Page 13 of All Your Firsts

“Will the boss be okay with me working here?”

“You’re looking at her.”

Returning to the tattoo shop, I can’t help but feel a rush of excitement bubbling inside me.

I look for Vic, but he isn’t at his tattoo station, so he must be in his office. The thought of knocking on the closeddoor crosses my mind, but I dismiss it when I recall how he saw no problem with putting his lips around my fingers earlier. After thinking about it one too many times while I was perched on the stool all day, I know it was intentional. Why? I have no idea, but it was.

As I enter the room, I notice Vic and Axl conversing in low voices. I make my presence known by placing the bag on Vic’s desk with a deliberate thump.

“Thanks. You can go back out there,” Vic murmurs without looking up at me.

“Actually,” I say, a smile playing on my lips as I reveal the folded paper from my back pocket. “Here.” I toss it onto his desk.

“What the fuck is this?” he says to himself while meticulously smoothing out the creases in the paper.

“My resignation. I quit.”

“You can’t do that.”

“And you can’t hire someone against their will.”

“Damn, Vic. She has you there,” Axl says with a laugh.

I gaze over at Axl, and I notice the anticipation on his face as he rummages through the bag for his lunch. “Also, Jess says she only made food for Vic and Samuel. She said Richard can go get his food somewhere else.”

Axl’s fingers curl tightly around the bag, his eyes boring into mine with a menacing glare.

“I’ll be back,” he says with a hint of determination.

I don’t know what he’s done to upset someone as kindhearted as my new boss, Jess, but it must have been severe for her to continue catering to Vic the Dick, as I now call him in my head. As for Samuel, Vic’s apprentice, I can’t comment on him since he hasn’t arrived yet.

As I search through the bag for my food, the scorching intensity of Vic’s stare lingers in the air.

“No.”

“What?” I look up at him.

“You heard me.”

I shrug. “I guess I was waiting for you to reconsider.”

“Not a chance in hell.”

“What are you getting out of this?” I say as I gesture back and forth between him and me.

“Right now, a massive fucking headache.”

“Whatever my brother paid, I’ll double it. I just want to live my life here without a babysitter breathing down my neck. I want to be free to make my own decisions.”

“Triple.”

My eyes widen. “Are you serious?”

Vic stays quiet but smirks. He’s going to tax me because he knows I’m desperate. Which is something I would never show to anyone, but I am desperate.

Really fucking desperate, and I don’t know how to make it happen because I’ve never been on my own.

He really is the devil.

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