Chapter 11
Knox
Three walk-ins, two cover-ups, and some guy who flinched so hard during a shoulder piece I had to redo a whole fucking line.
Now I’m wiping down my station with the kind of intense focus I usually reserve for things that actually matter.
The autoclave is running. The ink caps are sorted.
I’ve checked tomorrow’s appointments twice, which Mars definitely noticed and filed away to use against me later.
Mars is across the room doing his own closing routine. He hasn’t said much tonight. Just a grunt about the supply order and a nod at the salvaged line on the flincher. He's got that particular silence going—the one that means he’s thinking about something he’ll say in his own time, or not at all.
Things have been different since the dare.
The hostility is wearing thin, and what’s underneath is almost friendly.
If Benji would ever let me use that word.
He actually asked me about a stippling technique yesterday, and we talked about art for twenty minutes without insulting each other.
I noticed. He definitely noticed. But underneath all of it, those two words—family shit—are sitting between us like a dropped weight.
He hasn’t brought it up. I haven’t offered more.
Last Tuesday I almost walked over to his cafe.
Got halfway down the block with some bullshit excuse about needing coffee at nine at night, then turned around at the corner because I couldn't figure out what I'd say when I got there.
I've been circling his orbit for weeks, and the fact that I keep almost-going and then not-going is a confession I'm not ready to look at.
"Locking up in ten," Mars grunts, his way of telling me to get my shit together.
"Yeah, I'm almost done."
"You've been almost done for thirty minutes." He shrugs into his beat-to-hell leather jacket and starts his key routine. Back door first, register second, lights third.
Then the front door opens.
I look up, expecting a lost Uber Eats guy or a walk-in who can't read the Closed sign.
Instead, Benji Rowe is standing in the doorway.
He's alone. No Jude, no Shay, no human shields.
Just Benji in beat-up combat boots and a jacket way too thin for the weather, that slice of blue hair catching the fluorescent light.
And the claiming bite, right there above his collar.
"I think I left something here last time," he says.
He didn't leave shit here last time. We both know it. He was here for Jude’s tattoo, and he walked out staring at the sidewalk.
My entire body goes dead still. My hands stop on the counter. The mate bond doesn't flare—it just settles, like a heavy, undeniable weight dropping into my chest. All those times I almost walked to his cafe, all those deleted texts, and he's the one standing in my shop.
Mars looks at Benji. Looks at me. Looks at the bite on Benji’s neck. We have a whole conversation in three seconds of silence.
So this is the one who's been making you draw the same face for two months.
Don't.
I didn't say anything.
Your eyebrows said plenty.
Mars grabs his keys. He walks past Benji, pausing just long enough to say, "Lock up when you leave," in the flattest voice he owns. From Mars, that's practically a blessing. The door clicks shut behind him.
The shop shifts the second we're alone. It feels smaller, warmer. My scent and his start mixing in the air without Mars's beta neutral to cut them. The amber after-hours lights make the flash art on the walls look softer. My sketchbook is sitting face-down on the counter, right where I left it.
"Your boss always that warm?" Benji asks, walking further inside. His boots echo on the floor. His fingers trail along the edge of a design binder on the counter.
"That was warm. You should see him when he's annoyed."
"Terrifying." He stops in front of a flash sheet on the wall—a neo-trad snake and roses I drew last year. He tilts his head. "This one's yours."
"How can you tell?"
"Your line work does this thing at the curves. Thicker on the outside, thinner on the inside. Consistent across all your pieces." He traces the line weight in the air. "Same thing on the sleeve design by the door."
I just stare at him. He read my line work like a fucking signature. I cover the sudden, tight feeling in my chest by reaching for a binder.
"You want to see the custom portfolio?"
"Yeah."
I hand it over. He flips through it at the counter, and we spend the next fifteen minutes having the most normal conversation of our lives.
He asks about a cover-up I did on a burn scar.
I answer him, and I don't even have to put on the cocky act.
It's just easy. He points out the negative space on a geometric piece.
He laughs when I tell him Mars's teaching style consists of letting you fuck up and staring at you until you figure out why.
His fingers keep touching things. The binder, the vinyl arm of the tattoo chair, a flash sheet. He touches things exactly like he traced my tattoos that first night in the dark. My stomach does a slow, heavy roll, and I keep it off my face.
Eventually, he ends up sitting in my tattoo chair. He leans back, the chair adjusting to his weight, and he looks contained in it. His hands rest on the armrests, the bite visible on his neck, my scent everywhere. He came here. He chose this.
"You working on anything new?" he asks, his voice trying way too hard to sound casual.
My sketchbook is right there. Facedown, six inches from my hand. Full of his jawline, his freckles, that blue streak. I could show him.
Instead, I reach past it and grab a fine-tip skin pen.
"Hold still," I tell him.
He looks at the pen. Looks at me. A quick, braced flicker crosses his face, but then he reaches down and pulls up the hem of his shirt.
He exposes the pale strip of skin along his left hip, right where the waistband of his black skinny jeans sits low.
He doesn't say a word. Just holds the shirt and watches me.
I lean over him.
The chair puts my face inches from his skin. I brace my left hand against his hip to steady the canvas, the pen in my right. His body heat radiates against my cheek. I can smell him perfectly now—warm and sharp beneath the shop's antiseptic.
I start drawing.
This is what I'm good at. My hand knows what to do even when my brain is short-circuiting. I move the pen across his skin in clean, steady lines, building a geometric design that echoes his poster art. The tip catches the fine hairs on his hip, and he shivers once before going completely still.
No sarcasm. No running his mouth. Just his steady breathing and his fingers gripping the armrests. A flush creeps up from his collar, making the freckles on his shoulders stand out.
My left thumb strokes once across his hipbone. It’s not a steadying touch; it’s just me wanting to feel his skin. His breath hitches for half a second before evening out again.
His scent spikes. It’s subtle, but I catch it—a deeper, warmer thread cutting through the sharp edges. And right at the edge of my vision, I can see the faint tension at the front of his jeans.
Fuck.
My gut tightens, a hot, immediate pool of arousal hitting me straight in the dick.
I force my hand to stay steady on the next line.
I don’t look up. If I acknowledge it, if I let my cock do the talking right now, this turns into something else.
And he came here for this quiet, careful thing.
I am not going to be the guy who ruins it.
I draw around his freckles. I’ve been sketching them from memory for months, but the real ones are lighter, more copper.
The ink curves around them, making them part of the piece.
I take ten, fifteen minutes on a design that should take five.
It’s the most honest I’ve been with him since the night I left.
I can’t say the words, but my hand is on his body, and I'm hoping he can feel what I'm trying to say.
I finally pull back. The dark ink sits on his pale skin, already softening at the edges from his body heat. It looks like it belongs there.
I open my mouth. Something is right there on my tongue, some sentence that starts with I and ends with you, but I swallow it down. I cap the pen.
Benji looks down at his hip. He studies it for a few seconds, tilting his head. Then he lets his shirt drop, covering it.
He doesn't wipe it off. He doesn't make a sarcastic joke. He just covers it like it's something worth keeping, and that simple fucking gesture hits me harder than a punch to the jaw.
He stands up, adjusts his jacket, and looks around the shop one last time before his eyes land on me. His expression is quiet. Almost trusting. He gives me a single, small nod.
"See you," he says.
And then he walks out.
The door clicks shut. I stand there in the empty shop, the pen still in my hand, his scent lingering in the air. I look down at my station. The sketchbook is still facedown.
My hands are shaking. A fine, uncontrollable tremor runs through my fingers.
They were perfectly steady on his skin a minute ago.
They did exactly what I needed them to do.
But now that he's gone, the act drops, and I'm just standing here staring at my shaking hands, realizing the steadiness was all for him.