*
Pixie watched the needles go in and out of her arm. Under Trent’s control, they pierced the skin enough to leave the beautiful purple behind, but never dragged or pulled. Trent and Cujo had tattooed every one of the flowers on her arm. The reasons behind each of them were all different, but the meaning the same. Life is beautiful, with care it blooms. So the purple orchid on her arm this time was twofold. She’d survive her stepdad’s return, and it was time to let her relationship with Dred bloom.
She wasn’t sure exactly what the call he’d received on Monday was about, but they’d texted the previous afternoon, Dred having a gig in New York that evening. Long-distance relationships weren’t easy, but she wasn’t the needy kind, and he had responsibilities to the band, which, from their living arrangements, went way deeper than just being coworkers.
Pixie leaned back and sighed. She was comfortable back in Second Circle, and more importantly, warm. The winter coat hung in her closet, the boots lingered in her hallway. When she’d left for Toronto, she’d thought Miami’s spring to be cooler than normal, but now it felt positively tropical.
“Want to talk about why you’re getting this?” Trent asked. He stopped the needles for a moment. It was after closing, just the two of them in the studio.
“If I said no, would you leave me alone?” She smiled at him, and he grinned back, the two dimples Harper always mooned over showing.
“Probably not.”
There was no value in regurgitating what happened. Trent had seen her at her worst and was thankfully still there for her. No way did she want him to know the full story. Why would he want to hear about her humiliation of being stripped over and over? Would he even understand why she’d felt the need to protect herself by killing someone? She wasn’t so confused about the past that she thought of herself as a murderer, but she was sure a court would call it manslaughter. What would the wonderful man in front of her think of her then?
“Pix?”
He wasn’t going to let it go, but she’d expected as much when she sat down for the ink. “I saw someone from before.” “Before” had become the synonym for everything that happened from the day she was born until they’d found her.
Trent finished the last detail of the shading. He put his tattoo equipment down—never call it a gun unless you wanted to get him pissed—and wiped down her arm.
“You okay?”
Not really. “Of course,” she lied. Pixie tilted her chin toward the new tattoo. “I have my shield in place.” Her ink was her armor, the equivalent of Wonder Woman’s Bracelets of Submission. Every day, she stood before the mirror in the bathroom and recounted the story behind each blossom, a mental pattern to start the day on a positive note.
Trent rubbed the ointment on her arm and wrapped it for her. “There you go. You know what to do with it.”
“Thanks, Trent. Perfect as always.”
Trent stood and started to unplug his equipment. “You know we’re here for you, right? If you need us.”
Shuffling to the end of the chair, she pressed down on the tape he’d stuck on her skin. Part of her considered telling him, but to what end? Until she understood Arnie’s motivation, there was no point sharing the parts of her she wished would just disappear.
They cleaned up the station together, and Trent dropped her off at her condo before heading over to Frankie’s to watch Harper. She’d started training to fight back against her abusive ex, but it turned out she was great at it. Her first amateur fight was in July, and Trent was as terrified as he was proud of his fiancée.
Pixie waited until Trent’s Plymouth disappeared from view and wandered toward the condo. It was a beautiful evening. A little cooler now the sun had gone down, but nothing she couldn’t handle after freezing her butt off in Canada. She’d missed the salty air. A guitar-playing busker was further down the street. The Cuban music sounded familiar, like a song by Eliades Ochoa maybe, but she couldn’t be sure.
“You kept me waiting to see you again. Where did you go?” Arnie slipped out of the shadows by her building. She should have anticipated seeing him, should have considered that he would approach her while nobody was watching. Damn it. Why hadn’t she just run straight inside when Trent dropped her off?
Summoning confidence, or at least its mask, Pixie stood her ground. “I don’t owe you an explanation for anything. Now if you’ll excuse me.” Raising her head, she walked past him.
“We aren’t finished here,” he said, grabbing hold of her arm and wrenching it. “You thought you’d get to decide when I am done with you?”