Chapter 2
Chapter 2
Nick
“H ey, Nick, do you want coffee? I’m craving something sweet. And I need the boost.”
I nodded and looked over at my fellow tattoo artist, Leo. “Coffee sounds good.”
“What do you want? The usual? Or something spicy?”
I shuddered and glared over at Leo. “Is spicy coffee a thing? Is this what the kids are doing these days?”
Sebastian, my co-owner of Montgomery Ink Legacy and friend, snorted. “I don’t think the kids these days are making spicy coffee. I’m just imagining some form of hot sauce in coffee just to see if they can handle it.”
I shuddered. “I don’t think that’s for me.”
“Actually, you can put cayenne pepper in coffee. I’ve had Mexican mocha coffee, and a Moroccan spiced coffee that’s pretty decent,” Brooke, my friend’s girl said as she looked over a stack of papers she was grading. She was here visiting Leif, my fellow co-owner, best friend, and blood brother.
“Well, now I want to try all of that,” Leo said. “But I don’t think we’re going to get it at the café at the corner.”
Sebastian looked down at his phone. “This says you can make it with a rich blend of coffee, cream, cinnamon, nutmeg, and cayenne pepper.”
Scowling, my stomach rumbled. “Damn it. Now I want to try it. And we’re not going to find it at that place.”
“I bet Hailey would have it at Taboo,” Brooke added helpfully.
Liam walked in and kissed the top of her head. “We need her to franchise as well. That way she can put in a shop next to us. I got spoiled downtown.”
I frowned, wrote down a few notes. “I wonder why she hasn’t franchised. Or your aunt and uncle down in Colorado Springs who have that bakery. They do coffee too, right?”
“Some, but they don’t go into the specialties as much as Taboo does. And I think Hailey had her hands full with the downtown branch. I don’t think they need to put it in a strip mall on the other side of town.”
“Stop saying strip mall like it’s a bad thing,” Brooke said. “You guys are killing it here. I’m very proud.”
I rolled my eyes, even though I was pleased that we were doing well.
Putting my life savings into this venture had been scary, even though I had worked my ass off to get here. I had trained with the best—Leif’s parents and family members down at Montgomery Ink in Denver and other friends down in New Orleans. I had learned my craft, saved money and gone into owning Montgomery Ink Legacy with Leif Montgomery, Sebastian Montgomery, and Lake Montgomery.
Lake wasn’t even a tattoo artist but a friend of all of ours, even if we growled at each other more than not. She had wanted to do something with the obscene amount of money she made at a young age, and apparently we were her charity case. That was fine with me because I got to do what I wanted, thanks to her. Though I didn’t have to ask her, I didn’t have to thank her often. Or ever, if I had any say in it.
“Really though, what kind of coffee do you want?” Leo asked.
Montgomery Ink Legacy, or MIL for short, might have been owned and operated by three tattoo artists and Lake, but Sebastian was still under twenty years old, in college, and going to be a father soon, which was insane to me. He was here to learn, had some of his own clients, but hadn’t bought in fully like we had. Lake helped with the books but worked with her own multimillion-dollar company and was rarely here. Thankfully. Not that I would say that to her.
Mostly because that was my problem and not hers, and I wasn’t in the mood to deal with it.
So Leif and I did most of the client work, and I was fine with that. We had hired three other tattoo artists to work with us.
Tristan, Taryn, and Leo. The three of them worked together well and were a crew of their own. All three were also experienced and licensed piercers, so we ran the gambit here at MIL.
Leo was a friend, and since he was getting me coffee, he was my best friend.
“Something iced, cream and sugar. I’m not in the mood for just black coffee.”
“Have enough hair on your chest?” Sebastian asked, poring over his business books. At least, I thought it was a business class. I wasn’t sure since Sebastian was taking more credit hours than I thought reasonable and helping his pregnant girlfriend or fiancée through her initial stages of pregnancy. It was a little too much for him, but he was kicking ass, and I was always there if he needed me.
“Yes, I do. There are no complaints.”
“He says that, and yet he hasn’t introduced me to a single girlfriend,” Brooke teased.
I glared at the woman, even though I liked her. “Because as soon as I introduce you or any of the other women to her, it’s going to be a thing. And I don’t need it to be a thing. I’m just fine with my relationships as they are.”
“Imaginary, or just your left hand?” Sebastian asked.
Leo barked out a laugh, the others joining as I just shook my head, my lips twitching.
“It’s my right, thank you very much. I can be ambidextrous with more than just tattoos.”
“I still can’t believe you can do both.” Brooke blushed as everyone laughed.
Leif put his hands over his face. “Babe. Really?”
“I meant tattooing. Not fucking your fist.”
We all froze for an instant, blinking at that phrase coming from her mouth, though Leif didn’t sound surprised.
Damn, Brooke was all full of surprises; no wonder I liked her.
“That’s an image I’m going to carry with me until the end of my days,” Leo said with a sigh. “And on that note, I got everyone’s coffee orders. I’ll be back. But I’m not going to get Taboo’s coffee like I want.”
“I guess we can all go work on her to start franchising so we can have Taboo next door. I’m sure she’ll do it just for us,” Sebastian said.
“Exactly. We won’t have to wait for long,” Leif said with a laugh.
“Now that we have that out of our systems, I’m headed out,” Brooke said as she stood up, rubbing her back.
“Are you okay?” Leif asked, concern in his tone.
She smiled up at him, and I tried not to feel jealous. I didn’t want Brooke, I liked her, but it wasn’t like that.
The way that she looked at Leif like he was the center of her universe? I don’t know. It might have been nice to have that. I never had, not even as a kid. I didn’t think I was going to have something like that ever. But I didn’t complain. I had a good life. Had my friends, this shop. I didn’t need much else.
And that wasn’t a lie at all.
“I’m fine. I just slept at an odd angle all night.”
I whistled under my teeth along with Sebastian, and Brooke narrowed her gaze. “Because Luke had a nightmare, and he ended up sleeping between us all night. Get your head out of the gutter. Both of you. You’re about to be a dad, Sebastian. Just know it’s going to happen to you too. Late night feedings, diaper explosions, and even when they get older, they’re going to come to you and scare the hell out of you. How, you ask? Well, what they’re going to do is they don’t want to wake you up completely. They don’t want to startle you by touching your face or jostling you awake or even saying your name. Instead they’re just going to stand beside your bed, waiting quietly. Staring without blinking. Until even within your dream you feel a presence there. Knowing. Waiting and watching. You open your eyes in the dark, only the moonlight sliding through the cracks in the blinds, illuminating your son’s pale face with wide unblinking eyes.
“And as you try not to scream, not to scare your son or the man sleeping next to you, all you do is let out a chirping noise. One that startles Leif awake, going ‘What, what,’ and flopping around on the bed as if he were an injured seal. And then your son cries and is so sorry that he startled you, but all you can hear is your heart in your ears and bile on your tongue because you just thought that the kid from The Grudge is at the side of your bed, making that weird guttural throat sound. That is your future. And you’re going to love it.”
I sat there as the others laughed, my eyes wide. “That was very descriptive. And a little scary.”
“A whole lot scary. The first time he did it to me, I thought there was an actual monster in the room. Instead, it’s just our kid.”
The two of them looked at each other and smiled, and I swallowed hard.
Their kid. They hadn’t even been together a year yet, weren’t married, but Luke was their kid.
I wasn’t jealous, but damn I was happy for Leif. He deserved this. So did Brooke.
“For real, though, I’m leaving. I have a class this afternoon, and then tomorrow is all-day seminars. Are you good picking up Luke since May has an appointment?”
“I’m on it. We’ve got this.”
They kissed softly, and a little too long for my taste, until finally Sebastian cleared his throat.
“Our next appointments come in soon. I don’t know if you guys want to be making out in front of them.”
Leif didn’t even bother to look at us. Instead, he flipped us off, and Brooke laughed, blushing slightly as she waved and said her goodbyes.
“I need to head out too. I promised Marley I would meet her for lunch between classes. I have a night class tonight, then labs all day tomorrow.”
“Sounds good. You have clients on Friday, right?” Leif asked.
Technically, Sebastian was an apprentice. He needed more time to learn and was going to business school so he could help out and we could grow as a company. While MIL was a subsidiary of the original Montgomery Ink, just like Montgomery Ink Too was down in Colorado Springs, we were the heavy investors. This was our company. And we didn’t want it to fail.
I had all the hope and trust and faith in my partners, in the Montgomery family.
After all, they had practically raised me. They had been there when nobody else had, so I wasn’t about to not believe in what they could do.
“Yep. You’ll be there too, right? To hover over me to make sure I don’t fuck up?” Sebastian was teasing, but I heard the worry in his tone.
It was daunting and exhilarating, and I knew that Sebastian was feeling everything that we had when we had first started.
Of course, we hadn’t had impending fatherhood and marriage on our shoulders like he did.
“We’ll be here. Watching over you like mother hens, don’t worry,” Leif teased, and I snorted, narrowing my eyes at the sketch in front of me.
It wasn’t right yet, and I had two more versions to show my client.
She wanted a full side piece of broken and growing branches, to show where she had been, and where she wanted to go.
She wanted it in grayscale. I didn’t blame her. She had had a full-color tattoo about a decade ago from another artist, and the color had faded to almost nothing in a couple of years, her skin not reacting in the way that most other skin did. The outline had also blown out, and she had been hesitant for another tattoo for a while.
We had done a smaller tattoo on her hip in the meantime, just to see if she could handle another one, and it had worked out.
So we didn’t know what had happened, other than we needed to be careful, and she wasn’t going full color. I didn’t mind, but that meant that I had to be careful with my shading, and have the drawing and sketch work with what I wanted, to enhance the drawing, rather than just have something in black and white that didn’t make much sense.
“I have our coffees. No cayenne pepper,” Leo said as he came in, the coffees already sweating in his hands.
It was humid outside, which was a rare gift to most of Colorado.
Colorado was dry as hell and always led to dehydration and altitude sickness for people who hadn’t lived here before. But the fact that we had humidity right now was weird. I didn’t like it, and never wanted to ever visit a place that was high humidity. For instance, Florida was never going to be on my bucket list, even though I knew that our friends all wanted to go down to EPCOT one year and eat and drink our way around the world. That sounded fun, but doing so in Satan’s hellhole of humidity didn’t.
“Thanks, I’m headed out,” Sebastian said, and Leo nodded.
“Have fun. Learn all the things.”
“I’m trying.”
Sebastian said his goodbyes as Leif leaned back in his chair and stared at his phone.
“What is it?” I asked.
“Lake was going to stop by, but just texted to say that she had another meeting. I hate that she’s working herself too hard.”
Leo looked between us and kept silent.
Everyone in this room knew part of what had happened to Lake. It wasn’t like we could hide it since we were all friends and family.
But I had been the one to first see her.
I had been watching Luke for the night, staying at Brooke’s place while Brooke and Leif went out for a date. I liked the kid, and I hadn’t minded staying.
And I don’t know, maybe part of me had wanted to be there, knowing that Lake lived next door.
Because part of me had known something was wrong. I didn’t know what it was, and I should have known.
I should have thought about more than just the fact that asshole Zach had given me the creeps.
I had told myself I needed to get over my overprotectiveness, that Lake wasn’t my sister, was only my friend, and even then, we fought more than we actually liked each other.
But I had been the one that she had asked for help.
Help.
One word, four letters, something I hadn’t even known she knew.
Because Lake Montgomery did not ask for help. She had become a Montgomery later in her life and had worked her ass off to prove that she was worthy of becoming part of that family.
Which in my head was fucking ridiculous because she didn’t need to work at all to become a Montgomery. That family loved all of their people, even ones that sometimes fucked up, because no matter what, they were family, and they took care of each other. There was no sniping or growling beyond the usual. They cared for one another. There was no jealousy or trying to outdo one another. The Montgomerys took care of their own.
And somehow, along the way, I had become one of their own too. Because their own weren’t just those with the Montgomery iris tattoo—a flowered circle with their family crest that each member of the family got tattooed on their bodies because they wanted to, not because they had to.
So I didn’t know why Lake had worked so hard to try to fit in with a family that loved her beyond all measure.
But maybe I didn’t know Lake. All I knew was that we growled at each other and fought no matter what we did. We were co-owners of this damn place and always yelled at one another.
And I wasn’t going to dive too deep into the why of that.
Yet I had been the one standing there, the one watching her as she put her hands to her neck; and the bruises etched on her skin would forever haunt my dreams.
Because she had tried to cover them up. So many different kinds of makeup all blended together, but I could still see.
That bastard had wrapped his hands around her throat and tried to kill her.
Though the cops didn’t believe that.
They let her put a restraining order on him, but that was it. Zach was still out there, not in jail because apparently those bruises only meant that he might have hurt her once. Because Lake hadn’t gone to the authorities the other times he had hit her or emotionally put her into a cage and treated her like shit, so when she began to wear sweatshirts with baggy pants and her hair up in a bun instead of done to the nines like she always did, it wasn’t worth putting the man in jail.
Then again, I knew all too well what happened when somebody broke your spirit, but not the law.
There was only so much you could do, so Zach was out there, but so was Lake.
And she wasn’t here again today.
I didn’t want to be the selfish asshole who thought it was because of me.
But she didn’t see me anymore.
In the three months since that day, I had only seen her a handful of times.
The others saw her, and I knew she came into work on the days that I wasn’t here. And I didn’t know if it was on purpose or not.
But Lake Montgomery seemed to be avoiding me. It was the only thing that made sense.
And I fucking hated it.
I didn’t know why I hated it so much.
“She’ll be here tomorrow, though,” Leif added, looking down at his phone.
On my day off. Not that I said that out loud.
“Whatever,” I growled, going back to my sketch.
The look that the other two shared didn’t escape my notice, but I ignored it.
Just like I ignored the text from the unknown number next to me, as my phone buzzed once again.
I didn’t want to deal with that right then, I didn’t want to deal with anything.
The world kept moving on around me, and I was standing still.
Maybe I needed to not worry about everything I couldn’t control.