Page 7 of Beg for You

But this feeling, it wasn’t just about the tattoo, was it?

I looked back over my shoulder to the small shop across the street—while loud voices and music echoed out from the bar just down from me, a soundtrack that seemed to throb through me—and I sucked in a sharp breath.

There was a large shadow at the window, a dim outline through the pictures taped on the glass door, but I knew what it was…who was standing there.

Cal.

Chapter Two

Cal

She didn’t recognize me.

But then my name wouldn’t have tipped her off. Cal was a nickname, a shortened version of my surname Calero. Cassandra wouldn’t know that, Chris had called me by my first name, Joel.

Through a small gap, the only piece of glass door not covered in pictures, I watched Cassandra Deighton get into her car and shut the door.

Jesus. Even after ten years she still seemed as untouchable as she had then. That coating of frost she’d made sure I felt whenever I was around her hadn’t thawed. The only time I’d seen her soften was around her horses. Daddy’s perfect angel. She’d been an ice queen in the making back then. Is that who she was now?

What would her father say if he knew she was getting inked up? If he knew who was going to be decorating her rich-girl skin?

I gripped the handle. I needed to go out there before she left, put a stop to this, tell her that I’d made a mistake, that I couldn’t fit her in after all. But I couldn’t make my damn feet move. I fucking stood there and watched her drive away.

The last time I’d seen her she’d been walking up the stairs in her house, dressed to the nines, dolled up for one of her father’s fancy dinner parties. She hadn’t seen me, had missed the night’s entertainment when I’d been escorted from the property, whispers and looks of accusation following me as I was dragged out and told not to come back.

The poor Rocktown kid, the bad seed who had led Lyall Deighton’s perfect son astray then dared to show his ugly face at their doorstep and remind them of what had happened. All I’d wanted was to see if Cassandra was okay. I knew she’d been hurt, but I had no idea how badly.

That was the first time her father publicly blamed me for Chris’s death.

My fist collided with the doorframe, a rough growl erupting past my lips, rage a twisted knot in my gut. I should have followed her from my shop. I should have told her not to come back.

Would you be able to even form the damn words to tell her to take a hike?

I felt my skin heat and gritted my teeth. Yeah, I’d seen the horrified look on her face when she’d gotten a good look at me, the tilt of her head when my speech was slow, measured. It pissed me the fuck off. Frustration, the kind I hadn’t felt in a long time, settled in my gut. The TBI—traumatic brain injury—I’d suffered when I was thrown from the car had changed my whole life, and even after all this time I still had moments when I struggled with my speech. The words didn’t always come easy, and I had to think hard, get them right in my head, before I spoke.

“Fuck.” Of all the tattoo shops Cassandra could have strutted her snooty ass into, she’d chosen mine. Why did I agree to work on her? I’d lost my motherfucking mind. Shit, if she knew who she’d asked to cover those scars…

An image of her smooth porcelain skin, the burn scars marring that perfect flesh, flashed through my head. I tried to shove the image from my mind and strode back to my room to start cleanup, but it wouldn’t leave me. I kicked my stool across the room and dragged my hand over my cropped hair.

Goddammit. I never thought I’d see her again.

I’d met Chris, her brother, in a club one night. He’d come to me, looking for a dealer, and I’d been only too happy to be his supplier. My grandmother had been raising us, doing her best, but could barely put food on the table. So when my brother had gotten sick, really sick with pneumonia, and we’d needed money fast, I’d done what was necessary to cover the medical bills. Chris was reckless, always trying to prove something. Soon the weed I sold him wasn’t enough, and he got what he needed elsewhere. There was nothing I could do to stop the road he’d headed down. No one could have.

But Chris’s family, Cassy—her brother had called her—they’d blamed me when I knew damn well the guy had been acting out long before I came along. It was easier to point the finger at me than admit they’d ignored the warning signs, that Chris’s fate had been written on the wall a long time before he’d gotten in that car, stoned and drunk, and driven us into a tree.

They’d had no trouble pinning Chris’s death on the punk kid from the wrong side of the tracks, a kid who had no one on his side and no one to stand up for him against a wealthy family in need of a scapegoat.

His father was angry that I’d lived. He’d wanted to hurt me—so he had, the only way he could. He went to the authorities about the drugs and about my younger brother and the conditions we were living in.

My grandmother had been raising Dane and I since our parents abandoned us, along with our cousin Logan after his mom proved time and again that she cared more about her next drink than her son. Our grandmother did her best, despite having nothing. No, some days we didn’t eat, but we still had each other, and we were with someone who loved us.

The end result of Lyall’s interference was Dane being taken away, put into foster care, and Logan, who had been helping pay the medical bills by doing the same as me, had been arrested and sent to prison. He was the oldest out of the three of us, and was always trying to look out for us, protect us. Because of that, he’d stashed the weed in his room, and had insisted he take the fall for the drugs that were found completely.

Our small dysfunctional family had been torn apart, all because Lyall Deighton had wanted someone to punish for his own damn failings.

Cassy.

She’d been sixteen when I first saw her. There hadn’t been many times, but she’d made an impression. I’d been nineteen, tall, skinny as hell. Rough and hungry, hungry for every damn thing, every experience, every opportunity, any way to find a better life for my family. I’d gone with Chris to his property the first time he’d asked me to see what I could steal from that big fancy ranch house of his. Instead, we’d somehow ended up friends.