Page 53 of Take the Blame (Seaside Mergers #3)

Chapter Twenty-Eight

ALTA

“It’s too big!”

“No it’s not, Alta.”

“It’s literally not fitting, Harper. I’m trying.”

“Ally, baby. Quit getting so frustrated and try it again.”

I took a long breath, and moving my hands, I tried it again. And I nearly slipped off. Stopping abruptly I growled and squeezed the shaft with my hand.

“Hey, don’t yank it so hard like that!” he grunted. “Easy, baby. Not so rough, that hurts.”

Sinking back into the warm safety of Harper’s chest, I tried to center myself.

It wasn’t really working, but as he held my hand steady while I gripped the tattoo gun trying to keep the needle on the line, I felt the ridiculous bolster of confidence I always possessed around him.

His steady, encouraging words powerful enough to lead me to do crazy things.

Which was the precise reason I was even attempting this insanity.

After handing over the drawing to Harper the other night, I watched as he turned my simple bear into this swirling abstract version of itself that he called a “one line drawing” on his tablet.

It was beautiful the way he’d smoothed my harsher lines or made others bolder.

Shaping my drawing where it needed help but otherwise letting it be.

It was a lot like us, in a way. Harper volunteering to quell the parts of me that were too timid and unsure. Helping to bring me steady.

It was so peaceful, watching him work like that. The drags of his pencil like liquid as he pulled them across the screen. Every motion was so natural to him it was like breathing. The grace of it all drew me in.

No literally—the longer I watched, the more I found myself leaning over him to get a better view.

So much so, that when I’d finally leaned in enough that my front was pressed firmly into his side, he said, “Keep pressing into me like that sweetheart and I’m going to have to get you acquainted with my chair before you ever get a tattoo. ”

I swallowed. “I’ve never sat in a tattoo chair before.”

His eyes blazed over to me. “You seem curious.”

“I am.”

He cursed, closing his eyes and audibly asking God for strength. “You’re going to be the goddamn end of me.”

But suddenly he was up and leaving the room, only to come back a brief moment later with two oranges in his hands. I perked up immediately, but he pointed at me in a reprimanding gesture. “Not a snack. ”

“Aw,” my shoulders sank. “What are they for, then?”

Coming up beside me, he leaned over and grabbed a pen then drew on the fruit. I felt my face pinch as I watched him, growing more and more confused. That confusion peaked when he handed me the defaced fruit. “I’m going to teach you something.”

“How to waste fruit?”

“No, smartass,” he bumped my shoulder coming up beside me. “How to tattoo.”

Flicking my eyes up to his, I paused, a soft questioning hum slipping free from my mouth. He smiled, taking in my face. “Interested?”

I’d watched the guys with their systems and tools for almost a year now.

Sometimes when I was taking photos of the process, I got pretty close to live tattoos.

Seeing the action was interesting. Seeing the guys in their elements was even more interesting.

Ryan had explained a few of the basic terms to me.

Gerald and Quis drilling in the importance of clean and sterile tools and workstations, and Lana mentioning all the different styles of tattoos out there.

But Harper had always been quiet when it came to his craft.

Call me curious, but I wondered what part of tattooing he resonated with the most.

My nod was a no brainer, Harper’s knowing smile agreeing as he set the fruit down in front of me and went over to his station to grab his actual tattoo machine. Woah .

Bringing it over to me he set a few things down in front of me before he got to work with assembly. The various wrapping and configuring that came with every tattoo didn’t stop when it came to fruit, I guess. Watching his hands, my eyes followed the deftness of his fingers as he set everything up.

Three separate tube-like items sat in front of me by the time he looked back up. “Go ahead, grab one.”

My eyes snapped up to him, cautious. “But?—”

“They’re not on. Just to see what grip you like. ”

“Grip?” I wondered as I slowly reached forward and wrapped my dominant hand around each item.

“Yeah,” he said. “Here. Hold it like a pen for now. Yeah. Now, do you like the skinnier or thicker one?”

Testing the weight and grip of each one, I easily decided, “Thick.”

He grinned. “My girl.”

“Harper,” I huffed a giggle, knocking him with a playful elbow. His deep chuckle was like a reward, like a treat I looked forward to every time we were together.

“Alright,” he said, removing the other two options and leaning in close. “Now, instead of holding it like a pen, go ahead and slide your middle finger down here next to the needle head. Yeah, like that. And as you ink, you’ll use that as a guide.”

“ This is a tattoo gun?”

“It’s a machine, and yes,” he said. “They’re not so scary, at least when there’s no skin involved. They’re actually really cool machines.”

I peeked at him. “Yeah?”

“Yeah,” he murmured as he gently slipped it from my hand and adjusted the knobs, settings, and tube to his liking. “Especially the newer ones. See, up here, you can adjust voltage which is like speed, and needle depths which is going to help you keep a clean line.”

Had he ever sounded so excited before?

I hummed, eying him as he brought the machine up to eye level and inspected something.

As his excited eyes turned on me, a hopeful smile playing around his lips, I decided that no.

I’d never seen him this giddy about anything, not even the tattoos themselves.

Yet the machine put this look on his face?

Huh . “What makes them so special? Isn’t the important part the art? ”

“Nuh-uh,” he said right away. “Well, okay yeah that’s the important part. But it’s the art in conjunction with your tool that makes things special. And the personalization possible with the machine or the way you handle it, becomes part of the art itself.”

“Oh,” I said, looking at it again. I wasn’t quite seeing the same things, but I saw how much he believed in it and that alone was enough to put me on his team. “That’s pretty cool.”

“The coolest,” he said. “I collect these things. I can show you all my favorite ones when we’re done. I even built a few. Anyway— You ready?”

I blinked. “For what!”

“To turn it on.” My blank expression must have given away my thoughts, because he grinned even wider. “It’s just a pen cartridge—to practice. I want you to play with the settings against the orange and see which one you like. If you’re good, then I might actually give you a needle.”

“Yippie,” I said sarcastically as nerves took over my chest, though I was actually a little curious.

He let me practice on the orange, first with the ink cartridge and later with an actual needle.

He made me glove up and everything. He gave me freedom to play around with it, monitoring only loosely while he finished up our drawing close by and giving tips here and there when necessary.

By the time we were done, it was midnight and I’d blown through ten oranges.

On that tenth one, as soon as I connected the last line I squealed.

“Harper, turn it off! Turn it off!”

“Baby, the power button’s on the top.”

“No, here, you take it.” I shoved it his way like it was a loaded gun. With gentle hands he took the machine and turned it off, allowing me to spring up and hold my orange in the air like it was baby Jesus. “I did it! I did it!”

“Of course you did,” he said, eyes tracking me with an easy smile playing on his face.

I was jumping up and down, protecting my orange with my life, but the sound of his words brought me to a halt in front of him. The smile he held was so big you would think he was the one who’d just tattooed their very first orange.

“You knew I could do it?” I asked.

“I know you can do anything,” he said. “Anything you want.”

Something in me felt like it was flying. Rising up to the sky and living in the clouds with the crazy feelings this man gave me.

Shoot.

Shoot, shoot, shoot!

What was this feeling he kept pulling out of me? What was this invisible, invincible feeling that I only got around Harper? And why was it becoming so addicting?

I had no idea, but I wasn’t going to give it up. And Harper didn’t ask me to each day he allowed me through the doors of his shop and of his heart. Showering me with affection and encouragement, so much that now when I was around him, I expected to feel a million feet tall.

What I didn’t expect though, was that a couple of nights later he would come into the main room of the shop holding up our drawing on stencil paper with the widest grin on his face asking, “Ready?”

Looking up from my computer where I had been working on my project, I asked, “For?”

“For the real deal, baby.”

And now, as he sat with his legs around me on the large tattoo chair that resembled a dentists’ chair, the crazy man was still insistent that I take the lead on this crazy person mission.

Holding the much more officially set up tattoo machine away from us, I said, “Can you just do it, please?”

“No,” he said easily. “You can do it, it’s only the lines. Remember the skin? You did great on that.”

I shivered. Yeah, I remembered the skin.

Practice Skin is what the artists called the jelly-like slabs of silicone they used to train their tattooing craft on before moving to human volunteers.

Harper had come in holding it like he caught it out in the wild.

I recoiled and screamed and he laughed his little butt off before explaining that it was not actual skin, it was just for practice.