Page 10 of Forget Me Not

At first, I was shocked, then honored, and then disappointment came in. Because an apprenticeship was everything I wanted at that point and something I couldabsolutely not afford. Except when I told him I couldn’t afford it, he didn’t hesitate to up the offer.

He told me the apprenticeship was free as long as I promised to work at the shop when it was over. I genuinely thought the guy was crazy. He was offering to waste his money and time training me for free, offering me a free tattoo on the spot, and offering me a job, all just after looking at a sketch.

To this day, I’ve asked him why he did it, and the only answer I ever get is, “You’re fucking talented, kid.”

A better person may have refused King’s generosity, but I never said I was a good person. I didn’t hesitate to accept everything he was offering. He took me to his room, tatted my artwork onto my chest, and never once questioned the jagged two-inch scar that he was covering up.

Blackheart Ink has been my home ever since. The staff has become my family. Honestly, I’m not sure where I’d be without them or this place. Nowhere good.

“What crawled up your ass?” King says, now standing in the doorway of my room.

“Nothing, just had a rough night’s sleep,” I respond.

He stays quiet for a minute, watching me, assessing my mood and the situation.

That’s the thing about King, he’s constantly bordering the line between letting me deal with things on my own and pushing me to talk about them. Never forcing though. He’s intuitive and knows me better than anyone else.

“You want to tell me why you’re not sleeping?” he pushes. He knows he may or may not get an answer from me, but he asks anyway.

“You remember L?” I say and his body tenses for a second. King is the only one in my life who knows the full story and what led to me talking with her. He also knows about her final messages and that I haven’t heard from her since.

“What about her?” he asks, now more curious. His body language stiff, as if he’s protective over me in the whole situation. Although only six years older than me, King has always treated me like a son. Makes sense since I was still basically a kid when I met him. He was only twenty-four, so technically he was too. But fatherhood aged him and made him wiser in a way most people his age weren’t.

“Think her twin sister stitched up my hand last night,” I say casually, trying to not make it as big of a deal as it is.

“Well, fuck,” he says, running his hand through his hair, his eyes wide in shock. “You said you think? Does she not know who you are?”

“No, she definitely doesn’t know who I am.” I hesitate. “Her name is Logan Hart and she said she had a twin sister.”

King looks at me thoughtfully, as if he’s come to the same conclusion I have. L is really dead.

“What are you going to do about it, kid?” he says, and I wish I had an answer for him. The logical part of my brain is telling me to avoid seeing her ever again. To avoid the ridiculous connection that I feel toward her. To stay far away from her and don’t screw up the girl’s life any more than it already is.

Then there’s the other part of me that can’t get her out of my head. Her long blonde hair that would look so good wrapped around my fist, her bright-green eyes that hide so much behind them, and those lips. The image of her wrapping them around her straw as she looked for me in the crowd at Carl’s replays in my mind and has me fighting a groan that’s threatening to escape.

The clearing of a throat pulls me out of my daydreaming, and I remember King asked me a question. “Any chance Logan Hart is good-looking?” he asks, humor shining in his eyes.

I don’t respond but rather drop my head into my hands with a sigh. I run my hands through my hair, pushing the fallenstrands out of my face and meeting King’s stare just as he begins to laugh.

“Yeah, good luck, kid,” he says, still laughing as he makes his way out of the doorway and toward his own room. Fuck me, I’m going to need it.

CHAPTER

FIVE

Logan

Friday is my day off from the hospital and after an exhausting night, it’s already eleven a.m. by the time I manage to drag myself out of bed. After treating Kade last night, everything seemed to spiral.

My mind was scattered and when Ryan approached me the second time within two hours about going out with him, I snapped. He came up to me and started telling me about a new restaurant he and I had to try together. I just couldn’t do it. I yelled that it was never going to happen before he even finished getting the words out. Loudly.

Then because the man had the audacity to look like my statement was the shock of the century to him, I broke out into hysterical laughter. Not just a quiet laugh, nope. Loud cackles that attracted the attention of anyone my yelling hadn’t already. Laughter that had tears forming in my eyes. Then when I realized what had just happened and that the tears poking at my eyes weren’t just from laughter anymore, I bolted.

I hid in the supply room until I was able to calm down. Deep down, I know it’s not out of the ordinary to have such a reactionafter having to repeatedly tell a person no. But the part of me that craves control felt like it was being ripped at the seams.

Then I remembered my earlier interaction with Kade, and I felt even worse. As though with every encounter I have with a man I barely know, more cracks seem to form in the wall that I’ve protected myself with for the past eight years. I’m desperately trying to fill the cracks, but it feels like they’re forming quicker than I know how to handle. I feel like I’m being held together by tape and glue half the time.

I can tell myself that this is the end of it, that I’ll never see him again and things will go back to how they were only a few days ago. I know I’d be lying to myself, though. Which isn’t out of the ordinary, lying is something I’m familiar with, to others and to myself. Sometimes the truth hurts too bad to acknowledge.

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