Ingrid bit her lip in thought. “Last night… last night you said…”
The words came back to me unbidden, and I repeated them, already knowing what she was about to say: “I said I’ve never killed a man, doll.” I shook my head. “I know what I said in the heat of the moment, but I’m a fighter, not a murderer. Murder means prison. Prison means leaving you. I can’t do that.”
Ingrid looked down. The defiance began to seep away until she looked small again. “No, I know,” she said softly. “I wasn’t seriously suggesting… We need to get Camila back, and it wouldn’t solve the issue with your mom. I just… I guess it all just started to feel so desperate that I began to wonder, you know? If it might be a way out. But it’s not, so…” She smeared away a tear that had escaped down her cheek.
“So I guess we go back to the drawing board,” I murmured.
“I guess so.”
I held her close as we went quiet, listening as our breathing synchronized and some of the tension that had tightened Ingrid’s body began to bleed away.
My mind kept turning.
I’ve never killed a man, doll... but for you, I’d do anything.
I would do anything for her. Iwould.
I held her tighter.
This girl who had been treated like something to use by everyone who was supposed to love her.
But it’s true: I’m not a murderer. I’m a fighter.
But… maybe it’s about time I changed that.
Chapter thirty-nine
Tristian
Iwiped down my tattoo gun with a sanitizing wipe, the smell of alcohol pungent in the air. Ingrid was perched in a chair nearby, her head down, charcoals dancing across a page of the sketchbook I’d given her as her dainty little floral sundress flared around her.
I rolled my stool over to her. She was shading a rose. It was still simplistic in some ways, and kind of on the squat side, but her skills were getting better.
At my appearance in the edge of her vision, Ingrid looked up with a frown. “Your next client still isn’t here?”
“He’s late,” I rumbled. “It happens.”
“We should have stayed home,” she said, a flush climbing her cheeks. “We could have had a lot more fun.”
Heat flared in me. I knew exactly what she was suggesting.
Leaning in to nip at her neck, I growled, “You’re not wrong about that, doll… but I’ve got to support us somehow. Bills to pay…”
“And your mom,” Ingrid said quietly.
I leaned back, mood broken. I nodded. “Right. Mom.”
Ingrid chewed her lip. “I could get a job? Would that help things?”
I chuckled. “I appreciate the sentiment, doll, I really do. But her medical bills are… well, they’re a lot higher.”
“How much higher?”
I leveled a look at her. “A lot.”
She considered for longer. “I could get a high-paying job?”
I laughed. Between her Netflix binges, baking, and afternoons sketching, I doubt she’d have much time.
