Playing for Keeps (Heartbreaker Bay #7)(31)

And that was great. For them.

But Sadie had never been lanky lean, not from day one, no matter how she ate or exercised. Nothing changed the fact that she was . . . well, curvy. And fighting it by restricting her food intake and exercising herself half to death for way too many years had only made her hate life.

Her parents had not known what to do with her. She’d been fourteen when they’d sneaked a peek into one of her sketch pads and found some drawings she’d done of a teenage girl wielding a knife, and they’d freaked out. Her mom had contacted a psychologist, Sadie’s school, and practically the National Guard.

This had put her on near lock-down with little to no privacy allowed. They might as well have cut off her hands because drawing had been her only outlet. Once that had become monitored, she’d started a new secret thing, one she could control. The only thing she could control.

Cutting.

And when that had been discovered two years later, her parents had institutionalized her. The nightmare had lasted only a few weeks, but to this day it’d been the worst, darkest time of her life.

She’d come a long way since then, but it’d been a learning curve. These days she didn’t care much about what people thought. And that alone was the reason she was still here. She didn’t live to make people happy, even if those people were her own family.

Needing a quick bout of happy at the moment, she pulled out her phone and brought up her pics, specifically the one from this morning when Caleb had come to pick up Lollipop. She’d run on her three legs right for him and taken a flying leap. The pic was live, showing Lollipop hitting Caleb’s chest and then his arms coming around the dog, but it was the smile on both man’s and dog’s face that caught her.

“What are you smiling at?” her mom asked, sitting next to her. “Who’s that?”

Sadie had played aloof so long she’d almost started to believe it about herself, but the truth was, there wasn’t anything aloof about how she felt about the dog. She was starting to come to terms with the fact that she felt a whole hell of a lot for the man too. Or at least certain parts of her did. “No one,” she said and slipped her phone away.

Her mom opened her mouth to press, but Addie interrupted and cemented a place in Sadie’s heart for it.

“How about this dress for you?” Addie asked. “It’d suit you.” She was holding up a long lacy bridesmaid dress that was actually pretty except for the fact that it was pink. But at least it was pale pink, almost a champagne color, and who didn’t like champagne . . . “This is the right color, yes?” she asked Clara.

Clara nodded. “And it’s great for Sadie’s skin tone.”

“Her tattoos will show,” her mom said. “And what will we do about her hair?”

Sadie reached for the bag of chips again just as her phone went off with a text from the Canvas Shop letting her know her next client was in.

Perfect.

She stood. “Sorry, gotta get to work.” She hugged Addie, and then on second thought hugged her sister, her mom, and her aunt too, even though the Lanes weren’t exactly the hugging type. Stepping back, she let out a breath, officially hugged out for the rest of the year. She was halfway out the door of the bridal shop when she heard her mom.

“But seriously, what about Sadie—?”

She couldn’t hear the rest of the question, but chances were that it was a valid one. No one ever knew what to do with her.



Three minutes later, Sadie entered the Canvas Shop. Rocco gave a jerk of his head to the back room. His version of asking her to talk for a minute.

She followed him.

He leaned back against a counter and stared at her. His black hair was wild as always and months past needing a cut. His jeans were torn up, his kickass boots battered, his T-shirt advertised his own shop, and his expression was dialed to Cranky Ass. Unlike Sadie, who only had a few very strategically placed tattoos, Rocco was inked from head to toe. Tattoos gave a history, a road map so to speak. There were prison tats. Russian tats. Drunken tats . . . Every one of them told a story and Rocco had started young.

Not Sadie. After high school, she hadn’t been able to get an apprenticeship with a tattoo artist, so she’d gotten her esthetician license instead and started doing permanent makeup instead, working at a spa that did a lot of pro bono work for cancer patients.

It’d been eye-opening. What she’d heard most often was the devastation of dealing with the aftermath and recovery, including surgical scars.

When she’d finally gotten a chance to become an apprentice at Rocco’s tattoo shop, she’d jumped on it. She’d worked under him for three years, doing whatever work Rocco had given her before getting her own clients, and she’d made her own niche. Because unlike anyone else in their shop, she specialized in covering scars.

Rocco was only five years older than her, but besides being her boss, he also considered himself her protector and her very nosy older brother.

“What’s going on?” she asked.

He handed her a brown bag from the coffee shop. It was filled with Tina’s famous mouthwatering muffins.

“Wow,” she said. “Thanks. Is it Christmas?”

“They’re not from me.”

Her heart took a good hard leap against her ribs as she realized they must be from Caleb. The night before he’d had a late work night and he’d needed her to cover Lollipop for him. She’d happily done it and hadn’t expected a reward of muffins, but she would take it.