Delicate
Contents
1. Sierra
Logan
2. Logan
Sierra
3. Logan
Sierra
Logan
4. Sierra
Logan
5. Sierra
Logan
6. Sierra
Logan
7. Sierra
8. Logan
Sierra
9. Logan
Sierra
10. Sierra
Logan
11. Sierra
Logan
12. Sierra
Logan
13. Sierra
Logan
14. Sierra
Logan
15. Sierra
Logan
16. Sierra
Logan
17. Sierra
18. Sierra
Logan
19. Sierra
Logan
20. Sierra
Logan
21. Sierra
Logan
22. Sierra
Logan
23. Sierra
Logan
Epilogue
Logan
Sierra
Letter to the Reader
Bonus Epilogue
Defiant
Dangerous
Also by Sara Cate
About the Author
Copyright © 2020 by Sara Cate
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Cover design: TRC Designs
Cover photo: Lindee Robinson
Editing: Rumi Khan
Created with Vellum
1
Sierra
The buzzing sound is relentless. It’s like knives drilling into my head. How anyone could work here all day, I don’t know. It seems impossible.
“So you think I should do the dolphin or the dragonfly?” Natalie says next to me, flipping through her phone. She has a Pinterest board pulled up with hundreds of girly tattoo images on the screen.
“I don’t know,” I answer. “Which one has more meaning to you?”
“Eh. I don’t really care about meaning. I just want something pretty back there, you know?” She winks as she points to her left shoulder blade.
I laugh, although it’s a little forced. She’s the kind of girl with a perfect body—round hips, thin hourglass waist, and big, full breasts that make the most boring T-shirt look smoking hot. I’m a little jealous.
“Natalie,” a man’s voice calls in a flat tone from the front desk. I recognize the big, burly man with the salt and pepper beard, dashing green eyes, and broad, hard shoulders.
Natalie jumps up from her seat to greet him—with her boobs, of course. He doesn’t even notice. I have no doubt that Natalie is not above sleeping with him just because he’s a decade or more older.
“Logan is gonna be right out to do your ink. Did you decide on anything?”
“Oh, you’re not doing it?” she asks, leaning over the glass. I roll my eyes at her display. Natalie and I have known each other for years, but we only hang out when our parents come up to Wickett Beach on holidays—or Wicked Beach, as it’s been unofficially renamed. I like Natalie, but she and I are two totally different people. She flaunts everything all the time and doesn’t even care that guys only want her for one thing.
Which is fine. But it just seems to take all of the fun out of it for me. It might sound cliché, but when I find the right guy, I want it to be special—not just a quick romp for fun.
She’s still trying to get the older guy to react to her tit display, but he doesn’t seem impressed. I bet he sees girls like her all the time, especially this week.
Spring break on Wicked is typically crazy, full to the brim with young, rich trust fund babies in the prime of their first week of freedom. Bars and clubs are more relaxed on their carding policy. Cops let the rules go because more people are spending money, and it’s known for being a playground for the rich kids. Not quite as sleazy as Cancún, but just as wild.
While we wait, I glance around the shop. It’s decorated like a mechanic’s garage with big red toolboxes and short black stools on wheels, which is clever and somehow sexy. The front desk is a glass case full of photos and piercing jewelry. It’s actually a pretty tasteful place and not what I expected. I’ve only ever seen it from the outside, and I was picturing something seedier. My parents would freak if they knew I was in here, but just like every spring break on Wicked, they disappear and leave me alone for the entire week.
I’m an adult now, so it’s not like I need a chaperone anymore. But if they knew where I was, I bet they would disagree. I smile to myself thinking about their reaction.
The thought of shocking them makes me strangely happy.
“Natalie?” Another man appears from behind the wall that divides the front waiting area and the back where the tattoos are taking place. I glance up when I hear his voice, smooth and deep like chocolate, and my jaw nearly hits the floor. I can’t take my eyes off of him. He’s covered from his hands to his neck in tattoos, but they’re not all black like the older guy’s. They’re beautiful, vibrant, and full of color like a mural on his skin. In fact, I don’t think there is any black in them at all—like a watercolor.
But it’s not his tattoos that keep my attention. It’s his familiarity.
I know him.
Every summer I come to the island, I seek him out, in the least creepy way possible, of course. Once or twice, I would gawk at him through the window as I passed on the boardwalk. More than once, I watched him eating at the diner down the street.
Why I’ve been so drawn to him, and act like a stalker suitable for a true crime documentary, I don’t know.
It’s not just his looks, and I mean, he is gorgeous, with his rich brown hair that always falls in perfect waves over his forehead and his sharp cheekbones. Maybe that’s what caught my eye the first time I saw him back when I was just fourteen, but the fascination became something more than that.
I could see the trouble in his eyes, like he held secrets I wanted to know and wisdom I could never understand. He can’t be more than twenty-five, but I can just tell his twenty-five years have seen a lot more than my nineteen.
“That’s me!” Natalie squeals, and as soon as her eyes land on him, she seems to forget the guy behind the counter.
But he’s not looking at her. He’s looking at me.
I’m still sitting on the folded black chairs as we stare at each other, and I feel a settling weight of remorse land in my gut. Something about him has changed since last year. It’s not just the new tattoos or the way his shoulders don’t seem to fill out the T-shirt in the same way they did before. There’s a little less life behind his eyes.
I stand and walk toward Natalie, trying to pull myself from the trance I fell into the second his crystal blues fell on me. “It’s her,” I say as I point to my friend.
“You don’t want a tattoo?” he replies with a crooked smile. It’s contagious because I feel my own smile grow across my face. Without knowing why, I put my hand against my cheeks to hide the grin. The world’s worst flirter, right here.
“N-no,” I stutter.
He shows his pearly white teeth, and I swear my knees buckle.
Natalie cackles next to me. “Her? Get a tattoo? Yeah, right.” I realize she’s teasing me, so I lose my smile and glare at her. I get that I look a little innocent, but I’m no saint.
“Well, maybe one day,” he says, and I’m under the spotlight of his stare again.
“I think I want a dolphin on my shoulder here,” Natalie says, pointing to her back. “To remind me of my time here. It’s special to me,” she says, looking at him through heavy lids.
He nods at her and takes a deep breath, an expression I can tell means he’s mentally preparing himself to deal with yet another bubbly young girl and her dolphin tattoo.
I smile to myself as I follow them back to his station.
Logan
God, I fucking hate spring break. It’s nothing but drunk, rich fucks and dolphin tattoos.
But the business is good, so I guess I shouldn’t complain. Murph loves the girls this time of year, but I could live without them. They come to Wickett (I refuse to call it Wicked) once a year to get their kicks with the dirty locals and take off back to their lives of big houses and upstanding boyfriends. We are a proverbial bucket list for these girls.
I lost a bet to Murph, hence why I’m stuck with the dolphin, and he gets to take the next walk-in. The shop was slow for a minute, and I bet him the next customer to walk in would be a frat guy on a drunk dare. It’s past 8:00 p.m. on the first night of spring break. Getting a stupid tattoo is like a rite of passage. But when we heard the door bells ring, we both peaked our heads around to see two girls walk in. One looking like she was ready to fuck the coat stand if someone didn’t step up. And the other…was her.
I never thought I’d live to see the day she’d actually walk into the shop. She spent the last five years watching from afar, which made sense. A girl like her doesn’t belong here. With her white Chucks and a pink skirt that hangs from her barely-there hips, this girl couldn’t look more out of place if she tried.
“Ha ha,” Murph teases. “You’re up.”
“Okay, go get them signed in. Let me grab a smoke, and I’ll be right up.”
“Fine,” he bellows. Then his hand lands firmly on my shoulder. “A smoke.” His eyes narrow, and I nod back.
Fuck, I know he’s just worried about me, but I hate being treated like I need to be babysat. Whatever I want to do behind the shop is my fucking business.
And if I want to chase the sweet, sweet ecstasy of the powered bliss in my pocket, that’s my choice.
Although I am working, and it’s his business, so maybe I will just wait until after my shift to do anything other than smoke. The little plastic bag feels like it’s burning a hole through my pants and into my skin. Damn, I wish it would.
He says I have no self-control, but look at me. Waiting until after my shift to get high.
The girl up front is being obnoxious. I can hear her through the back door. When I come back in, I do the usual routine: wash my hands, prep my supplies, and sanitize the seat and everything in my station. I have to appreciate how clean and righteous Murph runs things here. I wouldn’t work anywhere else.
Rounding the corner to the front of the shop, I stop in my tracks when I see the girl again. But this time, my eyes aren’t on her squeaky-clean sneakers or pastel pink skirt. I’m drawn to her eyes, nearly as blue as mine. Why haven’t I ever really looked into those big doe eyes before?
Every line of her face is delicate.
I have to snap out of it before I make a fool of myself staring at this beautiful mystery girl.
After I call the client, Natalie, she starts babbling on about a dolphin, and it takes every ounce of resolve in my body to not groan.
I don’t know why I tease the blonde about getting a tattoo. I think I want to see her smile, and it’s perfect. This girl is not my type, but I still want to look at her, hear her voice, swim in those perfect blue eyes.
When we reach my station, Natalie straddles the chair and immediately pulls down her shirt where she wants the dolphin. We make small talk while I clean the area and draw the design onto her skin. She chatters about coming to Wickett every spring and how she loves getting down with the locals. I fake my laughter through her story, and then my eyes slide up toward the quiet girl sitting in a chair in the corner.
“What about you?” I ask.
She lifts her eyes expectantly.
“Do you love to get down with the locals?” I tease her. Natalie giggles until I remind her to hold still.
“She’s not really the get-down type,” Natalie whispers.
“That’s okay.”
“I love coming here. Not to get down with the locals,” she answers, mimicking our tone, “but just because people are nicer, and I can breathe better here.”
Glancing up again, I smile because I know exactly what she means. Wickett has always been like that for me. Quiet. Comfortable. Every other week of the year.
“Boring,” Natalie mumbles as I hold a mirror up to show her the sketch on her back. “Yes, I love it,” she says. I ready the ink and listen to the girls talk about their plans after the tattoo. They’re going down to the bonfire which is a spring break ritual. They do it every year, and it’s always packed down there with tons of rich college kids, a real kickoff to the week.
Not gonna lie, I don’t like the idea of this girl going down to the bonfire. It’s notorious for heavy drinking and rowdiness. Every year some douchebags end up going a little far, and it becomes town gossip quick. The cops don’t do much with the pressures from the investors. I get the inside scoop from my brother’s best friend on the force. He hates this week even more than I do.
They let the kids have their fun but try to keep it under control. And they usually do.
Until I show up with my pocket full of party favors.
When I press my foot on the pedal, Natalie jumps from the loud buzz of the gun. I can already tell this is going to suck. She will cry and squirm, and it will turn out like shit. And I fucking hate when it’s not perfect.
“Is this going to hurt?” she whines.
“No, it tickles,” I answer dryly.
Two seconds into the tattoo, she’s crying. I don’t even get a full outline before she turns stark white and her skin goes cold.
“I’m going to throw up,” she cries.
I lift my foot from the pedal and grab her a bottle of water. Setting the tattoo gun on the tray, I help her up from her seat. “You need fresh air.”
“We can help you to the door. Can you walk?” the girl asks.
“I think so,” Natalie mumbles.
God, I fucking hate fainters. Every once in a while, I get the pukers and the fainters. I pull off my gloves and help Natalie to the back door—never out the front. It’s bad for business. She sits on one of the chairs we have back there for this exact reason.
“Put your head between your legs, honey. Deep breath in and deep breath out.”
“It smells back here,” she whines.
“Yeah, it’s an alleyway behind a tattoo shop, and we’re fresh out of candles,” I reply dryly. I shouldn’t be such a jerk, but I’m irritable, and the bag in my pocket isn’t getting any lighter.