Chapter 12
PD
“Will thinks I’m an asshole,” I grumbled under my breath and slammed a second pair of jeans into my black leather backpack.
“Am I an asshole? No, I’m not. He’s.” I shoved in a pair of socks.
“An.” I jammed in my sketchbook and pencils.
“Asshole.” I was barely able to close the zipper.
I didn’t need much to survive, but I was pissed off that I was clearing out of the house I’d worked hard to get Will back into—and twice as fucking infuriated that he was making me feel like I wanted to be away from him.
How long would I go? Well, who knew. Knowing how fucking stupid I could be about him, not more than a day, but I needed a breather.
My phone buzzed in my pocket, and I sighed as I tugged it out and glared at the screen, gearing up for round two with Will.
Jake
Will’s here and wants a tattoo. I have some concerns.
My boyfriend was having someone else ink him? My fingers shook as I texted back. Nope, I wasn’t hurt. There were no tears in my eyes. I would eat a razor blade before I would admit that I wiped one off my face.
PD
He’s an adult. He doesn’t need anyone’s permission. You know that. His cash is green.
Unwilling to be part of yet another conversation that would piss Will off, I powered down my phone with a huff and stuffed it back into my pocket. Running my hands down my face, I glanced around my room.
Was I really doing this? Yeah, I had to get out of here, even if it was only for twenty-four hours.
I needed one night. If I was somewhere else, I wouldn’t have to fight with myself because now Will and I were together.
I could go into his room and wrap my arms around him.
Goddamn it, I wanted to have my anger right now. I deserved to get upset sometimes.
As a treat.
I shook my head and smiled, then rolled my eyes.
Maybe I would be back later tonight. I could already feel my resolve crumbling as I remembered how nice Will felt tucked against my body, but for now, I grabbed my backpack and slung it over my shoulders.
I rooted around in my closet for my black leather bowler hat and plopped it on my head as I was headed out.
Then, I went back for my Kings of Men cut.
A knock on the front door made me stop and glare at it.
“Why today? If this is a salesman I’m going to toss him in the street on his ass,” I grumbled before flinging open the door.
On the other side, an older woman wearing a plastic rain hat over her brilliant red curls blinked up at me. She had her hand raised and squawked, taking several steps back, which forced me to grab her shoulders to keep her from falling. She flung around her huge purse and bonked my hip with it.
“Hyacinth?” I asked with a chuckle. “Are you okay?” I shuffled to the side to block the door because Will had said about seven hundred times that he didn’t want his mother in the house ever again. She’d spent days ranting the last time that it was filthy.
It wasn’t.
It wouldn’t pass the white glove test in all the corners, but it wasn’t that bad. For two bikers, it was pristine.
“You better let me in, Paris, or not even Shakespeare will be able to save you!” She swatted at my hands, and I let go of her to casually lean my shoulder against the doorjamb, fully blocking access.
She taught high school English and theater, and she’d always had an eclectic sense of fashion, maybe as a result.
Her yellow overalls weren’t a shock, not even on a woman who had to be pushing seventy.
If I didn’t know how she could be, I would even say she was cute.
She glared at me with the same brown eyes she’d passed down to Will and crossed her arms.
“No.”
“You let me in or I’ll call the cops and tell them you’re abusing my son!
That’s the only reason I can figure he isn’t answering his phone this long.
” She shook her head so hard her rain hat fluttered off and fell to the ground.
I bent down to scoop it up for her, and she stepped over my arm into the house.
Cursing, I whirled around, ready to yell at her, but she stopped awkwardly in the living room.
“Is he napping? It’s quiet in here?” Her eyebrows furrowed as she squared up with me again.
“Get it over with. Whatever you’re here for. Just lay it on me.” I raised my hands and closed my eyes, tilting my head back like I was waiting for her to punch me, because honestly it was the same thing.
She snickered, but it sounded weak. “You always were a rude little shit.”
“Then, you shouldn’t expect any different.” I tapped my fingers on the doorjamb and raised my eyebrows. “What do you need?”
“Where is my son?” She slapped her hands on her thighs. “He isn’t answering his phone.”
I stared at her.
She glared back.
“Don’t make me explain what an unanswered phone means.” I laughed, running a hand down my face. “No idea where he is.”
Her mouth fell open and she shook a finger at me, getting right in my face. “You promised in the hospital! You said you would look after him! He isn’t answering his phone. He could be dead in a ditch for all you know.”
There was no way to fend her off without possibly hurting her, so I let her shove my chest and do a thousand things I would ruin anyone else on the planet for attempting. Her singular saving grace was that she’d produced Will. I took a big step back, and she stumbled.
“He’s got some issues, but he can still think. He isn’t about to wander into traffic.” I winced internally as I remembered the vehicles breezing past me on the street while he shouted at me earlier, not very much different from this, actually.
She marched forward, grabbed the straps of my bookbag, and gave me a shake that did not endear her to me.
“I thought you were watching him. Why won’t he talk to me?
I’ve been trying to get him to have a conversation with me for at least a month.
” She sounded so distressed that my anxiety began to amp up.
“This—” I waved at her. “—is why he isn’t answering his fucking phone.”
She gave me a shove and stalked around me to the front lawn. Her rain hat blew away in a stiff breeze and in the distance thunder rumbled as gray clouds closed in. “Where is my son?”
“Fuck this. He’s at my tattoo parlor getting inked. Go yell at him there.” I waved my hand at her and locked the front door, deliberately checking to make sure it wouldn’t open while staring her dead in the eyes.
“No,” she moaned, cupping her cheeks. “He already has so many! I should’ve made him come home and move back in with me.”
The laughter that struggled out of my throat took me by surprise. “Go tell him that.” I took a card for Ink Well out of the front pocket of my backpack and handed it to her. “See what happens.”
She stomped her foot. “He won’t have a choice.”
I laughed like an asshole as she got into her yellow Kia and drove off, gears grinding.
I didn’t even realize they made manual transmissions for those cars, but she was clearly too furious to be driving it.
I shook my head. There was a reason she didn’t get along with Will, and it was because they were too damned much alike.
Once they got something in their heads, it stayed there until they chewed it up and spit it out in smaller pieces than an old dog bone.
For a second, I rubbed my chest as anxiety swirled there, but then I shrugged it off.
Will was mostly in his right mind, no matter what she thought, and she couldn’t take him away.
She couldn’t make him do anything. Even when he’d been fresh out of a fucking coma, he’d refused to go with her because he remembered enough to know how fucking nuts she drove him.
I’d already volunteered to help him get back on his feet anyway, which she hadn’t appreciated.
She’d been livid to learn that I’d been his medical contact for over a decade.
“Fuck!” I glared at the sky. Lightning forked and thunder boomed overhead.
The storm moving in brought a bright ozone scent with it, and I loved that smell.
It made me want to get on my bike and ride, which was counterintuitive because rain was dangerous, but I couldn’t explain it.
I grabbed my Triumph and sped off into the city, not sure where I was going.
Eventually, I found myself in the rundown neighborhood that housed Derek Uhlig’s illegal casino, and I knew better than to go within a hundred feet of that place.
Simply seeing a King’s cut might start shit between Uhlig and the club, so I detoured away to a side street with a lot of businesses I’d never visited.
There was a hookah café, and I hadn’t been in one for a couple of years, so it would be as good a spot as any to kill an afternoon.
Inside, the rich smell of scented tobacco greeted me.
There were several round tables of old-timers sitting around bullshitting, reading the paper, and otherwise pursuing the favorite pastimes of old men everywhere.
Maybe if Will and I were lucky and calmed our asses down, we’d get to do things like that together when we had gray hair. I fought back a smile.
No, I was fucking mad at him right now. My lips still twitched toward a grin.
One table in the back was surrounded by what looked like college students.
Shrugging, I took a booth against the big front window to get a good view of the storm. A tall man with an impressive belly and a long white beard came over, grinning at me. His brown eyes had happy laugh lines crinkled in the corners.
“Flavor?” he asked as he plopped a shiny red-and-silver hookah in the middle of the table.
I shrugged. “Surprise me.”
He brought out coals and tobacco, and when I finally hit the hookah, the tobacco was a shocking pineapple blend that had me smiling back at him.
He patted my shoulder and walked away. “I’ll get you Turkish coffee. The hookah is for friends! You should find some!”