Chapter 15
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Sebastian
Two weeks later
Sebastian lay on his back on Sutton’s tattoo table at Iron Rose, his shirt off, her right hand moving across his skin.
The needle hummed. The afternoon light came through the front windows at an angle that meant it was past three—Dom’s usual tea-break hour, though Dom wasn’t in the parlor today.
He’d worked three days this week already, and Sutton had insisted he stay home.
But he was threatening to be back full-time by the first week of December, whether his doctor—or Sutton—approved.
It had been fourteen days since he’d carried Sutton out through the front door and felt her body go limp in his arms. Fourteen days since hospital waiting rooms, concussion protocols, and a stitched-up shoulder that the ER doctor had described, with professional detachment, as one of the more photogenic grazes he’d seen.
Photogenic. Jesus.
She’s alive. The phrase kept finding him at odd moments—driving home from the grocery store, reaching for his coffee, lying in bed in the early morning hours listening to her breathe. She’s alive. She’s alive. She’s alive. It was a mantra he hadn’t chosen but couldn’t stop repeating.
The bullet had nicked her shoulder, but it had been inches away from putting her in a coffin.
The needle paused. “You’re thinking loudly again.
” Sutton didn’t look up from her work. Her injured shoulder rode high under her T-shirt, still wrapped in a thick, white bandage he changed twice a week.
It restricted her range, but it didn’t stop her.
Her right hand was the working hand, and it was fine.
“Habit.”
“Uh huh.” She dipped the needle into the ink cup. “Stay still. I’m on the whiskers.”
He stayed still.
The lynx was going in over his scar. Her idea—she’d floated it two days after she was discharged from the hospital, sketchbook on her lap, her left arm in a sling. “The scar’s the wrong kind of permanent,” she’d said. “Let me give you a different one on top of it. Something you chose.”
She hadn’t asked him to forgive Penn. She hadn’t asked him to forget what the bullet had done to him. She’d asked if he wanted a piece of art, made by her, living on the same patch of skin where her brother had nearly killed him. A reclamation.
He’d said yes before she’d finished the question.
Now the lynx was taking shape across his left side—crouched low, eyes forward, the geometric shapes she’d woven through its body making the scar beneath it almost invisible, absorbed into the composition.
The entry wound had become part of the cat’s chest. Penn’s bullet path was a structural element of the animal’s anatomy. Destruction made into design.
It was genius work. He’d told her so already. She’d rolled her eyes and told him he was biased.
He was biased. She was also a genius.
Her shoulder tattoo—the crescent moon in branches, the piece Penn had given her for her eighteenth birthday—had taken the worst of the bullet’s path.
The graze had torn through the middle of the branches, leaving a healing line of scar tissue that ran diagonally across Penn’s linework.
Dom had offered to re-ink it once she was fully healed.
A Blackridge artist who’d apprenticed under Penn in D.C.
had reached out, too—said it would be an honor to restore a piece her brother had done.
Sutton had said no to all of it.
“It’s mine,” she’d told Sebastian that night, her hand tracing the edge of the bandage.
“The whole thing. His work and what happened to it. I don’t want anyone to touch it.
I want the mark of that day on my body the same way you have the mark of his day on yours.
A thing I survived. A thing we both survived. ”
He hadn’t argued. He’d understood.
Now, as he watched her face as she worked on the lynx, he said, “I’m buying the farmhouse.”
Her hand paused. The needle lifted a fraction off his skin. Then she resumed, her expression carefully controlled. “From Nesbitt?”
“He’s been trying to sell it for two years. I made him an offer yesterday. He accepted this morning.”
“Wow.” She leaned closer to his ribs, adjusting the angle. Her hair smelled like green-apple shampoo. Her shampoo, not Vivi’s. He liked it. “So you’re staying.”
“I am. I’m also remodeling the upstairs.”
“Yeah? For what? An office?”
“I’m combining the two spare bedrooms up there.
Knocking out the wall. The south-facing windows get full light from about ten a.m. to four p.m., and the ceiling’s high enough to mount a drafting surface and still have wall space for pinned work.
The tiny bathroom can hold a wet station for ink or paint mixing.
And the old chimney runs up through the middle of the space, so if we frame around it, you’d have a—”
The needle stopped. She pulled it back.
Her mouth parted. “Sebastian.”
“Yeah?”
“Are you making me an art room?”
“It would be silly to make me one. I’m not the artist.”
Her brow creased slightly. “Are you asking me to…move in with you?”
She kind of already was, only maintaining her apartment to assert her independence. “Will a full studio make you say yes?”
The corners of her mouth tipped up. She set the needle on the tray and wiped her gloved hands on a paper towel. Studied him. “Only if I can also redecorate the living room,” she said.
“Done.”
“And the kitchen.”
“Pushy, but okay.”
“And the bathrooms are so sterile I want to cry. No offense. Really, Sebastian, you need more color in your life. The beige in the guest bath is a war crime.”
He acted offended. Wasn’t. “Done, done, and done.” He watched her face. Watched the brightness climbing behind her eyes, the wicked tilt to her mouth that came out when she knew she’d won.
He’d give her the whole farmhouse. He’d give her the land. He’d give her anything she wanted, whenever she wanted it, for the rest of a life he was still learning how to let himself believe in.
The realization didn’t scare him. Two weeks ago, it would have. Now it sat in his chest like a fact. I’d give her anything. Data he’d stopped running analysis on.
“Just as long as you don’t leave your clothes on the bedroom floor,” he said, trying to save a shred of his dignity.
Her eyebrow went up. “That’s it? That’s the only concession?”
“Will you make me pancakes at least once a week?”
“Since it’s about the only thing I make that’s any good, that can be arranged.” She picked the needle back up. “But the rest of the cooking is on you.”
“I like to cook.”
“Your mushroom raviolis are a religious experience.”
“I’ll teach you.”
“Absolutely not. I’ve made my peace with my culinary limits. You cook, I eat, and I occasionally contribute breakfast. That’s the deal.”
He rubbed his chin as if considering it. “I can live with it.”
She bent back to his side. The needle resumed its hum. He watched the ceiling for a while—the textured panels, the old fluorescent fixture Dom had been meaning to replace. All the time, he was grinning like a crazy man. She was moving in. “Mom called,” he said.
“Yeah?” Sutton didn’t look up. “When?”
“Two nights ago, after you went to sleep. We talked for about ninety minutes.”
Sutton’s hand paused again. She lifted the needle. “Ninety minutes?”
“She asked about you.”
“She—” Sutton sucked in her bottom lip. “Is that good or bad?”
“She’s read the tabloids, watched the cable segments, and formed her own opinions.
” He tilted his head enough to meet her eyes.
“She claims that the tabloids are trash, that I should have called her weeks ago, and that you sound like the best thing that’s happened to me since I was nine years old and asked Santa for a dog. ”
“Aw, you got a dog?”
“Dad said dogs ruined rugs. I didn’t get the dog.”
“So I’m better than no dog.”
“You’re better than the entire zoological kingdom. Oh, and Charlotte texted and said to tell you hi. She wants the Warrior Raven print for her office.”
She laughed softly. He watched her blink hard and pretend she was concentrating on the whisker she was putting on the lynx, instead of feeling overwhelmed by the fact that his mom and sister were accepting her. Watched her get her composure back the way she always did—steady, stubborn, Sutton.
“We’re inviting her for Christmas,” she said. “Both of them. All of them.”
He froze. The needle paused on his skin, her hand going still in response to his muscles locking. “We are?”
“Yes. My mom, too. And Dom. And everyone else, really—whoever’s available. We’re going to have a tree. The biggest tree you can find. And a Christmas Eve party.”
“A Christmas Eve party,” he echoed slowly.
“In our farmhouse. In our living room, which I will have redecorated by then, so prepare yourself.” She leaned back and examined her work. Her tone was casual. Her eyes weren’t. “When was the last time you had a proper Christmas, Lynx?”
He thought about it. The answer was easy, which made it worse. “Six years ago.”
“Exactly. We’ve both spent each one since alone.
Or trying to pretend we didn’t notice it was happening.
I spent last Christmas in my apartment with a frozen pizza and a bottle of red wine, listening to the laundromat not run for once.
” Her voice caught for half a second. “This is the new us. Our future together. No more being alone on holidays.”
She bent over his side. The needle resumed.
He thought of his mother’s voice on the phone—thin, hesitant at first, opening up as the call went on, apologizing twice for things she’d never apologized for before.
He thought of his sister Charlotte texting him: Mom told me about Sutton.
When do I get to meet her? I’m flying out over New Year’s, whether you invite me or not.
He thought of Dom on bed rest, gaunt and sharp-eyed and furious about not being back full-time yet.