Page 23 of Keeping Kaitlyn

“It’s whatever.” Clearing my throat, I lift my battered Sox cap from his hook next to my keys. Pulling it on before I turn it backwards to keep my hair out of my face while I work, I shake my head. “Probably won’t have time for more than two, anyway.” Looking down, I focus on pulling on my gloves. “You know where I keep the cups and ice,” I tell her before she can start drinking straight from the bottle.

“Since when are you afraid of cooties?” she asks, giving me an eye roll on her way past me and through the narrow doorway that leads to the back of my shop.

“Since you started swapping spit with that giant dickhead again,” I toss back, falling easily into the slightly scathing back-and-forth that’s always been a part of my relationship with Tess.

“Still jealous, I see,” she says on a laugh, her voice raised so I can hear her while she makes her way down the hall.

“I’veneverbeen jealous,” I remind her with a laugh of my own before I reluctantly refocus my attention on the group of women loitering in my lobby. Kait isn’t looking at the framed drawing of her and Two-tone anymore. She’s looking at me. Listening and watching while Tess and I bicker like an old married couple. “Not ever.” I say it directly to her, lying through my teeth again before I look away from her completely to focus my attention on the other women in the room.

You know what?

Fuck it.

Tess wants a bachelorette party, I’m going to give her one.

Taking off my hat, I toss it on the counter before reaching back to snag the neckline of my T-shirt. Dragging it up, over my head, I toss it on the counter. As soon as Con hears about how I willingly played eyecandy for his fiancé’s bachelorette party, I’ll never hear the end of it. Half-naked, I retrieve my hat and pull it back on. “Alright ladies—who’s first?”

THIRTEEN

KAITLYN

“Went’s mystery woman.”next to me, Tess lifts her plastic cup of Jameson to her mouth and presses it to her lips. She’s not really drinking. She’s been pretending, taking phantom sips from the same cup all night. I want to ask her why but I don’t. “No one knows who she is.”

Hearing Tess say it out loud, I feel the nausea that’s been plaguing me all night roll through me in a gut clenching wave. Because I can’t seem to stop myself, I aim a quick look away from the framed drawing in front of me, toward the man who drew it.

He’s tattooing Henley’s sister, Maeve. Still shirtless. Still hot enough to make me weak in the knees every time I take a chance and look at him.

It’s close to midnight and Grace and Cari are long gone. The limo took them home around ten, after Grace got her dog tags with Ryan’s name on them. Cari was tired and Grace was eager to show Ryan her new tattoo. I tried to leave with them, citing that I’d had a long day and that Mookie was probably in the middle of eating the entire contents of my dirty clothes hamperand the limo driver shouldn’t have to make two trips to the same place, just to drop me off.

Tess wasn’t having it.

“Cari gets a pass because she’s pregnant and Juno’s got a whole ass baby at home, but you—” she shook her head at me, eyes narrowed on my face like I’m a dirty traitor. “you’re not going anywhere.”

Because I know that arguing with Tess is useless, I relented with a barely audible sigh and a tight-lipped smile. Went has been working on Maeve’s brass knuckles for a few hours now. He’ll be done soon. That means I can go home. Have a good cry and pretend that I won’t have to see him again in a few days.

Like he can feel me looking at him, Went flicks a quick, hard look in my direction, a scowl planted firmly on his face. The look is fleeting and as loud as a shout.

Quit fuckin’ looking at me.

Mortified, I turn toward the woman standing beside me and force myself to smile. “Mystery woman?”

“Yeah…” Tess cocks her head to the side and studies the drawing in front of us. It’s one of me and Two-tone, in the corral behind Northpoint. “He used to tell people they were of me but anyone who knows me knows I’ve never ridden a horse in my life.” She laughs like the idea of her on a horse is the funniest thing ever. “He has more at his place—same woman. She’s naked in some of them. They’re everywhere.”

I know. I’ve seen them.

Instead of saying it out loud, I make a neutral noise in the back of my throat. “She’s probably just a model,” I say, doing my best to distance myself from the drawings of me that surround us both. “A lot of artists pay the subjects they draw.”

When I say it, Tess gives me a weird look. “How’d you know they were drawings?”

Shit.

Shaking my head in hopes of knocking something loose, I open my mouth but before I blurt out some stupid lie, Tess continues to speak. “Most people think they’re photographs—everyonethinks they’re photographs.”

“I mean—” still shaking my head, I keep stumbling. “I just assumed that?—”

“Okay,” Went calls out from behind the counter. “We’re done here.”

Turning away from Tess, mid-stumble, I look up just in time to watch a still shirtless Went snap off his black latex gloves and toss them in the trash. Behind him, Maeve and Henley are admiring his work—a pair of brass knuckles—inked into Maeve’s hip. I can’t even see them and I know they’re beautifully done.

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