“I take it you never heard of my tat business?”
“Should I?”
He nodded at my arm where I had a band of music notes inked all around. “Where did you get that?”
“Some parlor in Mississippi,” I said, then quickly clamped my mouth shut.
But he didn’t ask me why I went back to the state I lived in before I moved here. Instead he said, “It sounds familiar. The tune.”
“Did you just hum it in your head?”
He beamed at me, looking proud over impressing me and lazy at the same time. If he could have leaned any further back in his chair, he’d be on the ground. “I told you, I play guitar. What song is it?”
“It’s nothing,” I told him. “Anyway, so you’re a tattoo artist. I’m guessing you got pretty big.”
“Big enough,” he shrugged with false modesty. “I was one of the top artists in LA. I was even on LA Ink. Ever watch that show?”
“I only watch Netflix.”
He nodded, as if he could deduce something about me from that. “Well, you weren’t missing anything. You know I’m going to keep humming that tune and eventually I’ll figure out the song. Maybe then you’ll tell me the meaning.”
I frowned at him. “I think you overestimate your skills of persuasion.”
“I got you to sit down and have coffee with me when you were ready to bolt out the door.”
Yes, well it helps that you’re hot, I thought. “So what are you doing here if your business is in LA? Visiting the ‘rents?”
From the way his eyes shifted—changed—I could have sworn a cloud passed over the sun, putting the whole shop in shadow. But it was only in his eyes and it disappeared as soon as he smiled.
“No. Not my parents. Though they still live here. Dad’s still the sheriff, you know.”
How could I forget? He ran my parents out of town.
“I actually have my business here. I own a tattoo shop. Sins and Needles,” he said. “It’s just coming into town from the east. Maybe you saw it? It’s in an old house with replicas of Bela Lugosi and Swamp Thing on the porch.”
Charming.
“My shop’s downstairs, I live upstairs.”
“And you make enough to live on?” Despite the proximity to LA and the facelift, Palm Valley still wasn’t a place for culture, or sub-culture as it were.
His smile went from charming to shit-eating. “I sure do. You’d be surprised how much money a tattoo shop can rake in.”
I would have found his cockiness to be off-putting, but the truth was I knew nothing about tattoo parlors. All the ones I’d been to looked half-dead, with an artist who looked like he’d been regulated to piercing young girls’ ears in order to keep the lights on.
He pulled his phone out of his pocket and glanced at it. “In fact, I have an appointment in twenty minutes. Want to come see me in action?”
Normally, the thought of watching someone get jabbed with an inky needle would have turned me off, but there was something so earnest and open about his handsome face that I found myself nodding. There was also the whole guilt thing over how horrible I was to him in high school. And, let’s be honest here, I was curious to see how successful this guy was.
In my business, you had to stick to successful people like glue.
CHAPTER THREE
Twenty minutes later, I was pulling up Jose in front of a quirky, two-story house, Camden McQueen at my side. The drive was short and he alternated between pointing out what had changed since I left town and cooing over the car.
“How much was it, if you don’t mind my asking?” he asked as the wheels crunched to a stop over loose sand.
A smile tugged at my lips as I took the keys out of the ignition. “I wouldn’t know. I borrowed it.”
He opened the door and paused, giving me a suspicious look. “Borrowed it like you used to borrow the teachers’ books before a test?”
I matched his suspicious look, wondering how much Camden knew about what I did. After my parents became fugitives, everyone in Palm Valley knew they were con artists. People used to point at me and whisper, and I figured it was either over my injury (which was usually the case) or they were placing bets whether I was in on the con. I hadn’t been, not at that time. That didn’t stop me from pulling a few tricks in high school, but they were just minor things. I’d never gotten caught—teachers just looked the other way when they saw me. I think it’s because they felt sorry for me and they were right to.
“I always gave them back,” I told him and got out of the car. The sun had somehow gotten hotter. On days like this, I hated that I couldn’t wear shorts.