Hearts of Jade (A Hidden Hearts Novel Book 3) Read online

  “It wasn’t all his fault. I’ve been swallowing my feelings for a really long time. This conversation was bound to happen sooner or later. We had lots of things to say to each other, but I regret that it happened in the middle of the workday. It was way too much emotion to handle at work. It started being about vacation and ended up being about why Onyx decided to commit suicide; it was just unreal.”

  “I’m sorry Jade, I wish I’d been there for you, that’s a lot to handle on any day.”

  “You don’t even know the half of it,” Jade remarks, drilling the heels of her hands into her temples in small circles, as if to wipe away fatigue. “Remember the other day when we went out to lunch after my clients left?”

  I nod as I reply, “I figured they would probably be back. It was only your dad that was having a conniption fit. I know how you work. You don’t want to do any work on someone unless you’re absolutely sure that they are sure. I wish I would’ve had a tattoo artist like you for my first few tattoos; if I had, you would be doing a whole lot less cover up work on me,” I remark with an embarrassed grimace. The first couple of tattoos that she covered up for me were horrendously embarrassing. She smiles back at me as she remembers some of the atrocities that she covered up. It was a good thing that she didn’t have her cable show back then, or I would’ve been starring front and center on her show. It’s just as well. I would’ve probably been tempted to be on her show to help promote my music career but trust me, the whole nation did not need to see how poorly I treated my skin. Nobody needed to see that, including my mother or Jade.

  “One of them was a memorial tattoo of sorts, her boyfriend was killed in one of the terrorist bombings in France. He was an artist who was innocently attending a concert.”

  “Do you have some psychic gift that draws these people to you or something? Isn’t this like the third memorial tattoo that you done involving a victim of a terrorist attack?”

  “It’s actually far higher than that. I just don’t talk about it much. I even did a small piece on a young woman who lost a family member on an airplane in the Ukraine. I will never know how she found me in the middle of Florida. The one today was sad on so many levels. They were so young and fell in love at first sight. He had already escaped one terrorist attack only to be taken down by another. I met his brother, Mark, who has his own tragic tale but had to bury his little brother too. I felt so bad for him, he came face-to-face with one of the other memorial tattoos that I had done from yet another victim of a mass tragedy — domestic terrorism, they call it these days — and it was like he had seen the ghost of his own child. After he showed me a picture of his daughter, I totally understand why he felt that way — they could have been identical twins. They look about as much alike as Ivy and Rogue. It was enough to make the hair on the back of my neck stand up. You know that I’m used to a bunch of really creepy stuff that I can’t explain with the spooky twins, but this was above and beyond that. Mark was really shaken by the whole experience. In the end, he was perfectly fine with his brother’s fiancée getting a tattoo of the drawing that his little brother created. So that part of the day ended up being successful.”

  “Why do you still look so devastated? It sounds like things are working okay with your dad.” I ask, still concerned about her closed off body language and her look of total fatigue.

  “I don’t know. I think I may have worked out a temporary truce with Dad as long as I can balance going to school and staying a part of the family biz. He doesn’t want me to leave the business entirely. Honestly though, I’m not sure how I’m going to handle it all, especially after an emotional day like today. Today’s tattoos just about took it out of me mentally.”

  “Were those the tattoos that you were working on this weekend?” I ask, remembering the symbolic design.

  “Yes, she settled on the small watercolor butterfly with the semi colon, but she wanted it on the top of her foot, which is a really tender spot to tattoo and it was a difficult topic for both of us. She wanted to talk about her guilt over not knowing that her friend needed her help. I wanted to listen to her story, I really did. It was like reliving all the conversations I had in my head after Onyx killed himself. It was excruciatingly hard to provide emotional support for her when I don’t feel like I have the answers. Sometimes, I wonder if I should go to school to be a teacher or if I’d be better suited to be a mental health counselor. If I’m going to stay in the business, I might need to be a counselor; being a tattoo artist is harder than it looks. People tell you their most intimate stories even if you don’t feel capable of dealing with them. I guess she felt like she could trust me with her feelings because she knew about Onyx. After that emotional confrontation with my dad, it was really the last thing I wanted to deal with today. I didn’t even know they were coming in today or I would have been more prepared I guess. The whole thing just kind of threw me for a loop,” she confesses.

  I reach over and fluff the pillow behind her and say, “I’ve got things handled tonight, so just put your feet up and relax. Try to set it aside for a few hours.” It’s then that she seems to stop and take a moment to look around.

  Impulsively, she throws her arms around my neck and kisses me as she says, “This is so sweet! But… um… where’s the food?”

  I gently extract her arms from my neck as I try not to grimace in pain. “For some reason, you beat Rogue here. That wasn’t exactly the plan.”

  Jade looks sheepish for a moment and then she remarks, “I’m sorry, we had a walk-in and I assigned it to Rogue. I didn’t know that you two were co-conspirators.”

  “That was kind of the point. It couldn’t be a surprise if I told you about it. I didn’t know about it until the last minute either. But I figured I don’t get news like this very often so I might as well celebrate.”

  Jade raises an eyebrow at me as she remarks, “After the month you’ve had, you could use some good news. Go ahead, lay it on me. I need a mood adjustment today.”

  “You remember my friend, Joe Summers? I brought him in a couple years ago because he needed a tattoo cover-up.”

  Jade concentrates for a couple moments and then answers, “Isn’t he the guy who had his girlfriend’s initials on his shoulder?”

  “That’s him,” I confirm.

  “I offered him a few cover-up designs, but he didn’t seem ready—”

  I shake my head in dismay as I respond, “Yeah, he’s really being punked. Unfortunately, he seems to be the last one to figure that out. He needed to be ready a while ago. Anyway, he teaches music therapy to kids with autism. He applied for a grant that required votes from the public and made a demo tape to create a buzz on social media. Apparently some producer somewhere saw it and wants him to make a demo tape for a record label. Since he’s using a song I wrote for him, he cut me a symbolic royalty check for the money we’re going to make; tonight is a celebration dinner.”

  “That’s really cool, you can be one of those people that says, ‘I knew Joe back before he could even carry a tune,’” Jade replies with a wide grin. “Seriously though, what a stand up guy to pay it forward before he even knows if it’s going to be a sure thing. I met a pretty cool guy today too. He was the brother of the guy I was memorializing. At first, he was all kinds of skeptical, but in the end, he made his own appointment for a back piece. It takes a real gentleman to do a one-eighty like that with so much grace. I offered to do his tat for free too because of his brother, but he turned me down and said I deserved to be paid for my work.”

  I can’t help but smirk as I respond, “That ought to make Jett happy. You actually booked an extra client off the whole deal.”

  Jade lets out a bark of laughter as she answers, “I know, right? I think Dad forgets that Ink’d Deep is actually a booming, successful business. He still treats it like the early days when he had a couple of chairs above Grandpa Petros’ boat shop. Every time he’s upset with me, he pulls out the old photo albums and starts reminiscing about how he built the business from the groun
d up and how children aren’t appropriately grateful for what their parents do for them.”

  “I don’t see that in you at all. You’ve stuck by your parents during the hardest of times, which is way more than what I have done for mine. When times got really tough in my family, I split,” I reveal.

  Jade starts to respond but we’re interrupted by a knock at the door. She moves to get up but I pull her back down onto the couch as I chide, “Remember, I got this.”

  “If I know Rogue, she got enough food to feed half the population of Gainesville. You’re going to need another set of hands,” she warns.

  I shrug as I say, “Whatever. Let’s not leave her standing out there, I’m starving.”

  As soon as I open the front door, Rogue points her index finger in the middle of Jade’s chest as she states, “You don’t even know how much you owe me. Did you actually talk to this guy? This guy was all over the map. One minute he wanted the Dory from Finding Nemo, the next minute he wanted Dexter. I’m so glad that Marcus was there working on the Jameson twins, otherwise I would’ve been fully creeped out.”

  “What did he finally choose?” I asked, curiosity getting the best of me.

  “That was the really bizarre thing, we never even got that far in the discussion after all that time consulting because suddenly he got all up in arms about me being able to certify the conditions under which my ink was manufactured. I can only go by what it says on the bottle. I can’t personally make a statement as to the conditions under which each company manufactures its tattoo ink. He stormed out of the shop blustering about how we support childhood labor and indentured servitude. I’m sorry, Jade, I may have bought us another negative review. I swear I didn’t do anything to this guy, I was trying to work wi —”

  Jade goes outside and puts one arm around Rogue’s shoulder and picks up a bag of food with the other. “Seriously, don’t worry about it. He sounds like the type of person who would’ve given the shop a bad review regardless of what you did. Remember the person who loved their tattoo, but didn’t like the kind of magazines we had in the waiting room and left us one star?”

  Rogue nods as she answers, “I forgot about that. You’re right, people are a little nuts. I’m going to go pound on some nails with my husband at the Habitat for Humanity house. That should make me feel better.”

  “Isn’t it a little dark outside for that?” I comment.

  “That’s what floodlights are for,” she replies smugly. “You’d be surprised by how fast we put those houses up because we can work nearly round-the-clock.”

  I walk over to Rogue and shake her hand as I declare, “Thank you so much, I owe you one.”

  “No problem, Gimpy. Be sure to treat my boss-lady right. She’s one in a million,” Rogue advises, as she says her goodbyes to Jade and heads out the door with a wink.

  IT’S WEIRD — WHEN ONYX DIED, it’s almost as if part of my identity died as well. I lost part of who I am and what my plans were for the future. As a little girl, I always figured that we would have a big family with lots of nieces and nephews running around. With Onyx gone, that part of me died too. I stopped being someone’s little sister. For the first time in my life, I’m an only child. I really don’t know what my definition of family is anymore. It’s not what I thought it was before. I didn’t realize what a solitary existence I was leading, despite the very social nature of my job, until Declan moved into my house.

  House. What a very funny descriptive word that is. Technically, that’s what I have. For the most part, it’s pretty boring and average. My dad helped me put in the garden tub in the bathroom, but beyond that, it’s pretty typical. The important thing to me is that it’s mine. I was proud of the fact that I was able to buy it a few weeks shy of my twenty-first birthday — not very many people my age can say that. Although it’s mine, it’s never truly felt like home until I had someone to share it with. Declan has been hysterical comic relief, in ways I never expected. One morning I was teasing him about not refilling the toilet paper roll in the bathroom and always hanging the toilet paper backwards. When I came back from work, there was a freestanding toilet paper holder and Declan had added a sign that read, “MINE. Problem Solved.” Of course, he hung the toilet paper totally backwards and I helpfully fixed it for him. Thus began the TP Wars. He in turn, fixed mine. Obviously, I had to do better. So, I bought him a roll of specialty toilet paper with crossword puzzles on it. Somewhere, he found me toilet paper designed for women going through divorce that had all sorts of men’s names on it and hung it on my toilet paper holder. I got him some with the word poop written in several different languages. He declared that one a collector’s item and wouldn’t put it on his toilet paper dispenser, so we are at a temporary impasse. Every time I think about our silly little game, it makes me smile. In fact, a lot of things about Declan make me smile. He claims that he doesn’t really like cats, but he sleeps with Inkblot every day. He even went so far as to make him a homemade cat bed out of an old concert T-shirt and I routinely catch him giving him bites of table scraps.

  For a man who doesn’t like putting down roots, he has turned my average little house into a real home. I’m not even sure how to explain how having Declan’s company has changed me. Even though we often fight like an old married couple, his presence has reminded me what I was like before Onyx died. I feel more authentically myself around him. It’s as if I don’t have to put on my social body armor around him. I can just be Jade Crystal Petros, the slightly odd woman who doesn’t quite fit anywhere. Declan doesn’t seem to be put off by my eccentricities.

  I didn’t set out to find myself a partner. Although it’s been amusing to watch my friends fall in love like timber at a logging competition, I just never figured it would happen to me. All of sudden, as I think about the future, Declan is in the picture with me. I’m reluctant to even admit that to myself. Declan is everything I want to turn away from, his lifestyle is the opposite of the one I want to pursue. My whole life has been all about following your bliss and doing whatever your artistic muse directs. Most kids want to run away and join the circus, my parents were the circus. Even though my mom is a librarian, she was remarkably casual about education. She always felt that I could learn whenever I needed to learn through reading on my own. Fortunately for me, I had a teacher in the seventh grade who reached out to me and gave me the love of learning. I want to be that kind of teacher for some other kid who doesn’t quite fit in to social norms. All of this brings me back to Declan. I simply don’t know what to do with the man. I never expected to like him as much as I do. He pushes my buttons in all the best ways.

  I wish Onyx was here to tell me what to do. He could always cut to the heart of the matter in just a few well-chosen words. I try to imagine what he might say about my current predicament. I remember the last time I was with Onyx and my grandmother. We were making homemade ice cream in an old-fashioned ice cream maker that you had to hand-crank. Onyx was complaining about his girlfriend’s taste in music and my grandmother told him that the universe would provide us with who we needed but not necessarily who we wanted. It was our responsibility to decide to get along. I always thought that that was funny advice for my grandmother to give because my grandfather smoked cigars like a chimney and she hated it with a passion, but they were madly in love until she died. If Onyx were here, I expect that he would tell me that I need to suck it up and decide what’s most important to me. Although it’s tempting to be cautious and play it safe, I know my heart is telling me something very different.

  Declan snaps his fingers in front of my face as he comments with a deep chuckle, “I know it’s been a really long day, but did you fall asleep sitting up?”

  I shake my head as I respond, “No, I’m just thinking.”

  He opens a little cardboard container and shows it to me as he asks, “Do you want this warmed up?”

  “You got bread pudding for dessert? I thought you hated raisins.”

  He shrugs as he answers, “I do, but I can pick
them out of my part. I know you like this, so I got it for you.”

  I take the box out of his hand and set it back down on the coffee table. “For a guy who likes to project the image that you don’t care about much, you definitely pay attention to the small details. I really appreciate that,” I remark as I bury my hands in his hair and pull him closer for a kiss.

  Declan pulls away and then rests his forehead against mine as he struggles to catch his breath. He groans softly before he says, “I hope that kiss means what I hope it means, because I’d really hate to misunderstand at this point.” He leans in to kiss me again before he asks, “I take it that this has a little something to do with what you were thinking about?”

  I nod as I respond, “It does. I decided to throw caution to the wind and follow my heart and send my worries on vacation.”

  Declan pulls away from me and unthreads my hands from his neck. “I’m not sure I like the sound of that. I don’t want to be anybody’s regret.”

  I cringe at his response. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it like that. It’s just that I didn’t expect to have you or anyone else in my life right now. I’ve got a lot of really crazy stuff going on that doesn’t have anything to do with you. At first, I thought I could keep my relationship with you separate from all of the rest of the chaos going on in my life, but it’s become apparent that that’s not possible. Having you in my life has changed the way that I approach my life. Just knowing that you are here supporting me makes me stronger, bolder and truer to myself — that means that my life is probably going to become a lot more complicated soon.”