“Mary died.”
It took me a beat to process what he’d said. “Wait…What? The boys’ mom died too?”
“Six months after my dad. It was unexpected, and I realized how fucking sad Dad would have been if he could see how I was behaving. So, I got myself together. Worked my ass off to keep the shop from going under. Stepped up for my brothers. Tried to stay cool with Pete, even though the dude can be a real asshole sometimes.” His breath whooshed out.
“Wow, Renn, that all sounds…really hard.” No wonder he seemed so much older than he was.
The black wash and macabre artwork on the walls enveloped us in the type of subtle darkness that allows vision but no sense of time. Not even a streak of daylight in our temporary fortress. Renn took a moment to compose himself, still gently gripping my forearm.
“That was four years ago. And don’t get me wrong—I might not want to talk about my dad—but that doesn’t mean I don’t think he’d be proud. I like to think he’s up there on some cloud, sipping a Corona with a lime in it, loving the afterlife and watching me run the studio. I never wanted to do anything else but be an artist.” Renn’s thumb on my skin continued its indiscriminate dance, and I shivered as he tickled me with circles and plus signs and random letters. “Pretty sure he bought me my first sketchbook when I was still in diapers, and he was always displaying my scribbles, showing them off to customers like they were masterpieces.”
“He sounds like a great dad.” Not that I would know from personal experience, but Thomas seemed like the type of father any kid would want.
“He really was. The first tattoo I ever did was on him. He didn’t have much real estate left on his body by the time I was sixteen, so he asked me to wedge in Gage’s name on this sliver of skin on his side. I was so nervous, I did a blowout.”
“Blowout?”
“It’s when you put the ink too deep under the skin, into the fatty tissue. It makes things look sort of spready and splotchy, so when it happens with letters, they’re hard to read.”
“Yikes.”
“I was so pissed at myself. But my dad just said, ‘that’s how you learn,’ and he walked me through doing a cover-up of my mistake, and that tattoo—shaded dice—turned out great.”
As Renn progressed from relaying the details of his dad’s death to being sparked by the happier memories he had, the atmosphere in the studio shifted.
He looked down at our entwined fingers, creating a language of touch. The barely-there graze of a pinkie to a palm. A rough pointer finger to the veined center of a soft wrist. Thumbs pressed together until the pads turned reddish-pink. An intimate exploration of lifelines and knuckle indents and pen calluses.
Renn looked up, his stare growing bolder as he captured my gaze. Quietly, “You’re so easy to talk to.”
One of his hands crawled up my forearm while the other reached out to rest lightly on my hip. He seemed to know intrinsically to be cautious, go slow, test.
I gasped softly as Renn tugged me closer until I was standing with my legs against the stool, wedged between his spread thighs. He kept his features even, but the spotlight above his workstation caught the nervous bob of his Adam’s apple and the beads of moisture at his temples. I could feel the wiry hair on his calves scratching against my smooth legs.
We were abruptly bathed in silence as the album ended, amplifying the distinct hammer of my heartbeat in my ears. I placed a steadying palm on his shoulder as my throat went dry and my breathing stuttered. My tongue snaked out to wet my bottom lip—drawing Renn’s intense gaze to my mouth. His own lips parted, and I couldn’t help but imagine them pressed against mine, against my skin. The mental picture of Renn moving his mouth along my body sent an immediate spike of heat to every part of me.
God, I wanted him, so warm and solid beneath my hand. I had forgotten how good it felt to want someone.
That was why, for one blissful and heady moment, I allowed myself to drown in the sensation of being possessed by this wanting. Every atom in my body felt lit up. I longed to melt into Renn, craved more of his touch.
But then, slowly, his palm on my hip grew more insistent, his grip on my forearm firmer—as though preparing to pull me close.
My trance broke as these languid movements began to feel familiar.
Familiar in all the wrong ways.
Every touch unlocked a memory, every puff of breath a reminder. Henri running his fingers up my side, coarsely palming my breasts. Henri staring at my lips, before gripping them between thumb and pointer finger, claiming a harsh kiss. What Renn sought softly, Henri had made hard and brittle.
I was unprepared for this flood, this strike from the buried edges of my consciousness, unsure if my racing heart signaled passion or terror.
“Oh God,” I moaned faintly.
Renn stilled his movements.
I felt his warm breath on my face just before he inhaled it raggedly back into his chest, eyes still shining with unmistakable desire.
And understanding.
He looked resignedly at my mouth before removing his hand from my hip. He dropped his other arm from mine but joined our fingers again, lifting them to his face. Closing his eyes for a moment, he gave me a chaste kiss on the back of my hand before unlinking our fingers and rolling his stool away to put a few feet of distance between us. I shuddered as I came to myself.