Hidden Ink (Montgomery Ink #4.5)(10)

After dropping that bomb, the damn man had just walked out of her café, hands in his pockets with a smile on his face.

It didn’t make sense. Why would Sloane have anything to do with Brody backing out of their almost-date? So, when she’d stormed over to Montgomery Ink, angry and hurt that Sloane would dare to interfere, especially when he hadn’t done anything when it came to her and him—at all—she’d been ready to tear him a new one.

No one had been more surprised than her when he’d asked her out.

Or rather, when he’d told her they were going out.

She wasn’t quite sure how it had happened, only that she’d raised her chin and said yes. She shouldn’t have, she knew. The man hadn’t wanted her until someone else had taken a chance. That wasn’t how relationships were supposed to start. He wasn’t supposed to keep her at arm’s length, waiting for him to make up his mind. That wasn’t fair to her, wasn’t fair to him.

And yet she’d been weak.

She’d said yes.

She closed her eyes as she gripped the edges of her robe. There was no way Hailey could back out now. He’d be there to pick her up soon, and then she’d take another chance at life.

She’d taken that chance before—had the scars to prove it—so maybe she could do this. Maybe she could be with someone and remember that it wasn’t the wholeness of her body that made her who she was, but the strength of what was inside. Only, she’d proven she was weak by saying yes in the first place, hadn’t she? She’d given in to his actions to get them where they were too easily.

She was so damn confused, and the fact that she was excited at the same time didn’t help. She’d wanted Sloane for years, and now they were getting their chance. Maybe she should just push aside the how and go with the now.

Hailey opened her eyes and met her gaze in the mirror. She could live in the now—she’d been doing it since that fateful day when she’d faced her mortality with a fragile strength she hadn’t known she possessed. Oh, she and Sloane would have to discuss how it had come to be, if only for a few moments, but she could move on.

She fingered the edge of the robe before letting the fabric fall to the floor. She stood naked in front of her mirror, relying on a strength she had long since honed in the darkness.

Her surgeon had done a wonderful job, but there was only so much anyone could do with a bilateral mastectomy that dug deep into the tissues. It had taken six surgeries for her reconstructive surgeon to find the right balance. Each time, she’d cried in pain, threw up from the meds, and ached in places so deep she never thought she’d be able to get up and breathe again.

Her breasts were gone.

What remained was thanks to the skill of her surgeon. A large scar—slightly faded over time but there nonetheless—slashed through each new breast. Other scars from surgeries, ports, and treatments covered her upper chest, her belly, and between her breasts. It wasn’t pretty, and sometimes she knew it was downright horrific.

When she’d first taken off the bindings and pads from the initial surgery, she’d sobbed—gut wrenching sobs that wracked her whole body…or at least the body that remained. They hadn’t been able to start the reconstructive process until her second surgery due to the depth of her cancer cells. It shouldn’t have hurt her as much as it had. She was alive. Breasts were just breasts.

But that was all a f*cking lie.

She was a woman. Her breasts had been part of her. She’d loved her body, even as a twenty-year-old. Sure, she might have wanted slightly more curves where it mattered when she’d been that young, but it hadn’t happened. Instead of coming into her own out of her teens, she’d faced her own mortality in a way no woman should have to.

So, yes, to the outside world she had a normal body—if normal was even a word these days. Her surgeon had been brilliant, and after all these years, Hailey knew how to wear the right clothes to ensure no one would guess what scars lay beneath.

But she wasn’t the same woman she’d once been.

One thing she’d done differently than most women was her nipples. She’d opted to not have them kept in any sense of the word, as some women do. It hadn’t been the right surgery for her, and she’d wanted to move on. Her nipples weren’t part of who she was—or at least that’s what she’d thought at first. She’d also decided not to do anything about tattooing fake ones on. At least not yet. She’d warred with herself over it and had even almost asked Maya to do it for her…but it wasn’t what she wanted. She’d had implants put in during one of the later surgeries, though they weren’t perfectly even. She’d missed her curves, and though at the time the new ones hadn’t felt like hers, she’d grown to see them differently.

In the years since her diagnosis and recovery, she’d formulated a plan. She wanted a certain kind of tattoo over what were once her breasts, and in her heart, she knew whom she wanted to do it. While Maya, Austin, or Callie would take great care of her, she wanted the one person she knew carried a darkness, a scar along his soul as deep, if not deeper, than her physical ones.

She wanted Sloane.

She let out a shuddered breath.

She’d never had the courage to ask him…maybe it was time. After all, if he saw her naked, he’d know about her breasts. And if she took this date—this relationship—further, he’d see it all.