“Get off me.” I shove him back. He takes a few more steps away, his jaw clenched and his eyes narrowed.
“This isn’t about you. Not what you want or what you think you need. If you want to get her back, then stop being a selfish prick and realize this is about her. What she wants and what she needs. That’s all that should matter right now.”
I work my jaw. The asshole is right and I hate it. My eyes fall to the floor and I force myself to take a deep breath before dropping down, my ass hitting the cool linoleum with my back against the wall. My eyes hit his once more. “What do I do?”
He rubs the back of his neck, a weary expression on his face. “I don’t know, man.”
“She won’t talk to me,” I say, my words hollow and empty.
Des sighs. “You’re making this about you again. It’s not just that she won’t talk to you. She can’t. You saw what happened before. She freaked out and damn near had a panic attack.”
Fuck.
An idea forms and suddenly, I know what I have to do now.
I push to my feet and head for the door.
“Where are you going?”
“Out.”
“What do you mean, out? We have class.”
I shake my head. “I’m skipping. I have something I need to do. Just—” I pause. “Watch out for my girl.”
I head straight to the parking lot, ignoring Mrs. Ford when she pokes her head out of her classroom and asks me where I’m going. Season’s over. She can give me all the detentions she wants.
I spot Liu in the parking lot getting out of his Subaru WRX and make a split-second decision to call out to him. “Yo, Liu.”
His head jerks toward me and he scowls.
“Come on, we’re cutting.”
“What?”
I stalk toward his car and open the passenger side door. “Get in the car, Liu. I need a ride. Let’s go.”
Surprisingly, he does as I ask. I give him directions to The Missing Piece and have him park in the first available space we can find. There’s no hesitation as I walk inside. I don’t even need to think about what to get. I already know. He follows behind, uncertainty written across his face.
The woman at the desk takes one look at the two of us and her smile brightens. She’s wearing a low-cut tank top in the middle of winter, exposing her arms, both covered in ink. “Do you have time for walk-ins?” I ask, ignoring the flirtatious smile she gives me.
“I’ll check for you,” she turns to her computer before her gaze returns to mine. “And what about him, sugar? You both here for some work?”
Liu shakes his head in a definitive no.
“Just me,” I tell her.
“Alright then. Henry has some time. What are you after?”
I give her a quick rundown of what I’m looking for, and she assures me Henry has silver alloy and can seal the piece once he’s done.
She purses her lips. “Are you sure you want that on your hands?”
I nod and she goes and gets this Henry guy who comes to the front, and I explain again to him what I want. He looks at me the way some tattoo artists do when they think you’re making a mistake, but he’s not going to say anything because he’s happy to take my money.
We sit down together, and he works on the sketch for both pieces. Laying the stencil on my hand, we go over placement and then we’re set. He doesn’t bother asking me for ID. I’ve learned that once you have some ink, no one really cares much about adding more.
“Last chance, man. You sure?”
I nod. I explained to Henry what the tattoos meant, it’s not every day a wolf walks in asking for what I’m after, and the explanation only cements his belief that this is stupid. But that’s okay. This girl is it for me. She’s not just my beginning, she’s my end. I’ve been fucking around and going through the girls in this town one right after the other until she showed up. That had worked for me these last few years. I never wanted more than one night with any of them. But with Isa, I don’t want just one night. I need more. I need her every day. For all of the days that are to come. I know we’re young, but I know, and my wolf knows. All that matters now is that she knows, too.
Isa is the first person I think about when I wake up and the last one on my mind when I go to sleep. She’s not just some random. She never was. She’s the real deal. She’s … it hits me. She’s my mate. Holy fuck!
Like a ton of bricks, the knowledge slams into me. Isabella Romero is my mate.
She needs to know that. On a visceral level. She has to know I’ll make the sacrifices. I’ll step up and put in the work. Because she fucking deserves it. I just hope this shows her exactly what she means to me because if this doesn’t do that, I have no fucking idea what else I can do to win her back.
It takes four hours for Henry to finish and like it did with my other tattoos, the silver alloy burns my skin and I barely fight back my shift as I ride through the pain when he seals the ink. When he does, he walks me through the usual list of how to care for the ink. But it’s worth it. She’s worth it.
There’s still around an hour left of school and another twenty minutes or so after that until she gets home. I need to talk to her where she’ll feel safe. I don’t want to do
