After Lucas had gone over the care instructions with Jessi, he placed the stencil on my shoulder and neck and handed me a small hand mirror. After agreeing on the placement of the tattoo, I laid down on the table and braced myself for the pain.
I heard the wheels of Lucas’ stool get closer and held out my hand for Jessi to take, but the hand that grasped mine was much larger and rougher than I’d been expecting. I glanced up to find Kane smiling down at me.
“I got you, Kelsey. It’s going to be okay.”
His words soothed more than just the nervous jitters I was feeling about the tattoo. When he said those words, I felt them to my core. Like he already knew all about my past, and was telling me it would all be okay in the end. I smiled at him before laying my head back down on the table for Lucas to begin on my tattoo.
The sting when the needle first penetrated my skin wasn’t as bad as I thought it was going to be. Don’t get me wrong, overall, the whole experience hurt like hell … I’m not even going to play like it didn’t. But every time I thought the pain was beginning to be too much, Kane was there whispering words of encouragement in my ear. Letting me know that it was almost over and that it would be worth it in the end.
After what seemed like forever, the tattoo machine finally shut off and I felt Lucas pour the cool, cleaning solution over my raw skin before applying ointment to the fresh ink. I couldn’t wait to finally see it. When he was finished, Kane helped me slowly rise from the table to a sitting position, and made me take a few minutes to sit there and make sure I wouldn’t take a dizzy spell and come crashing to the floor. After a few minutes of insisting I was fine, Kane finally let me stand and walk over to the larger mirror in the room. That’s when I noticed Jessi and Landon were missing.
Kane must have seen me looking for them because he answered my unspoken question, “She saw you bleeding a little and kinda freaked out. Landon took her to get something to eat. They are waiting for us at the restaurant now.”
That made sense. Jessi never had been good with blood and she kept her hand over her face throughout her entire tattoo.
Lucas followed me to the larger mirror and placed the smaller one in my hand again. Taking a deep breath, I lifted the mirror to take a look at my back. When my eyes landed on my new tattoo, I felt the tears well up in my eyes. It was beautiful—perfect.
I looked at Kane and then Lucas; both were smiling at me as I tried to find the words to tell them how much I loved my tattoo … but all words seemed to fail me at that moment. I took one last look before handing the mirror back over to Lucas.
“Lucas … I love it. Really. It’s like you saw right into my head and how I pictured it, and put it on my body. You really are amazing at what you do. Thank you so much!”
“Really, Kelsey, it was nothing. I enjoyed doing this tattoo too. I’ve never done one like it before so it’s always fun to do something different and you did great by the way. You sat like a rock through the whole thing. For this being your first tattoo, that’s something.”
After Lucas went over the care instructions with me, I thanked him again, and Kane and I exited the shop into the cool night air. The temperature had dropped quite a bit from when we first went into the shop, and my halter-top wasn’t so perfect for the weather anymore. I shivered from the cool night breeze as we walked to the restaurant where Jessi and Landon were waiting for us.
“Cold?” Kane asked, and I nodded.
“A little, but it’s not too bad, and we should be there in a few minutes anyway.”
Kane stopped and began to pull the black long sleeve shirt he was wearing over his head. As he pulled it up, his gray undershirt went up part of the way with it—revealing a flat, toned stomach, and the top of gray boxers. If I wasn’t mistaken, I thought I’d caught a glimpse of a tattoo peeking over the top of his boxers.
After pulling the shirt all the way off, he tugged his undershirt down before holding up the other shirt for me.
“Kane, really, you don’t have to do that. We will be there in a little while anyway.”
“Kelsey, I insist.” He gave the shirt a little shake to let me know he was waiting.
I stepped closer to him, but he didn’t hand the shirt over to me. Instead, he held it above me and pushed my head through the collar before telling me to slide my arms into the sleeves. Anyone passing us on the street may have found it odd to see him dressing me right there on the sidewalk, but my stomach was so full of butterflies that I really didn’t care what anyone else thought at the moment.
Now that I was dressed in his shirt, we continued on our walk to the restaurant. I couldn’t help but secretly lean my nose closer to my shoulder to get a whiff of the sweet smell that was Kane.
That smell would forever be burned into my memory. Just like his eyes were.
That night after dinner, Kane and Landon walked us back to Jessi’s car before they headed off to Landon’s truck. When I offered to give Kane his shirt back, he refused and I smiled, secretly loving the fact that I was going to get to keep it for a few more hours.
By the time Jessi and I had made it back to the dorm I was so ready to crash. As soon as we stepped inside our room, exhaustion overtook me, and I flopped down on my bed. I didn’t bother to take Kane’s shirt off—and honestly I was enjoying the fact that I would be able to drift off to sleep with his sweet smell all around me.
I awoke to the sounds of blood-curdling screams, and it took me a second to realize that the screams were coming from me. By the time I opened my eyes, Jessi was hovering over me … concern etched all over her face.
“Kelsey, oh thank God you finally woke up!”
“Finally woke up? How long had I been screaming?” My raw throat and hoarse voice let me know that I must have been screaming for quite some time.
“About five minutes. You woke me up with your screams. I tried to wake you up but no matter what I did, you just wouldn’t open your eyes. It was so scary. I didn’t know what to do. Usually you’re so easy to wake up when you have your nightmares, but there was something different about this one. I couldn’t get you to come out of it.”
I felt so bad for putting my friend though my many years of night terrors. It had been a few months since my last one, though, and I wasn’t sure what would just bring them on again.
This one was just like the others—I was back in my old house, reliving the whole thing all over again and again. The last thing I remembered when I’d woken up was those eyes staring back at me.