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“Pat Tillman?”
“Oh, yeah. I do know who he is. Didn’t recognize him.”
After I finished looking, I stood there, both wanting and not wanting to face him. Finally, I turned.
Lucas totally looked down at my chest.
My shirt wasn’t as revealing as some, but more so than others. Tasteful, but definitely one I wasn’t sorry to have worn for this chance meeting.
“You can’t avoid me forever,” I said when he caught my eye again.
It was barely a whisper, the words as straightforward as I could manage.
“Charlee. . .”
I loved hearing my name on his lips. “Lucas,” I countered, ready to win this battle at least, if not the war. “This is incredible,” I said, meaning it. “I don’t think I’ve ever been in a tattoo parlor before.”
Books of, presumably, tattoo ideas littered a table that seemed to serve as a design station.
“No, I wouldn’t imagine you would.”
He leaned against the counter, arms crossed. His own tattoo sleeve peeked out from under a T-shirt, and I dearly wanted to go up to him and take a closer look. Ask him to tell me what it all meant. Maybe touch them, run my finger up his arm. . .
His words belatedly penetrated.
“Meaning?”
“Never mind. So, are we doing this now or what?”
“Jesus, blunt much?”
“I’ve never been one to sugarcoat, Charlee. You know that.”
Without being invited, I sat down in the swivel chair at the design table.
“There’s sugarcoating and there’s. . .” I waved my hand at him. “Whatever you’re doing.”
“Doing? I’m not doing anything.”
“No? Just trying to push me away.”
His laugh was not the kind I remembered. “You do that all by yourself, bright eyes.”
It was what he’d called me back then—my eyes were one of the features Lucas liked best about me. I tried not to look surprised he used it now, but the intimacy of it was inescapable.
“I’m sorry, Lucas,” I said. “I was a fool to break up with you just because it’s what my father wanted. A fool,” I repeated for effect.
“Okay.”
That was it. I’d opened up, made myself vulnerable to him by admitting I’d made a colossal mistake, and his response was. . . okay?
One more try. “I thought about you—”
“Stop.”
“—while you were gone. Not just in the beginning, but the whole—”
“Stop, Charlee.”
