Under Locke (5 page)

Will had always told me I wore my emotions on my sleeve. I was a terrible liar because of it. I was wary of looking people in the face when feeling crappy came more naturally than being in a good mood. I
t wasn’t a shock
Blake could tell something was up
, but he wouldn’t know
what since he’d walked in after the unintentional verbal beat down had finished.

"Hey—," the good-looking ass started to say before Blake saved me from further humiliation by calling out Dex's name a moment later.

The last thing I wanted to do was stay. I didn’t want them to keep me either. I’d been someone’s charity case for half of my life, and I sure as hell didn’t want it to multiply now. I’d told myself I was staying because it wasn't just a matter of wanting a job. It was
a necessity
. Plus, Sonny was friends with these people, and I didn’t want to embarrass him. Maybe if I could suck it up a couple weeks, and then put in my notice it wouldn’t be as bad as just walking out. Just two weeks.

I could
do
two weeks.

I'd lived for years not knowing w
hether I’d even be alive to turn twenty
. Two weeks of dealing with an asshole couldn’t be worse than a million other scenarios I'd already lived through.

So even though everything in my heart screamed at staying and battled against my pride, I was going to stay, regretting with every inch of me ever having walked into the damn building to begin with.

~ * ~ *

It was close to midnight when the second to last customer, an older man that Dex had worked on for well over two hours, made his way out with a wink and a “Goodnight,
sweetheart
,” in my direction. Blake still had a young girl spread out on his chair with her pants down to her crack as he tattooed a Monarch butterfly on the top corner of her butt cheek.

I’d spoken to Dex twice throughout the last few hours. Each time went along the lines of, “Dex, so-and-so is here for their session.” In reality, I
wanted to ask him if he’d sold his soul or if he’d never had one to begin with.

But the minute the dollar signs popped up in my head, I forced myself to say what I needed.

I was surprised by how consistent business was. Most of the customers were scheduled in advance but one had been a walk-in.

A brief conversation with Blake had explained more of the things I'd be responsible for. Shop manager duties mainly consisted of reordering supplies—like inks, gloves, jewelry, etc.—filing expenses, paying utilities. Easy things. Dex handled everything else, any cash deposits at the bank, and settled accounts with the company they used for debit card usage.

He and Blake had been busy, and I’d been busy talking to customers about random stuff while they waited. I was surprised by how nice everyone had b
een—w
ith the exception of Dex's dumb face.

There hadn't been a single biker in the shop either. Weird. 

All of this assured me that I
’d avoided
ha
ving
to interact much with my boss. The owner. The bleeding mouth sore.

The snot-faced asshole that I only kind-of, sort-of hoped came down with an infectious illness in his private parts. But you know, something he could get medicine for.

I tried my best to keep from replaying the scenario in the office but it was impossible. It wasn't his tone but the words that had seared me.

And each time, it made me want to cry. It didn’t get any easier or any less painful. How the hell could someone be so rude? I didn't understand and I couldn't get over it.

Every cycle had me coming up with different things to call him. A dick. A slimy bastard. A slimy, small-dicked bastard. Right? Maybe he wouldn't be so mad at the world if his pubic hair wasn
’t
longer than his
full-blown erection
. God, I felt awkward thinking about what he had under his clothes but it was the best insult I could come up with.

I didn't normally hold grudges. If something upset me, I'd get over it quickly. Being pissed off took way too much effort and stressed me out, and I had no business stressing if I could avoid it. Plus, there weren
’t that many things in life really worth being mad about.

Until today.

After cleaning up my desk and logging off the computer, I wiped off the coffee table, and put the magazines and binders of photographed tattoos back where they belonged. I swept the floor by the front just in case I was supposed to and started spraying the frames on the wall because I’d seen people touching the glass several times throughout the day. Up close, I saw that each frame held articles, clippings, or mentions of Pins and Needles, or Dex Locke’s work.

Certain phrases caught my eye even when I wasn’t trying to read the writing. The ridiculously large fonts made it impossible for me not to catch the highlighted statements.

“Art was the only class I never skipped in high school.”
The caption was directly below a picture of Dex standing in front of the shop with his arms crossed over his chest. Typical.

“It’s an addiction,”
another article screamed.

Then there was the one that had me rolling my eyes.
“Can’t get arrested for it any more.”

Blah. Blah. Blah.

I was in the middle of cleaning off one of them when I heard, “Ritz.”

I knew it was Dex speaking. His voice was its own unique drawl of deep and rich. All baritone and rasp. On anyone else, I would’ve liked to hear them talk all day but Dex? I’d be perfectly fine not hearing him talk for, oh, let’s say, the rest of my life.

“Ritz.”

Now he wanted to talk? Ha. I sprayed the glass and quickly wiped it down, ignoring him.

“Babe.”

Jerk. I scooted over and sprayed the next frame.

“Babe, I’m talkin’ to you. Quit sprayin’ for a sec,” he said, the quick irritation in his tone hinting at the fact this man wasn't used to repeating himself.

As much as I didn’t want to, I stopped what I was doing and turned to look at him. He was standing just to the side of the desk, hands shoved into his front pockets.

“Yes?” I asked, keeping my gaze locked only as high as his bare neck.

“Ritz,” he repeated the name he’d used at first.

“My name’s—,“ I started to say before he cut me off.

“Would you look at me?”

No.

Was there
a treatment for gonorrhea already?

I clenched my teeth together. “You didn't tell me what you wanted me to do until you guys were done, so I figured I'd clean up. Blake said you would put up the—,“ I started to tell his neck in a surprisingly even voice. You couldn’t even tell I’d been fighting back tears the majority of the day.

“Look at me,” Dex interrupted in a low voice. 

Slowly, fighting everything in me that ached from his shitty words, I dragged my eyes up to his.

"Yes?" It was like the words were pulled from my throat with rusty tweezers.

Some indecipherable emotion reflected back at me from his true blue eyes as I grudgingly held his gaze for all of ten seconds before turning back to finish cleaning the frames.

Dex exhaled. It sounded like he rubbed his palms together before speaking. "You gotta toughen up," he gritted.

Oh my God. The first person in my life who I had the urge to punch in the face was a six-foot-three-ish biker that I assumed beat the living crap out of someone and went to jail for it. Of all the people in the world smaller than me that I could have chosen, and this was who I wanted to nail right in the testicles? Not Sonny, or even Trip who hadn't given me the impression he'd try to murder me?

I bristled and like clockwork, my molars ground together.

I need the job.

I need the job.

I need the job.

“Wipe down the counters for me," he added in a low voice that seemed to go immediately against the harsh, no-nonsense tone he'd used a moment before. How was this man even capable of speaking in that kind of tone after the daggers he'd been spitting out earlier?

I nodded and swallowed back that gross feeling in my throat again. “Okay.”

“Yeah?”

I held back my long sigh, keeping my eyes on the title, “Ink Me!” on the mounted magazine while I wiped streaks across the glass. I wasn’t going to argue with him, I wasn’t going to care enough about the fact he didn’t remember my name, and I definitely wasn’t going to let him know how shitty he'd made me feel. In all actuality, this just made it easier for me to want to find another job. “Yup.”

My pride won out because I didn’t turn back to look at him while he
stood in place
another minute, and when Blake walked with me to my car twenty minutes later after closing, I didn’t look at Dex again then either.

Fuck him. Not screw him, or damn him. Fuck him. He deserved the f-bomb for being such a dick and heaven knows I saved th
at
word for special occasions.

Just because I let my conscience guide me into keeping the job out of respect for Sonny—and my need for some cash—didn’t mean I had to like my boss. It didn’t mean I had to let what happened go and get over the fire he’d breathed for no reason.

Friggin' asshole.

~ * ~ *

"What's wrong?"

Sonny was going to blow a gasket. There was going to be smoke coming out of his ass and ears. I just knew it.

I'd underestimated him my entire life. When I was a kid, I'd thought he hated me because Will and I had lived with our dad and he hadn't, except for
yearly visits that lasted until Son was old enough to tell him to screw off.
As a teenager, I thought he wouldn't care too much about the disasters that had stockpiled in my life.

But the fact was, he had. As an adult, Sonny had become the most solid figure in my life even if he lived over a thousand miles away.

We hadn't been raised together, obviously. Sonny had lived in Austin with his mom, where I'd grown up with mine in Florida nine years later. We'd settled for seeing each other once a year when I was younger,
when
my dad would take Will and I to Austin to see Sonny. So I'd never had that typical overprotective older brother situation as a kid until he got old enough to drive himself, and by that time, Dad was long gone.

Sonny Taylor, whose mom hated
Curt Taylor
with a magnitude that led her to move out of state the moment Son graduated high school, did care for me. He loved me in his own way, and he knew my facial expressions.

So when I walked into his house, still more hurt than pissed off over what I'd overheard that afternoon, he'd caught onto the clues like Sherlock Holmes.

And now I was a little worried to tell him because I'd promised to quit lying. Apparently, I'd run out of get-out-of-lying passes when I didn't tell him they'd found more cells in my arm.

"Iris, tell me," he insisted.

Crap. He never called me by my first name.

I blurted the tiny story out, feeling like a kid again who wanted her mom or dad to make things better.

The words rode a boomerang in my head over and over again. The moment I'd gotten to Sonny's house, it all hit me straight in the solar plexus.

The guy was just a dick. An ass who didn't know how to get past the things that made us all up
—t
he good and the bad.