Chapter Six
~ Ransom ~
The morning after kissing a man who’s spent a decade pretending he doesn’t want to, you expect the world to change. Maybe the sun comes up a few degrees to the left. Maybe the coffee tastes different, or you stop caring about the finer points of statutory vandalism.
I’d settled for a half-degree shift in the angle of the window light at Inked Rebellion, which was probably just the result of last night’s weather front pushing east, but let a man have his illusions.
I made a ritual of sanitizing every station before I started tattooing, even on slow days. Maybe it was leftover Catholic guilt, or maybe I just liked the way isopropyl stung my knuckles if they were already raw from overwork.
Today, the gloves were off—literally. I cleaned every inch of surface with bare hands, letting the sting keep me present, while my brain replayed the tack room in Technicolor: Floyd’s mouth, angry and desperate; his body, hard enough to leave bruises; the sound he made when I took control and made him like it.
The shop was empty except for the ghosts of last night and the smell of lemon cleaner.
Even the diffuser had given up, no match for the chemical assault.
I stacked my needles with military precision, then rearranged the pigment bottles from light to dark, then by frequency of use, then by likelihood of causing an allergic reaction.
None of it stuck.
I could have alphabetized the autoclave wipes and still had mental bandwidth left to imagine Floyd in uniform, then out of it, then kneeling on the rough barn floor with his badge around his neck.
The clock above the register ticked toward ten. My first client—some trust-fund city type wanting a “meaningful” quote in sans serif—texted to cancel for a “spiritual emergency.” Good. I’d rather lick an ampersand off a urinal cake than needle that much banality into human skin.
Instead, I pulled out a battered spiral notebook and a stub of charcoal, which I used only when the sketch mattered. I let my hand go loose, half-watching the front window for the inevitable walk-in, half-focused on the shape of last night’s man in my head.
It started as a joke—how to cartoon a small-town sheriff who fucks like he’s resisting arrest—but then the lines got sharper, the shading more careful, and I realized I was actually trying to get it right.
I drew the jaw first, square and mean. Not the jaw of a hero, but the jaw of someone who could bite through fence wire if it got in the way.
Then the line of the neck, all those hidden cords of muscle, tense even in supposed relaxation.
I sketched the mouth last, because I was scared of getting it wrong.
Last night, that mouth had gone from rigid line to open desperation in about three seconds flat. I’d never seen anything as honest.
For the eyes, I had to start over three times. The first pair looked too cold. The second, too sad. But the third try caught something—an edge of fear, maybe, or the longing that hung behind it. I didn’t draw the badge. That was for him to bring, next time.
I leaned back, let the paper drop, and tried to breathe through the ache in my chest.
The bell over the door jangled, and I snapped up so fast I smeared black across my wrist. There are maybe six people in McKenzie River who could walk into my shop at 10:15 on a Thursday and throw me off my axis. Floyd Hardesty was at the top of that list.
He didn’t wear the uniform. Today it was jeans—dark, clean, clearly ironed—and a button-down shirt in some faint blue that made his eyes look like sky after a rain.
His hair was still regulation-short, but it looked like he’d run his hands through it a hundred times before coming in.
He paused in the doorway, like he needed to memorize his exit route, then came in fast and closed the door behind him.
He looked at me, then at the shop, then at the door again. “Anyone else coming in?”
“Nope,” I said, and let my voice go soft. “You’re safe.”
He set his jaw. “You know that’s not—” But he didn’t finish.
I watched him take in the space, eyes jumping from my station to the waiting area to the old couch under the window. He drifted over, pulled the blinds, and then—because the world is nothing if not hilarious—he walked to the front door and locked it.
I didn’t say anything. I just let the silence hang there, like the breath before a punch. He leaned against the wall, arms folded, all the bravado drained out of him. The only thing left was nervous energy and the faintest trace of last night’s aftershave.
“Do you want coffee?” I asked. “Or are we skipping straight to the part where you tell me this was a mistake?”
He glared at the floor, then at me, then at the floor again. “We should probably forget what happened last night,” he said.
I let the words sit. “Should we?”
He made a frustrated sound, almost a laugh. “You know what I mean, McKenzie.”
“Do I?” I set the charcoal down, careful not to look away from his face. “Because I remember a lot of things about last night, and none of them feel like something I should forget.”
He ran a hand over his mouth. “Don’t. Please.”
“Why not?” I asked, letting my own pulse speed up. “Scared someone might find out you’re human?”
That got him. He straightened, stepped forward, trying to reclaim a little ground. “You think you have me all figured out, don’t you?”
I shrugged. “Not all. Just the parts you keep trying to strangle.”
He took another step, closing the distance. “You don’t know me.”
“I know enough,” I said, and this time I let a smile bleed in. “I know you’re here. I know you locked the door behind you.”
He looked at the lock, then back at me. “Habit.”
“Sure,” I said. “Let’s go with that.”
He shook his head, eyes dark and desperate. “We can’t—I can’t do this, Ransom.”
I stood, slow and deliberate, wiping the charcoal off on my jeans. “That’s not what you said last night.”
He flinched, but didn’t back up. “Last night was—”
“Real,” I said, crossing my arms. “It was real. Unless you’re going to stand there and tell me you didn’t want it.”
He tried to say something, but it stuck in his throat.
I closed the rest of the distance, just enough that he had to tilt his head up to keep eye contact. “Tell me you didn’t want it,” I said, quiet and dangerous.
He pressed his lips together, then shook his head, just once. “Don’t make this harder than it already is.”
I could smell the coffee on his breath, the clean sweat of a man who showered twice before coming here. His hands trembled, barely, so I caught his wrist before he could hide it.
“You’re not the only one who’s scared,” I said. “But I’m done pretending it’s nothing.”
He looked at my hand on his wrist, then at my face. “What are you saying?”
I leaned in, just enough to feel the heat off his skin. “I’m saying you don’t have to run from this. Not from me.”
He shook his head, but this time it wasn’t a no. “This is a terrible idea,” he said, voice barely a whisper.
“Probably,” I agreed. “But is that really what you want?”
He looked at me, and for the first time, I saw the answer.
His jaw flexed, the vein in his temple making a slow, deliberate climb, and for a second I thought he’d finally found the bottom of his well of self-control.
Instead, he turned away, put two steps between us, and then started pacing the line between my counter and the back wall. Each pass was a new study in misery: hands through his hair, hands in pockets, arms crossed like he could corral his own pulse.
He stopped at the window, made sure the blinds were all the way down, then pivoted back to me. “You don’t get it,” he said, voice raw. “I can’t stop thinking about it. About you. About what we did in the tack room.”
I should have gloated. I should have made a joke about small towns and smaller closets, but the confession landed too close to the bone. Instead, I found myself just watching, waiting to see if he’d go further.
“I went home and…” He shook his head, looking disgusted with himself. “I didn’t sleep. I just kept seeing it. Over and over.”
I crossed the room, slow so I didn’t spook him. When he didn’t move, I closed the last gap and crowded him against the edge of the counter. “Then tell me what you really want,” I said, low and steady.
He held my gaze, desperate and cornered, and in the end he caved first. “I want—” But he cut himself off, biting down on the words.
I planted both hands on the counter, bracketing him in, and leaned close. “You want what?”
His breath hitched. “I want it again. I want to stop pretending I don’t. But if anyone finds out—”
“Screw anyone else,” I said. “Just say it.”
He hesitated, then finally let it out. “I want you. I’ve wanted you for years.”
I didn’t wait for a written invitation. I moved in, face inches from his, watching for the split-second of flinch that would mean stop. Instead, he tilted up, closed the distance, and this time when we kissed it was a hundred times worse because it wasn’t a surprise.
It was consent, deliberate and hungry.
His hands went to my sides, fingers digging in like he meant to leave a mark. I tasted last night’s regret and this morning’s desperation, the combination enough to fog the inside of my skull.
I let one hand slide from the counter to his waist, slipping under the shirt, palm flat on the hot, trembling skin. He shuddered, then pushed into me so hard the edge of the counter left an imprint on my ass.
This kiss wasn’t a car crash like the last one; it was a controlled burn.
He let me in, let me lead, but I felt him fight for it too—a kind of battle of equals, both of us unwilling to give the other the upper hand for more than a second.
His mouth tasted like mint, his stubble scraped my jaw, and I never wanted to stop.
He broke it off first, head tilted back, breathing so hard it almost scared me. “We need to be careful,” he said, voice shredded. “No one can know about this.”