Total pages in book: 118
Estimated words: 113923 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 570(@200wpm)___ 456(@250wpm)___ 380(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 113923 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 570(@200wpm)___ 456(@250wpm)___ 380(@300wpm)
Levi doesn’t stay more than a few minutes. After we finish our coffee, he’s off to meet with a client about another job, and I’m back to measuring a plank of cedar. My head’s not in it, though. It’s never a good idea to operate power tools when your concentration is shot, so I call it quits and leave my workshop. Whatever. Evan can eat his dinner off the floor tonight like his precious girlfriend Daisy.
Speaking of Daisy, she’s nipping at my heels when I stride back in the house. For the next ten minutes, we practice her sit-stays, but my head’s not feeling that either.
Goodbye, Cooper.
I feel … heavy. Like I’m being dragged under the surface by a hundred-pound steel anchor wrapped around my neck. It’s not a foreign feeling for me. My whole life, I’ve felt weighed down. By my parents’ debts, my brother’s bullshit, that sense I get sometimes that I’m trapped in my own head.
“Sorry, girl, I gotta get out of here,” I tell the dog, reaching down to scratch beneath her silky ear. “I’ll be back in a minute. Promise.”
That’s a lie. It’ll take more than a minute to do what I’m itching to do. Daisy’ll be fine, though. Evan will shower her with love and attention when he gets home. Same way Mackenzie did every time she is the dog. I wonder if she’ll come back to visit Daisy sometimes.
Doubt it. She’s probably already forgotten about the both of us.
Gotta admit, I didn’t expect her to be so cold. I guess in the end she is just like all the other Garnet clones. Cold-blooded to the core.
Honestly, it serves me right. I went into this with bad intentions, treated her as a means for revenge against Kincaid.
Karma’s a bitch.
I forcibly shove her out of my mind. Ten minutes later, I’m parking my truck near the boardwalk. The tattoo parlor is empty when I enter, save for a frazzled-looking Wyatt sitting at the counter with a sketchpad in front of him.
“Yo,” he greets me, his expression brightening.
“Yo. Got time for a walk-in?”
Wyatt’s been tattooing me since I was a sixteen-year-old punk requesting a tombstone on my left biceps. ’Course, he was only a year older at the time, with a tattoo gun he picked up from the pawnshop, so my first ink wasn’t exactly a masterpiece. If I have kids, first thing I’m telling them is to never let their dumbass teenage friends poke needles into their flesh. Fortunately, it turned out all right in the end. Wyatt honed his craft and now co-runs this joint with another artist, and my shitty tombstone was skillfully camouflaged within a full sleeve featuring a watery graveyard among the crashing waves of Avalon Bay.
“Depends,” Wyatt says. “What’s the piece?”
“Simple, small. I want an anchor.” I rub my fingertips over the back of my neck. “Right here.”
“What kind of anchor? Stockless? Admiralty?”
I’m not a boat guy, so I roll my eyes. “How the fuck do I know? A fisherman anchor—you know the one I mean.”
He snickers. “Admiralty, then. Come to the back. It’ll take less than an hour.”
In no time at all, I’m straddling a chair while Wyatt preps his workstation. That’s how it works in the Bay. If you’re good to your friends, they’re good to you. Wyatt probably won’t even charge me for this new ink, no matter how much I insist. Instead, he’ll show up at my place in a few months or a year from now asking for some random favor, and I’ll happily oblige.
“So what were you looking all bothered about when I got here?” I ask.
He releases a frustrated groan. “Ah. Yeah. I was trying to design a piece so fucking sexy that Ren’ll have no choice but to take me back.”
I smother a laugh. “She dump you again?”
“What else is new, right?”
He’s not wrong. Wyatt and Lauren aka Ren break up at least every other month, usually on account of the most random nonsense you can imagine. They’re a great source of entertainment, though.
“What happened this time?”
“Lean forward,” he orders, nudging me so that I’m bent over the chair, the back of my head at his mercy.
A second later, I feel a cool spray at my nape. Wyatt cleans the area with a soft cloth before reaching for a razor.
“Okay,” he says as he starts shaving the short hairs on my neck. “I need you to imagine something. Ready?”
My snicker is muffled against my forearm. “Sure. Ready.”
“You’re on an island.”
“Deserted or, like, a resort island?”
“Deserted. You were in a plane crash. Or your boat capsized. Not important.”
“How is it not important?” I object. “If I was on a boat, I’d probably be more familiar with islands and tides and shit, which means I’d have a better shot at survival.”
“Oh my God. That’s not the point,” he grumbles. “Why you gotta complicate it, Hartley? You’re on a deserted island. The end.”