Chapter 15
Holden
The days dragged on, a series of one tattoo after another and another, all of it blurring into nights wrapped up in Bryce’s long and trembling limbs.
Holden and Bryce had fallen into a bit of a routine, but nothing that would arouse suspicion with Merrick, who still had no idea about the two of them.
He certainly knew Bryce was seeing somebody.
Holden had listened to Merrick whine about it at least once a day for the past two weeks, but he couldn’t figure out who.
It was a small relief for Holden to find out they’d been doing a good job at keeping their relationship under wraps.
And it was a relationship, after all. They were boyfriends.
Secret boyfriends.
Holden carried another secret, though. That he’d fallen in love with Bryce Shannon whether he’d meant to or not.
Bryce promised he was just as all-in as Holden was, but Holden knew things were sometimes said in the heat of the moment.
He wanted to trust it, because he did trust Bryce, but it was hard.
Hannah told him more than once he was being ridiculous, that he would turn into a self-fulfilling prophecy if he didn’t tell Bryce the truth, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it.
The moments they shared were as close to perfect as Holden had ever imagined possible, and he wasn’t ready to lose that yet.
“But what if it gets better?” Hannah had asked him last time they spoke.
He waved her off and said he had to get off the phone.
She rolled her eyes at him but let the lie slide.
It didn’t matter; her question had been bouncing around in his head for days, and that was how he found himself at work early one Wednesday, bent over his sketchbook, tracing out a galaxy of constellations, Bryce’s knuckle tattoos in the forefront of his mind.
Just before eleven, the upstairs door opened and the landing creaked. Holden set down his pencil and cracked his back, calling up to Riggs, “I’m in early.”
The last thing he wanted was to catch his boss and his boss’s boyfriend naked or in the middle of a sex thing, which was a real risk considering Riggs lived in the apartment over the shop.
Smith had his own place in Hollywood, but he stayed over a lot.
The two men were sickeningly in love, but Holden found it hopeful and inspiring.
Most of the time.
“I’m decent,” Riggs announced, voice still thick with sleep. The stairs groaned as Riggs descended, and he blinked like an owl once he reached the bright lights of the shop. “Did you have an early appointment?”
“Just going stir crazy at home and wanted a change of scenery.”
Riggs chuckled and tied his long hair up into a messy bun. “Most people would go to the beach or a coffee shop in that case, not work.”
He gestured to Holden’s empty chair. “Can I sit?”
“Your shop.”
Holden rolled his stool back to make room for Riggs, who settled into the chair like a man who’d spent hours doing it.
He had, in fact. Riggs was almost entirely covered in ink from his throat down to his ankles.
Holden wasn’t much further behind him as far as coverage went, but for some reason—maybe the hair and the constant five-o-clock shadow—Riggs looked a lot tougher than Holden ever would.
“What are you drawing? Do you mind sharing?”
Holden handed over his sketchbook. “Just stars.”
Riggs smiled and tapped his finger against the corner of the page. “Can I flip?”
“There’s no nudes in there, if that’s what you’re asking.”
Riggs crossed his legs at the ankle and skimmed through Holden’s sketchbook.
It wasn’t the first time. Holden had brought it with him for his interview, but Riggs had paid more attention to his finished portfolio than his in-process sketches.
It made sense because the end product was what they were selling.
Of course, it mattered how he got there, but that was the least of it.
“You are really good,” Riggs finally said, handing the book back.
“You sound surprised.”
“I wouldn’t have hired you if you weren’t,” he said. “Just nice to be reminded, I think.”
“Yeah, well. Thanks.”
Riggs nodded and yawned, stretching his arms over his head. His shirt lifted, revealing a stripe of equally tattooed skin.
“How have you settled in here?” Riggs asked him. “You like it okay?”
“I like it a lot,” he said. “I could stand for Merrick to talk less, but it’s fine.”
Riggs chuckled and nodded. “A man of many words, whereas you…”
“Are not.”
A silence fell between them, and Holden fought the urge to fidget.
It was nice, he realized, having Bryce around because their silences were never awkward, when they existed.
Over their time together, Bryce had found the space to sit with himself long enough for Holden to find his own words.
It made a special kind of peace in Holden’s apartment that he wanted to carry with him always.
“Can I ask you something personal?” Riggs glanced up at the ceiling, a creaking floorboard that must have indicated his boyfriend was awake.
“If you had a human resources department, the answer would probably be no, but this is a tattoo shop, so sure.”
“What do you do when you’re not here?”
Holden laughed, scrubbing a hand down his face. HR or not, he absolutely could not answer that question truthfully. “Nothing exciting,” he said.
“Are you seeing anyone? Do you date?”
Holden’s heart lodged in his throat, and he tried to shrug off Riggs’s question like he’d asked something much simpler like, “How’s the weather?”
“I…sometimes.”
“I know that’s probably really out of line. Nothing I would have asked a year ago, but I wouldn’t have had employees then either.”
“Times change,” Holden muttered.
Riggs nodded a thoughtful agreement. “I’ve learned lately that it’s nice to have other people around. I’ve also seen how Merrick’s brother looks at you when he comes into the shop.”
Holden schooled his expression, licked his lips. “What do you mean?”
“He definitely thinks you’re attractive. I don’t know if you like men—”
“I do,” he interrupted, grimacing at how loud his answer was. “I do. I mean, I like both.”
“Merrick’s brother is new in town. He looks a bit like a lost puppy when he comes by the shop.”
He looked a bit like a debauched whore with his ass up and cum dripping down the backs of his thighs, but Bryce would be glad to know Riggs’s opinion of him remained unfazed.
“He seems sweet,” Holden managed to say.
“Sweet.”
Holden glanced up from his sketchbook, finding Riggs’s stare locked onto him, dark and curious.
“Okay,” Riggs said, slapping the tops of his thighs and standing up.
Holden slid his stool out of the way to make room for his boss, all while doing everything he could to avoid Riggs’s stare.
“I’d like to get on your books sometime.”
“Pardon?”
“I want to get tattooed by you. I don’t have a lot of room, but something small, I think.” Riggs lifted his shirt revealing a small gap of skin on his ribs, not more than a three by two square.
“What did you want?”
“Dealer's choice,” he said. “Just tell me when.”
“Do you want to do it now?”
Riggs raised his brows, glancing at the clock on the wall over the door. It was an hour before the shop opened, an hour before Merrick arrived, and Holden didn’t have an appointment until one.
“How long do you need?”
“We can knock it out before twelve.”
“Alright.” A huge smile split Riggs’s face. “Let me tell Smith I’ll be down here, and you can get set up.”
Holden nodded and dropped his sketchbook onto the empty chair.
He had no idea what to do in the small swatch of skin Riggs allocated for him, but he knew it needed to be good.
Most of Riggs’s work was black and gray, and there was no way Holden was going to do the same with the skin he’d been allowed.
He flipped through his sketchbook, past the pages Riggs had inspected earlier, until he found a small snake he’d done, except the body of the animal was twisted into the shape of a heart, fangs dripping with venom.
It was a decidedly new school take on an old school tattoo, and he could pack so much red and yellow into the scales that it would really pop in the dark shadows of Riggs’s ribs.
He’d just finished setting up by the time Riggs came back downstairs. Coffee in hand, his boss sank down into the open chair and tugged his shirt to his armpit. “Is this good?”
“Yeah, totally, but sit up so I can get the stencil on.”
Riggs shifted around and held his arm up, and an immense wash of pleasure rolled through Holden when he realized the stencil fit perfectly in the space allowed.
“What do you think?”
“Love it.” Riggs settled back down into the chair and rested his head on his forearm. “Why a heart snake?”
“Well, I’d started sketching an ouroboros, and I was thinking about how they represent the never-ending cycles of life.
” Holden snapped on his gloves and tested the power to his machine before dipping the needle into a cup of black ink.
He situated himself over Riggs and stretched the skin across his ribs, “Do you want a short line as a tester to remember how much this fucking sucks?”
Riggs laughed and shook his head. “Do your worst.”
“I’ll do my best,” he offered instead, sinking a long and curved line into Riggs’s skin. “But anyway, I was thinking about the forever nature of it and love felt like a forever thing too, so I tweaked the shape.”
“Have you ever been in love?”
Holden wiped the ink away and laid a couple more lines before he answered, lip pinched between his teeth in concentration.
“Sorry,” Riggs said when the buzzing of Holden’s machine went quiet. “You’ve talked to me more today than you have in the past seven months, I think. I don’t want to overdo it.”
Holden exhaled a breath that sounded a lot like a laugh and paid attention to the tattoo, appreciating the quiet Riggs was offering him.
There was something sacred about being in a tattoo shop on either side of the needle.
There were lots of people, Holden included, who got tattoos because they were silly or because they had too much time and not enough sense, but there were also people who got tattoos that mattered.
Holden had done dozens if not hundreds of memorial tattoos, doing his best to pretend he didn’t see his clients crying through the process.
He’d done complicated pieces that had taken him hours to sketch, a hodgepodge of ideas that all meant so much to the recipient that they couldn’t narrow it down to a single thing.
Tattoos were real and they were serious, and maybe it was his appreciation for the art and the commitment that always sent him into such a space of quiet contemplation.
“I have been in love,” Holden said after he’d finished the line work and the black shading. “I am in love.”
It felt good to say it out loud, to admit this thing with Bryce was more than just raunchy sex.
It absolutely was also raunchy sex, but there was something else underneath it that kept the two of them coming back to each other, drawn close like magnets desperate to connect.
Holden realized he needed to be honest with Bryce about how he felt.
Both of them deserved the truth. Both of them deserved to sit with their love, even if they had to sit in secret.
He had no illusions that telling Merrick would be an easy thing, but that could be a problem for the future.
Besides, who was Merrick to argue about his brother’s happiness if his brother was in love?
Fuck, what if Bryce didn’t love him back?
No. That was impossible. Holden was creative, but he wasn’t delirious.
He knew the feelings went both ways, and he promised to be truthful about them.
Honest with himself.
Honest with Bryce.
“What’s their name?” Riggs asked.
Holden glanced up, and Riggs rolled his eyes when Holden said nothing, settling back down into the chair and staring at the wall with a soft smirk on his face.
He finished the tattoo in fifteen minutes, the color going in solid and easy.
After he was done, he cleaned the piece, took a picture of it for his portfolio, and bandaged his boss with plastic wrap and medical tape.
Riggs poked the gauze tape, the unspoken taunt the same as the verbal one Merrick often threw at him.
“Do you need me to tell you how to take care of it?” Holden teased, pulling off his gloves and flinging them into the trash.
“Unwrap it immediately and wash it with scented dish soap,” Riggs shot back.
Holden laughed. “Just like that. Let me know how it heals up for you.”
Riggs checked himself out in the mirror, the bright red and yellow scales visible even through the plastic wrap. It was a gorgeous pop of color in the darkness of Riggs’s rib piece, and Holden was honored to fill the space.
“Thank you for this,” Riggs said, letting his shirt fall. “How much do I owe you?”
“You don’t,” Holden promised. “The honor and the conversation were more than enough.”