Chapter Nine
There was something very different about Harper when she walked through the studio door. He couldn’t quite put his finger on it. He wasn’t particularly poetic, but she looked even more … shit, something. There was a different kind of quiet confidence about her.
A smile lit up her face after she saw him. She even waved to Cujo as she walked over.
“How comfortable are you with PDA?” she asked.
“Unless it involves nudity, very.” He wasn’t really. He usually hated it, thought it lacked finesse. But for Harper, he’d get okay with it. If he grinned any harder, he was going to break his own jaw.
She stood up on her toes and placed his arms around her back before wrapping her own arms around his neck.
“Good,” she whispered against his mouth as she kissed him. She laughed as he lifted her just enough to take her toes off the floor and carried her into the private tattooing room.
He wondered what country music delights he would be subjected to this time. Nails down a chalkboard sounded better to him than high-pitched twang. But anything to make her more relaxed.
This was going to be a huge appointment for her. Afterward, her scar would likely be unrecognizable. The tattoo would still be a long way from finished, but enough of the outline, detail, and shading would be in place to distract the eye.
He couldn’t wait to see her in something backless, or a bikini, or nothing at all. Now there was a thought to distract him from the drivel that had started to flow out of the speakers. Yeah. Thoughts of Harper naked could definitely distract him from the hell of banjo-accompanied crooning.
* * *
“I’ve been thinking about our conversation yesterday,” Harper said, once the shock of the first fifteen minutes of needle time had passed.
“You think too much, darlin’.” The irritation stopped momentarily, and Harper could feel Trent wipe the surplus ink off her back.
She winced as the needles started back into her skin. It wasn’t as painful as the first session. Or maybe it was, but she was just more used to it.
“Ha ha. But seriously, I thought about it a lot this morning. I want to tell you a bit more about what happened to me. Just get it out of the way so you know. If I tell you in here, while you’re doing this, it might be a bit like an exorcism, if you know what I mean.”
“Whatever you want to tell me, I’ll listen, you know that.”
“I don’t know that I can talk about it. But I think I can say it. Like a news report.”
The needles vibrated across her vertebrae, the tiny movements jarring as Trent detailed what felt like the handle of the broadsword. She needed to explain to him, to give him a clearer frame of reference as to why she was such an emotional yo-yo. It was unfair to expect him to simply accept it.
“For sure, sweetheart. I’m your captive audience.”
The slow drone of the tattoo machine and rhythmic rubbing of her back actually started to soothe her.
She focused on the reflection the can lights made on the hardwood floor until the brightness made her eyes water.
“Nathan had started to hang out with a different crowd, partying more, doing cocaine. I didn’t like it, but I wondered whether I was just being a prude. Maybe he was into harder stuff, too—I never knew for sure. He’d borrow money. Twenty dollars here, fifty there.”
Harper rubbed a hand across her face. In hindsight it was all so obvious. He’d been able to earn enough to keep up with a coke habit but couldn’t afford the other choices he was making.
“I accidentally found out he was seeing someone else. A message popped up on his phone while he was in the shower. It wasn’t a huge surprise, as he’d been losing interest in me for a while. I wasn’t as exciting as his new friends—or her, apparently.”
Her fingers started to flare, but watching them somehow helped her keep focused. This story needed to be told, and she was not going to freak out.
“I held it together, waiting until he had gone out, and started to pack as much stuff as I could. His temper was getting worse, shorter, anything could set him off. I was going to run home. I thought I had plenty of time—when he went out he was usually gone for hours. But this time he’d run out of cash.
He came home, hammered and high, to get some from me and found me stuffing clothes into a suitcase.
I had no idea how bad his habit was, so you can add stupid to my list of faults. ”
Trent slowly rubbed her arm as she talked, not interrupting. Swallowing the embarrassment, Harper took a few deep breaths before she could continue.
“He didn’t really ask me to explain what I was doing before he hit me, breaking my nose.”
The first tear fell. She felt her bones shattering under the force of Nathan’s fist. She tasted her own blood trickling down the back of her throat as she tried to process the shock and pain.
“I thought I was choking because I couldn’t breathe. I asked what happened, why he had done that, but he told me to shut up.” Harper’s breath caught. Trent grabbed her hand, and she was never more grateful that she couldn’t see his face.
“Next he broke my jaw—silencing me. But God, I tried to scream. I tried to shout ‘No!’ but he just wouldn’t listen. He was demented. His eyes were glazed over like he couldn’t focus on anything and he looked crazy. I thought he was going to kill me.”
Harper pulled her hand away from Trent and wiped the tears from her face. She took a deep breath, and counted to ten on the exhale.
“When I tried to get up and run, he punched my side, breaking one of my ribs before he tied me to the bed, facedown.”
The buzz of the tattoo equipment stopped.
“Don’t stop.” If he did, she’d never finish before falling apart.
“He was rambling, kept talking about how he could do anything to me. He got a knife from the chopping block in the kitchen…” She gasped, determined not to waste any more tears on Nathan. “Then he told me I would always be his bitch.”
* * *
Trent vibrated with rage. There was no way he could keep up the detailed line work on the intricate silver handle of the broadsword.
His hands shook, the finesse required to make such small, tight patterns impossible right now.
He switched machines. The incredibly fine lines the three needles he’d selected would produce were too important to screw up. And his concentration was shot.
The fury he felt at hearing the list of her injuries consumed him. He wanted to hold her. He leaned forward and kissed the base of her spine that was being left un-inked, conveying what words couldn’t.
Picking up his round curve magnum, he shifted to shading the rocks the sword was cleft into, something he could do in his sleep.
He watched the needles as he circled her skin, pausing to wipe the surplus ink away.
He mentally recited the benefits of why a round curve magnum was better than a stacked magnum.
Less impact to the skin, better at deflecting the skin, needles that moved more freely over skin.
Anything to calm the anger still boiling inside him.
Harper rested her head on her forearms and shivered. He could see the goose bumps appear on her arms, her fine blond hairs standing up straight.
Fuck it. Switching his equipment off, he got up and crouched in front of the bed to look up at her.
When their eyes finally met, hers were wet with tears. He could see the effort it was taking to hold herself together. He admired the control she was starting to show.
“I really want to do normal with you, Trent. I want to look forward to wearing a bikini on the beach. I want to enjoy going dancing again. I want to anticipate the first night you sleep over at my place and the first time we, you know … assuming those aren’t the same.
” She smiled at him, but it didn’t quite reach her eyes.
“Now that you have an idea of what happened, do you still want to be normal with me?”
Words choked him. Until he could find his voice, he took her hand, turned it over, and kissed her palm. He wanted to protect her for the rest of her life.
“More than you know. We can absolutely try normal because I want you to look forward to all those things. Hell, I want to look forward to all those things too, especially the sex part.” He laughed softly.
She smiled at that and blushed. “After everything I said, the sex part is what you pick up on.”
“I’m a guy. We always pick up on the sex part, even if you don’t mention a sex part. And it made you smile.”
He grabbed a tissue and wiped her tears. “So from today, you and me and normal, right? I know enough about what happened, and you know it doesn’t affect what I think of you. And if something we do triggers memories, we’ll talk about it before you run. Deal?”
She shook his hand with the one he’d just kissed.
“Deal,” she said. And this time when she smiled, it reached her eyes.