Page 98 of Keep Your Guard Up
Instantly snapping my head to my forearm, my heart clenched at the new drawing on my skin. Smudged with excess ink, and with small and delicate lines, was a smallChancespace from the gameMonopolyjust below my inner elbow.
“Chance.” I beamed at the little rectangle on my skin.
“Fitting, since you’re the first official tattoo I’ve ever given. Had to leave a calling card.” He smirked, packing his little kit away into the shiny onyx zip-up bag.
“The first? Really?”
“Yup. JJ showed me how to do it. Then, of course, I spoke to someone else—someone with a lot more experience.” He winked
I couldn’t make out what it meant.
“And here we are.”
“Here we are?”
“Here we are, Sunny baby.”
“So, do I get to give you a tattoo now?” I asked, reaching for the little black bag.
“No need.” He smirked. “I’ve already got some new ink for today. I’d say we’re even.”
“How the hell does that make us even—” I couldn’t finish my sentence. Couldn’t breathe, couldn’t speak, couldn’t think when he pulled the already tight black sleeve up over his right arm.
There, filling a clearly unintentional gap in the whirlwind of art, was a small, hand-drawn sun. No bigger than a fifty-cent piece, the circle had over a dozen sun rays pointing out from it.
Sun. Sunshine.Sunny.
Fine lines that overlapped where he’d …Jesus, did he do this himself?
“Did it all myself,” he said, reading my thoughts with a proud grin warming his face. “JJ helped tidy up the lines a little for me, but I wanted to be the one to draw it.”
Leave it to Chance to be instantly good at something as complex as tattooing. I reached out, running my fingers gently over the plastic that was stuck over the top of the slightly raised skin. It was beautiful.
Beautiful.
Beautiful.
Beautiful.
My heart pounded, thudded deeply in my chest like a sledgehammer against a wall. For sure, it was going to pop out of my chest and onto the floor any moment now. I couldn’t stop it; I didn’t want to stop it. Warmth, that familiar loving flood of warmth, rushed my system.
“What do you think?” he asked softly.
When I looked up to find those oceanic blue eyes, I found a stormy, heated,electrifiedgaze awaiting me.
“It’s beautiful,” I whispered, my throat welded shut with emotion.
“Yeah?”
“It’s …” I ran my fingers over the delicate lines again. “It’s perfect.”
“I know.” He grinned.
~
We’d found a new spot tonight, an old barn house at the back of an empty lot a few doors over from Al’s house. His lights had long been turned off when we snuck past—every single curtain drawn closed in his house, a force of habit. Cars drew too much attention to our presence or lack-thereof, so we walked everywhere.
“Didn’t we name that one after Hogs the other night?” I asked Chance, referring to the cluster of stars that looked like the gigantic, hunched-over heavyweight who trained at Knock’s.
