Clipped Wings (6 page)

“It looks so real.”

“Jamie’s an amazing artist.”

“Lisa’s boyfriend?”

Hayden nodded.

On the occasions I’d dropped by Inked Armor he’d always been with a client, but I’d seen him and Lisa leave together many times.

“So he did this?” I asked.

“Most of my tattoos were done by either Jamie or Chris.”

“You designed them and they put them on you?”

“Yeah. Or we collaborated. The only one I didn’t design was this one.” He pulled up the sleeve on his other arm. It was covered in a black pattern I couldn’t decipher.

“How far does it go?”

“All the way up my arm and over half my torso.”

“What is it?”

“If you come to the shop, maybe I’ll show you.”

The idea of Hayden shirtless was like a shot of fire through my veins. I didn’t hesitate this time. “Okay.”

“That’s better than a maybe.”

He was openly flirting. As apprehensive as he made me, part of me enjoyed the nervous anticipation and the warmth under my skin. The heavy strains of a rock anthem came from Hayden’s pants, and he dug in his pocket. He looked annoyed as he checked his phone. Instead of answering the call, he silenced it.

A minute later Cassie appeared at the top of the stairs. The call he avoided had been Lisa; his client had arrived and she was still waiting for her latte.

“Duty calls.” Hayden hefted the box filled with keepables under his arm. “I’ll go through the rest another time. You’ll stop by the shop?”

“Sure.” I wasn’t sure at all. Talking to Hayden had only served to ratchet up my infatuation with him; indulging in his presence wasn’t likely to make that dissipate.

He gave me a look but dropped it. “Thanks for keeping me company.”

“No problem.”

In an unexpectedly tender gesture, he leaned down and kissed my cheek, those steel rings piercing his bottom lip treacherously close to the corner of my mouth.

I stood there long after he left, my fingers pressed to the spot where his lips had been. Warmth radiated out with the echo of sensation, moving down until it settled low in my stomach. I felt suddenly vulnerable as the vortex of emotion that followed threatened to lift me up and take me away. I hadn’t expected him to do that. At all.

If I’d been stronger, I would have left him to sort through things on his own. But I didn’t, and now I had this memory of his lips on my skin. As innocent as it might have been, it brought with it unexpected feelings. I hadn’t felt anything close to lust in almost a year. That one simple gesture of affection had awoken the dormant desire I’d been fighting since the first time he came into Serendipity.

Hayden was the opposite of everything I’d ever known. He defied convention at every turn, and it made him that much more of a weakness. He was not only inordinately gorgeous but intelligent and passionate as well. Beyond the hard exterior, the brash comments and flirtation, a sensitive side lurked. But, like me, he was closed off; his tattoos formed his walls. I knew all about walls. I had built my own. With him I wanted to let them down, if only just a little. It was a dangerous thing to contemplate because in doing so they could very well crumble completely.

Until now I’d thought I had been managing well enough, that I was making progress and moving on. But even after all these months, I was still so broken. This man could very well be my undoing.

Early on Tuesday afternoon, Tenley—who still hadn’t stopped by since we hung out in the basement of Serendipity—left her apartment. The entrance to the apartments above was at the rear of the store. There was a narrow alleyway between Serendipity and the adjacent low-rise apartment building giving her access to the storefront. I liked it, because it allowed me to see when she was coming or going. Not that I was watching for her or anything.

Instead of going into Serendipity, she turned in the opposite direction and headed down the sidewalk. She was wearing a dress that hugged her curves but still managed to be conservative. On the plus side, it ended midthigh. She had great legs, the kind I wanted wrapped around my waist, or my head, whichever. I wasn’t picky.

After my dreams last night there was relief in seeing she was okay. My subconscious alternated between lurid fantasy
and
horrifying nightmares, which had been dominating my sleeping hours as of late.

I couldn’t get the images out of my head. The bad dreams weren’t unusual; there were past mistakes I couldn’t undo. The part that was messing with me the most was Tenley’s arrival in my subconscious and the way I managed to insert her into the clusterfuck of a nightmare. Usually they revolved around the same theme—death. In this dream, though, the loser from the bar hadn’t let her go. He’d pulled a gun and aimed it at her chest. I couldn’t get through the crowd to help her. I woke up before he pulled the trigger, but it didn’t make me feel any better.

That she had been in any kind of danger, imagined or not, left me unsettled and raw. Awake or asleep, I didn’t like the loss of control.

“Have you heard a thing I said?” Chris stepped in front of me, blocking my view of the empty sidewalk.

“What?” I asked testily.

“What’s up with you? You’ve been all over the board this week.”

“What are you talking about?” I leaned back in the chair and laced my fingers behind my head, feigning nonchalance. His rare moment of perceptiveness stunned me. I hadn’t realized I was so damn obvious.

“If you were a chick I’d say you have PMS. Since you’re not, I’m saying you need to get laid instead, which brings me back to the original one-sided conversation I was having while you so rudely ignored me. I’m going to the peelers tonight, you should come.”

That meant The Dollhouse. Sometimes I believed the only reason Chris asked me to come was for company in his pit of moral decay. As if my being there somehow made what he did okay. Just because I tolerated his actions didn’t mean I condoned them. Not anymore.

“Seriously? Why there?”

“You need to ask?”

“I don’t know.” I wasn’t eager for a trip down memory lane, and there was a good chance I’d run into Sienna. I had successfully avoided her for the past year. I was inclined to keep it that way.

“Come on, there’s this new waitress I’m digging. I think I’m starting to wear her down.” He flashed a grin.

I could only imagine what his version of wearing her down would consist of, but the distraction in the form of visual stimulation might prove helpful. “I’ll think about it.”

I swiveled in my chair, turning back to my station to prepare for my next client. Tenley was gone anyway, and I doubted she’d stop by tonight. I shouldn’t have kissed her on the cheek. It was too fucking forward, which was laughable, considering the alternative scenarios I’d been entertaining.

It was just before closing, and I was inking an American flag on some guy’s ass. Most ass tattoos took place in one of the private rooms because the general public preferred not to show off their parts in a busy studio. But the guy in my chair flat out refused. Maybe he had a thing for exhibitionism, because he insisted on baring it all front and center in the shop.

The only benefit to the awkward situation was the chance to keep an eye out for Tenley. It was late by the time she came home. She looked in the direction of the shop and her steps faltered, like maybe she was thinking about coming in. She didn’t, though. Instead she continued down the narrow alley leading to the back of Serendipity. A minute later, lights came on in her apartment. It was the last I saw of her that evening, but that didn’t stop my mind from wandering in her direction.

* * *

Against my better judgment, I accompanied Chris to The Dollhouse. By the time we got there I wished I’d downed a few shots of tequila to help make the evening bearable. But that would have meant relying on Chris to get home. I wanted to be able to make my own escape if necessary. Our waitress was a girl named Sarah, who had pale blond hair. Chris had chosen the table specifically because she was working the section. Given the fact that she was his most recent conquest target, I felt bad for her. Chris could be persistent.

From what Chris said, she hadn’t been working there long. Staff turnover at such establishments tended to be high thanks to people like Sienna, who treated her employees like commodities rather than human beings. Everything could be sold for the right price, especially dignity. Sarah seemed unaffected by Chris’s charm, which meant his reputation probably preceded him. Rather than titter like an idiot over his compliments, she ignored them and told him off when he asked for her number. I liked her.

It took him all of five minutes to get over the rejection. Chris stuck a five-dollar bill in a dancer’s thong. She shook her ass in his face. I sighed and checked the time.

“You need to relax, you’re too uptight,” Chris said, exasperated with my attitude.

“I’m always uptight.” I took a long draft of the overpriced, crappy beer and surveyed the club. No Sienna. Thank fuck. I’d been on the fence about coming in until we’d pulled into the lot to find her car wasn’t there. If I was lucky, I’d get in a couple of beers and leave without running into her at all.

Chris left me alone for a few minutes while the dancer rubbed herself on the pole. I imagined it would require a heavy-duty sanitizing by the end of the night. Once her set was over, Chris started up again, seeking a way to rectify my pissy mood.

“What about that one?” He pointed to a nondescript girl making her rounds with a tray of shooters.

I barely glanced in her direction. Unlike our waitress, she was artificially blond. “Not my type.” Not that naturally blond was any more my style.

“Since when do you have a type? Seriously man, you should unwind.”

Thanks to Chris’s irritating insistence that I needed some sort of action tonight, he ended up paying some poor girl who smelled like stale cigarettes and cheap perfume to give me a lap dance. But instead of feeling aroused, a heavier emotion settled into my gut. It felt something like guilt, maybe? Halfway through the song, I couldn’t take it anymore. I ushered her over to Chris, where she resumed dancing. Chris looked annoyed, which inflated my mood. We politely declined when she offered additional services, compliments of management.

Shit. Our presence hadn’t gone unnoticed. Across the room I spotted Sienna sitting at the side of the bar closest to her personal security guard, chatting with a suited-up businessman. Looked like she wasn’t taking the night off after all. She flipped her bleached-out hair over her shoulder and tipped her drink in my direction. I looked away, uninterested in whatever game she wanted to play, when Damen pulled up a chair beside Chris. I wasn’t surprised to see his ugly face. If he wasn’t working at his tattoo studio, Art Addicts, he was here, pushing other addictions. At least he knew better than to sit beside me. He and Chris engaged in some stupid-ass handshake-shoulder-bumping garbage like they were best buddies.

It bothered me the way Chris always sought Damen’s approval, like he was some messed-up version of a father figure. I supposed that in a lot of ways Damen assumed that role for Chris when we worked for him years ago. From what I understood, he took Chris in when his parents would no longer deal with his antics. Damen’s accommodations had turned out to be more of a den of iniquity, but Chris hadn’t been in much of a position to complain. Not that he had. Chris hadn’t seen his own family in years, and Damen was a master at exploiting insecurities. When it had come to Chris, he’d heaped on the praise, knowing how little it took to gain Chris’s loyalty and lead him astray. Chris was a talented artist, but sometimes he lacked common sense, and that got him into trouble.

Even back when I was a kid, barely eighteen and working my first job at Art Addicts as a piercer, I never fell for Damen’s bullshit. Sure, I took advantage of the drugs and the access to women, but that was where it ended. I hadn’t needed his approval. Which was why, after three years of dealing with him and all the crap that had come with him, I’d gotten out. I hadn’t done it on my own, though; Jamie had been the driving force, and Chris had come along for the ride. If I hadn’t escaped the drugs, I would have OD’d at some point.

Damen reclined in his chair, looking like he owned the place. His black hair was slicked back, his receding hairline pronounced. His aquiline nose and vicious smile made him look like the vulture he was.

“Hayden, it’s good to see you. I was telling Chris the last time he was here he should bring you by. You here for the women, or are you looking to do business?”

“Chris is here for the women. I’m here to ruin his night.” I swished my beer around in my glass.

Damen had been hounding Chris about merging studios for a long time. I adamantly refused the offer. Damen had a hard time keeping artists at his shop. I’d witnessed the slow decline as they got hooked on blow, or whatever else he was selling, until performing their actual job became a challenge. I’d been at risk of going down the same path at one point. I had no intention of being dragged back into his bullshit crooked dealings. I ran a clean shop, made legitimate money, and served no one’s interests but my own. Partnering up with Damen would mean bending to someone else’s whims. Chris was too caught up in keeping things amicable to say no outright, so he always pussyfooted around an answer.