Chapter 15
The Visitor
Kian
Of all the people who could have walked through his door the following afternoon, he sure as hell never expected it would be her. Katelyn. The name he’d tried so hard not to think, the face he’d purposely pushed to the recess of his mind, though it refused to remain there.
He was in the middle of setting up the room for his appointment. He hadn’t bothered to check the book since Heather informed him that morning that she’d filled his spot for one. The woman wanted a cat design. Said she’d bring it in. That was all he knew.
When he looked up and found Katelyn standing tentatively in his doorway, blue eyes wide with shy apprehension, fear even, he nearly jumped right out of his skin.
She was incredible, as she always was. She had on a flowy red cotton dress that fit snug in her ample bust and nipped in her at waist. It flared out at the hips and dropped modestly to the knee. The red was bright. On her, with her delicate complexion, it shouldn’t have looked good, but it did. Her legs, shapely and smooth, were revealed under the hem of the dress. She wore black wedges with just a slight heel, enough to push up and define the muscles of her calves.
His fingers itched to run the length of those muscles. He wanted to start at her feet, trail his hard fingers over her milky, satin skin, trace the pattern of her knee, learn the warmth of her thigh. He wouldn’t stop. He’d push up her skirt and…
Stop. Just fucking stop. He gave himself a hard shake. He never thought of women that way. Never once since the accident. Why her? Why, when he’d already had her, did he only want her more?
“Katelyn,” he breathed, her name rolling off his lips reverently. He closed his eyes, feeling like an idiot.
“Umm… hello.” Her voice was equally soft and just as unsure. “I… saw the posting for an opening. I wanted to get a tattoo. If you’ll give me one.”
I wanted a tattoo…. Her voice played over in his head as he turned his back. Kian went right on setting up the chair, taping the thin paper sheet in place to keep everything sanitary. He’d already set up his stand and laid out the machines in their sterile packaging. He just had to set up his inks, but because he wasn’t sure if it was a color tattoo or black and gray, he’d waited.
“Kian?”
Her tiny, lost voice, begging him to turn around and face her, set his teeth on edge. He ground them together until his molars ached. He pivoted around slowly. “Alright,” he finally growled under his breath. “What did you bring?”
Hands shaking, Katelyn dug in her purse, a small black messenger bag and produced her phone. Her index finger flew over the screen and, after a minute, she held it out like an offering she didn’t truly believe he would take.
Kian stepped closer. He gripped the edges of the phone neatly, carefully avoiding touching Katelyn’s hand. The black plastic case it was enclosed in still held her warmth. It burned him just the same as her skin would have.
“Can you do that? Maybe just her face?”
He stared at the picture of her cat. The cat he’d fed the night her ex-husband had come over to her condo and decided to rough her up. That night had changed his life…
“You want it realistic?”
“No. Kind of. I don’t know. I’m not any good at this. I don’t even have a single tattoo. I like when other people do. I mean, I like your work.”
She blushed furiously at that, two twin spots of red appearing on her delicate cheekbones. It stabbed at Kian in a way it shouldn’t have. He felt his body react on pure impulse, his cock hardening painfully in a visceral response he didn’t have a hope of controlling.
“Do you?”
“Like your work? Of course.” Katelyn blinked hard. “I was thinking maybe kind of realistic but not so much. Does that make sense? I don’t want it to look like a carbon copy of the photo.”
“So you want me to give you my interpretation. You’ve come because you wanted me to leave my mark on you, even after I told you to stay away.” He leaned even closer, unable to stop the tide of words that he’d do anything to take back. “That night wasn’t enough for you, Katelyn? You had to come here and force me to do this for you. Force me to notice you again?”
Her incredible, lustrous blue eyes clouded over with pain. Pain he’d caused. On purpose, because inside he was bleeding. He was bleeding and it was a hard, hot rush he couldn’t stem. It flowed through him, aching, thick, choking the life out of him. Fear squirmed in his stomach, fisted and squeezed mercilessly. Coward. I’m hurting her because I’m a coward.
It was wrong. Kian knew it, but it was his defense mechanism. He did what he had to do to survive. The lifeless face of his wife flashed in front of his eyes as darkness closed in. Her sightless eyes, once so full of life. It was gone, in an instant. Taken from him. That accident should have killed him. He should have been the one who died, because he sure as hell hadn’t lived since that night.
“Never mind. This was a stupid idea.” Katelyn’s bitter words snapped him out of his trance. She reached out and snatched her phone out of his grasp. She stuffed it into her purse, turned on her heel and fled the room. Her shoes pounded down the hallway, the steps growing fainter as she faded away.
He stood frozen. The sweetest floral notes of her perfume lingered in the air around him. The heat of her hand where she’d grazed his fingers taking back her phone, tingled in his palm. It spread through his wrist, up his arm, into his shoulder. The shivery sensation leaked into his chest and slowly reached his heart. A heart that had refused to beat for anyone or anything. Until he met her.
Until that night he’d opened his house and found her face staring back at him. Her blue eyes wide and concerned, compassion in their depths, her honeyed hair floating around her face, framing it like a halo.
My angel.
He’d been in hell for so very long. And then she’d appeared. Appeared like she’d been sent to save him. From the pain. Always, the pain. It consumed him. It was his entire life.
Suddenly he was moving, his black boots scraping on the hardwood floor, pounding as heavily as a heart that was so very used to feeling nothing but pain and when he blocked that out- nothing at all.
He ran down the hall, past the other tattoo rooms, out to the front. He reached the reception desk and kept going, past a startled Heather who stood, mouth slightly parted, watching him as he whipped past her and flung himself out the front door.
Kian stood, staring down the street. He glanced left, then right and he saw her, nearing the end of the block, about to turn the corner. He didn’t know what he was doing. His mind refused to register his movements. He just knew he had to catch her. If he wanted a chance at redemption, at ever living again, he had to make her understand.
How the hell do I do that? How can I make her understand what I can’t even explain to myself. What I won’t explain to myself.
He was so close. He finally slowed his pace, not wanting to alarm her, before he called out her name in a husky breathless word.
“Katelyn…”
She whirled. Her eyes went wide and wild. She hadn’t expected him to follow her. Of course she didn’t. How could I have said those things? Kian took a deep breath, filling up his burning lungs. She waited, those eyes burning straight through him all the while.
“What?” she finally said. Her hands went to her hips in a gesture of impatience. “What do you want? What could you possibly say that you haven’t already?” Righteous anger, which he completely deserved, flooded her face.
“I- I’m sorry.” The words came out weak, like he didn’t mean them. He swallowed hard and forced his voice to be firmer. Steadier. “I’m sorry, Katelyn. You caught me off guard. What I said was rude.”
“It was more than that,” she spat, eyes blazing fire. “You could have just said you weren’t interested. Not in the tattoo, not in me. You could have sent me away nicely, like any normal person would. But no, you had to go that extra step. You had to twist the knife once you’d stabbed it in. That’s fucked up. Who does that?”
“I know. I know it’s messed up,” Kian admitted. He raised a hand and swept his hair back from his forehead in a gesture of sheer anxiety. “I’m fucked up. If you can’t tell that just by looking at me, then I don’t know what would convince you.”
“Just because you look a certain way doesn’t give you the right to treat me like shit. Who sleeps with someone and then acts like a crazy person before it’s even done?” She slowly let her hands fall away from her hips. “Look,” she said in a more moderate tone, obviously trying to compose herself since they were standing in the middle of a public sidewalk, traffic rushing by them on a busy street. “I’m sorry I came here. It wasn’t right. I knew that. I didn’t listen to you or to my better judgment. Believe me I’ll stay away now.”
It was what he wanted. Kian should have sighed in relief. Instead he felt… panicked. Hard, bracing panic. It took over his lungs, forcing out his breath, squeezed his chest violently. That hard fist in his stomach knotted harder, wrenching his insides into a painful mass.
Katelyn tried to turn, to resume her walk down the street, but he couldn’t let her. He reached out. His fingers closed over her forearm. The warmth of her skin was shocking, alarming. His head spun, his body ached.
“No,” he begged. His voice was strange, like it belonged to another man. “Don’t do that. I don’t want you to do that.”
“No?” Katelyn tugged her arm free. She sighed long and hard in annoyance. “What do you want then? Wait. Let me guess. You don’t even know. I don’t have time for games. I’ve been through enough of that bullshit with my ex. So please, just let me leave. It’s better for all of us if this ends before it even starts.”
Kian didn’t reach for her again. He didn’t touch her. Instead he moved fast, sidestepping in front of her. He stood like a granite wall, blocking the sidewalk. She could have walked around him, but she froze in place. The dangerous hope in her eyes sent hard fear shooting through his entire being.
His next words had to be forced out through a parched, closed up throat. “The trouble is, we both know, it’s already started.”