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“Get lost, girl,” I said. “I’m not calling the cops on you.”
This was a mistake, telling her this. Because in her surprise she took another step forward. There was little more than my drawing desk and a few fateful steps between her and me. I gripped the edges of the desk, felt the soft wood splinter between my shaking fingers, wondered just how long it would hold me back.
“Why not?” the girl asked, all accusation, all suspicion.
“What does it matter?” I said quickly, biceps beginning to shake. “Just take your reprieve and go.”
The stupid thing didn’t leave. No, she just came closer still.
“I want to know why,” she demanded.
For such a small thing, she had quite the mouth. Or really, quite the nerve to use it.
“I’m working,” I tried, almost desperately. “You know, the thing you do to earn money.”
The girl’s lips curled into a mischievous smile and I was apparently damned to say all the wrong things.
“You need to go.”
“Tell me why you aren’t going to bust me,” she insisted.
I jerked back when the little thief’s fingertips came to the top of my drawing desk. When had she gotten so close? How had I allowed her to get so close? She looked up at me through long dark eyelashes that had caught the rain like blades of wild grass. She tucked her hair behind her ear. I was doomed to stare down into both her wide, wickedly innocent eyes.
How was I supposed to tell her the truth without multiplying the questions on the tip of her tongue, a little wild raspberry perfect for plucking, for holding between my teeth? How was I supposed to provide an answer behind which were a dozen more answers, a dozen more reasons to step closer, a dozen more reasons to stay? How was I supposed to explain something that would take longer than my resolve to have nothing, absolutely nothing with my little thief could possibly last?
If I told her that I knew the hells of juvie and wouldn’t, even for the life of me and certainly not for trying to snatch a few crumpled old bills from the cash register, doom her to that fate, I knew, I knew with a certainty that I could not explain, that she would ask me how? How did I know? She would move around the side of my drawing desk. Her fingers would come to rest on my forearm. And it would be all over just like that. I would take her. I knew I would.
If I told her that I’d been like her before, that in the darkest moment of my life I could have used a grace, a kindness like the one I was offering to her if she would just fucking take italready, then she would ask me what I meant. She would sink down onto the edge of the couch. She would lean back. She would draw her legs up, crisscross applesauce, but only for as long as it took to stalk over to her, to throw her over my shoulder.
And if I told her the truth, the rotten truth that a dark part of me wanted her and couldn’t resist her if she stayed even a fucking second longer, then…well, I was terrified that she would say something stupid with a seductive quirk of her head, like, “Well, what are you waiting for?”
So I did what I thought I must do. For the second time in as many days, I grabbed ahold of the girl’s wrist and dragged her toward the front door.
“Hey!” she shouted. “What the hell?”
“Listen,” I said through gritted teeth, lifting her almost high enough that her toes barely scraped the old shag carpet. “Is that something you can do? Listen?”
“We were having a civilised discussion, you brute,” the girl growled back.
I suddenly hit resistance and looked back to find the girl holding onto a tattoo chair. The devil of a thing was grinning at me victoriously.
“Now,” she huffed, blowing her hair out of her eyes, “let’s just sit down and—hey! Hey!”
It was like knocking over a domino, tipping her over into the chair. Then it was as simple as lifting the chair itself, the little thief positioned nicely atop it. I carried the chair toward the door as she scrambled to look at me over the top.
“What’s your problem?” she complained.
“My problem is you,” I said as I set the chair down by the door with a grunt. “So, listen—”
I quickly boxed her in before she could escape.
“Listen,” I repeated in a growl as I yanked open the door, a gust of bitter wind and biting rain sweeping inside against us, “I don’t want you around here, alright? Dublin Ink, I’m afraid, no longer requires the assistance of a thief, and a stupid one I might add, returning to the scene of the crime.”
I managed to push the girl from the chair. She fell onto the sidewalk and glared up at me, fire in her eyes. A fire I hated to admit that I liked. I filled the doorway with my bulky frame to cut off any ideas of her regaining entrance.
I pointed a finger at her and said, “Now, I’ll cover for you with Diarmuid, with all that Young Offenders bullshite. But you’re not to come round here anymore. Do you hear me?” I gestured to the night and added with a sarcastic flourish, “I’m setting you free, little thief.”
Before she could say anything to make me change my mind, I slammed the door shut, locked it, switched off the “Open” sign, pulled shut the velvet drapes over the window, and turned on the speakers to full blast, Talos’ “This Is Us Colliding” drowning out any shouting or pounding the girl might be foolish enough to try. I left the tattoo chair where it was; Mason or Rian could deal with it whenever they came in. They had some making up to do after leaving the shop wide open to robbery.
I returned to my work at the drawing desk after another shot of whiskey and two more aspirin. My leg hurt worse than ever after all that. But I found as my pencil moved in quick, violent bursts across the page that I was drawing the very thing I’d just kicked out, my little thief.
I tore the page, then tore it again, and again.
I’d really meant what I’d said about setting her free. I knew first-hand the damage someone like me could do to her life. If she thought it was screwed up now…
And to truly set her free, I couldn’t draw her, couldn’t dream of her, couldn’t allow her into a single thought.
Or I’d be tearing that door open and pulling her back into my hell with me.
