I shot him a half-smile. “Seems like you’re not a dick after all.”
The smirk on his face gave me a glimpse of the cheeky, arrogant Ink I had known for years. “Don’t kid yourself, woman. I’m still a dick.”
I had to laugh, and when my shoulders moved, Red scolded me. “Seriously. Do you want this phoenix to have a lazy eye?”
Ink snorted, and I could not stop laughing. It took a full five minutes before Red could start again.
“What about you?” Ink sat back down. “You were an addict too.”
I stared at the laminated floors, thinking back to the time when I was nothing more than a lost girl who had lived a lie. “I guess you can say I was the classic example of a girl with daddy issues.”
“Did he hurt you?”
I glanced up at him, the creases on his forehead a sign that his mind had already wandered to the worst-case scenario most imagined when a woman brought up daddy issues.
“Not me, no. In fact, if there was an award for world’s best dad, he deserved it.”
Red moved toward my left side, and the burn elevated the closer she got to my ribs. By the time I breathed in deeply, closing my eyes and trying to ignore the pain, she moved the needle back, more toward my shoulder blade.
“I was sixteen when the feds busted down our front door, charging inside while we sat at the dining room table eating dinner.” I tucked a strand of violet hair behind my ear. “Turns out that my perfect little daddy got his hands dirty with child pornography.”
“Jesus,” Ink muttered, righting himself in his seat.
“At first, I refused to believe it, but then the evidence started piling up until it was something I couldn’t ignore anymore.”
“I’m sorry, Neon.”
“Yeah.” I glanced down at my hands, nervously tugging at my cuticles. “There’s something about witnessing your dad get handcuffed and shoved into a cop car that kinda messes with your head. And the fact that my mom up and left, disappearing into thin air, didn’t help much.”
“She just left you?”
I nodded. “I stayed with my grandma for a while, until the streets sucked me in, welcoming its newest junkie.”
Placing my chin on my arms, childhood memories flooded past the gates of my mind. As a kid, it was the kind of memories you’d want to bottle and keep forever—the kind that would get you through tough times when venturing into the unknown of adulthood. But when my dad eventually pleaded guilty, admitting to all his unforgivable sins, all those good memories oxidized, leaving nothing but traces of lies. There were so many lies, and it made me question every fucking second he spent with me.”
I sighed. “My dad broke my heart. And cocaine was the only thing that could make me forget how fucked-up he really was.”
Ink didn’t say a word, just staring at me with those cognac eyes—rich, intense, intoxicating.
“You know,” he smiled, “together you and I have quite the colorful past.”
“That, we do.”
Silence settled between us, the only noise the buzz as Red continued to work. If it was anyone else who sat opposite me, it would have been one of those awkward silences, the ones where you kind of hoped a bomb would go off and take out the entire fucking block…including you. But not with him. It felt natural, as if the silence between us had a voice of its own, a way of speaking without saying a word.
Lost in my own thoughts, a scary place if it wasn’t for the comfort of Ink’s presence, I hardly registered the pain from the needle anymore.
The machine stopped buzzing, and I glanced over my shoulder, unaware of how much time had passed. “I’m still good if you want to do some more.”
Red wiped her arm across her forehead. “You might be good, but I’m starting to see double. Three hours is where I draw the line and demand a break.”
“Three hours?”
“Yup. I’m guessing two more sessions and we’ll have this baby done.” She started wiping some salve on my back. “I don’t want to rush it. The shading on the wings needs to be perfect if we want to blend it with scars.”
I sat up while Red placed the protective wrapping on my back.
“Take this off tomorrow, and we can continue again the day after.”