Free Dangerously Inked by Eden Bradley

twenty-four. Stupid of me. It didn’t last long—about a year and a half.”
    “But you didn’t go home after?” she asked.
    He nodded his chin. “Your ghosts? Well, I guess you could say I have my own in Australia. There was a reason I was so eager to get out even though I knew I didn’t really love her.”
    He’d never admitted anything so true to anyone. It made his chest ache.
    “I’m sorry,” she said, reaching to cover his big hand with hers, so small and delicate. “Tell me about your ghosts, Finn.”
    The knot in his chest pulled tighter. He shook his head. “Maybe another time. Why don’t you tell me about yours?”
    She let out a short, barking laugh. “What makes you think I have any?”
    “Don’t we all?”
    “Hmm. Yes. But mine are…well, no one’s died. Thank God.” She took a sip of her coffee, wiped her mouth again very carefully. He loved the way she looked with her scarlet mouth. Even without her lip gloss her lips were a lovely, deep red. “So…” she stopped again, folded her napkin in half on the table, then in half again. “I guess you could say my family is not very supportive of me. It’s almost as if my parents and my sister are cut from a different cloth, you know what I mean?”
    He nodded, and she went on.
    “Family for me was always Christie. We’ve just always been close, ever since we were kids. And there was my uncle, Henry Lee, my mother’s brother. He owned the shop for years, taught me to tattoo at sixteen so I didn’t put any more crap ink on eager teenage boys. He understood me. That I needed to tattoo. That it was almost a sort of redemption for me.”
    “Redemption for what?”
    When she looked up there was fire in her eyes. “Do you really want to know?”
    “Yeah.” And he did. It was almost as if this conversation, the two of them sitting at this table at nearly midnight, was some sort of sacred space. Just the two of them insulated from the world, the rain coming down with a soft patter on the awning overhead.
    “Okay. Okay.” She lowered her eyes, smoothing her napkin once more. When she looked up, her gaze was dark. “I really was a good Catholic girl, went to Catholic school. Well, I was always a bit of a rebel, but I had faith, you know? Anyway…there was this substitute teacher one semester. I was fifteen, but a girl knows when she’s being undressed by a man’s eyes. It wasn’t long before the bastard tried it with his hands.”
    “What? Bastard,” Finn agreed, his heart wrenching. He wanted to kill someone. He might have, had the fucking wanker been within reach.
    “He didn’t get very far. But it left me…pissed off. I’d always drawn. It was a kind of escape for me, a way to express myself growing up, and at that point I needed it. And Henry Lee, he caught me tattooing some idiot guy in the parking lot at the school with a machine I’d stolen from him. God, he was mad. But he realized I was going to do it with or without him. He started mentoring me right then. Didn’t tell my parents, of course. They would have had a stroke. And that was redemption, too, that he trusted me to have this secret, just the two of us. I should say three of us, since Christie was my biggest repeat customer while I was learning. Tattooing has been the best thing in the world for me. I know this kind of thing has happened to a lot of girls. I don’t mean to sound pathetic, because I’m not. My art has been my way of dealing with it.”
    Finn shook his head. “I get it. I do.”
    She tilted her head, smiled a little, though he could still see the darkness in her eyes. “I think you do.”
    He wanted to kiss her again. Needed to.
    “Come on, Roisin. Let’s get out of here.”
    She just nodded and pulled her coat on as she got to her feet.
    Together they moved through the crowded tables and onto the rainy sidewalk. Neither of them mentioned that they were getting wet as they walked. He had his arm around her small waist, pulled close to his body,