Silent Is The Heart

CHAPTER 7

Easton

“What the fuck do we need that for?” I ask, taking the picture frame Wolf thrusts at me.

“It’s cool.”

Snorting, I roll my eyes. The image shows us smirking and posing with our arms crossed over our chests. Punks. We were such wannabe punks.

It was taken the summer we met, so I was still scrawny as hell having just busted free from Hampton Hills. It definitely needs to be burned.

Thrusting it back at him, I make sure I have his attention in case he needs to read my lips. “You’re fucking delusional.”

Nostrils flaring, he heaves a sigh, making me chuckle. I take pride in being the more difficult friend, but he certainly pulls his weight carrying part of that title. “It shows where we came from, that we’ve been together for years. It helps prove we’re a trusted establishment and shows part of our story. People like stories. Something they can connect with.”

Now, he really is delusional. Our story ? How much did he smoke today? I know he doesn’t like his story as much as I don’t like mine.

Still… I feel a twinge in my chest over his sentimental, if not ridiculous, logic. We have been together for what feels like forever. Eight years feels like a lifetime ago.

My hair was still short in the photo, but starting to grow out from the stupid haircuts they gave me at Hampton Hell. Wolf is grinning like he just felt up a girl for the first time and standing in front of the old motorcycle his mom’s ex-boyfriend, Jasper, helped him fix up.

He was so proud of that thing. Shit, we rode it everywhere. It was love at first rumble for me, feeling it between my legs and the wind on my face. I thought I’d be scared to drive after the accident with Mom. Thought I’d be terrified of wiping out and shattering my leg, even though it had healed decently by then. Neither deterred me once we hit the open road, and Wolf let loose. Maybe it was the thrill of knowing turmoil could be the end result, could still be the end result each time I hop on my own bike now. It was a big fuck you to all the ugly fears I had when I was holed up in that shithole, all the fears I had each time I knew Leonard was coming home.

I shared all my firsts when taking my new life into my own hands with Wolf. So, yeah, in a way, I’m sentimental too. Still, I don’t see why the hell anyone at this stupid festival we’re planning to set up a booth at for our tattoo shop needs to see this shit.

“No way, man,” I grumble.

Rustling through a box of old design work photo albums, Clark Wolverton is oblivious to my continued skepticism. Either that, or he’s just ignoring me. My tone is too low and gravelly even for his fancy hearing aids sometimes, but he’s good at ‘ playing deaf ’ when he doesn’t agree with me.

Tapping him on the head with the framed picture, I get his attention. Enunciating as much as my stupid throat will let me, I make my annoyance known. “We don’t even have any freaking tattoos in this picture!”

His expression sours. Tilting his head, his long, wild black hair lilts over one eye as it narrows at me. Great. Here come the hands. That means he’s not willing to negotiate.

Just put it in the fucking box, he signs.

Rolling my eyes, I sigh and pitch the frame carelessly into the box he’s filling to take to our booth tomorrow. Fine. But it’s stupid, I sign back.

I get the middle finger. Because I’m a bit of a sadist who likes to push his buttons, I return the proper ASL sign for fuck you .

I never miss a chance to call him out when he gets lazy with the speakage. He’s the one who taught me ASL, after all.

Shoving at my chest, he snickers. I shove back, but we give up our playful wrestling within thirty seconds. He’s too eager to return to packing this damn brag box for our festival appearance. Freaking Wolf. Total softy.

Sighing, I step out of the closet and back into our office. He doesn’t need my help. He can totally handle being an idiot all by his lonesome.

Dropping into my chair, I kick my booted feet up on my desk and tug at a snarled string hanging from the rip in the knee of my jeans. It’s humid as shit today. I can feel it in my leg. Maybe I’ll get lucky and it’ll rain tomorrow for this festival. Anything to get out of the four-hour shift Wolf made me swear to work would be fine by me. I don’t feel like sweating my ass off under a tent while listening to people probe their partners over what tiny butterfly would look good and where they should put it on their bodies. Or the inked people who ask a million questions about designs and costs, want you to sketch something custom for them, and then come up with some story about how they need to think about it or save up to pay for it down the road. People who really want a tattoo come to us. Plain and simple. We don’t need to make fools of ourselves at the last hurrah of the fall festivals to drum up more business. We’re doing perfectly fine. Our business account and the safe that’s chock-full of emergency money in the bottom drawer of the file cabinet say so.

Wolf wants to become a chain, though. I don’t doubt that he’d shit himself if we were offered some reality TV show either. Anything to embarrass us. I know he inks for the love of it like I do, but he’s more ambitious than me; like he always has something to prove. I have nothing to prove to anyone and am perfectly content living my best life as it is.

Except my mood seems to be teetering now. Freaking Wolf. His talk of the past dug up more than just memories of fixing up that motorcycle Jasper helped us with. It hasn’t escaped me that Nancy’s been gone for a year next week.

If someone had told me years ago that I’d get attached to a foster parent, I’d have told them to keep dreaming. I can’t deny it, though—she was one of the coolest people I’ve ever met. Okay, maybe not totally cool. Her obsession with Beanie Babies was not healthy, but she was always behind me a hundred and ten percent, and she always kept her word. Those are rare qualities in a person.

When I told her I had no intention of picking back up at some new high school after I got out of Hampton, she got me a tutor for my GED. When I asked to borrow one of her cars so I could get a job, she obliged and circled every want ad she thought I’d be interested in. In the end, I wound up finding work cleaning Jasper’s shop, which was like not having a real boss at all because I already knew him as Nancy's neighbor. It was perfect. Wolf attended his tattoo school program during the day while I went to some art classes at the local college that Nancy had recommended. At night, we hung out in Jasper's motorcycle repair shop where I slowly picked up ASL from him. We worked and learned about bikes from Jasper until we found jobs interning under the old owner of our tattoo shop.

Nancy cheered me on even though I wasn’t going for an art degree or to become a mechanic. She never pushed and never set goals for me. I think she knew from the get-go that I wasn’t the kind of kid who vied to fulfill goals set by other people. Maybe it worked, simply because she knew I was no longer a kid, even though, technically, at seventeen, I still was.

How lucky was I that Jasper was her neighbor? If he wasn't, I may have never met Wolf that first summer when I saw him over there working on that bike. The only way things could have been better was if Nancy and Jasper had gotten together. We would have been this eccentric little found family. It wasn’t her fault that she wasn’t into men.

‘Promise you won’t spend time crying over me,’ she demanded at one of her chemo treatments. ‘ I’ll beat this. I’m a tough old broad.’

Not tough enough, apparently.

She kept all her promises, except that one. I can’t begrudge her for dying. When I think about what she did, sometimes it makes it difficult to keep my promise. The zany broad, leaving me all that money. I know she’d be stoked that I was able to buy this place with Wolf because of it, but still—I never imagined she’d leave me something.

Laughing, I can still recall her cringing whenever she’d come in and watch me ink someone back when we were just renting the place. Tough my ass. How can you go through chemo and be afraid of tattoos? I’ll never understand her. I guess I don’t really have to. She didn’t try to understand me. She just let me be who I was. That’s more than I can say for most people who came before her in my life.

Listen to me. Freaking Wolf dragging me down memory lane.

I’d better either get off or get drunk before I have to deal with this shit show tomorrow. It’s the only hope I have of surviving it.

Digging out my phone, I creep through the social media profile of a guy who’s been eye-fucking me the last few times I’ve been at Pulse. I put him on my mental list of options. It’s not my fault he has to wait in line, but I scroll, considering moving his number up the list of hopefuls who’ve hit on me at the club.

Blond. Full lips. An eagerness to please in his eyes. Totally a bottom. Yeah. He’ll do.

A snort tears my eyes from my screen.

“Really?” Wolf asks in his mottled tone. “Dude, it’s only five o’clock, and we have shit to do tomorrow.”

“ And we’re young and healthy,” I digress, getting up and grabbing my keys.

His eyes grow wary, and he shakes his head. “No, man. Come on.”

“We’ll grab dinner first.”

Wolf’s weakness is the home cooking he never received from his mother when he was a kid. I can see him wavering, deliberating, but then his mouth sets in a firm line.

“No. Melissa wants to spend time together tonight.”

“Fine. Bring her along.” I shrug, heading to the door that leads to the studio.

“Not that kind of time,” he protests. “ Alone time. She wants a romantic evening at home.”

His phone dings just as he says it. Judging by the sappy grin on his face when I turn back around, I know who it is.

Ugh. Him and Melissa. Two years I’ve put up with them, attached at the freaking hip. I’ve suffered through every conversation about possible themes for their potential wedding, the names of their future children, and countless arguments over the dumbest shit known to man. They can detach themselves from paradise for one evening to help me get laid.

“Come on. You owe me for this festival. Tell her you’ll blow her mind later.”

“It doesn’t work like that,” he grumps, typing out a message.

“What? Is your dick on a schedule?”

“No, but apparently yours is.”

Okay. That was fair. One point to Wolf.

My patience is at its limit, though, so I snatch his phone. One of the benefits of being a few inches taller than him.

Rushing out of the office while he grapples with the back of my shirt, I type out a message, informing Melissa that we’re taking her out to dinner and then meeting a potential client at Pulse later. She’s a sucker for promoting her man—she’ll bite.

“Ha!” I laugh when she responds, confirming. “You’re welcome,” I inform Wolf, tossing his phone back to him. “I just saved you from a boring evening of foot rubs and scented oils.”

Reading his text, he heaves out a long-suffering sigh. “Fine, but I’m not drinking.”

Rolling my eyes at him, I throw a salute at Shannon to let her know we’re out for the evening. It’s her turn to close, so she doesn’t act surprised.

“I’m not,” Wolf repeats, close on my heels.

He’s a total lightweight and yet lacks the ability to say no . I’m not going to be the only one who’s miserable tomorrow. That’s what he gets for disrupting our routine with this festival nonsense.

What’s the point of being self-employed and beholden to no one if you schedule foot rubs and fuckery? We seriously need to have a business meeting one of these days.