Page 81 of Take the Blame (Seaside Mergers #3)

ALTA

One year later

“Are you ready?” he asked from beneath me.

“I’ve been ready for a week, Harper,” I said excitedly, peeking up at the full-length mirror in the corner of my bedroom. I ate up the sight of the large gauze bandage spanning from my mid-waist to the bottom of my hip.

Under the white wrappings was my very first tattoo.

In the year since Harper had gotten that heart-stopping message from what had to be his younger sister, I never stopped being proud of him for his reaction that day.

He never told me he'd been getting calls from an unknown number that could potentially be his sister—he hadn’t been ready to face the fact just yet. I know now that he needed time and so much closure to be ready to receive her again. I didn’t expect him to be so ready that instant, however.

But surprising me once again, as he always did, he'd silently—albeit with shaking hands—sent a simple response to his sister before slipping the phone back into his pocket.

Harper:

Time and place. I'll be there.

There was no doubt after reading that message, it was his sister who sent it.

And it would have been easy for Harper to spiral after that, to drop everything and turn his life upside down in a mad hunt to follow this clue.

But he didn't. For once, instead of offering himself for others, he decided to let her come to him. If she wanted. In her own time.

And that time was coming. Slowly, and in waves of periodic text messages or even a birthday card sent to the shop—that time was coming. She was reaching out from wherever she was, and like she promised in her message to him, she'd find him when she was ready.

He accepted that.

After finally going back to Connecticut and coming to terms with the past, Harper had closed the door on chasing down old what ifs.

No one would ever know why Mar did what she did until Mar herself said so, and she wasn't coming back unless she wanted to. So if a new future with or without her in it came to him, he’d welcome it, but he’d learned he couldn’t force it. So he wouldn't torture himself to try.

Instead, he was going to give his love where he could right now.

To his mom who called him every day just to hear his voice and feel his smile, which she swears up and down she can feel through the phone.

To his dad who he’s built a slow relationship of trust and forgiveness with and who’s about the only person who will nerd out with him about rickety old machine parts for hours.

To his business to which he has many, I had learned and a career that makes him very happy without having to work for his family.

And to me of course.

To the girl he thought hated him. The girl he orchestrated a whole handshake—or lip-locked—deal with just to spend time together. To the girl he’d promised his heart to.

Yeah, he was giving me a whole lot of love.

Even now, two weeks after I woke up in his arms on our anniversary and he asked me if I was ready for the tattoo I had been begging him for six months now to give me, he was peppering me with love in the form of soft kisses up the side of my tattooed hip.

I thought when the day finally arrived I would be more nervous to get a tattoo, but it turns out I was more than prepared to walk out of Ink and Mar with another part of my body permanently changed—since the man in charge had already done a number on my heart.

I was ecstatic. Not so much about the tattoo itself than the meaning behind it.

Because it wasn’t the first time we’d attempted to get me inked.

That had been directly after walking me out of Tore Tattoo that day we said I love you.

But when Harper sat me down on his tattoo chair and asked me where and what I wanted, I knew without a doubt that I wanted him to choose my tattoo for me.

He was apprehensive about it, which was funny coming from the guy who let me doodle a bear and half a day later was having it tattooed on his body by me! But still, I reassured him that this was what I wanted.

“I thought you said you wanted something that represented you,” he’d said.

I nodded, “I do.”

“And you want me to choose that?”

“I do.” I nodded again. When he still looked apprehensive, I added. “You saw me, Harper, when I couldn’t even see myself. You saw me before anyone else did. You’re the only one I trust with this. I want to walk around knowing exactly how you see me.”

And just like I thought, he’d known exactly what to do.

But he made me wait to get it! Something about not wanting me to regret it?

I tried to tell him I would never regret a single thing to do with him, but still he held the design close to his chest until now.

Well, until two weeks ago when he finally inked my skin in the quiet of his shop after hours.

I didn’t want to know what he’d chosen to put on my body right away. I wanted it to heal so that the first time I saw it, it was perfect. So Harper had been taking care of it for me and covering it with this obscenely dramatic gauze-like thing every day until it was ready to be unveiled.

It was a good thing the two of us had been busy lately, or else I might have been tempted to peek way sooner.

But instead, we’d been in meetings with my brother and Harper’s parents, and the Fergusons, of course.

Three families back in the same rooms after on and off negotiations looking to finalize a third leg to their merger.

None of them wanted to destroy Mar’s safety net, and this allowed SHarper Designs and Manufacturing the ability to hold onto their ownership while having some of the burden of maintaining a business that they had sordid history with taken off their shoulders.

Plus, Ox almost seemed giddy about the idea of having inside control of machinery and technology parts he’d been having to outsource for years.

Yep—leave it to my brother to get excited about control, but overall, things seemed to be working out for everyone.

Things still weren't official, but even the possibility had taken a ten-year load off of the Harper family’s shoulders.

A family who had coincidentally just gotten on a plane back to Connecticut, leaving just Harper and me.

And my new tattoo!

“ Vamos, Oso !” I said excitedly, defaulting to the pet name he’d earned in our year together after those brown bear eyes–and I guess now the hand drawn tattoo to match! “Today please. I’ll be old and gray before you rip this thing off me.”

“And married. With three kids and six grandkids and a nice, patient, very good-looking husband.” He said, painting the scene as clearly as he drew his art.

I snickered. “And I assume this husband and father of my children is…”

He nipped at my thigh, dragging his teeth across my skin until I giggled. “Me, you smartass!”

“Oh right, right.” I teased. But I was warm with the light of him considering me as his even in his hypothetical scenarios. “How could I forget?”

Gingerly, he began peeling the adhesive tapings of the gauze up at the sides while he crouched beside my half-naked body in his bedroom.

As the image etched into my skin became revealed to him alone, his warm lip came over the bone of my hip and his eyes flickered up to me one last time. Nervously, I realized. He was nervous to show me what he’d done. What he’d chosen for me.

“Ready?” he asked again, more for him than for me at this point.

My hand went to his hair, pushing through the curls and sweeping back around to the underside of his jaw so he would look at me. He held his breath.

“Like a gift,” I reminded him. Just like he told me when I’d given him his tattoo. “I will love anything you’ve given me, amor. So show me.”

He took a deep breath, a huge breath. Readying himself as if this was his first tattoo, not mine. And then he peeled the last barrier between him and me away. Letting me see into his mind. Letting me see what he saw in me.

And it was beautiful.

From waist to hip, running the side of my body was the creeping tendrils of a cracking bolt of lightning.

It bracketed out in several branches with smaller streaks surging from the main ones.

And periodically at the ends of different lightning rods, there were sprouting flowers, simple and beautiful.

As if that wasn’t enough, looking closer I could see that, drawn into the image of two unsuspecting streaks of lightning, were small words that read “Beautiful Storm.”

My breath shuddered, and tears pooled in my eyes. Harper was on me in a second. Gathering me up, his head pressed to my head, his nose on my nose, his words apologetic, of all things .

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I can cover it up. It’s mostly lines, it’ll be easy to change?—”

I kissed him, hoping my lips could convey what my reaction obviously wasn’t able to. When I pulled away and looked at him, he looked unconvinced.

“You think I’m beautiful?” I asked, happy– so happy.

He shook his head. “Baby, you know that. I think you’re the most precious thing.”

I smiled, but my emotion took over, more tears bursting free and making me laugh. “You think I’m a storm?”

Realization washed over him and finally he understood that I wasn’t crying because I hated it. I was crying because of him. Because all this time he had thought of me this way and I had no idea.

Ever since that day we promised ourselves to each other truly he had taken our new agreement as seriously as an oath, making good on our promises, easy and hard.

But somehow I suspected it was easy for Harper—my Harper—to rise to his feet and take my face in his hands to tell me another ode to our love.

“Alta, you are the most breathtaking wind that has ever blown into my life. You’re the most jarring mixture of beauty and strength I’ve ever known.

You’re the most decisive strike of fate that’s ever cut through my world,” he said.

“You are the most beautiful storm, baby. And anyone who gets the pleasure of having you wash over them should be damn grateful. Because I know I am. Forever.”

That word sounded like a promise falling off his lips.

“Forever,” I promised right back.