Canon (Klein Brothers 2)

I needed to do some soul searching. Given that I’d had a bruised tit and I’d discovered I didn’t much like day drinking the last time I’d done it, I could only do it one way—the adult way. So, walking over to the bookshelf where I had fabric boxes with stuff in them, I pulled one out and took out a new notebook.

They were usually used for hair ideas and drawings, or I used them to make plans for the business, but today I was venturing into the world of emotional journaling. Some people used their journals to doodle, and some used them as a diary. I was using mine to expel some serious thoughts so I could pull them apart and make sense of them.

Well, I was going to try to do that. And hopefully, I’d find a way to either get past Canon or find a way to get over myself and be with him.

Unfortunately, I stared at that first blank page for over an hour before giving up and going for a shower. The fact I was walking tenderly and was overly sensitive between my legs because of him made it feel like I’d taken a champagne cork to my cooter instead of my tit.

Leaning my head against the tiled wall, I let the tears fall as the water ran over me. I’d expected the cup runneth over scenario, I’d warned myself repeatedly that’s what would happen, but the reality of it all fucking sucked worse than I’d imagined.

One week later…

I liked to experience something new to try and find who I really was every month. It wasn’t that I was psychoanalyzing myself or trying to fix the damaged girl, it’s that I just don’t know where my niche was in my own life.

This month, I was branching out into the ludicrous—more ludicrous than the short wig I’d tried for a week a few years ago. Definitely not a look that worked for me, but you don’t know until you try it, right? I’d also gone down the colored contacts route, the different clothing styles one, I’d gotten tattoos—which fortunately I still liked, so I was happy about them. But now, I wanted something different.

Staring up at Mace and Ellis’ tattoo shop, I gulped in a breath. Tattoos were permanent, but even they hadn’t put the willies up me like what I was about to do was doing.

The door opened as a customer walked out, drawing the attention of Mace to me as he said goodbye to them.

“Jacinda? I didn’t know we had another appointment today?”

Mace looked genuinely confused and like he felt guilty for not noticing my name in his appointments, even though we didn’t have much to do with each other that often. He was such a freaking nice guy, and Ava was the luckiest girl in the world.

I waved a hand through the air, giving him my usual breezy smile. “It’s not with you, pal, so no biggy.”

Holding the door open wider and standing back so I could pass, he murmured, “Is it with Ellis? He’s not in today. There was a—”

“Not with him, either,” I interrupted, trying to walk like I was all cool, when inside I was shitting myself.

I really didn’t want him to know why I was here. It wasn’t bad, per se, but Mace was Mace! If he found out exactly what I was doing…

There was a pause, and I glanced behind me to see him watching me closely. “Esmerelda?”

Esmerelda was the piercing guru who’d started working for them about six months ago. I’d met her when she’d come into the salon to get the underside of her hair dyed turquoise a few weeks ago, and we’d discussed me doing this. I’d stupidly said I’d always wondered about it but had never found someone I trusted to do it, and she’d told me to leave it with her.

Those words were harmless. Plenty of people said them every day about anything and everything, so I’d put it out of my mind and had forgotten about the discussion. That was until she’d then come back in the following week and told me she’d booked me in, not giving me the option to back out.

Somehow, I’d again put it out of my mind and hadn’t remembered I even had the appointment until this morning when my phone pinged a calendar announcement. Fuck my life.

“That’s right. Relly’s a client, and we were talking about piercings and shit like that while I did her hair.”

His eyes widened as he opened his mouth to say something, but then I heard my name being called from the back of the shop, and turned to see the woman in question smiling widely at me.

“I’m glad you actually came. I was so sure you’d back out of doing it.”

Esmerelda was fifty-nine years old and still as beautiful today as she most likely was in her twenties. Her long white hair fell to just above her ass, the turquoise color we’d put in the under layers of it was still holding firm, adding an edge to her Indigenous American heritage and her striking beauty.