Evanescent Ink (Copperline #4) (2 page)

She was a visionary of sorts. She helped me solidify the gig at the Copperline, encouraging me to give it my all, even if I was a little concerned about burning the candle at both ends. My tattoo parlor—Ink, Inc.—had become fairly well-known in the area to the point that I had to hire a second artist, Neil, and then a piercer, Giselle. Giselle barely lasted a week, thanks to Justin’s manwhore ways. He called her Gis and was in her pants within days, but quickly moved on. As did
‘Gis.’

Shortly thereafter, I hired Raven.

Maggie liked Neil. She saw him as someone who could free up my time. Someone who could shoulder my day-to-day responsibility, allowing me to follow my path to stardom.

She even like my first piercer, short-lived as that was.

Maggie did
not
like Raven.

The depth of her overt animosity surprised me. After all, Maggie was somewhat partial to chicks. She was always pointing out hotties to me, asking if I’d like this one or that one, which never failed to turn me on. She excelled at bringing some truly choice pussy home with us. She could walk into a crowded bar and come out with the best of the best.

However, Raven was the first girl Maggie truly showed obvious distaste for. Raven, with her purple hair and violet eyes. Raven, with her eyebrow ring and that alluring little piercing at the corner of her lower lip. With her corsets and lace cuffs and steampunk vibe. She began as my employee, but she became a friend. Something about her struck a kindred tone inside me with her tattoos and piercings.

Maggie was
very
clear in her dislike, though, which made things extremely uncomfortable at times. She would make scathing comments about something Raven wore to work, saying it looked like a Halloween costume. Raven definitely stood out with a style all her own. I actually thought it was pretty fucking hot, but the one time I let that slip, Maggie looked like she wanted to rip my dick off.

So, to avoid conflict, I did what I could to keep my personal life away from my work life. To keep Maggie out of Ink. She was more interested in my road to fame anyway, so it wasn’t really that hard. Ink paid the bills, but it wasn’t going to make me a star. Music was.

Maggie kept me hungering for it. She made sure I was always geared towards the prize. Aside from Ink, she took care of the other aspects of my life so I could focus on the success of the band. She nurtured my creativity and took care of me. She made sure I ate so I didn’t get weak. She made sure I slept so I didn’t get worn out.

And she made sure I had plenty of pussy around so I didn’t wander.

At first, it all worked. Nobody understood it, and the other guys gave me shit for it. They knew she kept me on a pretty short leash, but they didn’t understand what she was doing. They didn’t get how her control kept me focused. They didn’t see how much of my drive was a direct result of her belief in me. Her belief that the Mofos could be superstars.

Somehow in all of this, though, she kind of turned me into her bitch.

It was quite spectacular, really, and it happened without me even realizing it. Once I did, I wanted to push it out of my mind because it began to mess with my head. The more she supported me, the more I felt like I needed her to make it. The more I started to worry that I didn’t have what it took. I started wondering if there was more to this wild sex fest she was always laying at my feet. I even began fighting streaks of jealousy towards the girls she brought to bed with us, sometimes feeling like the third wheel.

Yet I did nothing. She had taken such control of my life that I didn’t know how I’d go on without her. I needed her, even though I slowly grew to resent so many things about her. I began to feel vulnerable and paranoid, constantly worrying about what Maggie wanted… or
who
Maggie wanted. It was like I’d handed her my balls on a silver platter. I was a slave to her, policed by the prospect of her leaving me and rewarded with sex.

She
owned
me.

I doubled my efforts to be the best. The best boyfriend. The best lead guitarist. The best sex toy, more or less. I did whatever she wanted and refrained from doing anything she didn’t. She had me wrapped around her finger. Twisted, really. Tight and harsh like the hold she had on my nads.

We went on like that for well over another year. A year of mind games with Maggie pulling me back just to push me away, toying with me like a cat with a mouse.

Until she dumped me right in the reception area of the shop, not caring that the room was full of my employees and my customers while she berated me for not being what she thought I should be. For not living up to my potential as a musician. For not pushing myself and my Bangin’ Mofo brethren to seek fame and fortune on stage.

And, apparently, for not having a vagina. She was done with dick and I had one, so she was done with me. I’d been such a shit boyfriend that I’d turned her into a full-bore lesbian.

In moments, she disintegrated my self-respect and shredded my ego. Everyone else stood there in shock, like they were watching a car wreck, unable to pull their gazes away from the carnage of my life.

Everyone except Raven.

“Just get the fuck out of here, Maggie.” Low and firm. A total
don’t-fuck-with-me
vibe emanated from her dark little frame. For a second, I thought she was going to throw down.

Maggie just cocked her eyebrow, looking Raven up and down.

“Whatever, you little freak,” she sneered, then turned and walked to the door. “He’s finally free if
you
still want him.”

And she was gone.

I was paralyzed by what had just happened. Completely blindsided. My shop was silent. Pin-dropping shit. Nobody moved.

“Drew?” I heard Raven say from behind me. “Are you—”

Pulled from my shock, I shook my head with a tight grimace. “Everyone get the fuck out.”

“Drew, maybe—”

“Go! Get the fuck out!” I shouted. A couple people, potential would-be clients who probably wouldn’t be now, scurried for the door. Neil shifted uncomfortably.

Raven folded her arms over her chest and gave me a hard look, her narrowed eyes dark and stormy. “I don’t think you should be alone right now.”

“Fine,” I snarled and turned towards my office to grab my coat, “you won’t go, I will.”

“Drew—” she tried again, but I ignored her. I pretended like she wasn’t even there, blocking out everything around me as I pushed past her, focused on leaving. I didn’t want to talk. I didn’t want companionship. I wanted to seethe. To try to come to grips with what just happened.

So I left. I escaped their sympathy. I made a beeline down the street to the liquor store and bought a bottle of tequila, then climbed up the fire escape to the roof over Ink where I sat and drank and wondered why my life suddenly seemed so fucked.

I should have been relieved when she ended it after the way she controlled me. I shouldn’t have wallowed in the remorse and the regret and the what-ifs. I shouldn’t have flipped out like I did. I shouldn’t have even been surprised. The signs had all been there, right before my eyes. She didn’t love me. She never had.

Yet when she coldly turned away, she stripped me of all that strength she’d built up around me. I felt naked and uncertain. She ripped my heart out, stomped on it a few times, and threw it back in my face as she walked out the door.

Her last scathing glare tumbled through my mind as I sat on top of the building finishing off the tequila and watching the world go on around me.

Eventually Neil left. After a long while, well after the sun went down, Raven finally did, too. She scanned the quiet streets of Ophir for some time before climbing in her Jeep and driving away.

Then I came back into my deserted shop with a plan in mind.

LOVE SUCKS.

Straight and to the point. Maybe not the most artistic ink to grace one’s forearm, but it was better than my buddy Denny’s WANKER tat.

I dipped the gun and lowered it to the skin, but the lines blurred. Then they went double. I blinked hard against my fierce intoxication, thinking for a moment that I maybe shouldn’t have had that last swig from the bottle of Cuervo. Or the last ten. Nasty shit, but I was feeling nasty. Angry. Frustrated and confused.

I rubbed my eyes and tried again to focus. To aim the tip of the gun to the stenciled lettering. I knew better than to get this schnockered before trying to do a tat. I knew better than to get drunk and
get
a tat.

So it was kind of a double whammy to drink almost an entire fifth of tequila by myself and attempt my own ink.

With the first sting of the needle in my forearm, my hand holding the gun jerked.

Fuck.

I took a deep breath and tried again and missed the line.

Fucking fuck.

I tried again and forced my shaking hand to steady.

My shop was empty. Way after hours. Not that I wanted help, but there was nobody around even if I did. I wanted to do this now, though. I
had
to do this now. I had to remember forever just how shitty I felt right that very minute.

About halfway around the letter O, the bells on the shop door rang.

Dammit
.

I could have sworn I locked up after I came in.
Didn’t I? Shit.
I was so drunk I couldn’t remember. It was about one in the morning and I was twenty sheets to the wind. I’d been drinking since about four in the afternoon.

I heard heels tapping down the hall of my tattoo parlor until they hit the doorway of my station.

My first thought was
Maggie?

But turning my head I saw Raven leaning up against the door frame. Intense concern still darkened her eyes, thickly lined with jet black. Her deep purple hair, lit with a few streaks of rich pink, the latest in her rainbow of color changes, fell softly to frame her pale ivory face. Her lower lip caught in her teeth as she studied me closely.

“Go away, Raven,” I slurred, and her eyes widened. “I want to be alone.”

“So you can mutilate yourself?” she asked with a raised, perfectly arched, pierced brow.

“Fuck off,” I muttered, although I knew she wouldn’t leave. Over the past couple years, we’d become buddies, in spite of Maggie’s obvious dislike, and Raven was simply too compassionate to leave a friend in pain. I still tried, though. “I know what I’m doing.”

“You look pretty trashed. I doubt you could even write your name with a pen, much less do clean lines with a gun, especially on your own arm.”

I scowled at her. “Fuck off.”

Instead of listening to me, she grabbed a rolling stool and sat, scooting closer and eyeing the stenciled script on my arm. With a frown, she looked up at me.

“Love sucks?” she murmured, but I just glared at her, wishing her away. In vain, apparently because she touched my hand, stilling the gun. “She’s not worth this, Drew.”

“Would you just go away?” I tried again, toying with my labret piercing in an effort not to lose my shit. I didn’t want her friendship right now. I didn’t want to talk. I just wanted to hurt. To wallow in my self-pity and reproach. To mark myself forever as a reminder so I’d never let myself feel this way again.

Raven gave me a long, hard look, then gazed down at my arm, running her fingernail just beside the line I’d already fucked up. She heaved out a gentle sigh, grabbed some gloves and slipped them on, then reached out for the gun.

“I'll do it.”

“You’re not a tattoo artist. You do piercings.”

“I’ve done a little. Besides, you’re not yourself enough to even hit the lines, so I’m more of an artist than you at the moment.”

It was a shit solution, but it was a solution. Truthfully, I didn’t want the tat to look good anyway, so it didn’t matter if she fucked it up. I wanted it to be ugly and jagged like the way I felt.

I handed her the gun and sat back in the chair, extending my arm. Always cool and collected, Raven rolled a little closer and went to work.