Pretty in Ink (Voretti Family Book 3) (3 page)

“Good.” Caleb rolled his neck, trying to release the tension, but his muscles were strung too tight.

“And that’s down to you. I’d have pulled everyone off the case. Six weeks as detective, and you’re already doing great things.” Rich’s grin disappeared, leaving a too-perceptive stare in its place. “You’re a natural.”

“Thanks.” Caleb forced himself to hold still and look his boss in the eye, even though the last thing he wanted to do was listen to Rich talking about how talented he was. Because it had nothing to do with natural gifts. Caleb had known Polke was guilty because he understood how the guy’s mind worked. He’d grown up with parents exactly like Polke. Not murderers, but irresponsible narcissists who were ruled by their emotions. Whatever they wanted, they took, regardless of the consequences to others. He could be the same if he let his mental guard slip.

“Don’t like compliments, huh?” Rich’s grin returned. “Don’t worry. Most of the time, I’ll stick to chewing you out. But today I’m sending you home early. Tommy can give Polke the good news.”

“That’s okay. I have some paperwork—”

“When you deal with these types of cases, emotions run high. You’re still new to this. You’re not numb to the horror show yet. Take the rest of the day off.”

Hell, no
. Without the organized chaos of the downtown precinct to distract him, he’d be trapped in his own head—the last place he wanted to be. “I’m fine. Really.”

Rich gave Caleb the steely-eyed glare every cop had in his repertoire. “That wasn’t a suggestion, Detective. It was an order.”

“Yes, sir.” Caleb had to force the words out of his throat. Rich was watching him carefully, like maybe he was wondering if Caleb’s strange behavior wasn’t due to inexperience after all, so there was nothing to do but walk down the hall and out the door.
 

He got in his car, intending to go home, but instead found himself approaching the street where he’d last seen Liv. She was so damn impulsive. She’d probably seen an advertisement for the tattoo shop and decided—what the hell—might as well permanently mark my body. He put more thought into which movie he was going to watch on Friday night than she did into major life choices.
 

Not that it was his business. Liv clearly wasn’t interested in his input on the matter.
 

The storefront came into view.
 

He wasn’t going to stop. He was only cruising by, taking the scenic route home. But then the door opened, and CJ strolled out. He stopped for long enough to light a cigarette, then continued down the block. Alone.

Why was Liv still dating that waste of space? When Caleb had seen CJ make his move at Ella’s birthday party six months ago, he’d been sure Liv would kick him to the curb. Otherwise Caleb never would’ve left her there unsupervised after promising Rafe that he’d keep an eye on his sister.
 

But he hadn’t been able to stay in the same room as Liv. Not when she’d been shooting him flirty glances and finding all kinds of excuses to touch him. Not when she was so obviously a woman instead of the kid he liked to pretend she was.
 

Caleb pulled over in front of a deli. Ignoring the loading zone sign, he cut the SUV’s engine. “Hey!”

CJ kept walking.

Caleb shot out of the SUV. He’d left Liv at that party with CJ, which meant this was his fault. And he was going to fix it. “Yo! CJ!”

The hipster prince took his time turning around, taking a long drag on his cigarette first. “What?”

“Where is she?”

“Who?”

Caleb moved in. He might be a homicide detective now, but he’d spent plenty of time dealing with petty thugs exactly like the one in front of him. He knew how to use his height, his muscle, and his arctic gaze to make it clear who was in charge.

CJ looked up. He must’ve finally realized that Caleb had four inches and twenty pounds of muscle on him, because he swallowed whatever smart remark had been about to come out of his mouth. “If you’re talking about Liv, she’s inside. Decided she wanted a tattoo.” He widened his eyes, like he had no idea where that crazy idea had come from. “I told her to slow her roll, but you know how that girl gets. When she wants something, she’s gotta have it now.”
 

Caleb breathed in through his nose. Slow. Steady. Forcing his body to relax whether it wanted to or not. “If she’s inside getting a tattoo, why are you out here?”

“You know. Places to go. People to see.” CJ feigned to the left, trying to get past Caleb, but he was slow and stupid.
 

“See them another time.”

“What’s your problem?”

Walk away
, said the ten years Caleb had spent conditioning himself not to think too hard about Liv. But he couldn’t. Not with his blood surging through his veins, commanding him to do his job. To protect. “My problem is, your girlfriend is afraid of needles. She needs some support.”
 

CJ’s gaze shifted away from Caleb. “She’s not my girlfriend anymore.”

Time slowed, like CJ had pulled a .22 out of the waistband of his skinny jeans. The timing of the break-up made Caleb all kinds of uneasy. “She was your girlfriend this morning.”

“Yeah.” CJ glanced toward
Permanent Ink
, twitchy as a tweaker in withdrawal. “Well, it was more responsibility than I could take. I’m only twenty-two. I’m not ready for
 
a wife, kids, and a house in the suburbs. I gotta be free, you know?”

Asshole
. “Yeah. Like the Skynyrd song.”

“See. I knew you’d get me.” CJ gave him a smarmy bros-before-hoes smirk, and hot rage surged through Caleb’s veins.

He forced it down. Except he must not have gotten it all, because CJ backed up a step, his face going whiter than the dead body Caleb had found his first day on patrol.
 

“Look, man—no disrespect to Liv. I gotta live my life, that’s all.”

Caleb took another slow breath, planning exactly what he was going to say so he didn’t accidentally go off on CJ.
Sure. I get it.
Short and sweet. Then he’d go home, like he should’ve done in the first place.

“It wasn’t gonna work out for me and Liv anyway,” CJ said. “She plays at being alternative, but inside she’s exactly like all the other chicks out there, desperate to find a man to take care of her.”

Caleb couldn’t remember moving, but somehow he was right up in CJ’s face. “You want to live your life? Good. But here’s how it’s gonna be. You stay away from Liv. You don’t touch her, you don’t come near her, you don’t even call her. After today, as far as you’re concerned, she doesn’t exist. Understand?”

“Chill, man.” CJ held up both hands in the universal gesture for surrender, backstepping as fast as he could. “You’ve got nothing to worry about. I don’t want your girl.”

“She’s not my girl.”

“Sticking to that just-friends story, huh?” Now that he was out of range, CJ’s smirk returned. “Well don’t worry. I’ll stay away from your
friend
.”

*

“Uh, lady? You can open your eyes now.”

The unfamiliar male voice brought Liv out of her trance. The buzz of the tattoo machine had faded to silence. Her eyes were clamped shut, her hands were clenched around the arms of the chair, and her bicep burned like she’d been branded, but she’d done it. She’d faced her fears and gotten a tattoo.

Slowly, she unclenched her muscles. She eased her eyes open, but kept them pointed in front of her, at the tattoo artist she was only now seeing for the first time.
 

He was in his mid-thirties, with two full sleeves of swirling red and blue designs that looked like the ocean on fire.

 
She had a vision of a dress. Azure silk with carmine accents. The skirt would billow as she walked, like an ocean wave, and—

“You gonna take a look?” Ocean On Fire gestured toward her arm.

“Of course.” She was strangely reluctant to turn. She couldn’t remember which design she’d chosen; things had been fuzzy for a while. What if she’d accidentally pointed to something purple and yellow? She didn’t want to live her whole life with an acid-trip butterfly on her arm.

No. She was being ridiculous. She might have been out of it, but she wouldn’t have chosen anything truly terrible. Her brain could pick flattering colors even in the throes of a full-blown panic attack.

She swiveled her head to the left, bringing the area into her peripheral vision.

All black. That was good. No acid-trip colors to worry about. Except…

Her stomach plunged toward the polished concrete floor, leaving the rest of her body behind. The black ink didn’t trace out the delicate wings of a butterfly or the petals of a flower.

There was a name printed across her bicep in bold cursive letters.

Caleb
.

L
IV
STARED
AT
her arm, waiting for the letters to rearrange themselves into a hummingbird or a flower. She’d even settle for some obscure Sanskrit symbol that meant peace. But the ink remained stubbornly immobile.

How on earth had she ended up with Caleb’s name on her arm? She was sure she’d pointed to a butterfly.

Seventy percent sure.

Heart thudding with panic, she searched the room for the one person who might be able to explain, but CJ was nowhere to be seen. “The guy who was with me. Where is he?”

“He took off.”

“Took off? As in, he
left
?”

Ocean On Fire nodded.

Liv sprang out of her chair. “I’m going to
kill
him!”

“Hey!” Ocean On Fire looked alarmed. “I still gotta wash that and wrap it for you.”

Think, Liv. Think. What happened?

A couple of hours in, CJ had started complaining that she was squeezing his hand too hard. She’d let go, and he’d taken off, muttering something. He must’ve gone outside for a cigarette. Or maybe he’d needed coffee. He’d probably told her, but she hadn’t had room in her head for anything other than the mechanized hum of the tattoo machine. “How long has he been gone?”

“You should really let me finish. If you don’t keep the area clean and damp, you can lose color, and—”

“Where did he go?”

“He didn’t tell you?”

“I was kind of busy getting poked with needles.”
 

Ocean On Fire just stood there, not volunteering any information—yet another guy who was frustrating her.
 

Fine. She’d find CJ herself.

She rummaged in her hemp bag for her cell phone, working with only her right hand because she was afraid to move the side with the tattoo. Why was there so much crap in her bag? She was going to clean it out as soon as she got home. For real this time.

Finally, she made contact. She dialed CJ’s number and pressed the phone to her ear, clenching the case and wishing it was his neck. If he thought he was getting laid tonight, he was sadly mistaken.

It rang four times before he finally picked up.
 

“Hey, babe.” CJ sounded cautious, like she was some crazy ex he’d run into at the grocery store, and he was afraid she was going to shove him into the pyramid of Spam. “What’s up?”

“What’s
up
? What’s up is that you ditched me while I was being repeatedly stabbed in the arm!”

“Yeah. I guess we need to talk.”

“No kidding. You can start with where the hell you are and why you’re not here.”

“C’mon, babe. You know I can’t deal with that kind of pressure.”

“I wasn’t squeezing your hand
that
hard.”

He sighed. “Look, babe. We’ve had fun together. You’re wild in bed. But I’m not ready to commit. I mean, at first it was kinda cool. Flattering, you know? But then I started to think about it. Like, what if you expected me to propose or some shit?”

She clenched the phone hard enough that it was probably cutting a permanent impression into her palm. “CJ, I swear to God if you don’t tell me what you’re talking about in the next two seconds, I’m going to strangle you right through this phone line!”

“Inking my name on your arm is so…permanent.”

“And that’s another thing! How did I end up with your name when I was supposed to be getting a butterfly?”

“A butterfly?” CJ snorted. “No, babe. You pointed at the your-man’s-name-here tat.”

“Are you kidding me? Why didn’t you
say
something?”

“I said you should probably think about it.”

“But you didn’t say
why
.” The reality of the situation hit her, leaving her weak and dizzy. She put one hand to the wall to support herself. “I have your name on my
arm
.
Forever
.”

“So it was an accident? Not some crazy play to get a ring out of me?” CJ had the nerve to sound skeptical.

“Of course it was an accident!”

“Okay. Well, if you want to hook up later—”

“Hook up?” Her voice went so high Ocean on Fire cringed. “Are you kidding me?”

“Naw. I mean, as long as you’re sure you’re not gonna go all Bridezilla crazy on me, there’s no reason we can’t pick up where we left off.”

“Actually, CJ, there is.” Her heart beat fast and hard, but it felt nothing like her earlier panic attack. Her head was totally clear.
 

CJ didn’t love her. He didn’t even care about her enough to give her the basic courtesy of a heads-up before taking off. They’d never been right together, and every effort she’d made to turn herself into the girl he wanted had only been postponing the inevitable.
 

“This relationship isn’t going anywhere,” she said. “I’m not the woman you want, and you know what? You’re not the guy I want either. So let’s not waste any more of each other’s time. We’re done.”

“C’mon, babe. Just ‘cuz we’re not getting married doesn’t mean we can’t have fun together.”

“I’m not having fun.”

He muttered something about crazy bitches, and Liv took great pleasure in punching the end call button.

She stood straighter, letting the weight of CJ slip off her shoulders. But as the adrenaline drained out of her system, she could no longer ignore the pain in her arm—the world’s worst sunburn. She’d broken up with CJ, but she still had the jerk’s name branded onto her skin.