She was trying to figure me out earlier. A guy who doesn’t even flinch when he feels the sting from that needle like a knife carving into his flesh. Odd to her, I’m sure. But she saw the shrapnel scars on my back. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that they were serious, that they would have hurt far more than any tattoo.
“Keep going.” We passed the one-hour mark quickly enough, even with my ambiguous answers and her annoyed sighs. But we still have six more hours, and I need to steer this conversation away from the places we’ve traveled—between the two of us I think we’ve covered every continent except Antarctica—and start pumping her for any information that might be useful to me in finding this tape.
“So what made you want to become a tattoo artist?”
“I love doing it,” she answers simply, wiping away excess ink.
I’m careful not to move my body when I turn my head to peer up at her face. She knows I’m watching her, but she seems intent on avoiding my eyes. “Who’s being evasive now?”
Her lips press into a tight line, like she’s trying not to smile. And suddenly I wish I wasn’t having this piece done on my side. I wish I’d picked my chest for its location, so I could lie on my back and stare up at her the entire time.
Because I meant what I said: Ivy is fierce, stunning, and captivating.
“I love to draw,” she finally says. “I’ve been drawing on every surface I could reach since I was able to grip a crayon in my hand. Paper, walls, cars, you name it, my parents will tell you I marked it.” A wistful look flickers past her eyes. “And my uncle. He’s what got me into this career of drawing on bodies.”
“The uncle who owned this shop?”
She swallows hard. “Yeah, him.”
“Tell me about him.”
She frowns. “Why?” There’s a hint of suspicion in there.
I need to tread carefully. “Because sometimes it helps to talk about loved ones you’ve lost to a complete stranger.” Even though that’s not why I’m asking, it’s still true. I watch her as she seems to think about that, still working away on the outline.
Only when she breaks to clean the ink do her dark brown eyes flicker to mine. “Have you lost any loved ones?”
She’s already figured out that I was in some sort of armed forces. The army, she assumes. I haven’t corrected her because I need to be cautious. With only a few thousand active SEALs at any given time, it wouldn’t be impossible for someone to connect dots that lead to me.
But I also can’t blow her off now. She finally seems to be relaxing around me, revealing more about herself. “One to a sniper bullet, and two to a roadside bomb. I watched all three of them die.”
She settles a gentle, knowing gaze on me. “I saw my uncle, just after they shot him and ran out the door,” she says softly. “But he was already gone.”
Yeah, I pretty much figured that. “It’s hard to get that image out of your head, isn’t it?”
She averts her gaze to my side, but I catch the small nod.
“So tell me about your uncle,” I prod. “It will help, I promise.”
She sighs. “I’m not really sure what to say. No one’s ever actually asked me that question before. I mean, you either knew him or you didn’t. You either liked him or you didn’t. But how to actually describe a guy like Ned?” She chews the inside of her mouth, until a slight smile pushes through. “He was a real fucking asshole.”
I wasn’t expecting that answer, and I can’t help it. I burst out laughing. Luckily Ivy pulls away a second before my entire body starts shaking. “You can’t move!” she yells, but she’s laughing along with me, and smiling. Trying so hard not to smile, by pulling her bottom lip into her teeth.
“Then don’t be funny.”
“I’m not. He really was an asshole.” She shakes her head. “But man, did I love him.”
“Was that a part of his eulogy?”