Tattoo Kiss x, page 1
TATTOO KISS
BOOK ONE
SARAH BROWN
Copyright 2022 Sarah Brown
All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system without the prior written permission of the author.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
CONTENTS
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Acknowledgments
About the Author
With my broken heart and magnanimous grief, I took the hand of my well-worn gypsy and left it all behind.
My family, my home, my job, all of it behind me, with no thought to how it would affect my life or what a profound impact that choice would have on so many things. I let him take me to the woods, mountains, and the wilderness.
Where no one knew my name or my face.
Where every flower was a new discovery.
Every turn in the road a surprise, closer to what felt more like home than ever before.
I was nameless. And so was he.
The solitude and silence, a balm for the grief which wracked my soul.
I found strength in his arms, and in the nights we would lie out under the wide-open moon and watch the glow together.
Expecting nothing, it looked down upon us with its blue-white face, as it had eons before.
The moonlight held us together, tied up our secrets, and laid them bare.
We bore each other’s burdens with greater solemnity in its presence.
A beacon of hope to our ever-weary hearts.
In the wilderness, we were free to be who we were.
And love.
Open and unashamedly out under the hazy glow of the mirror ball hung in the sky, twinkling ever so slightly with the dance of a thousand lights all glimmering at once from their bed of black velvet heavens.
We fell asleep suspended in dreams. His name on my lips and mine on his heart.
Echoing ceaselessly into the past and beyond, out of reach of space or time into the great unknown of forever.
Letti
It’s a known fact that women are supposed to be sad when their husbands die.
I’m not sad though.
Sometimes, I sit in my garage and leave my car running.
Just for a minute or two.
In the darkness, I imagine what it would be like if it didn’t take hours.
What it would be like to just…
Sleep.
I always end up turning off my engine because my elderly neighbor, Beverly, wouldn’t be too keen on finding me like that.
Bev is a busybody by nature, the kind of woman who puts bluing in her hair and still wears that awful saccharine Avon perfume released in 1997.
Her outfit is never complete without wide gold hoops or clip-on earrings, and she has one set for each holiday.
Bev would be the one to find me.
She’s nice enough, but I know she worries about me.
I can see it in her hazel eyes when she asks me, “How’re ya doing, kid?”
And we make small talk around the double mailbox by the street before each of us retreats into our quiet, insignificant lives.
No one the wiser.
Everyone here worries, but no one comes up to talk to me about it.
Not after the one time when Joan, my other neighbor, came to ask if I was okay.
She heard me rage-screaming and crying in my kitchen as a cupboard full of plastic containers held together by the grace of God alone came down in an avalanche on my face and that was it.
The straw that broke me that day.
Yeah.
I’m (not) okay.
It’s the PTSD, but I tell her it’s grief, and she goes, “Ooh.”
The pity “Ooh.”
The one I usually hate, but this time, I welcome it.
It’s easier to explain a widow’s rage than it is for me to explain my PTSD.
Women are supposed to be sad when their husbands die.
Tonight, I enter my quiet apartment and take my shoes off.
Grocery shopping for one.
Pathetic.
I always buy ingredients to make a salad.
I should take care of myself better.
But I don’t.
It’s one of the many reasons I hate myself.
Even the crisper drawer in my fridge laughs at me as I pull out the faded, wilted head of romaine from last week to replace it with the green and healthy-looking head of romaine for this week.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions and old heads of romaine lettuce.
I’m greeted by a loud meow, more like a yell. If this cat could talk, he’d have a voice like a Jersey bodega slinger.
Hercule is nine and doesn’t give a fuck anymore.
When he was a kitten, he would mew softly and follow me everywhere. Now he’s leveled up like a dark type, boss-level Pokémon and follows me like he has an equal share in my life and pays half the rent.
Rules don’t apply to either of us anymore. We’re both set in our ways after almost a decade together when I rescued him from a garbage bin after I heard him mewling next to a disintegrating box of Lucky Charms.
He was half the size of a hamster and meowsically delicious.
He’s gone from guttersnipe to king of the castle since I took him home and scrubbed him with Dawn, and he puffed up into a black, long-haired Furby.
I yell at him for being on the counter.
He just looks at me with his yellow eyes and meows back at me, “And? What’re you gonna do about it, huh? Huh?”
He’s got too much personality.
A cat-dog.
He’s the real reason I went to the store at all.
He was out of his wet food.
I knew I’d never hear the end of it if I put *gasp* dry food in his bowl in the morning like some damn uncultured swine.
“Just you and me, bud.”
I walk back to my room and take off my bra. After a quick, quiet shower, I change into my nighttime pajamas.
Not to be confused with the ones I wear during the day. Since I work from home, I don’t need to wear actual clothes. Or leave the house. Or see anyone.
I look in the mirror and scrub off my mascara and start layering on serums and creams.
At thirty-one, I have both acne and wrinkles.
Aging is fun, kids.
If your idea of fun is practically embalming yourself before bed each night.
I promised my therapist I’d do some kind of self-care bullshit.
Bath bombs feel too girly, but potions to reverse the hands of time? Now that sounds witchy.
Perfect.
Light me up, Puritans. I am now a witch.
A hydrated witch. Good luck with that.
I put on my old Gap ringer tee with a green collar and raglan sleeves. It used to be Kyle’s. There are holes in it now, but I don’t care. It’s onion-skin see-through, ultra-washed, super-comfortable cotton. The comfy that happens to a shirt right before it utterly disintegrates in the wash.
Pouring myself a bowl of Cinnamon Crunch cereal, I go to the couch to sit next to Hercule. Clicking on the television, I look at the wide-screen blankly.
“Murder documentary?” I look at Hercule, who is licking himself seductively. “Or murder mystery?”
I flip on his namesake, Poirot.
I’ve seen them all hundreds of times, but there is something comforting about that Belgian accent talking about his “little gray cells.”
I don’t watch new things anymore.
I lack the energy to invest in new things lately.
Maybe I’ll make it to bed tonight. It’s not uncommon for me to pass out in front of the wide-screen television my grandmother left me.
I don’t go out anymore either.
The last time I went out after nine p.m., it was because I’d forgotten to take out the garbage and recycling bins.
Time is a funny thing.
It moves until it doesn’t.
Until all life, as you know it, just stops, and you’re expected to go through the motions.
The hand of the clock breathes a sigh of relief as you gradually resume normal activities such as showering, cleaning, and going to t
And yet.
For me, it doesn’t budge.
I’ve been stuck in this perpetual purgatory for almost a year.
Has it really been that long? The change of the seasons tells me it has.
Merry Christmas, hide the rum. Pop the champagne, Happy New Year. Letti’s drunk again, out of her mind in the backyard.
Yeah. Family functions have been fun.
Family.
I try not to think about the copious texts I’ve been ignoring from my mom.
Maybe I’ll just say yes to that family dinner and go, pretend things are fine, so she leaves me be for another month or two.
Sometimes it works.
My head gets heavy on the couch.
I tell myself that lie again, the one where I say I’m just resting my eyes and then wake up at six a.m. with the worst neck pain ever.
Tomorrow will be just like today, and today was just like yesterday.
Nothing new.
I like that.
No surprises.
Even better.
I’m (not) okay.
“Dammit, Kendra.”
I grin like an idiot when my phone buzzes with a notification.
My coworkers and I have a meme with the words “Dammit, Kendra” floating around between us all on Microsoft Teams.
There used to be an actual Kendra.
She got fired because she didn’t do her job, nor did she care. It was kind of hilarious to watch the crash and burn.
Does that make me a mean girl?
Probably.
Low key, all of us call center representatives admired her for not giving a flying fuck.
Now, when other employees aren’t making use of correct protocol, the “Dammit, Kendra” memes start to circulate. It’s about as much entertainment as I get these days.
Don’t get me wrong, I love helping people who are obviously trying to help themselves here. If you’re new and struggling, I gotchu boo.
I, too, was once young and naïve and thought the world was a better place than it is now.
When I was in college, I used to work in retail.
Yup, sold makeup, the whole shebang. I would do makeovers for rich bitches and get commission and all that jazz.
Retail was a fucking cakewalk to what I’m doing now.
When I gave up my job at the firm, I went on unemployment for a grand total of two months before receiving an email from a job posting site asking if I’d be down to work from home for the government.
Sure.
Keywords: work from home.
You mean I wouldn’t have to leave my house and possibly have panic attacks on the highway to get to work? Only to face courtrooms full of angry people looking at me not to crumble while I present emotional cases to a judge and jury.
Hell, yes.
I spent one too many mornings late to court because I was hyperventilating on the side of the road with my hazard lights on. Blasting the air-conditioning in my face, trying to blink furiously while my tears worked their way through the Marc Jacobs mascara. I bought it to dissuade myself from ruining my makeup by crying.
That phase lasted about a month before pricy mascara alone couldn’t stop the tears from flowing.
I remember reading somewhere that breathing in intense scents could help stop a panic attack. So, there I’d be, on the side of the road, sniffing my highly scented hand sanitizer or essential oils (if I remembered to put them in my purse) like some kind of goddamn huffing hippie. I’m honestly shocked no one called the cops on me for doing drugs.
By the way, no, it doesn’t work. Peppermint oil can fuck right off.
Enter working for the Department of the Treasury. The pay was less…a lot less…but for working from home, the job came with fancy government benefits, and honestly, it wasn’t the worst.
Now I deal with the public who thinks the government works for them personally.
Karen? I know her. She knows me, too. So does her cousin Barbara, and her Aunt Peggy, who call me up just to scream at me and tell me what a fucked job the government is doing. Like I am personally responsible.
Sometimes, it gets to me.
If I had a soul, it’d be worse.
I used to care.
It’s my job to help the public get the help they need, but after hearing scam after scam of people playing the system and with my past as an attorney, it’s hard to hear the lies and still care.
I’ve learned to be firm but polite. How to sound feminine so my male callers will go easy on me. How to be a hard-ass when others try to boss me around.
I play all roles here.
It pays the bills.
Do I see myself doing this forever? Not really.
Then again, do I see myself here forever? I’m not going to answer that.
Macabre.
I adore pronouncing that word. The r rolls off the tongue and makes me feel like I’m French or something.
I’m thinking about that as I clock out for lunch and head to the kitchen to throw in a pre-made quinoa bowl.
Next to the fancy new head of lettuce, you’d think I’m practically Ina Garten herself.
In my kitchen, there is a window to nowhere. Facing the wall of my red brick garage and currently glazed over because of the unseasonably icy rain outside.
I pretend I’m looking out onto a Tuscan villa with vineyards Bacchus himself would be jealous of when I hear a sharp knock at the door.
Fuck.
I’m not expecting anyone.
Not today, not ever.
Maybe it’s Amazon and they’ll leave.
I like my mail carrier.
I call him Kenneth, but I don’t actually know his name. He looks like a Kenneth with his Mormon Ken-doll haircut. He knows to leave the package at the doorstep and to get the fuck out like the pizza delivery guy from Home Alone.
Good old Kenneth.
My heart is in my throat. I feel like I’m about to be sick as I hear the knock again.
This is not Kenneth delivering my weekly supply of ground coffee that I suckle down like a greedy baby with a stimulant dependency.
Fuckity fuck fuck. I’ll have to go check the door.
They sound insistent.
Finally, my turn to be on a murder documentary.
Fuck it, Letti. Go to the door. You’re a grown-ass adult.
I look down at my outfit: oversized men’s sweater and skinny jeans. No bra.
Oh, well, I guess I can hide behind the door so they don’t see my nonexistent tits…
Okay, now that was a bang. Rude.
I swear to God, I’ll kill them.
I skitter past the kitchen and up to the front door.
Fuck me and my plans of being artsy.
I was an idiot when I put a faux stained glass window clings all over my door, because now I couldn’t see who it was. I actually have to fucking open it.
“Coming!” I call out.
Why is my voice so high?
My palms are sweating here.
Why is this shadow so big? Is fucking Shrek standing outside?
I take a deep breath while I unbolt the three locks I have on the inside of my door.
Shrek must think they’re at fucking Gringotts bank from Harry Potter by the sounds of all the locks my shaking fingers are turning.
I open the door like a vault and poke my head into the crack.
There’s a goddamn giant outside my door.
Standing there in the freezing rain, soaked, and with massive shoulders that are at least two feet across.
Instead of Shrek, the man in front of me has the male equivalent of resting bitch face. I like to call this stoic Viking face.
At least what face I can make out under the hat.
He’s bundled up against the icy drizzle outside and all I can see is his potentially auburn, wavy hair poking out from under his gray knit beanie and the cloud of vapor. His jacket is pulled so far up on his face I can barely see it.
