The Man I Love (The Fish Tales, #1)(61)

Erik nodded.

Will looked away. “But I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I’m so sorry, Fish. I told you I’d take care of it. And you trusted me not to let Dais get hurt. You told me you trusted my hands.”

“Stop,” Erik whispered. He’d never seen Will like this. Inside-out. Frantic and fretful. Sure of nothing.

“It’s killing me,” Will said. He rolled his lips in and his eyes squeezed shut. “What they had to do to her leg. And when I think about how I dropped her—”

“Dude, you were shot. He took your fingers off.”

“I dropped her.”

“It’s not your fault.”

“It is, Fish. He was coming after me.”

“If he was coming solely after you he would’ve shot you and only you. He was on a tear. He shot his way through the wings and killed five people. He shot Daisy. He shot Marie and Kees. He almost shot me.”

Will looked at him, his mouth working hard to hold back the emotion. “You stopped him.” The tears rising up in his dark eyes began to spill down his face. “I watched you talk to him. You don’t know, Fish. You don’t know what I…”

“I do know.” Erik got out of the chair, moved to sit on the edge of the bed. Will tried to sit up but grimaced in pain. Erik came to him instead, leaned and held Will’s forehead against his collarbone and let him cry. “I do know,” he said. “And it wasn’t your fault.”

“I’m sorry,” Will whispered between sobs.

“It’s all right,” Erik said. “It wasn’t your fault. It’s gonna be all right.”

He made his hands heavy and soothing and calm. Not rubbing or patting Will to make light of the vulnerable moment, nor thumping his back to couch it in masculinity.

After a minute Will pushed him away, roughly wiping his face. “God, you’re such a crybaby, Fish.”

“Yeah, I love you too,” Erik said.

Will pointed at him. “Don’t. Just don’t. If I tell you how much I love you, it’s going to get embarrassing. You’ll really cry. Then I’ll cry. Someone’s cock will get sucked. It will rapidly get out of hand and we’ll wind up on Jerry Springer.” He ran a hand through his hair and nudged his chin toward the bottle of juice on the table. “You wanna open that for me?”

Erik twisted the cap off and handed it over.

“Thanks,” Will said, taking a sip. “Apparently hospitals make Lucky horny. Who the f*ck saw that coming?”

Erik laughed, and even Will managed a smile, shaking his head against the bottle.

“Listen, I need your help.” Erik told Will what he wanted to do, and Will made a short phone call on the spot. After hanging up, he wrote down an address for Erik.

“Ask for Omar. He does all my ink. He’ll be waiting.”

Omar had been following the coverage of the shootings on TV. In the inner sanctum of his tattoo parlor in South Philly, he listened to Erik’s story, then took pencil and paper and began sketching. He grasped what Erik wanted right away. Not cute or cartoonish. Simple. Realistic. He even consulted a botanical book he had on one of his many shelves. He suggested the petals not all be perfect, maybe one or two could be tattered. Erik liked the idea, as long as the flower didn’t look like it was dying.

“Oh no,” Omar said, in his sing-song Jamaican patois. “We’ll keep her alive, my friend, but we won’t ignore her scars. We’re all shaped by our scars.”

Erik watched as Omar went over the pencil with a black pen, watched the design come to life.

“It’s a daisy,” Omar said, “but it’s just a little…dark.”

“It’s perfect.”

“Do you want any lettering—her initials, or the date?”

Erik wanted just the flower head. On the inside of his left wrist. It took Omar less than twenty minutes to ink. It hurt like hell and Erik was glad of it.

He went back to the hospital and sat at Daisy’s bedside, tenderly running his hand over her face and hair. She stirred under his touch and began to wake up. He smiled as her eyes grew lucid and settled against his.

“Feel better?” he whispered.

She hummed in her throat. The corners of her mouth flicked upward and she turned her forehead into his palm. The tattoo was inches from her chin. Erik waited. A moment’s silence passed with her head bowed against his hand, and then she seized his wrist. Her mouth slowly opened as she moved his forearm back from her face. She blinked hard. Her fingers slid to carefully touch the puffy swollen skin.

“Erik…”

He sat still. She looked a long time, her lips trembling as she ran fingertips over her representation sunk into his skin.

I have set you in my presence forever, Erik thought, remembering Psalm 41. I uphold you. You’re in my skin. And I am not leaving.

Still holding his wrist, she looked at him. “Does it hurt?”

“Yes,” he said.

Her face dissolved beneath a stream of tears. She took his hand and drew it along her neck, tucked it beneath her jawline, curled against it as much as she could.

“Nobody loves me like you,” she whispered.





Part Three: David





Executive Decisions