Page 22 of Full Tilt
He leans in a little, not crowding, just close enough to read the page beside me. “Yeah. I studied the photos that Tank took of your right piece. That’s where I thought you’d lean. I’ll tweak theelbow section, tighten the wrap, sharpen the direction down the forearm. Maybe bring in more negative space.”
I lift my gaze. “I want it to feel like it belongs. Not like it’s fighting the other side.”
His lips twitch. “You and symmetry, huh?”
I take a long sip of the water he passed me. “I like balance. On the pitch and off it.”
“Noted,” he says easily.
I watch him as he scribbles a few things on a sticky note, head tilted, brow drawn in quiet focus. It’s unfair, how this moment—just the two of us, a table between, pencil scratching paper—feels calmer than it should after what just happened in the alley.
It’s centring. It grounds me.
I needed this. Talking about the sketch helps me find my footing again. Helps me be me again.
But still, I can’t forget how he kissed me like he already knew exactly how I’d taste.
Brent grabs a fresh pencil and flips to a clean page in the sketchbook, posture loose but focused. His brow furrows slightly as he starts blocking out shapes—quick, light strokes, just roughing out ideas. He’s quiet for a minute. There’s just the soft drag of graphite filling the space between us.
I watch his hands. They’re confident, efficient, with no hesitation. I don’t know why that makes me feel calmer, but it does.
“You know,” he says, not looking up, “the first person I ever inked was my best friend’s older brother. I was seventeen. Probably shouldn’t have even been holding a machine unsupervised, but Dutch—my mentor—had this hands-off, ‘figure it out or fuck it up’ approach to teaching.”
I raise a brow, relaxing a little. “That sounds promising.”
“Oh, it gets worse,” he says, grinning. “This guy, Tyler, shows up all full of swagger, like ‘Yeah, man, ink me up, no big deal.’Wants a tribal sun—because it was back in the day, and no one was making good decisions.”
I snort despite myself.
Brent’s smile widens. “I get maybe thirty seconds in and the machine stalls. Just dies in my hand. Tyler doesn’t even flinch. He’s halfway through telling me about a rave he’s throwing in a barn, and I’m panicking, like ‘This is it. I’ve ruined a man’s spine, and my career’s over before it started.’”
I let out a quiet laugh. “What did you do?”
“Faked it,” he says proudly. “Made some vague excuse about switching needles and then spent the next ten minutes trying to fix the machine with my elbow covering the fresh linework so he wouldn’t notice I’d botched the curve.”
“And did he?”
“Not until two years later when he came in to get it covered up,” Brent says, flicking his eyes up to me with a shameless grin. “Said it looked like a cartoon egg hatching.”
I huff a low, amused breath. “Did you do the cover-up?”
“I did. Fuck knows why he let me, but he let me fix up my shitty design. Somehow, we’re still friends. Mostly.”
I shake my head, but the grin pulling at my mouth is harder to fight now.
There’s something disarming about Brent, even when he’s telling a story that should’ve had me walking out the door ten minutes ago. It’s the way he owns it. The way he laughs at himself without pretending he’s perfect. He doesn’t try to impress me. He just is.
And that… that’s dangerous as hell.
Because the more I sit here across from him—his long fingers dusted in graphite, his hair falling forward as he sketches, that faint smudge of ink on his cheek from earlier I hadn’t noticed before—the more I feel my grip loosening.
The reasons I shouldn’t want this blur at the edges. The excuses I’ve clung to start crumbling. And that kiss? That stupid, perfect kiss? It's echoing too loud in my head.
It’s not supposed to feel like this. It’s not supposed to feel… right.
I push back from the chair so fast it scrapes against the floor. Brent startles, pencil still in hand, gaze snapping up to mine.
“Cam?”
