Page 71 of Handful

He leaned back on the stool and took his time, the way a man does before a story he knows won’t flatter him.

“You earn your road name while you’re prospecting.” He set the pen down. “Could be the worst moment of your life. Could be something stupid you did. Could be both at once.”

I smirked at him. “Sounds like you.”

“Younger me.” He didn’t argue the point. “We were on a run, two nights. First night I end up with this woman.” He held up a hand. “Turns out her brother’s the local sheriff. We leave fast. No big deal.

“Three weeks later, different run, different town.” He paused. “Different sheriff’s sister.”

I stopped restocking and stared at him.

“Different state,” he said. “I had no way of knowing.”

“What are the odds?”

“That’s what I said. This time the sheriff finds me before we can leave, and I—” He stopped. “I maybe didn’t handle the conversation with the level of diplomacy the situation required.”

“What did you say?”

“I may have expressed some views that no man wants to hear said about his sister. And this one happened to be wearing a badge.” He shook his head. “He arrested me. Dutch — not president yet, his father King was still running the club — had to come bail me out, get the charges dropped. Took most of the day. Every time they brought me back to the desk I felt the sheriff needed to understand the distinction between a crime and a woman who’d had a good evening.”

I was crying with laughter now. “While Dutch was trying to get you out?”

“He’s a reasonable man. I thought he’d appreciate the argument.” Another pause. “He did not.” He did the voice — flat, weary, done. “Prospect, you are a handful. And it stuck.”

“A handful.” I was still grinning. “Dutch nailed it.”

“He has his moments.”

“And the lesson you took from two sheriffs’ sisters in two states is that you’ve got a gift for diplomacy?”

“The lesson I took is that sheriffs have no sense of humor about their sisters.” He tipped his head, unrepentant. “I stand by my position.”

But I wasn’t looking at his face anymore.

I was looking at his forearm.

I knew those tattoos. I’d traced every one of them in the dark with my fingers and my tongue, back when they were mine to trace — the pin-up girls, retro, cartoonish, the ones I’d rolled my eyes at the first night and known by heart by the fifth. I knew them cold. Which is the only reason I caught it, because nobody who didn’t have them memorized ever would.

There was a name on one. Small. Worked into the little banner the nearest pin-up held over her head, where there had been nothing before. Austen.

I looked up his arm. There — curled along the bottom of the next one, like it had been part of the ink from the start. Austen. And the one above, tucked in the corner. Every one I could see. My name.

“When?”

He followed my eyes down to his arm and went still, caught, a man who’d left a door open he’d meant to keep shut.

“Had Ice do them the day of the party. Planned to show you that night.”

“Ice?”

“Iron Skulls MC. Only man I’d let ink me.”

He’d had my name on his skin going into Dutch’s birthday. I knew what it meant. A name in ink isn’t a gesture — it’s a statement of fact. Permanent, public, no taking it back.

He’d been wearing long sleeves at Dutch’s party. I remembered it now because it had struck me as odd — Handful runs warm, always has, and it was a summer evening. I’d clocked it and moved on. Hadn’t thought about it again until this second.

And on the sidewalk outside Velvet, when I’d told him we were done — he’d had my name on him then too. He could have shown me. He hadn’t.