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And why am I thinking of Ocean and marriage again? Am I crazy? Has to be all the talk about babies and weddings. Amber could be right.
I should make a wedding gowns category.
Also, what’s with the timing, huh? Three Inked girls pregnant at the same time? What’s up with that?
I get that Tyler’s son would want a little brother or sister to play with, and Zane and Dakota got married, which meant they were seriously thinking about it—probably—but I didn’t think Rafe and Megan were in any real hurry to have kids. If anything, I thought Megan was kind of scared of the idea.
Personally, I’d have bet on Dylan and Tessa getting preggers first, but come to think of it, they have Dylan’s little brothers. They’re already set, I guess. They can wait a while longer to have their own.
I love babies. They are the cutest things. And I’d love to make wedding dresses for the Inked Brotherhood girls. If they’d like me to. I’m not as close to them as I am to the Damage girls, but I do love them all. One thing you can say about these pretty, wounded boys is that they have good taste in girls.
All except one, that is. Otherwise he’d have called me, right?
I’m sitting on my bed, a drawing pad propped on my knees, retouching a design of a pair of long, slinky pants, but my mind isn’t on it. I glance at my sewing table, at the glittering, beautiful fabrics waiting for me to shape them into funky clothes, and sigh.
It has been like this since Tuesday. Since I walked out of Ocean’s apartment.
I tried not to ask about him, not to be interested, but information has filtered in anyway. Happens when you hang out with his friends. Looks like Jason’s sicker than he himself thought. It’s the flu, it seems, and there was an emergency trip to the doctor’s when the fever wouldn’t go down. Jesse was there, too, and Amber.
They didn’t tell me, as I was so upset with Ocean.
Crap.
? stab my pen into the paper, then start shading in one side of the pants. I add a flare at the hem. Then a pattern of flowers.
Yes, I was angry when I left his apartment. Confused. Thrown off my game. The fact he’s been taking care of Jason doesn’t change that.
My mind keeps going back to that night in his apartme
nt. Could it be I overreacted? That my attraction to him blinded me to what was really going on? Was he sad over something else, and I pushed him too hard to talk to me?
“Not now,” he’d said when I’d walked into his room. Had I waited a little, would he have told me what was on his mind?
But why should I let him snark at me when I was only trying to help him? That’s dangerous territory. He should explain. He should apologize.
In my mind I see his eyes, blue like a slivers of summer sky, and that sharp edge of sadness in them, and my heart hurts.
Yeah, dangerous.
Before this went down, I’d started on a present for him. Two, actually. A long-sleeved T-shirt, and fingerless gloves. I’ve left them unfinished.
Everything between us feels unfinished. Only starting.
Or already ending?
I put down my drawing pad and grab my pack of cards. It’s not the first time today I’m spreading them, hoping for some insight, some clue. About him. About his reaction.
And mine.
The Magician card keeps coming up, and this time is no exception. I study his youthful face, his determined expression as he lifts a scepter in a lush garden, the symbol of eternity hovering over his head. He looks a bit like Ocean, I think. If his hair was blue, perhaps.
His belt is a snake biting its own tail, another symbol for the eternal, and he has all the symbols of the deck laid out in front of him: the sword, the cup, the rod and the pentagram.
Beginnings. Initiation. Call to adventure.
Is this him? Or me?
What was my question again? Damn.
