Page 38 of Sucker Love (Sugar Pill Duet #1)

LUCA

Noel is very quiet all throughout Sunday.

Quiet after I get back from my morning of snowboarding, quiet when we check out, and quiet on the drive back down to Boston.

At first I chalk it up to what can only be a gnarly hangover—he really did get shitfaced last night—but he insists that he’s not at all, and in fact has never been hungover before.

A twenty-something’s superpower, I guess.

But he’s not in the mood for my bullshit either way.

Not when I love up on him in the early hours, before I set off for the mountain, and not when I return, trying to coax him into the shower with me.

He just stares at me like I’m speaking a different language and I know he’s still upset with me after last night.

The five fucking cosmos were not enough to alleviate that.

And I almost feel bad. Guilty. Maybe I was too hard on him the night before.

Killian can be a lot, after all, and he was even more after he had a few drinks in him.

And I suppose it might be a bit confronting to have what’s supposed to be a night out at the club with your lover be interrupted by an ex-boyfriend, no matter how ancient that history might be.

Especially to someone like Noel, who is so sensitive at the end of the day, who feels things to such extremes.

It is an important boundary to set, though.

He has his friends, and I’m allowed to have mine.

Killian’s added me to the group chat of all my old favorite people and I’m thrilled about it.

So many familiar names hailing me like no time’s passed at all and asking to make plans.

It’s like no one’s even holding a grudge about what happened with Arin (though he is conspicuously missing from the chat, and I’m almost too afraid to ask why).

It feels good, like progress, a step in the correct direction.

This is what I should be doing, rediscovering my tribe right along with myself.

I know I’ll need their support in the days to come, when the divorce shit really hits the fan.

But I though I feel justified in what I said to Noel, I still can’t help but worry about him.

Wonder if I have damaged our fledgling relationship in some way after we’d just made so much of our own progress.

Still haven’t told him how I feel and now I don’t know if I should, because he’s definitely put out.

So I guess I’m going to have to love him up some before we can have that conversation, the one where I confess my adoration to him and we finally define what we have.

If we should even have it at all, now. Because I’m certainly not getting any love from him right now.

Which is why I am so afraid to define my relationship with him.

To him. It can be hard to gauge whether we are on the same page or not.

When he is like this, sullen and moody and wanting almost nothing to do with me, it’s easy to believe that we’re nothing at all.

He can turn it on and off like a light switch.

One moment he is desperate for my affection and the next he couldn’t care less for it.

I can only imagine how stupid I would’ve looked last night if I had told Killian he was my partner. The way I had been about to, before I caught myself last second.

But it was after that that Noel ran off.

So maybe that was a misstep, maybe that’s the entire problem.

Fuck, I’m not built for this shit. I’ve already ruined so many relationships, I shouldn’t be responsible for another one, especially not with someone like Noel.

The problem is that it’s too late. I just like him so damn much.

“Are you okay?” I ask him, more than once, on our way back south.

“Yup.” He’s buried in his phone.

“You sure?”

“Told you I was.”

Some variation of this conversation occurs at least fifteen times over the course of the next three hours until I at last drop him off at the apartment.

He seems almost relieved to be away from me as he grabs our things and scrambles up the stairs.

Too much time together, maybe? That could be the problem.

Even though I still can’t get enough of him. Even when his antics irritate the living shit out of me.

And fuck, I just want him to let me in. I thought we’d made some real headway there this weekend.

Those little moments of vulnerability he showed me, like the rare ones he showed me before—I wanted more of that.

I want to connect to him the way we did when I fucked him on the floor of the hotel room, but I want it all the time.

I don’t know how to get it. Just don’t know how to get under that cloak of razor blades of his with any sort of consistency, except when we’re intimate and he gives himself over to me entirely—precious glimpses that are all too brief.

And now we’ve taken a bunch of steps back, I think.

I drive over to the house in Revere, and Demi isn’t there.

She’s out to dinner, apparently, but she’s left a note on the fridge all but begging me to take a look at the divorce paperwork.

I’m so wiped out, though, and I have zero interest in poring over the legalese.

It’s just not going to happen tonight. I simply pretend I didn’t see the note, collect Amelia’s things and take off again, leaving the passenger window cracked just enough so she can shove her long snout out and enjoy all the smells.

On the way home I make a quick stop by the tattoo shop so I can paw through my diary and see what my week contains.

Amy, the girl who jockeys the desk most days, hails me with a hearty hello and informs me I had a big cancellation tomorrow.

Forfeiting their deposit in the process, sure, but it’s a small consolation.

“That wipes out my entire day,” I say in dismay, staring at my blank schedule. “I’ve got nothing.”

“I know.” She’s apologetic. “I was just about to call and see if there was anyone who wanted to reschedule.”

I flip through the book. I see Noel’s name down for next weekend and get an idea. “Let me make a quick call,” I tell Amy, pulling out my phone. “I might know someone who can come in earlier.”

The prospect of getting his tattoo a whole six days earlier does a lot to thaw Noel’s iciness towards me.

And by noon the next day, fresh out of his morning classes, he shows up at InkLab in sweats as I advised, practically vibrating with excitement.

And he loves the finalized design, roses blooming through a cat’s skull, their black thorns tipped in red, and a crescent moon looming in the background.

Loves all the changes I’ve made to it—though his initial one was good enough on its own, if I’m honest—and there’s nothing he wants altered at all.

Nothing more he wants to talk about, zooming through the consent form with barely a glance.

And he has no idea the attention he’s drawing as he sits in the waiting area, either, with the clipboard and pen, the appreciative glances from men and women alike. My chest swells with a mix of possession and pride because he is mine.

“Let’s do this already,” he tells me, shoving the forms into my hands.

I take him into the private room where I’ve already set up, locking the door behind me. Off come the sweats.

It’s an intimate thing, tattooing someone you know like this and in the spot I’m doing it.

A different ballgame entirely. Of course I’m nothing but professional as I clean his hip and thigh and lay the stencil, but I am so very aware of his nudity like I never would be with anyone else.

Aware of his smell, aware of the fact that I have touched these places on him more than once.

and in contexts that are not professional at all and I have to swallow.

“We’ll start with you on your side,” I say, as he gets comfortable on the bed.

“Is it going to hurt?” he asks, watching me pull up my stool beside him.

“Oh, yeah.” I switch on the gun and it buzzes.

“How bad?”

“Like a bitch, baby.”

And I’ve been wondering this since I’ve met him, what he’d be like to tattoo.

I’ve wiled away many-a quiet moment wondering exactly what his reaction would be to the pain.

I’ve known self-professed masochists who have wept and asked for constant breaks and broken relatively simple tattoos up into multiple sessions.

Not that I judge, necessarily—pain tolerance is not a universal thing, and my own Rome was not built in a day.

Five hours in one sitting is about when I have to tap out myself, my skin starts twitching so bad.

In my experience, though, first-timers take it the worst, regardless of their tolerance.

It’s little wonder why. It’s a shock to the system, a needle depositing ink up to thousands of cycles per minute.

I don’t begrudge people their reactions.

I’ve seen it all at this point, having done it for over a decade.

Noel is different.

He takes it like a champ.

I start up by his hip, where I know it’ll hurt the worst, right over bone and so very little fat to pad it.

I steel myself for him to flinch or gasp or react in some way, but there’s nothing.

No sucking in his breath, no hissing through his teeth, no swearing under his breath.

He’s completely and utterly still, relaxed, unbothered.

Actually that’s not quite it, either. I know that languid look in his light brown eyes.

It’s the same one he gets when I’m being especially rough with him, when I’m asserting dominance over him.

He’s in the zone, and not just in a locked in sort of way, getting through it because he has to. He is enjoying it.

Subspace.

And I’m the one marking him up. Claiming him for myself, almost. I’m the very first one to do it, and I love how that feels. Being his first. Making him mine in this way, while he’s naked and vulnerable on the table and basically putty in my hands. There is no tension in him.