He let all that he was feeling seep into two words. “I’m sorry.”

I just shook my head. “It’s going to take a lot more than just ‘sorry’ to make everything alright.”

“Will you…will you come with me. Somewhere? I want to show you something,” he said softly.

“I have to go to a meeting tomorrow at eight. I can’t stay out late,” I tried.

He shook his head. “I’ll keep you there as long as you want to be there. The minute you want to go home, I’ll take you.”

“My car’s here,” I countered.

“I’ll drive you back up here in the morning,” he said pleadingly.

I looked at him for a long while before I came to my decision.

“Fine. Just…don’t hurt me again, Michael. It hurt enough the first time to last me a thousand lifetimes. I don’t think I could survive it a second time,” I whispered hoarsely. “Promise me.”

He made a sound in his throat that hurt my heart, but I didn’t relent.

I watched him and waited for him to promise me, and promise me he did.

“I swear on my life that I will never intentionally hurt you again. I promise.”

Chapter 5

Life’s a bitch. Oh, no. Wait, that’s you. My mistake.

-Secret thoughts of Nikki Pena.

Michael

“This is my favorite place in the world,” I admitted softly as I pulled my truck up into the front row parking spot of Peek’s Tattoo Parlor.

“It’s a tattoo parlor,” she said in surprise.

I tossed her a grin as I opened the door to my truck and dropped out.

I didn’t know what the fuck I was thinking.

All I know was that this day had been complete shit, and I’d had to do a lot of thinking. Something I’d been avoiding doing for quite a long time now.

Nearly a year and a half to be exact.

From the moment that I let Nikki misunderstand why I didn’t want kids, I knew I’d made a terrible mistake. But, at the time, I thought I’d been doing a good thing.

She would have a terrible life if she stayed with me, and there was no one on earth that I’d want to have to deal with my shit.

But then I’d held that boy, while he’d drained his lifeblood on my chest, and I knew that I couldn’t deny it anymore.

I loved her. And I’d do anything to have her. Even have a child with her if that was what it took.

I was tired of being lonely.

And when I walked in on her reading to the baby, I knew I’d make her mine again.

No matter what it took.

It all started with letting her into my world. Letting her see me. And that started here.

“So, I guess I need to start by telling you why I do the tattoos,” I started, swallowing convulsively before I flayed myself open. “When I was twelve, I started cutting myself.”

She gasped in surprise and whipped around to stare at me.

I put the tailgate of my truck down, and hopped up, holding out my hand to her.

She took it, no reluctance whatsoever, and that bolstered me to say what I had to say next.

She came in between my legs and leaned into me, looking up at me with her heart in her eyes.

I leaned my head against hers for a long moment before pulling back and looking up at the stars.

“That was the first time my parents realized something was wrong with me. I didn’t try to kill myself, per se, I just knew that something was wrong, and pain made it feel better,” I explained, not looking down into her eyes. “That was when I was diagnosed with depression. Three weeks after that, I was diagnosed with bi-polar disorder. Bi polar two, to be exact. By the time I was fourteen, I was diagnosed with ADD. Right now I’m on medication for my bi-polar disorder and ADD since they believe that those are the two causing most of my problems.”

When I finally got the courage to look down at her, it wasn’t horror that I saw, but understanding.

So I felt like I should continue.

“Surprisingly, none of that affected my schooling. The manic side of my bi-polar disorder kept me from falling behind with the other things affecting me. I always strove to be the best. The depression kicked in when I wasn’t the best,” I explained.

“My youngest sister is bi-polar,” she said, surprising the fuck out of me enough to look down at her again.

And the understanding in her eyes about killed me once again.

“When I turned eighteen, I got a job in a tattoo shop to help fund my schooling. My parents paid for nearly all of it, I only had to cover the books,” I explained. “That’s when I found that the pain of the needle fed that need for pain in less destructive ways, and I haven’t looked back since.”

“Schooling? I thought you were in the Navy,” she said.

I curled a sliver of her hair that’d fallen free of her bun behind her ear, cupping her neck once I did.

“I went to school for my medical degree when I was seventeen. Graduated with that when I was twenty five. Joined the Navy when I was twenty three, while finishing that up. Then realized that I hated being a doctor, so I just…quit.”

I knew the next thing out of her mouth before she even said it.

“And what made you not want to be a doctor anymore? Seems like a lot of schooling on your part for you to just give it up,” she whispered, laying her head against my chest and looping her arms around my waist.

I held my breath, and tried to hold the pain in, yet it didn’t want to be held anymore.

“I witnessed an abortion that changed the course of my life and also ruined me for the medical field,” I said woodenly. “If someone could just kill an unborn child in that way, one that had fingers and toes, and clearly defined features, then how could they say they were an upholder for human life? Wasn’t what they were doing the exact opposite?”

“Oh, Michael,” Nikki breathed. “Do you want to tell me about it?”

I knew Nikki was catholic.

She went to church religiously every Sunday.

In fact, as a way to get closer to her, I’d started going to conversion classes, and attending Sunday mass at the very church that she went to just so I could breach some of the gap between her and me.

The fact that abortion would never be uttered from her lips really held great appeal to me.

Because abortion had been a determining factor in how I’d live my life from the moment I turned twenty three.

Even now, twelve years later, I can still remember what that baby looked like.

I looked at it every day in the mirror.

“It’s gory. And not a good story,” I warned her.

She pressed further into my arms, and said what I needed to hear. “Tell me.”

So I did.

“I was asked if I wanted to, and since I’d never witnessed one before, I thought ‘sure, why not.’ Well, the why not became a ‘what the hell have I done’ pretty fuckin’ quickly. I’d heard about abortions during one of the many lectures. Knew the basics of it. So I go in there, and there’s this woman already on the table with her legs high and wide in the air.” I cleared my throat. “She was asleep, and it was then I realized that the baby they were doing the abortion on was a viable fetus, but the mother just didn’t want her.”

“I watched as they hooked the vacuum up, maneuvered the small hose up her vagina, and started to suck away.” I coughed. “Instantly, there was blood, and that’s about when I turned around and refused to watch anymore. I’d just witnessed a child murdered right in front of my eyes.”

“God,” she breathed, a sob catching in her throat.

“That was the first tattoo I got,” I said, grabbing her hand with my own and moving it to rest over my heart. “That’s when I met Peek.”

She moved away, placing distance that I didn’t want between us, between us, and held out her hand. “Show me your Peek.”

And that’s what I did.

Hopping off the truck’s tailgate, I made my way inside, hand in hand, with Nikki.

The first person to greet us at the front counter was Alison, the woman that’d been working the front desk for as long as I could remember.