Page 133 of Caution to the Wind

“Sorry,” I said, but I didn’t sound it.

To my intense delight, he chuckled again. “Left my fair share of marks on you tonight, so I can’t complain.”

“Is this where you tell me this won’t ever happen again?” I ventured, thinking it would be easier to just rip it off like a Band-Aid and get the hurt over with now.

Axe-Man was quiet for a long moment, his finger tracing the vaguely visible outline of the tiger tattoo on my thigh. I wondered if he knew I got it for him and figured he did. I’d never been good at hiding from him, and my tattoos were the most honest thing about me.

“You got your claws in me,” he repeated, so low I had to strain to hear him even though I was pressed to his front.

I opened my mouth to ask for clarification, but suddenly, he was moving, shifting out from behind me with more grace than just a big man should be able to muster. I sat there mutely, watching as he stepped into his jeans and made for the door.

My heart dropped into my stomach and fizzed like a Mentos in a shaken soda bottle. I thought I’d vomit, but I gripped the sheets tight enough to ground myself.

Just when I thought he’d leave me naked and yearning again, without a word of comfort, he turned to face me, a wedge of light spilling through the cracked open door to illuminate his handsome face and turn his eyes to blue glass.

“No feelin’ is immutable, Mei,” Axe-Man said, and I could feel the intensity of his stare on the side of my face. “No feelin’ lasts forever. Not even love, sometimes. Not even hate.”

MEI

I wonderedif I’d always been a masochist or if some strange alchemy had occurred in the empty recesses in my chest where a heart used to pound after losing Kate and Ma that made me yearn for any kind of feeling.

Even if it was pain.

Because sitting at the receptionist desk of Street Ink Tattoo was the worst kind of torture imaginable. Nova was too soft a touch to treat me poorly, but the rest of them were loyal to Axe-Man and they spoke to me only with work orders or barely concealed suspiciousness.

They hated me for him.

Ironically, I loved that he had that. A community of people to take his back without question.

Once, I’d had that too. In him and in Cleo.

Now, I had Jiang and Old Dragon. Only, Old Dragon was lost in the mire of his dissolving memories. Most of the time, he couldn’t remember my name. My friendship with Jiang was complicated by our semi-opposing mission statements, but I thought we had a tacit kind of understanding that transcended our deal. Though, I hadn’t heard from him since Seven Song threw me in the dumpster behind Purgatory Motel. It was understandable he was keeping a low profile, for his sake and mine, but a part of me was a little hurt he didn’t reach out to check on me.

At least I had Cleo again, though I had years of absence to make up for.

I watched from behind an open ink catalogue as Axe-Man prepared his station for his next client. He was fastidious, but then again, he always had been. It was in his nature but had also been finely honed by years in the military and medical school. He did nothing by half.

My mind took us back to the Sunday brunches he’d made for Cleo and I after Kate died. It was a new ritual, one that was meant to take our minds off the tragedy for a few hours. For a man who didn’t know how to cook up until that point, he’d learned quickly and thoroughly. Pancake boards piled high with steaming hotcakes and littered with fun, delicious items to decorate them with. Fruit platters cut into shapes until the whole board seemed like a painting with dinosaurs and fairy tales brought to life in watermelon wedges and blueberries. When Cleo and I bought him an apron for his birthday one year that read “Flippin’ Fantastic”, he’d worn it every Sunday brunch after that even though the huge, burly blond looked faintly ridiculous in it.

“You gotta stop it,” Nova murmured from my left, leaning against the reception desk the way he did sometimes to shoot the shit with me. “It’s not good for anyone.”

I shrugged, but the movement was too sharp. It gave away my guilt and shame like a fucking beacon. “You’re right, I really don’t know anything about ordering ink.”

Nova gave me a slow, curling half smile. On anyone else, I would have begrudged him the pitying expression, but he was just so dang pretty it was hard to be irritated with him for anything.

Besides, he was kinda, sorta my only ally at Street Ink Tatttoo Parlour.

“That I can teach ya,” he said pointedly, his thick lashed gaze sliding over my shoulder to Axe-Man. “I’ve known that man for near on a decade, Blossom, and he is one’a the biggest mysteries in this town. That said, he’s also one’a the kindest motherfuckers I’ve met. Haven’teverseen him look at a person the way he looks at you, and it’s not rainbows and violin quartets, you get me?”

I got him.

Oh, he didn’t have any idea how much I. Got. Him.

Henning had never been an angry guy. Even after Kate was ripped away from him, he’d kept his head high, his heart warm and open.

He wasn’t like me, prone to bitterness and rage.

He was good.