Chapter 24 Beck
Beck
After drying off, we make our way back downstairs where we heat up some leftovers from yesterday and take them to the couch.
Jensen pulls her legs up criss-cross, then pulls a throw over her lap. “So, your other tattoos…I know what the thigh tattoo was, but I didn’t get a good look at them the night this whole thing got started.”
“I’m sorry, you’re going to have to always refer to it as my slutty thigh tattoo.”
Jensen snorts a laugh. “Slutty tattoos. Slutty dick. Slutty glasses, and a very slutty ego.”
I tilt my head to her to watch that blush creep up her cheeks. “What can I say, I’m a slut for you too, Jenni-cakes.”
“We’re getting off topic, Beckham. I was talking about your tattoos.”
“Right, right. What do you want to know about them?”
Jensen shuffles on the couch to face me slightly. “What do they mean to you?”
“Tattoos don’t always have to have a meaning. I was sure you’d agree with that, Miss Tattoo Artist.”
“Okay, first, lose the attitude. Second, not every tattoo has to have ‘deep, profound’ meanings, but I think all tattoos have them whether the person realizes it or not.” She holds out her arm.
“My cherries, for example, there’s no big meaning or story behind it.
I love cherries, that’s about it. But it was the first tattoo I got when I moved here.
It made me happy to get something so simple, but for me at the same time. ”
Reaching over, I take her arm in my hand, rubbing my thumb over the red ink. “I’ll never be able to see a cherry and not think of you.”
“Same here.” Jensen pulls her arm back. “But lastly, I know you, Beck, your tattoos have a story. Tell me ’em.”
“Okay, you got me.” I take a deep breath before speaking.
I’ve never actually told anyone about why I got my tattoos, but I know I want to share it with Jensen.
“The lightning on my leg was the first one I got.
It was a few months after my mom started forgetting things and we had just gotten started on her diagnosis.
“She was a physics teacher at my high school, which probably would have been a nightmare for a lot of teenagers, but not me. I’ve always been close with my parents, can’t really explain it, but I am.”
Jensen places her hand on my leg. “I know I’ve only talked to them once, but I can see that. You don’t have to explain that part to me.”
The moment it fully registers that her hand is touching me, I take our plates and move them to the coffee table and pull her into my arms.
I need more of her—not sexually, but more of her touch, her comfort.
I let out a small breath when she adjusts cuddling deeper into my body instead of pulling away. “Keep going,” she whispers.
“Naturally, she was everyone’s favorite teacher.
She always made it fun and had the best experiments.
She had one of those generators that she would set up to make your hair stand straight up.
If someone got frustrated or an argument broke out in her class, she had this ball where the electricity would follow your finger—if anything needed to be worked out, you had to hold your finger to it until the issue was resolved.
If it was something someone didn’t understand she’d sit there touching it too while they talked it out. ”
Jensen laughs. “Oh my gosh, that’s so sweet.”
“I didn’t always get it, but it worked every time.
She said something about how it made them stop focusing on what the problem was and focus on the electricity following their finger that they’d calm down enough to actually be able to understand.
So, one day when I got really fucking sad, I thought about that and got the lightning tattoo the same day. ”
Jensen looks up, this pained look in her eyes. “Beck.”
I brush my fingers lightly through her hair. “It’s okay, it’s not the exact same thing, but every time I look at it I do feel a little better.”
Jensen lays her head back down on my chest. “I’m not calling it slutty anymore. That’s the sweetest thing I’ve ever heard.”
I chuckle and place a light kiss to the top of her head.
“After that I got the eight ball as a baseball because it combined both my mom and dad. Pool was always my dad’s favorite, he taught me the moment I could stand over the table.
But then Mom said I needed to have an actual appropriate hobby as an eight-year-old, so she put me in little league. ”
Jensen runs her hand over my shirt right where the tattoo is on my ribs. “Now you’re in the major leagues and have a pool table in your living room.”
“I think it’s safe to say both of them stuck with me. I got my piercings after my vasectomy, can’t really say why, seemed fun at the time.”
“Very fun. That’s all the reasoning needed.” Jensen’s hand moves south, and I catch it before she can tease me.
“Watch it, Killer. You tease me, I tease you back.”
“What a threat,” she mumbles, tugging her hand away, it wraps back around my waist. “You’ve got one more, Beck, what does the brain and heart tattoo on your chest mean to you?”
I take a deep breath for this one. “It was something the therapist told Dad and me when all this started, her mind might not be able to place us, but we’d always be in her heart and there’s nothing anyone or any disease could do to change that.”
Jensen’s hold tightens around me. “I love that. I imagine your head has a hard time rationalizing it too.”
Fuck. I swear Jensen’s the missing part of my soul because that’s exactly why I got it.
I still don’t understand why this is happening to my mother.
The most amazing person I know, and I want nothing more than for her to remember me.
To take this illness away from her, but the only thing I can do is keep the memory of her in my heart.
My anxiety starts to claw at my chest again, but unlike earlier I’m not sure if I can stop it from taking over.
Jensen’s hand moves up to my pounding heart.
“When we lost Stella’s mom, the grief felt so immeasurable.
I couldn’t understand it…I didn’t want to.
The woman I loved like an aunt was gone—my mom couldn’t leave her room for days, I stopped speaking entirely, and Stella was so angry, she started pulling her hair out.
“My dad saw it unfolding with all of us. He got us all into therapy, even though we didn’t want to.
A month after that he signed up to take Spanish classes so he could work on being a bit more fluent in Spanish so he could talk to mom’s family about how she was doing and not have to have my mom feel like she had to slow down or translate while she was grieving.
While he did that, he took Stella to MMA and me to an art class. ”
Jensen shifts around so she’s straddling my lap. Her hands rest softly on my chest.
“Stella hated it at first, and I didn’t care enough to fight him.
Neither of us participated in the beginning, we half-assed whatever we could to appease my dad, but then somewhere in that, I started talking about what I was drawing with my therapist. Stella stopped losing her temper and hurting herself.
“A few years ago, Stella and I were joking about how it felt like he should have put me in MMA and her in art. I’ll never forget the look of amusement on his face, as if it was ridiculous that we should have been switched…
He told us that we both needed to feel something with our hearts instead of letting our minds control the things around us.
Our own lightning if you will. Stella needed an outlet that let her feel her pain and express aggression in a controlled environment while finding her strength again.
When she was in class, her sole focus was just that class.
I needed to actually feel something and express it, instead of letting it consume me.
I poured my heart into sketches. Drawing Stella’s crystals and copying her tarot cards. ”
Jensen holds out her arm again. “The hand fan was my redrawing of Stella’s mom’s.
My cheetah is something I drew during one of Stella’s MMA tournaments.
” She chuckles. “She was so fast on her feet, but I had to put stars around it because she said if she couldn’t beat them physically, she’d hex them. ”
All the pressure in my chest has completely vanished. I chuckle even at the thought of Stella saying that to Jensen when they were younger. Something tells me she still thinks the same way now.
Jensen runs a finger over my chest. “So, yeah, I like this one the best. I want to know the reasoning behind all the ones you have me work on too.”
“I’ll tell you every single one.” Leaning up, I run my fingers through her hair, pulling it back to place a kiss on her inked collarbone.
She’s right, the reasons behind the tattoos mean something no matter if it’s the marigolds or the cherries.
I want to know every single thought behind ink on her skin and hell, I want her to know about mine.
She lets a soft moan of my name escape her lips as I start to softly kiss her neck. “Can—can I ask you one more question?” she asks in a soft whisper.
“Anything,” I answer, never letting my mouth leave her skin.
She doesn’t say a word for a moment, but with an exhale, she asks, “Why no relationship?”
The question takes me by surprise and I freeze in the crook of her neck.
Jensen picks up on my hesitation quickly. “Beck, I’m not asking so I can rationalize with you. I’m never here to judge you. I just want to understand.” She takes a deep breath. “I need to understand.”
Fuck, that ache is back in my chest. I swear it’s never going to leave me alone, and to make matters worse—it doesn’t feel like a panic attack simmering…I think it’s heartbreak.
Leaning back against the couch, I want to find a way out of this conversation, but this was a part of our deal. We communicate.
“I don’t want a relationship because I don’t want to forget my family.
Nor do I want the person I love the most to have to live with the memories of who I was.
Yes, I love my team, I love my friends…but if I do start to forget then Dex will have Lucie.
Callie will have Will. Adam will surely find somebody.
Tripp and Emma will hopefully figure their shit out, and you… ”
My words die off because I don’t want to say that she could have someone else. I hate that fucking thought even though it’s the reality of the situation. The fantasy is that she would have me.
When I open my mouth again, Jensen stops me. “Please don’t say it. I don’t want to hear you say what you see for my future.”
My whole chest is now on fire. “Good, because I don’t want to say it either.”
Jensen’s eyes turn cold and distant. “Is that what your and your dad’s argument was about?”
I give her a slow nod and mumble a curse at the look on her face. “Jensen, I’m sorry.”
Her eyes blink rapidly and a soft smile comes to her lips. “You don’t have to apologize.”
Her hands find my face in a soft caress. “Like I said, I’m not going to rationalize with you. We don’t have to talk about it anymore. I know what we agreed to at the start of this, Beck. I just needed to understand why.”
“You know it has nothing to do with you, right? It’s just, I can’t—” Sitting back up, I meet her eyes. There’s no pull to take off my glasses. No need to look away from her beautiful face. “I wish it could be me.” I want it to be me. “But I can’t, and won’t, ask that of you.”
“Beck, honey.” Jensen shakes my shoulders lightly.
“I came here because all my ex did was ask me to change. He wants a stay-at-home wife and four plus kids. Now, I commend every woman who does that. This is no diss to them at all, but I never want to be pregnant, that part about me has never even wavered. When I tried to discuss adoption as an option—because it wasn’t that I didn’t want kids, period—he told me no.
I put getting my tattoo license on hold because he said it was a waste because I wouldn’t be able to do it after we had kids.
He started leaving baby books and pamphlets about women’s health through ovulation and pregnancy around our apartment.
“He made so many snide comments about what I should want out of my life as a woman. Pushed so many of my girl ‘friends’ on the same agenda that I started believing I was the problem. I can’t even begin to explain how great it was to learn that Callie doesn’t want to have kids at all.
All I was told for three years was this is what I should want, and I was apparently behind on this race that I never even wanted to run.
I went back to therapy to try to find some sort of peace about this life he wanted me to live. ”
Anger radiates through my entire body. “Jen, you know that’s not true, right? You weren’t the problem then, and you’re not now.”
The corners of her mouth tug upward. “I know that. I swear, it took therapy and a hex from Stella for me to, but I do. And, honey, you’re not the problem either. I swear, me asking wasn’t to try to make you feel bad about your reasoning.”
I take a deep breath. “I know, but—”
“No, no buts, just understanding. If there’s a but later then we’ll talk about it then. For now, there’s simply understanding each other.”
Nodding back is all my brain can manage. There’s a baseball-sized lump in my throat stopping every single piece of my heart that I want to give to her.
Jensen places a small kiss to my forehead. “Get some sleep, Beck.”
My hands flinch against her skin, nearly finding the strength to keep her here with me, but then she gets up and I can’t stop her from going upstairs with Dottie following behind her.