“Your girl ran off. She said she couldn’t take it anymore.”
I grit my teeth as I close my eyes for a moment. There’s no way in hell she’ll get her deposit back now, but it would have been nice to have been paid for the work I did on her.
“Sorry, man,” Carter says, his tone echoing his client’s sympathy. I open my eyes and look at them both before I shrug.
“Just another day in the life of karma.”
I crush the can between my hands in frustration as I walk out of the room, the sound of the tattoo gun firing up and taunting me.
At least one of us will get paid for a full appointment slot today.
Chapter Two
The shop closed about an hour ago, but instead of going home right away, I decided to take a walk. I need to blow off some steam from the loss of income fiasco or I’ll explode when I walk through the doors.
The only thing that I’ve ever loved in my entire life doesn’t deserve the wreckage that my foul mood would cause.
My outbursts of rage have become a point of contention in our relationship and I do my best to be a better man for her because that’s what she deserves.
I let out my breath as her favorite trinket shop comes into view. I know it’s closed for the night, but I decide to make my way toward it.
I can do some window shopping before Virulence and Vanity opens for business tomorrow. Maybe I can get her a gift that I know will make her smile.
That’s something she hasn’t done in a long time and I still have trouble reconciling if it’s because of me. I treat her as best as I can and have stopped taking out my frustrations of unfinished pieces and lost wages on her, which I had hoped would have fixed everything.
Verbally, of course.
I’ve never struck her.
She’s had enough of that in her life from people that have claimed they love her, whereas I honestly do.
I catch a hint of my reflection in the large display window when I finally arrive. My reflection stares back at me, a banal expression on his face, yet somehow cautiously optimistic.
My thoughts immediately go to my darling Snow. A name I never did like but because her mother was something of a moron, naming her for the first thing she saw through the hospital window after giving birth.
Snow has always been so proud of her name, though. When she was a child, she would say that the winter flurries were named after her and not the other way around. As a teenager, she took to dying her hair white and maintained the spectacle well into her almost twenties.
Even now, I take special care to keep her hair white as she always had been so fond of doing. Coincidentally, it helps to set off the ice blue color of her eyes and make her seem otherworldly.
Since I’ve always had a thing for vampire lore, it works out.
But as my eyes focus again, and I still see my reflection slightly, I think about how different we look and wonder what the fuck she ever saw in me.
Kenji Miura.
Heavily tattooed arms and legs, light brown, almond-shaped eyes, straight black hair, and a semi-permanent half-scowl always on my lips.
We look so different yet we’re so much alike, that I honestly believe that the only opposite of our attraction is our physical one.
Her skin is pale and flawless; mine is naturally tan and covered with colorful artwork.
Her mother gave birth to her here; mine gave birth to me in Tokyo.
She likes quiet nights in; I like drag racing and having a few beers with the people from work.
And somehow, in a world where things don’t make much sense to me anymore, she does.
I reach up and push away a stray strand of hair from my face before I force myself to rebuff my reflection and do what I came here to do—pinpoint something that might brighten her day tomorrow.