Page 17 of Caution to the Wind

I’d had to buy out the rest of my contract with the army to pay them back for subsidisin’ my tuition without fulfillin’ my obligation to them as a military doctor after I finished, but Lin and I’d been able to scrape together the money to do it. Takin’ care of Cleo, bein’ there for her in a real way, was a helluva lot more important than my savings.

It wasn’t as hard a choice as you’d think, given all I’d wanted to be my entire fuckin’ life was a doctor. It wasn’t hard ’cause tragedy makes a man feel helpless, especially when that tragedy takes a good woman from him and leaves him the sole caregiver of a preteen girl. Lookin’ into Cleo’s tearstained, gaunt face in the weeks followin’ Kate’s murder, the decision came to me as easily as the tears that came at night when I lay unsleepin’ and alone in bed.

So, I gave up medicine and exchanged it for somethin’ I’d always loved but never thought was practical enough to make into a career ’til I was searchin’ for a job with flexible hours and decent pay.

Art.

Sure, I wasn’t some fancy painter with shows in galleries and multi-thousand-dollar price tags on shit only the insanely rich could afford. But I was an artist peddlin’ my wares, and it surprised me, more than Cleo, Lin, and Mei, that I wasn’t just good at this new gig as a tattoo artist at Battle Scars Ink.

I fuckin’ loved it.

Turnin’ someone into livin’, breathin’, walkin’ art. The way a design flexed and reformed on the flesh, how pigments changed on different skin tones and evolved with the body through age. Any vainglorious artist would love it, the way their work could be paraded through the world for all to see and admire. Any empath would love the look in a client’s eyes when you pulled somethin’ outta their heart and worked it onto their sleeve.

It was beautiful, but more, for me, it was a kinda therapy.

A marriage of the healin’ I’d loved seein’ as a doctor with the freedom and expression that had always drawn me to art.

Even more, I liked drivin’ Cleo to school and pickin’ her up in the afternoon. I liked havin’ time to raise her as well as I fuckin’ could. I was no Kate. No mother. When Cleo got her period and called me cryin’ from a fuckin’ pool party ’cause that shit had happened to her in front of her friends in a white bikini, I’d nearly beaten the boys who made fun of her to a pulp, and it was Mei who’d gone into the pharmacy with me while Cleo waited in the car to help me pick out the supplies she would need. I was probably too strict (no fuckin’ way was Cleo allowed to date), and conversely too mellow (my girl was a good kid, what the hell did I care if she didn’t get all A’s and didn’t like to eat broccoli, neither did I). I made so many mistakes sometimes at night they haunted me ’til I couldn’t fuckin’ breathe.

But I did what I could.

Not just ’cause I had to as Cleo’s legal guardian.

’Cause I wanted to.

Cleo was my daughter in all ways except for blood, and I was the first guy to admit, blood meant shit all if it wasn’t backed by heart. Lin had been the one to teach me that.

And all the heart I had left after Kate’s death was owned by my cherub-faced, grey-green-eyed girl.

“Dad,” she cried as she appeared between the crowd of teenagers spillin’ from the doors of the main buildin’ after the final bell rang.

She always cried this when she saw me.

Once, some punk kid had made fun of her, but before I’d had to take care of him, Mei had stepped up and hit him in the side of his head with a binder.

No one bothered Cleo about it again.

I grinned at my girl and opened my arms, where I stood with my ass against the side of my Harley in the pickup line. On cue, Cleo dashed through the students and lunged into my arms, squeezin’ me tight. I held her to me, peerin’ down at her closed-eye smile and the look of peace on her face as she pressed her cheek to my leather-covered chest.

This.

Fuckin’this.

This was the reason parents sacrificed again and again for their kids. Why those sacrifices felt halved instead of enormous. Why I woke up every mornin’ and fought hard to be the best man I could.

So this girl, my girl, could have some peace after a lifetime of pain.

“Hey, Glory,” I murmured as I palmed the back of her skull and stroked her long, wavy brown hair.

She hummed a response and kept huggin’ me.

I knew this meant she’d had a rough day, and this was further solidified when I spotted Mei in the dispersin’ crowd.

She stood still in the surgin’ bodies watchin’ us with a sort of pained smile on her face. Dressed all in black, one dark lipstick application away from full-blown goth, Cleo’s best friend watched over her as she always did. It was a kind of hand-off we had. I had Cleo before and after school, and Mei had her durin’ the daytime hours.

In ways that might have been unhealthy but explainable given the tragedy we’d lived through together, we were fiercely bonded together. Mei and I parentheses around Cleo and her tender heart. Between the two of us, we wouldn’t let anythin’ bad happen to our girl ever again.

We’d never spoken of it, but we didn’t have to.