Page 95 of Ink Me Three Times
Timothy’s on merch duty, somehow managing to look like he stepped out of an indie coffee table book while folding hoodies. He smiles like he means it and says things like“Let me know if you need a size swap,”and people swoon. Actually swoon.
Freddie floats between both ends, managing logistics, managing Penny, managing me, because apparently the man doesn’t believe in limits or taking a damn break. He looks stupidly good in a black tee with the Iron & Ink logo across the chest and an earpiece in, like he’s moonlighting as tattoo security.
Penny, meanwhile, is holding court near the sample stickers, telling anyone who will listen that her dad owns this place but she’s in charge really. She gives a little thumbs up every time someone buys something and only cried once when I told her she couldn’t actually get a real tattoo this weekend.
I mean, I love being around them.. All of them. I just… wasn’t ready to feel so much all at once.
Them. Together. With matching shirts. Looking hot and competent while I’m over here contemplating throwing up behind a speaker stack… it’s just too damn much.
The nausea hits me like a sucker punch to the gut. Sudden, sharp, and unfairly timed. One second, I’m admiring the way Timothy folds a hoodie like he’s defusing a bomb, and the next, my vision tunnels and my stomach threatens to revolt in front of God, Penny, and every man who’s ever had a sleeve tattoo.
I grip the edge of the display table like it personally offended me.
“Whoa,” I mutter, blinking hard. “Nope. Not now, Satan.”
The floor does this fun little wiggle that floors should not be doing. My mouth goes dry. I hear the buzzing of a tattoo gun kick up behind me and I swear the sound echoes inside my skull.
Before I can even play it cool or fake my way through it, a familiar hand lands gently on my back.
“Hey, hey,” Freddie says, voice low and concerned. “You okay?”
Great. Of course it’s Freddie. The man has dad radar. Probably felt a tremor in the force when I turned green.
“I’m fine,” I lie, the way people lie about taxes and that weird mole they haven’t checked yet.
Mitchell glances up from his client, catches one look at me, and immediately swivels in his chair.
“Tim!” he calls, snapping his fingers toward the merch table. “Ivy’s about to hurl. Code Ginger Ale.”
Timothy is already moving. Like, mid fold, hoodie abandoned mid sleeve, expression all business.
I don’t even get a chance to argue before I’m being gently herded, yes, herded, like a fainting goat, toward a little break nook behind the curtain wall of the booth. There’s a fold up chairand a crate flipped upside down acting as a table, and someone’s emergency stash of trail mix.
“I don’t need…” I start to say, but Timothy’s already pressing a cool can of ginger ale into my hand like he’s done this a thousand times.
“You were swaying,” he says quietly. “Just sit. Two minutes.”
Mitchell tosses me a protein bar. “Eat this. Or I will lecture you in front of customers.”
Freddie crouches next to the chair, one hand braced on my knee like he’s grounding me with actual fatherly voodoo. “You been feeling like this a lot?”
I nod. Regret it instantly. “It’s just… a little overwhelming is all.”
They all exchange a look. The kind of look that makes me want to crawl under the folding table and live there forever.
“I’m fine,” I insist, trying to pull the sarcasm lever and summon some dignity. “Just forgot to eat. And breathe. And exist like a normal person.”
Penny pops her head through the curtain, clutching a sticker shaped like a dagger and beaming like she’s won the Hunger Games.
“Are you gonna puke?!” she asks, delighted.
“Hopefully not,” I say through a strained smile. “But thanks for the enthusiasm.”
Timothy crouches beside me now too, opposite Freddie, like they’re staging an intervention.
Mitchell leans in from behind, arms crossed, still wearing his black latex gloves like a judgmental raccoon. “We talked about this. If you push yourself too hard, we will strap you into a rolling chair and wheel you back to the suite like a cursed office chair Cinderella.”
Freddie just chuckles and brushes a piece of hair out of my face like I’m fragile glass and he’s got the manual. “No one’smad, Ivy. We just wanna make sure you don’t pass out and take down the merch table with you.”
