“So it is about her,” I said on a whisper.
He shook his head. “No, it’s not. There, that day, the moment. Yeah, he remembered. He’s the one who spent thirty minutes trying to revive her, so I know he remembered.”
A single tear cut down my cheek as my heart broke for them. For Thatch—the man who deserved so much better than me—and for Frankie, so willing to open his arms to me even when I was yo-yoing between manic and a Grade A bitch.
“But you scaring him was all about you.”
I shook my head and wiped at my eyes. “I don’t get it.” But God, I wanted to. Even though, deep down, I probably already knew the answer.
“You’re the exact woman he’s always wanted, Cassie. Always. But that day made him afraid to want it. Afraid to think of what he might be putting himself through for the rest of his life. He knows you’re going to be wild and untamed, and he loves it. Until he feels like being so accepting of it might be the reason he loses you.”
“But what do I do?” My voice was barely audible.
“What you do is always up to you, Cassie. You’re the one who needs to decide what’s really important to you.”
I already knew the answer to that.
Moving to the corner of the room, he picked up the ring and dropped it in my hand. “And if you really think it’s over, you need to give him the ring back yourself. He’ll be here tonight at nine.”
Nerves fought to take over as I set up my station and pulled all the sanitary packets from the cabinet.
I was tattooing my very first client today. Frankie and some of the other artists had pretty selflessly let me practice on them a few times, and I’d obviously practiced on myself, but working on a client was different. I didn’t exactly think I’d fuck it up, but unlike what I liked to spout, it wasn’t an absolute certainty that I’d be good at it.
My black mood probably wasn’t helping things either.
“You ready?” Frankie asked, popping into the private room I was setting up in. My first client was a woman named Kristen. She’d come into the shop a week or so ago wanting some kind of custom book quote, and Frankie insisted this was the time. While he was a guru of portrait work, he felt like I had a gift for lettering.
Go figure. My everyday handwriting was shit.
“As I’ll ever be,” I answered with the best smile I could manage.
His smile, however, seemed unnecessarily bright.
“What’s with your face?”
“Huh?” he said.
“What’s happening here?” I asked, circling a finger around my face in explanation. “You’re looking a little too much like the Joker.”
“Nothing. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Seriously, why am I only friends with really shitty liars?”
He flipped me off. “I’ll send her back if you’re done.”
“I’m done for now, but I’ll get to the bottom of this eventually.”
His smile grew even more demented. “I have no doubts you will.”
“Whatever.” I rolled my stool away and got my ink cups out for the colors I knew she wanted. I’d double-check everything before we got started, though. Women had a nasty little tendency to change their minds.
What? Don’t even think about pretending that’s not true.
I heard a knock on the open wood door. “Come on in—”
The ability to speak left me when I saw who it was, but the smirk on her lips brought my voice right back. For the first time in our relationship, I was in no mood to be fucked with.
“What are you doing here?” I asked her.
“I’m your first appointment,” Cassie said, walking into the room and jumping up on the table in front of me.
“No. My first client is a woman named Kristen.”
She shook her head. “Not anymore.”
“I thought you had a photo shoot.”
“Screw the photo shoot,” I declared. “This is more important.” I pulled up the right side of my shirt, exposing my rib cage.
It hadn’t taken long after leaving Frankie to come to my senses. And to realize he’d been giving me a big fucking clue by telling me to bring the ring back myself. He’d looked downright elated when I’d walked in and raised a smirking brow.
Frankie had told me to think about what was important, and I had. He was the size of an elephant and had a trunk to rival all the others. And he was everything I needed in my life. He pushed me past my comfort zones at the same time he let me soak in them.
Thatch was my person.
He was my present and my future.
He was it for me.
God, I was such an idiot. I had risked all of that, my fucking happiness, Thatch’s happiness, because I was too bullheaded and stubborn and couldn’t stand the idea of someone else having control over me. But I was done with it now.
The funny thing about when you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with someone, is you don’t want to waste another second of your life without them.
You want it all. Right now.