Chapter 3: Supply Room Smash & Burn
The hum of tattoo machines was a distant, persistent buzz through the thin wall of the break room. Nova stared at the lukewarm coffee in her chipped mug, trying to un-hear the sound of Garrett’s fist meeting drywall. It echoed in the silence he’d left behind upstairs.
She’d thrown herself into two clients back-to-back, losing herself in the meticulous lines of a geometric sleeve, the world narrowing to needle depth and ink saturation. But the memory of his face, stripped raw with shame in the bathroom, kept bleeding through.
The door creaked open. Garrett stepped in, his movements too careful, his eyes fixed on the ancient coffee maker. He filled a mug, his back to her. The knuckles of his right hand were scraped raw, the skin split and angry.
“You should put something on that,” Nova said, her voice cutting through the quiet hum of the fridge.
He stiffened. “It’s fine.”
“It’s not fine.” She put her own mug down with a definitive click. “Garrett, look at me.”
He didn’t. He stirred sugar into his coffee, the spoon clinking like a warning bell. “We don’t have anything to talk about. I said what I needed to.”
“You said a whole lot of nothing.” She stood, crossing the small space. The air felt charged, thick with the scent of green soap and his cheap, clean laundry detergent. She stopped behind him, close enough to see the tension corded in his neck. “You think pushing me out that door fixed anything? It just made you feel worse. I heard it.”
He turned then, finally, and the look in his blue eyes was a storm front. “You don’t know what you heard. You don’t know what any of this is like. That guy owns me, Nova. He owns my time, my piss, my front door. The only thing I get to own are my choices. And I choose for you to be nowhere near that.”
“That’s not your choice to make!” Her hand shot out, her fingers grazing the fresh, dark ink on his forearm—the wolf’s head she’d traced just hours before. He flinched, but didn’t pull away. Her touch was lighter than the needle that had put it there. “This is mine. I choose to be here. I choose to see you. Even when you’re being a stubborn, self-flagellating asshole.”
His breath hitched. His control, that carefully constructed wall, showed a hairline fracture. “You have no idea what you’re choosing. The people I knew, the things I did… it’s a stain. It doesn’t come out. It bleeds onto everything you touch.”
“So let it bleed.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. She stepped closer, her pink hair a violent splash of color against the drab, beige wall behind him. “You think I’m scared of a little darkness? I paint mine on my skin every day. I know yours is different. But locking it in here,” she pressed her palm flat against his chest, over the steady, frantic beat of his heart, “is just another kind of prison.”
He stared down at her hand, then back at her face. The conflict in his eyes was a physical thing, warring with the need to protect her and the desperate, starved want to be seen. “Nova…”
“Tell me to leave again,” she challenged, her chin tilted up. “Mean it this time.”
His resolve shattered.
It wasn’t a gentle giving way. It was a collapse. One moment he was a statue of resistance; the next, his hands were on her hips, spinning her, backing her into the tall metal supply shelves with a rattle. Ink bottles and paper towel rolls shuddered. His body caged hers, all heat and tense muscle, but he didn’t kiss her. He just held her there, his forehead nearly touching hers, his breath ragged.
“I can’t,” he ground out, the words torn from somewhere deep. “I can’t mean it. That’s the problem.”
Then his mouth was on hers.
It wasn’t like before. There was no soft discovery, no tentative slide. This was a claiming, a confession, a punishment. It was teeth and desperate pressure, his hands gripping her waist like she might vanish. She met him with equal fire, her fingers tangling in the short hair at the nape of his neck, pulling him closer, swallowing his low groan. The taste of coffee and bitter regret was intoxicating.
He broke away, breathing hard, his lips trailing to her jaw, her throat. “This is a mistake,” he muttered against her skin, even as his hands slid under the hem of her shirt, calloused palms mapping the sensitive curve of her waist.
“Probably,” she gasped, arching into him, the cold metal of the shelves a stark contrast to the heat of his body. One of his knees pressed between hers, anchoring her. “Shut up about it.”
He gave a choked, half-mad laugh that dissolved into another kiss, slower now, deeper, a raw negotiation. The world outside this cramped, cluttered room—the parole officer, the checklists, the past—faded into a dull roar. Here, there was only the scent of his skin, the solid weight of him, the shocking slide of his tongue against hers, and the silent, screaming truth they were finally telling each other without words.
A loud burst of laughter from the front shop jarred them apart. They froze, chests heaving, lips swollen. Garrett’s eyes were wide, the storm in them replaced by a dazed, vulnerable shock. He slowly loosened his grip, his hands retreating as if burned.
The buzzing of the tattoo machines filtered back in. A phone rang at the front desk.
Reality, cold and insistent, poured back into the room.
Nova reached up, her thumb gently wiping a smudge of her lipstick from the corner of his mouth. He caught her wrist, not to push her away, but to hold her there, his eyes searching her face.
“I don’t know how to do this,” he admitted, the raw honesty in his voice more intimate than the kiss.
“We’ll figure it out,” she said. It wasn’t a promise she knew she could keep, but it was the only one she had. “But you don’t get to unilaterally bench me. Not after that.”
From the front, Leo, the shop owner, bellowed, “Garrett! Delivery out here needs a signature!”
Garrett closed his eyes for a second, steeling himself. When he opened them, he gave a short, almost imperceptible nod. A truce. For now. He released her wrist and stepped back, running a hand through his hair. The scraped knuckles were a vivid reminder of everything they were up against.
He turned to leave, pausing at the door. He didn’t look back, but his voice, low and rough, carried across the space between them.
“Your lipstick’s smudged.”
Then he was gone, leaving her alone with the humming fridge, the rattled shelves, and the taste of him still on her lips.