“I have an appointment,” I say stiffly.
“What about you?” Maverick asks, jerking his chin at Harper. “Need some more ink, little mama?”
“I’m just here to hold his hand,” she says, but she’s staring at the designs on the walls with longing in her eyes.
“Yeah, her too,” I say. “Whatever she wants.”
“You don’t have to—”
“I know,” I say. “Just get something.”
She nods and turns to Mad Dog. “Can you do mine?”
A couple of the guys laugh and punch Maverick’s shoulders. “What are you talking about?” he asks. “I gave you some of my best stuff.”
“Yeah, turns out your best stuff wasn’t that good,” she says.
I expect the guys to laugh again, but they fall silent, just watching what their newest member will do.
“Not how I remember it,hyna,” he says, then nods to his brother. “This one’s the reason I’m ambidextrous. She likes it when you put a finger in her while you’re working. The buzz of the machine and the pain gets her off.”
“And that’s why I wanted your brother to do mine,” she says, batting her lashes at Maverick. “I’m with someone now, and I’m not looking to cheat. I don’t know if I could resist if your hands were on me.”
Now the guys are laughing. I marvel at Harper’s easy way with these thugs. She’s not even nervous when alone in a room with five gangsters. I’m fucking nervous around them, and I’m not a woman.
“Come on,” Mad Dog says, opening one of the curtains. “We got both machines ready.”
I take the other seat, and Maverick talks to the guys for another minute before coming back. Their gangster friends leave, and then it’s just the four of us.
“Can you close the curtain between us?” I ask.
Maverick pulls them closed around our chairs.
Harper laughs. “I’ve seen you naked, Preston. What’s the big deal?”
“What are you getting?” I ask.
“I don’t know,” she says. “Maybe… A sunflower.”
“That’d be cool.”
“I can do that today,” Mad Dog says. “Come back in a few weeks and we’ll start filling in the color.”
I lay back, and Maverick picks up the tattoo gun and shakes his head. “You’re a brave motherfucker.”
“What are you getting?” Harper asks.
“Just a name,” I answer.
It doesn’t matter if Dolly left. She’s on my skin, in my soul, and she’ll never be gone. I might as well stop fighting it.
For a few months, I thought Harper could be everything she wasn’t. Harper’s here. She’s not like Dolly.
Dolly would never be happy with a hideous beast. She deserves a prince, someone as flawless as she is. If she wanted me, she’d still be here. I thought, for a minute, that I could catch her. But she wanted fame, and that comes with her pick of men, all those tattooed rock stars with perfect faces that she’s probably fucking on the road. I could never compete with that, could never get a Dolly Beckett.
I could get Harper, though, so I did. I took her, at first just to piss Royal off, but then because I wanted her. She didn’t care that I was ugly. She made me feel useful, even human again. I wasn’t just the beast inside his castle, eaten from the inside out by impotent rage at his fate. I had purpose with Harper. I could fix her, show her that I could help, that what’s left of me could be worthy of what was left of her.
But she left, too. She found the rest of herself, the pieces Royal had kept, and she put herself back together. She’s whole again. I’m still only half a man, a shell of who I was.