14. Wolf
“Fuck, man. This looks sick,” my client Anthony says, pulling me in for one of those awkward-as-fuck hugs between two men with too significant of a size difference. I lightly pat him on the back, trying not to break his body.
“Glad you like it. I’ll walk with you up to Aubrey, and she’ll get you checked out. Remember the aftercare instructions. If anything happens, give me a call.” The piece I just did, a Sailor Jerry cocktail pinup girl, is bold and bright, standing out against his pale skin. Pinups aren’t my favorite thing to draw, but this one came out cool as shit.
Once we reach the receptionist’s desk, I nod at Anthony and leave him with Aubrey to take care of his final payment. Like most men who come into the shop, Anthony’s eyes take on an appreciative gleam the moment Aubrey’s dark skin, colorful tattoos, and bright blonde dreadlocks come into view. It’s almost funny when Trent growls at the guys who get a little too flirty with his fiancée.
“Hey, beautiful. How’s it going?” Anthony comments, his voice taking on a grating tone. “Is that a new tattoo?” He waves toward her body, offering up a bullshit excuse for checking her chest out.
“Nope, still the same sternum tattoo you commented on last time, Tony. You owe five-fifty for today. How are you planning on paying?” Though Aubrey’s voice is sweet, her eyes communicate that she will disembowel him if he makes another comment about her or her appearance.
“Are you sure? It looks—”
“Eh, Tony. Keep your eyes off her body, you fuck,” Trent calls out, cutting him off mid-sentence.
“I’ve got it covered, Trenton,” Aubrey sighs, though there’s no annoyance behind her words.
“I know, baby, but you shouldn’t have to. Fucking pigs,” Trent murmurs loud enough for the rest of the shop to hear him. While the tattoo stations are set up in private rooms, some of the artists use the consultation tables and illuminated drafting tables in the center of the shop to meet with clients or draw out their work. Though Trent is my right-hand man, second only to Aubrey, and has a good setup in his private room, he likes keeping an eye on Aubs.
Unlike Trent, who can’t seem to help himself when it comes to defending his woman’s honor, I don’t step in unless Aubrey asks me to. Not because I don’t value her safety or protection but because I’ve seen Aubrey flay a man’s pride with an effortless combination of words, and I trust her to de-escalate a situation. Plus, I trained her on self-defense, so she could easily kick someone’s ass if they get out of line.
Anthony must sense that he’s on the verge of a takedown and on the fringes of both Aubrey and Trent’s shit lists because he thrusts his card out at her and throws a wad of cash at me before running out of the shop.
“God, watching them shit themselves never gets old.” Trent laughs, shaking his head like it’s the funniest shit he’s ever witnessed.
“Trenton Phillips, stop bothering me when I’m with clients. I swear to you, I will tell your mother that you are being a jackass.”
“Baby, he was ogling you like a fucking piece of meat. You wanted me to sit on my ass while he sexualized my fiancée?”
“I am capable of handling the occasional pervert that comes in here without losing the shop clients. If I need help, I’ll ask for it, but I’m not weak, and I’m not a damsel, so don’t treat me like one.”
I bite the inside of my cheek, holding back the laugh that threatens to break out at Aubrey’s chastising.
“Oh, don’t look so smug over there, you redheaded pussy. I saw you inching closer to that twat.”
“Don’t know what you’re talking about, man; don’t bring me into your shit.”
“Fuck off. You used to do the same shit with that harpy, Kelly.”
I sober real fucking quick at the mention of my ex-girlfriend and the memory of our encounter on Friday night. I’ve had so much other shit on my mind since Friday that I almost forgot about the training session with Gage and Jedd. I shouldn’t have been surprised that Kelly was there, filming the entire session for her dumbass social media followers and giving away all of Gage’s weaknesses.
Honestly, that shit made my day when he realized she was live streaming his instruction and giving his opponent an advantage for his upcoming fight.
“I don’t want to talk about her.”
“She still with that prick, Gage?”
“What fucking part of ‘I don’t want to talk about her’ don’t you get?”
“Dude, calm down. You seem a little frazzled. When’s the last time you had some company?” Trent wiggles his eyebrows before wincing as a tape dispenser is thrown across the shop, right at his head.
“We have clients here, you imbecile,” Aubrey hisses, looking around to determine if anyone heard Trent. “God, I am marrying a man-child.”
“Thanks for defending my honor, Aubs. I don’t think anyone overheard him, not that you should be concerned with my sex life, you freak.” I glare at him. “I’m your boss.”
“Go. Outside, now,” Aubrey orders, pointing to the side door of the shop, where employees take their smoke breaks and breathers when shit gets too heavy inside.
“Fine, I need a smoke anyway.” Trent walks over to Aubrey and plants a kiss on her cheek before turning toward the door. “Come on, you grizzly. Let’s give Aubrey time to recover from her heart attack.”
“Not funny, Trenton,” Aubrey grumbles, turning back to the computer and pressing down on the keys in a furious rhythm.
“She loves me, I swear,” Trent whispers as he walks past me, clapping me on the back as he goes. Unlike with my clients, I don’t bother curtailing my strength, and I punch him on the arm as I turn to the back door. “Ow, fuck, you beast. You’re lucky that’s not my drawing arm.”
“C’mon, let’s go before Audrey tries to fire you.” In my head, I add again because Aubrey’s favorite pastime is firing Trent and forcing him to make it up to her. It’s a weird game of foreplay, but it seems to work for their relationship. Who the fuck am I to judge? My only relationships have ended in breakups or her leaving me for another guy on my team.
I follow Trent through the side door and sit on the picnic bench while he lights up.
“So, where were you on Friday night?”
I clear my throat, surprised by the question. “I had Jedd’s promotional shit.”
He pulls in a drag from his cigarette and holds it in, releasing the smoke slowly so it wafts around him. Trent’s eyes are on me when he takes another long inhale. “And after?”
My jaw locks, and I debate how much I should tell him. “I had to help my cousin out. How did you know I did something after?”
“Aubs and I stopped by, figured you’d need some friends there since that viper and lug nut would be at the party. Jedd told us you went to help some girl.”
Some girl? Calling Serena a girl would be a disservice; she may be six years younger than me, but she has an eerie maturity, a wry sense of humor, and a face that deserves to be painted and hung in a fucking museum.
“C’s friend had a problem and needed someone to get her. It was no big deal,” I lie as a montage of our interactions plays in my head. I see her bare back and the bruises and scrapes on her body. The mental image of her abused form reignites the anger that had dulled to a simmer. “She got manhandled by some asshole at a party and closed herself in the bathroom. I checked to make sure she wasn’t harmed and brought her back to her place.”
Trent’s eyes narrow at my words. “Someone put his hands on this chick? Did you fuck him up?”
“Don’t call her a ‘chick.’ And no, she asked me to take her home, and I never got the chance to see him.”
“Fuck, McCleery, you should have beat his ass.”
“And traumatize a house full of college students and a woman who needed to get out of that shithole as quickly as possible? Nah, as much as I would have liked to beat his ass, her needing to leave was more important.” I don’t mention how I nearly broke down the fucking door to get inside because I was petrified of what I’d find in that bathroom. I also don’t mention how good her skin felt beneath my hands or how the feel of her lips lingered on my skin for a goddamn day.
“You’re going soft, you—oh, shit.” Trent drops his cigarette and stubs it out with his foot, grinding it down until the filter separates from the paper. I follow his line of sight and grimace as Celeste and her boyfriend approach the shop. Celeste doesn’t realize we’re out here until Dante nudges her arm and points in my direction.
“Why the hell are you outside? It’s like five degrees out here,” she yells from across the lot.
“Celeste, it’s forty degrees.”
“I am not talking to you outside in the arctic tundra, Wolf. We’ll meet you inside,” she says before disappearing into the shop.
“Man, let’s go inside before she tries to shank me,” Trent murmurs, shivering as he pulls his leather jacket closed. “She threatened to shove cigarettes down my throat if I kept smoking, and I’m scared she’s going to do it.”
“Fucking wimp. She’s five feet.”
“She’s terrifying,” he mutters over his shoulder as he opens the door and heads back into the warmth of the building. Instead of heading back to the drafting table where his work-in-progress sits, he waves hello to my cousin and power walks to his room like a fitness instructor from the eighties.
“I told you he was scared of you.” Aubrey laughs, following the path Trent took to his room.
Celeste shrugs off Aubrey’s words as though they don’t phase her. “It’s not my fault I have bigger balls than him.”
“Red, trust me, you don’t have balls. I would have seen them. Now, a pretty little—” Celeste covers his mouth before he can continue, and I’m grateful. I would have had to lay him out if he had said a single word about my cousin’s fucking anatomy.
“Dante Nicholas Camaro, watch your freaking mouth,” she scolds in a voice that is both annoyed and amused.
Dante mumbles against her hand, and I don’t even want to know what shit he’s saying. “Yeah, watch your fucking mouth, Camaro, or I’ll kill you with my bare hands.”
“Hey, no threatening my boyfriend, Wolfie. Besides, people are starting to stare. Can both of you keep your voices down before they start filming?”
“I threaten him when he says stupid shit,” I grumble before surveying the floor. Celeste is right, and I take in the people staring at us like we’re performers giving a show. “Fine. C, fuckhead, let’s continue this in my room.” I turn on my heel and walk across the floor, waving at a few of the artists as I pass.
Once I step over the threshold of my private room, I go to my drawing table and sit, allowing the green wingback chairs to remain available for Celeste and Dante. Dante seems to realize my intent because he walks to the corner of the room and settles in one of the oversized chairs, eying me warily as Celeste paces across the hardwood.
“Why are you pacing, Red?” Dante asks. “You’re going to give me motion sickness if I have to keep whipping my head back and forth to look at your ass.”
“Watch it,” I growl at the same time that Celeste’s footsteps falter. She glares at her boyfriend, mumbling obscenities under her breath before turning back to me. “I’m pacing because I want to know everything that happened on Friday night, but I also want to thank you for going to make sure Serena was okay. I’m just trying to prioritize my thoughts so that I say and ask the right things.”
I roll my eyes. “Sit, C,” I command and wait for Celeste to sit before continuing. “Nothing happened on Friday other than I went to that stupid-as-fuck party, picked up Serena, and drove her home.”
Her finger darts out, pointing at me like a nun with a ruler in Sunday school. “See, I knew you would lie.”
I raise my hand, running it over my head, and wish that I had hair to pull onto so that I could vent my frustrations. “I’m not lying.”
“You are. You went into her apartment. You cleaned her scrapes.” Celeste pauses, lowering her voice until I have to lean forward to hear her. “You saw the flying dicks on her back and offered to have someone fix them for her.”
I scowl at the reminder of the busted tattoo on her skin and the images that mar the perfection of her back.
I shudder at that thought; the perfection of her back? What the fuck am I even thinking?
“What was I supposed to do, drop her at her apartment door while she was bleeding and bruised after pretending to lock herself in a goddamn bathroom? I may be a fighter, but I’m not a fucking monster. Of course I helped, and thank fuck I did because that girl had expired hydrogen peroxide from 2019 in her cabinet and probably would have used it to treat her wounds.”
“Woman,” C says gently.
“What?”
“You called her a girl. She’s not a girl; she’s a woman. You have this idea in your head that she’s a child, but she isn’t.”
“I know she’s not a fucking child, Celeste. Fucking hell, one look at her is all you need to know she isn’t a child.”
“So, what you’re saying is, you think she’s pretty?” Dante asks from the corner like a moron.
“I swear to God, I will kill him if he doesn’t stop talking.”
“No, you won’t. All that is fine, but the part I don’t understand is how you saw her back tattoo or how you came to offer her a difficult-to-get, highly coveted appointment with one of your artists when you have a yearslong waitlist for each tattooist.”
I sigh, done with this conversation and the line of questioning. “Because I couldn’t leave a beautiful woman,” I emphasize, “with a tattoo of flying cocks for the rest of her life. Because the only thing that should grace her skin is a beautiful piece designed with care and consideration, not one stabbed out like a prison tat in exchange for ramen noodles.” Shaking my head, I continue, “What do you want from me, C? The end result is the same because I know damn well that the moment you saw the monstrosity on her back, you would have called me up and asked for a favor to fix your friend. I got in front of it and offered up my team’s skills on my terms, provided that she’s fully healed and mentally ready for a cover-up.”
C stands from the chair and walks toward me, slowly approaching like I’m a caged animal, and she’s a trainer worried about getting bit. “Wolf, I have to ask you a question.”
“What, Celeste?” My voice sounds resigned.
“Do you like her?”
I choke on the saliva in my throat. Like her? I don’t fucking know her other than how she smells like an unorthodox combination of serenity and sin, has a fire buried underneath her adherence to societal expectations and social pressure, and looks disgustingly like the Sailor Jerry pinup I just did on Anthony.
I didn’t intend for the drawing to look like Serena, but it happened and unnerved me the entire goddamn time.
“I don’t know her, and she’s got too much left to figure out.”
“I forgot how old you are, you troll,” C comments, rolling her eyes to accentuate her annoyance. “You’re less than six years older than us. Stop acting like you grew up in a different generation.”
“What do you want me to say, C?” I shrug, holding out my hands in defeat. “You want me to sit here and say that I don’t think she’s beautiful when we both know that’s a lie? I’m not ignorant, nor am I blind. But nothing is happening, so stop pushing your matchmaking agenda on me when I neither want nor need your interference.”
“She is an adult.”
“Okay,” I agree. “That still doesn’t change anything.”
“So, you view her the same way you do Ava and her sisters?”
I rear back, disgusted by the comparison. I’ve known Ava and her sisters since they were knobby-kneed kids who raised hell on the playground. They’re my de facto cousins through Celeste, and I see them as an extension of my family. To view them as anything else feels incestuous. “Fuck no, I don’t view Serena the same as Ava. I’ve known Ava since she was five. It’s two unrelated views.”
Celeste’s expression transforms from contemplative to sly, and I cringe at the smirk that breaks out on her face. “Whatever you say, Wolfie. But a word to the wise: if you hurt her, I’ll put you in a headlock and laugh as you lose oxygen.”
“Did you not hear a single word I just said?”
“Oh, she heard it, McCleery. But all the same, you’re fucked.” Dante laughs, shaking his head like it’s the funniest thing he’s ever heard.
Fucking prick.