Chapter 3
Sebastian
I closed my eyes, inhaling the scent of leather and ink for just a second.
“Do you think this looks good? Yeah. Yeah. We’ll leave it. It’s fine… Right?”
“We can move it around as many times as you want, Kels,” I said. Kelsey Mitchell, the twenty-three-year-old waitress from Harpoon’s Tavern, was sitting in my tattoo chair, staring at the three single-line designs meant to represent birds in a minimalist aesthetic in purple ink on her wrist.
“No, it’s fine,” she said, completely unconvincingly.
“Kels, I’m not letting you walk out of here with something that isn’t perfect. I don’t care if you want to change it. Bigger, smaller, a bit to the left or right. Whatever you want. Remember, it’s on your body forever.”
“Maybe a little bigger, then. But only if it isn’t too much work. I don’t mind it just as it is.”
I put my machine down and gathered an alcohol wipe to remove the stencil marks.
“It’s not too much work. It’s my job. Let me enlarge this real fast. I’ll be right back.”
I could freehand this design in my sleep. I didn’t need to print out a new stencil for her, but she was clearly nervous. From my experience, nervous ones were always scared of freehand designs, so a new stencil it was.
“How’s this?” I placed the paper against her skin before I transferred yet another version of this simplistic image onto her wrist. At this point, she’d had the equivalent of an epic bird migration take flight across her skin.
“I think that’s perfect. Really this time,” she promised with a guilty smile.
Charm oozed from my grin as I shot her a wink. “Of course it is.”
Kelsey was my last scheduled customer of the day… at 5:00 p.m. Business had been slow this winter. Slower than I expected. But there was always the chance that a walk-in would show up looking for some fresh ink on the spot.
I ran my machine across Kelsey’s wrist, delicately inking the marks into her skin. In just a few minutes, she was done. The look of awe that first-timers had when they processed that their fresh ink was permanent always made me smile.
“Thank you so much. I love it,” she gushed.
“It’s my pleasure, Kels. The first one is the hardest. Now that you’ve popped that particular cherry, you find yourself with the itch to get more ink, just let me know. I’d be happy to sit you in that chair again anytime.”
Was I flirting in the hope that she would be a return customer? Fuck yeah, I was.
Kelsey paid her nominal fee for the small work that I did and left. I cleaned the station, disposing of the single-use needle and sterilizing the barrel of my tattoo machine for the next use.
I went through the motions on autopilot, my mind going right back to the same topic it had been stuck on for days.
Lydia Fucking Wilder.
The purplish-silver-haired minx was lodged in my brain. It had been a week since New Year’s Eve, and I swore I was still getting recurring blue balls from the way she’d left me that night.
She had the right idea. We never should have gone even as far as we did. She was my best friend’s little sister, for fuck’s sake. I wasn’t entirely sure how Luke would react if he found out. How any of the Wilder brothers would, for that matter. They were basically family at this point.
Not that I had any familial thoughts about Lydia.
Any innocent, friendly feelings I had toward her when we were young disappeared the moment she opened her bedroom curtains in her underwear at eighteen years old.
I could still remember how her jet-black hair looked against her creamy, pale skin, her bouncy, braless tits covered by the smallest scrap of fabric that she called a tank top.
It was the first time, the only time, in my life that I was utterly speechless.
I remember walking around her room, trying to keep my eyes off her.
The feelings she stirred in me that night had done weird things to my chest. I hadn’t shown up with the best of intentions, my pride too important to back down from Tommy Riscuto’s stupid dare.
I’d had a plan when I knocked at her window.
I was going to tell her about the dare, ask her for a favor—a quick kiss, more than a peck, but no tongue—and laugh it off with her.
Then my heart stopped beating, and I forgot my brain cells outside that window.
It was her birthday. I just wanted to give her a birthday kiss. Instead, I ended up taking the one thing she could only give to one person.
Dipshit that I was had to go and take her virginity.
I had never told a soul about that night.
When Tommy tried to corner me about whether or not I was able to pull off a kiss, I shoved him off a dock for being a sexist dick.
He took that to mean that I’d lost in his little game of dare.
I didn’t bother correcting him. It was none of his business what happened between Lydia and me that night.
I snapped my mind back to present day. Lydia was pissed at me, that much was obvious.
She somehow found out that I went to her room that night because of Tommy fucking Riscuto’s nonsense.
The joys of living in a small town. But what we did in her bedroom was so much more than a meaningless kiss between friends.
I could never use her like that to win points in some idiotic battle of male pride.
Plus, if it ever got back to Luke that I was the asshole who deflowered his sister, I was pretty sure he would murder me.
I wasn’t one to kiss—or fuck—and tell, although my reputation typically did the talking for me, but I was even less inclined to share this most recent particular hookup.
Well, not hookup, since she left me hard as steel and hornier than a fucking bonobo.
We were all adults now though. Maybe he would be fine with it.
Lydia and me, walking into Charlie’s house for Sunday night dinner.
My arms wrapped around Lydia as we stood in Luke and Scarlett’s yard during a summer cookout.
Fuck. I needed to get my head on straight. My thoughts were taking a detour through a fantasyland that didn’t make any sense. I didn’t think of her like that. I didn’t think of her at all. Hell, Luke and Scarlett didn’t even have a backyard, seeing as they were still living at Wyatt’s place.
And Lydia wasn’t sticking around Calla Bay for any longer than she had to. That had been her MO for the past decade. What would make her change that up now? She had already been in town for a full week, which was mind-blowing and annoying.
I had to decline a Sunday night dinner invite just so that I didn’t run into her. And I loved Sheila’s dinners.
The door of my tattoo shop opened, and I hustled to the front in case it was a walk-in looking for an appointment.
“Hey, man. I bought tacos. You got a few minutes?” Luke strode in, still in his police uniform from his shift on duty.
I schooled my face, making sure I didn’t give off any guilty vibes. I didn’t have anything to be guilty about; it wasn’t like I was picturing his sister naked or anything.
Fuck, now I was.
“You come with food, and I’ll always find the time,” I joked.
“Where is everyone?” Luke asked, looking around at the dead shop.
“Winter in Calla Bay. It’s been deader than usual this year though.
” I took the bags of Mexican food from him, getting us set up at the lounge area at the front of the shop.
The black leather couches were small but comfortable.
A coffee table covered with stickers, some from clients and some that I just thought had cool designs, held a few ink inspiration binders.
“You need to get your business name out there, Seb. People just need to know you exist, and they’ll come,” Luke advised.
“Yeah. Easier said than done, my friend.”
“I know someone who could help with that.”
A skeptical brow rose as I continued to shove a taco down my throat. “Who?”
“Lydia,” he said. “She’s sticking around for a while. She could use some work. You could use a social media manager. It’s a win-win.”
A coughing fit hit me just as I was taking another bite. I nearly spat my food at him, but luckily, I recovered in time.
“No,” I said succinctly.
“What do you mean, no? You have no fucking customers. Let Lydia try to drum up some business for you. What can it hurt?”
He had no idea what it could hurt. Hell, my dick still hurt with phantom blue-ball pain if I thought about her for too long.
Having Lydia in my space, in my sanctuary, would be a distraction that I couldn’t afford.
Besides, there was no way she would go for this arrangement.
She despised me. Lydia and I being forced to work together would be disastrous.
“I don’t have the money to take someone on right now,” I told him.
It was the truth. Things were tight right now, and additional payroll expenses would only make that worse.
“How’s Scarlett feeling?” I asked, trying for a topic change before he kept badgering me about hiring his little sister.
A goofy grin split his face. “She feels great. She’s in the second trimester now. Apparently, that’s when her hormones start going wild because she. is. demanding,” he said with a knowing look.
“Ha. Sounds rough,” I laughed.
“We’re going to find out the sex next month. Letty’s going to put together a little gender reveal party. Nothing crazy, probably just cake with either pink or blue on the inside.”
“You need me to tat ‘It’s a boy’ or ‘It’s a girl’ across your chest, you let me know.”
“Yeah. I’m sure Letty will love that,” he laughed.
He wiped his hands on a napkin, his expression morphing into a piteous look.
I could see where this was heading before he even opened his mouth.
“Come on, man. Part-time hours. Just something that gives her a reason to stay in town and a little money in her pocket,” he pleaded.
This taco was suddenly the most interesting thing in the room. I didn’t want to look into his sad yet hopeful eyes and feel pressured into doing him this favor.
“She hasn’t been in town for over ten years.
She has no friends here anymore. No job.
She’s staying at Dad’s,” he said, resting his elbows on his legs as he stared me down.
“She’s floundering, Seb. I don’t know what’s going on with her, but she’s broke, and she’s lost. She needs this.
If something doesn’t change, she’ll drag herself back to New York, and it’ll be another ten years before we see her again. ”
Guilt ate at me. “She came around every once in a while. It wasn’t like we actually went a decade without seeing her,” I grumbled. Scratching my beard with a grimace, I added, “I don’t know, Luke. I wasn’t kidding when I said it’s been tight around here.” Really, really tight.
“I get it. Don’t worry about it. I just…
she’s back in town, and she’s in no hurry to get back.
Wyatt and Reid offered her some work with them, but can you see Lydia sitting behind a desk all day?
” He scoffed. “I figured the two of you could help each other out. She’s into art, you’re an artist…
She used to run the social media stuff before she got that promotion, you need better marketing…
” He looked around as if to make his point, like I didn’t know this place was dead.
He turned back to me, one brow raised as a question swirled behind his eyes.
“This doesn’t have to do with Reid’s wedding, does it? ”
Shit. I’d eaten all my tacos. I didn’t have anything to distract me.
“What about Reid’s wedding?” I asked, painting a look of confusion on my face.
“Did you two leave together?”
“Nope.” I shook my head, lying through my teeth. “I am sorry that I missed the engagement announcement though. You do remember that you proposed to Scarlett that night, right? I mean, you were pretty wasted,” I smirked.
“Ha. Ring’s already been purchased and is being resized as we speak. Letty agreeing to marry me is not something I’m going to forget,” he said, getting to his feet. “Alright, well, I’m going to get home to my fiancée.”
He balled up our aluminum foil wraps and threw them in the bag, which I took from him. Guilt settled low in my gut.
“Tell Lydia she can come by tomorrow at 3:00 p.m., and we can go over a marketing plan or some shit.”
“Thanks, Seb.” He grinned. “I think this will be good for both of you.”
Damn it. I’m glad someone did, because I sure as hell didn’t.