The Strongest Steel (9 page)

He’d known from the moment he’d seen her that first night that doing this was going to be something special, something he wanted to be part of.

Trent removed his black baseball hat, smoothed his hair down, and then put the cap back on backward. Some god-awful country song, likely about heartbreak, moonshine, or true love, was playing on her iPod. Her choice, not his. That shit made his ears bleed.

He pulled on a pair of black, nitrile gloves, picked up the tattoo machine, and prepared to start the first line, taking a moment to smooth on some Vaseline to stop the bleeding that would occur and help his needle penetrate Harper’s skin without friction.

As he’d planned the tattoo out the previous evening, he’d thrown out the way he’d normally approach a tattoo of this scale. He wanted the first session to have real impact. He also wanted to avoid some of the more painful parts if possible, as this was going to be a long journey and he didn’t want to make the anticipation of future appointments worse.

“Here we go, Harper. Take a deep breath and remember to hold still. If it gets really bad, just let me know and I’ll stop as quickly as I can, given where I’m at. The first twenty minutes are going to be the worst. Ready?”

“Ready.”

She flinched at the drone of the equipment. He reached out and rubbed the small of her back. “Don’t worry, darlin’. It’s just the needles movin’.”

He waited until her body relaxed again. “Take nice slow breaths for me, darlin’. No hyperventilating on my bed, okay? Starting in three, two, one…”

The buzz of his favorite machine vibrated in his hand. Nothing else felt like this. He stretched the skin taut and lowered the needles to Harper’s back, relishing that first moment of contact, a gentle pressure that every artist had to master to minimize the pain. Surplus ink puddled around the tip, blurring the lines he had to follow. The pigment flowed as the needles went in and out of Harper’s virgin skin. He lifted the needles and wiped the surface to clear away the unwanted ink. His hand was confident and steady as he drew the first couple of lines that would become the top portion of the sword handle.

Dipping the machine back into the ink, Trent paused for a minute. “How are you doing? You remembering to breathe?”

“I just keep telling myself that I’ve survived worse.”

He put his irons back down on the table and slid his stool around to the top of the bed. Lowering his head down to her eye level, he waited for her to look at him.

“You. Are. Amazing. I’ve tattooed thousands of people and not one of them was braver than you are being now. For what it’s worth, I am incredibly proud of you.”

The look in her eyes told him she didn’t believe him. And wasn’t that a damn shame.

*   *   *

He was staring into her eyes. “Thank you,” she said, and lowered her head back onto her forearms. She didn’t deserve his praise. Someone who ran and was still running wasn’t brave. Merriam-Webster would probably tag her as a walking example of cowardice, unable to face her attacker or let anyone touch her.

The drone started again and the pain took her breath away. Harper focused on a knot in the wooden flooring and counted to five with every breath. Trent had promised her that endorphins would kick in at some point, but unless they were laced with some heavy-duty pain meds, they weren’t going to do much.

The first hour passed in a blur, the pain becoming more bearable as she adjusted to it, with Trent checking in frequently to see how she was doing. He told her tattooing trivia and said he didn’t like the term “tattoo gun,” hating the connotation that the tool of his trade was a weapon. A tattoo, he said, had never killed anyone. He preferred the terms “tattoo machine” or “irons.” On ink versus pigment he really didn’t care one way or another. It was a colorful liquid that was left behind in the skin, and the fact that ink contained pigment made the whole conversation kind of moot. He hated the word “tatted” to describe someone who had tattoos, liked to be called a tattoo artist rather than a tattooer—which, in his view, sounded like a
Star Wars
planet—and hated someone bringing in a picture of someone else’s tattoo and asking him to re-create it.

Though listening to Trent was soothing, at the word “weapon,” a trickle of ice passed through Harper’s veins. Trying to shake it, she went back to counting her breaths. She tried to focus on an intricate realist painting on the opposite wall—a hand clutching a piece of fabric. She closed her eyes, but behind her eyelids, images started to flicker. She opened her eyes to escape them, but still they came.

She could vaguely hear Trent in the distance asking if she was okay. He sounded so far away, like he was at the other end of a really long tunnel. And she was back there. Lying on their bed, Nathan yelling at her. She felt the cold edge of the blade slice through her skin. No resistance. A hot knife through butter. A wave of bile started to rise.

Harper blinked back the images furiously, refocusing on the knot on the floor. Counting wasn’t working. Her breath became shallow. She tried to focus on Trent. He’d said hyperventilating was bad. Nathan’s scent flooded her, the smell of alcohol mixed with body wash and sweat ripe in her nostrils. His rant reached a crescendo in her ears. She was a whore. She could never leave him. “You’re my bitch. Nobody else’s. You’ll never get away from me.”

“Stop!” she sobbed, putting her hands over her ears.

*   *   *

Trent pulled the machine away, ditching it on the table as he quickly slid around to the top of the bed. She sounded like a wounded animal crying out for help.

Her hands were over her ears. Christ, he’d considered there was a chance that the tattoo was too close to what she had already gone through, but thinking it and seeing it were two horribly different things.

He desperately wanted to hug her close and kiss away her demons, but touching her was probably not the smartest move right now. He felt useless.

“Harper, sweetheart,” he said softly, “can you look at me?”

Her shoulders were still trembling, her entire body rigid as her forehead pressed down into the leather.

He needed to touch her. She needed someone to touch her. Harper had carried all of this alone for too long. He took off his gloves and placed his hands on top of hers, covering her ears. He kissed the top of her head.

He coaxed her hands from her ears, his thumbs rubbing her wrists. “Hey, sweetheart. I need you to look at me.”

Harper raised her head slowly. Trent gently wiped her tears from her cheeks.

“I’m sorry,” she choked out, not looking at him.

“Wanna tell me what just happened, darlin’?” He smoothed the hair from her face.

“I ended up back there. Like I always do.”

“Let’s take a break. Grab some water.” He didn’t want to push her into some psychotic break. They should probably stop for the day.

“No.” Harper pushed up on her forearms. “I want you to keep going. I have to stop this cycle. If I leave this bed right now, we both know I won’t come back.”

The rest of the session was uneventful as they fell into a comfortable rhythm of tattooing and talking. Trent wiped Harper’s back gently to remove any surplus ink before helping her off the table.

“Holy shit.” Harper’s mouth was open and her eyes were wide and bright as she twisted and turned in front of the mirror. “You weren’t kidding, were you?”

The black lines of the sword, granite, and flames really stood out, as he’d intended, and that they were angry looking and likely very tender did nothing to dampen the visual impact of the progress they had made in the session.

“About what?” Watching her reaction was priceless.

“You really are amazing at this.” She looked straight at him.

It meant more than any of the competitions he had won or awards he’d been given. It almost made up for his parents’ only grudging acceptance of the career he loved or Yasmin’s disappointment in his lack of success. This was why he did it. For people like Harper. Warmth spread inside him as she looked at him. Shit, he was turning into such a pussy. But he didn’t care.

“Thank you, Trent. I’m not really capable of stringing a better sentence together right now, but it means so much more to me than I can put into words.” Her voice was filled with awe.

“My pleasure, darlin’.”

He took his time gently applying the vitamin E cream evenly across her back. Usually putting lotion on freshly tattooed skin didn’t affect him, but the sight of the black lines raised up off her skin, red in places, was like a sickening punch in the gut. Being the cause of them was discomforting. He pressed the gauze pads over her skin and used surgical tape to stick them down.

“You have someone to come help you peel these off in a couple of hours? You’re going to have to wash this three times a day with antibacterial soap, then put on more of the cream.”

He helped Harper put her shirt back on, gently sliding the sleeve up her arm so it didn’t brush against her sensitive skin.

“My best friend said she’d help me out. She’s going to come over later.”

He realized, suddenly, that he wouldn’t see her again for a couple of weeks. The feeling didn’t sit real well.

“You want to take my cell phone number in case you have questions or anything?”

“Great idea,” Harper answered quickly. Maybe he wasn’t the only one feeling something between them.

Within moments, Harper’s phoned beeped. “That’ll just be me,” he said.

He felt her hand on his wrist. It was the first time she’d touched him without him making the first move. It felt so right that Trent had to temper his huge grin, taking a moment to absorb the sensation of her soft hand against his skin.

“I’m sorry for the spinout earlier. That hasn’t happened in a long time,” Harper said.

“Don’t sweat it, Harper. This can’t be easy. Makes me admire you even more.”

A soft blush crept up her cheeks. He remembered the first time he’d seen it, when she was carrying the pastry box. She looked even more delicious now, and it was hard to resist leaning forward to test whether those pink lips tasted as sweet as he imagined.

She paused, looking shyly from under lowered eyelids. “I should go. Good-bye, Trent.”

“I’ll be seeing you, Harper.” Soon, he hoped. Two weeks was just too damn long.

Chapter Five

“Hey, Harper,” Joanie said, as she and Harper were cleaning down the coffee machine, “could I talk to you about something?” The café was closing up, and besides Drea, who was in the office counting the cash, they were the only ones left.

“Sure, what’s on your mind?” Joanie had worked there longer than Harper, though she’d only just turned twenty.

“Well, you always seem so smart and organized. I wondered if you could help me with something.”

Joanie pulled some crumpled sheets of paper from the front of her apron and smoothed them out on the surface of the counter, using her palm to press them flat. It was an essay with a large D- in the top corner.

“I don’t really want everyone to know, but I never graduated high school. Long story. I decided to try community college to see if I could make up the classes, but … it’s really hard for me.”

Harper took a deep breath and reached across the counter, taking the paper so she could read the teacher’s comments. “Going back to school is the most awesome thing you can do. What do you need help on?”

“All of it, really. I can’t seem to get organized, I keep missing deadlines, and I’m getting shitty grades. I thought it might be easier now I’m a little older. But … no.”

Her heart pounded like it was about to beat right out of her chest. Harper stared down at the essay in her hand. It was such an innocent thing. Some lines on paper, but to her it was a crossroad. She could either take a step forward, reclaim a small part of who she was, or turn away. “Well, for sure, I can help with managing your time, especially on assignments. And we can take each piece of homework as it comes, see what we can do.”

Tears filled Joanie’s eyes. “You’d really do that? Can we talk more at the pool hall tonight?”

Harper sighed. She always avoided social gatherings, anything that put her in the path of too many people in an unknown environment. Until now, she’d declined José’s standing invitation to hang out with her coworkers, and had stood firm in the face of Drea’s constant persuasion. But the look of hope on Joanie’s face made it hard to say no.

“Of course. Bring a notebook and a list of your current assignments, and we’ll find somewhere quiet to sit and figure it out.”

Being somewhere so public was her worst nightmare. It was too hard to avoid contact with so many people milling around. She watched Joanie dart through the swinging doors into the back, and hoped she could find the courage to keep her promise.

*   *   *

Trent lay back on the sofa in his office, rubbed his hands over his face, and closed his eyes. If he’d known that Eric would flake on opening this morning, he’d never have gone out drinking with Cujo last night.

A knock on the door made him groan. Pixie walked in. “Good news. Your last appointment just canceled, forfeited his deposit and everything.”

Hallelujah!

“Cujo, Lia, and me were thinking of heading out to the Long Cue if you’re interested. Lia’s almost done and Cujo just needs another half hour.”

Crap. What he really wanted to do was go home to bed, but he found himself agreeing.

“Sure. I’ll be there. Maybe just a quick beer,” he said.

“Lightweight.” Pixie smirked at him. Easy for her to say. A decade stood between them.

“Now hit the light and leave me alone until it’s time to go.” Throwing his arm over his eyes, Trent tried to get back to his sleep.

The power nap was over in the blink of an eye, and after an uncomfortable drive, his body squashed into Pixie’s matchbox of a car, they arrived at the Long Cue.

“I reserved us a table in my name,” Pixie said, ducking under Trent’s arm as he held the heavy, red door open for them all. “I’ll set up a tab and we can split it later. Pitcher?”

The pool hall was a long, narrow dive of a place that was never going to end up in a tourist guidebook. A bar ran along one side and six pool tables ran perpendicular to it down the other. The walls were a yellowish white, a testament to the smoking era and a derelict landlord.