
Lord, why was I so nervous? This was my choice—a decision long overdue, to be honest. I’d lived with that black mark on my skin for too long, and now that I’d finally decided to do something about it, butterflies battered my insides. Placing one hand over my stomach hoping to quell my nerves, I clutched Mac’s hand with the other as we walked up the front path to Ty’s house.
“I feel like we’re doing some kind of shady drug deal, going to his house after hours instead of the tattoo shop,” she said.
“Yeah, well, you know as much as I do if I even stepped foot in that shop, the entire town’d be talkin’ about what Willow Haven was doing in a seedy place like that. It’d get back to Daddy in a heartbeat.”
It was a miracle I’d managed to keep my little act of teenage rebellion a secret as long as I had. The handful of souls who knew about the tattoo I’d gotten with Finn were Mackenna and the men I had been intimate with—which, admittedly, hadn’t been many.
“Yeah, yeah. Gotta keep up the image,” she said. “I get it.”
As one of the middle Haven girls, Mac did get it. It was what made the two of us so close. Rory soared far above the rest of us, the picture-perfect woman in our daddy’s eyes, married to her college sweetheart and raising two flawless children. And Nat, our youngest sister, hadn’t given a damn about this town or what our daddy thought, soaring in a different way and getting the hell out as soon as she’d graduated high school.
Mac and I stopped on the front stoop, both of us staring at the door. The blare of a television, interrupted sporadically by murmured voices, seeped out from inside.
Finally, after standing for long moments, she squeezed my hand. “Ready?”
Not even a little bit.
“Yeah,” I managed to get out through the invisible fingers wrapped tightly around my throat. I didn’t have to actually do anything tonight, but at least when I left there, I’d have a plan one way or another.
Mac raised her fist to knock but paused and glanced over, giving me one last chance to back out. When I didn’t speak up, she brought her knuckles down on the door in a quick rap.
“It’s open,” someone called from inside.
“No going back now.” She turned the doorknob and stepped over the threshold.
While I was friendly with everyone in town, I wouldn’t exactly say Ty and I were friends. As such, the last time I’d been to his house had been ten long years ago, and he’d done some upgrading since then, moving on from the trailer he used to have to a small ranch home. It was cleaner than I’d expected it to be, nicer too. A TV mounted on the far wall blared a video game, and as large as it was, it looked nearly minuscule compared to the massive couch that took up the majority of the room.
Ty sat sprawled out on one side, and I lifted my hand in a wave before glancing to the other occupant. My hand froze in midair along with the smile on my face, my feet refusing to move.
Lord, couldn’t I catch a freaking break ?
The person sitting all the way on the other end, smiling up at me, was none other than the man who’d dominated nearly all of my thoughts. Finn freaking Thomas.
He looked so relaxed there reclined against the back cushions, his legs spread, fingers loosely wrapped around the neck of the beer bottle resting on his knee, like he hadn’t teased me with his body and his words earlier in the day. Like he hadn’t rocked his erection against my ass on the dance floor mere days prior.
My stomach bottomed out, seeing him there as if he didn’t have a care in the world when the tornado of butterflies in my stomach just got kicked up to a Category five hurricane. I tightened my grip on Mac’s hand until my sister let out a squeak of protest and dug her fingernails into my skin in retribution.
“Looks like I picked the right night to stop by,” Finn said, his eyes stuck to me.
I blinked and shook my head. “Stop by…”
I narrowed my eyes at Finn, who only returned my glare with a smile. Of course, I’d known Ty and Finn were friends—they had been their whole lives. Really, it was my own damn fault I hadn’t anticipated this, especially considering the past few days. Ropers may have been a coincidence, but there was no way this was. No freaking way. I had half a mind to stomp my foot right there and cuss Ty out.
Instead of doing that, I settled on shooting daggers his way, a finger jabbed in his direction. “Tyler Owen Kenning Junior, you traitor. Your momma know what you get up to with boys like him?”
Ty laughed, resting an arm against the back of the couch as he tipped his beer bottle toward me. “My momma thinks I’m an angel and doesn’t listen to nothin’ anyone might say otherwise.”
“Mhmm,” I said, dropping Mac’s hand to cross my arms over my chest. “So this is the kind of professional you are, huh? When someone asks for an appointment, you invite all your friends to the show?”
“Appointment for what?” Finn asked, watching me like a hawk.
Did I imagine how his eyes flicked down to the vicinity of my hip and the black bird hidden under layers of clothes?
Ty held up his hands in surrender and spoke as if Finn hadn’t said a word. “Hey, you said you just wanted to talk about your options. Didn’t think it’d be a problem when Finn said he was gonna stop by, too.”
“What kind of options?” Finn asked.
I couldn’t tell if he was playing dumb, or if he really didn’t know my reason for being there. Either way, ignoring him was in my best interest.
To Ty, I said, “And I bet his stopping by had nothing at all to do with me being here, huh?”
Ty looked away from me, focusing on the TV. “I don’t know nothin’ about that. That’s between y’all.”
“ I don’t know nothin’ about what you’re doing here,” Finn said. “Someone wanna fill me in?”
I ground my molars together. “I told you earlier, you weren’t gettin’ anything out of me, Griffin.”
He clenched his jaw, no doubt over the use of his full name. Good. It was dumb and childish, but at that point, I needed to hold on to every bit of distance I could put between us. “You thinking of getting some more ink on that pretty skin?”
I ignored the shiver his words sent down my spine. “How do you know I haven’t already?”
His gaze heated even more, and I wanted to slap myself for being such an idiot, for walking right into his trap. He lifted one eyebrow and did a slow sweep of me from head to toe. “Guess I don’t. You offering to show me, Willowtree?”
Those handful of words coming from Finn’s mouth—the seductive, almost lilting way he said them—had the temperature in the room rising at least ten degrees. And I wasn’t the only one who felt it if Mac’s reaction was anything to go by.
“Oooookay.” She side-stepped me and plopped down next to Ty on the couch. “You two kids work out whatever you need to work out. I’m gonna play this game until you’re done.”
What the hell? I had brought her along for support, and as soon as the temperature got cranked up, she bailed. Some freakin’ wing-woman she was.
“We don’t have anything to work out,” I said. “All I need to know is—” I cut myself off. Why was I discussing this when Finn was sitting right there?
More importantly, why did I care if he was there when I did?
Steeling myself, I straightened my shoulders and addressed Ty, doing my best to ignore the way Finn bored holes into the side of my face with his eyes. “The tattoo you gave me. I want it gone. What’re my options?”
As much as I tried to ignore Finn, I couldn’t help the way my eyes darted over to him as soon as the words left my mouth. The crack in his facade was subtle, but it might as well have been a flashing marquee for as loudly as it screamed at me. He was good and pissed if the tightness in his jaw and shoulders was any indication. But, really, what did he have to be pissed about? I was the one who’d been left behind.
“All right,” Ty drawled, glancing at Finn out of the corner of his eye before focusing back on me. “Well, you can always do a cover-up. Your original tattoo’s not very big, so it’d be pretty easy to do.”
“And if I don’t want it there at all?”
“There’s always laser removal, but, Will, that’ll?—”
“I have a few options you should consider,” Finn said.
My eyebrows shot up my forehead as I looked over at him. Was he for real? “I’m not all that interested in your opinion, considering you’re the reason I’m here in the first place. Now, if you don’t mind, I’m gonna listen to what Ty thinks is best since he’s the professional.”
Finn stood then, setting his beer on the side table, and took a step toward me, then another and another. And, all right, it probably didn’t help my case the way I took equal steps back for every one he took forward, but I couldn’t be that close to him again— could not .
Except I didn’t have a choice because soon my back was pressed against the wall, and he wasn’t stopping— didn’t stop until he stood directly in front of me. So close, I could feel the heat emanating off his body, could smell his delicious Finn scent. I snapped my spine straight and commanded my body to hold myself upright so I didn’t do something horribly embarrassing like faint at his feet.
And then I did something I absolutely shouldn’t have. I took a deep inhale of him—fresh and clean, like the air on a summer day—and just…looked.
Lord, he was pretty. He’d hate that descriptor, but it was accurate. His eyes were like butterscotch candies surrounded by the lushest eyelashes I’d ever seen, a total waste on so much masculinity. His nose wasn’t perfect—he’d gotten in too many fights for there not to be a bump or two—but it was perfect on him. The scruff was new to me since he’d stayed mostly clean-shaven when we’d been together, but I could admit I liked it on him now. It made him look even hotter—which was nothing but trouble, because Finn certainly didn’t need any help in that department.
I begged myself to stop cataloguing his features there, but my eyes didn’t listen as they continued their path of no return until they reached his best feature—his mouth. His lips weren’t overly full, but the curve of his top lip begged to be traced—and I had too. With my fingers. And my tongue.
Low, so low I wasn’t sure Mac or Ty could even hear him, he said, “Stop lookin’ at me like that, or I’m gonna start thinkin’ you want more than you’re sayin’.”
“I don’t know what you mean,” I said, my eyes glued to his lips.
Said lips kicked up a notch on the side. He leaned closer—how was that even possible when it felt like we were as close as we could be while in mixed company? “C’mon, Willowtree, let’s go down the hall and discuss your options. Alone.”