Love in the Light (Hearts in Darkness, #2)(26)

Caden stepped to her side as if to look.

She whirled away. “You get to see when I get to see—when it’s done,” she said, not knowing if Heath had added the part Caden didn’t know about.

“So it’s like that, is it?” he asked with a smirk.

“It’s exactly like that.” She gave him some smirk right back.

“You’re doing great, you know,” he said. “It’s a big tattoo for your first time.”

She checked to make sure Heath wasn’t right behind her, and then said. “I like it big. You should know this.”

The smile he gave her said he wanted to devour her. “Is it time for appetizers yet?”

“Ready to wrap this up?” Heath said, sitting down on his rolling stool again.

“Definitely,” Makenna said, taking her seat. “And for the record, Caden, it’s almost time.”

*

Caden had really enjoyed sharing this experience with Makenna, and he was still kinda blown away by the fact that she wanted to do it in the first place. He knew that she really liked his tattoos, but she’d told him that she’d always been afraid they would hurt. And here she’d barely reacted the whole time.

He wasn’t surprised, though. Makenna was soft and sweet, but she could also be tough when she needed to be—like when she was calling him on his bullshit, or like how she was so well adjusted about the death of her mother.

“There,” Heath said after a while. “All done.”

The smile Makenna wore absolutely owned Caden. It really did.

“Can I see it now?” she asked. Heath handed her the mirror, and she walked kinda backward toward the full-length. “I get to see it first,” she said, grinning at him and sticking out her tongue. For a long moment, she studied herself, moving the hand-held mirror this way and that, and then her eyes went glassy. “I really love it,” she said. “Heath, you are so talented. It’s amazing.” Her joy was palpable, and it lit Caden up inside.

“Caden, I like this woman a lot. You’re welcome to bring her around absolutely any time,” he said with a wink.

Makenna laughed. “I mean it, it’s great. So much better than I even imagined.”

“Well, you’re welcome,” Heath said.

“Do I get to see it now?” Caden asked, curiosity getting the best of him.

“You do,” she said, her expression suddenly shy. She turned around, and Caden came closer.

The black ink was stunning against her fair skin. And she was right, Heath’s work was meticulous as always, crisp and clean and executed perfectly. The Celtic knots were beautiful, and the way the tree blended with them was interesting and unique. Across the bottom, six initials in an old-looking font formed a curve among the tree’s roots—M, E, P, I, M, C. Caden looked closer. The second M had a smaller letter hanging off of it on a little flourish. C.

“Say something,” she said.

He met her gaze in the mirror. “It’s incredible,” he said. “And it looks fantastic on you, just like I knew it would. What’s the little letter C?” That hadn’t been on the design she’d shown him earlier.

Meeting his gaze in the mirror, her expression went so, so soft, and she gave a shy little shrug. “The C…is for you.”

The words hung there for a moment, and it was like the room sucked in on him. “For me?” he heard himself say as if from a distance. Blood rushed through his ears.

She nodded.

“But…but this…this is your family tree,” he said, the room going a little Tilt-a-Whirl around him.

In an instant, she was right in front of him, hands on his chest and bright blue eyes staring up at him. “To me, it feels like you are part of my family, Caden. And I wanted you there.”

“I…I…don’t know….” He shook his head, entirely overwhelmed and overcome. “I mean, that’s amazing of you to do. I just can’t believe you did it,” he said, not exactly sure what he was saying.

And then something else occurred to him. She’d put his initial on her body. It wasn’t exactly the same as his name, but close enough. And he’d always heard that tattooing a lover’s name jinxed the relationship. It was bad luck. And for him, was there any other kind?

It was a stupid superstition, of course. But it was like him resisting telling her “I love you” because he didn’t want to tempt the fates, or the gods of mayhem, or whoever was responsible for bad things happening to good people. His brain was already imagining the ways that little curve of a C could be easily changed into something else—a heart, a clover, another knot.

And Jesus, here he was thinking about not wanting to tell her that he loved her when she’d permanently claimed him on her very skin.

“No one’s ever done something like that for me, Makenna,” he finally managed, his brain still only vaguely connected to his mouth. “It’s…it’s amazing.”

Her smile was pure joy. “I hope you don’t mind. Once I thought of it, it just felt so right. So I went with it. You’ll always be a part of me.”

“Let’s get you bandaged up,” Heath said, waving her over to the chair again.

Caden watched him work on Makenna and listened to him give her aftercare instructions, but he did it all as if he was watching it from across the room, from somewhere outside his body. His heart raced and his chest went tight.