of fun, anyway,” she said, waving an arm toward the front door and heading that way. “And I can help you with whatever prep you need to do so it won’t be so overwhelming.”
“Do you make that offer to all the places who host your field trips?” he asked as he squatted to unlock the door.
“Nope,” she said, tugging it open and letting in a blast of cold air. “Only the ones whose owners feed me chocolate. And have tattoos.”
“You like the ink?”
“I’m curious about the sayings,” she said, pointing to his neck, letting the door close, and remaining inside.
“I’ve got Nietzsche, Tolkien, and if you’re more into science fiction than fantasy, I’ve got Frank Herbert. Then there’s Lewis Carroll. Even Harper Lee.”
She cocked her head, her expression broadcasting her curiosity when she said, “Really?”
He nodded, wondering if that look meant she was trying to guess what he’d chosen. Dune’s mind-killer passage about dealing with fear was obvious, but only if she knew the book and more about him. And the banter between Alice and the Cheshire Cat about mad people had seemed to fit his life at the time, though she wouldn’t know that.
The Harper Lee might be harder, but Atticus talking to Jem about courage had stuck with him. He’d chosen the first two lines of Tolkien’s “The Riddle of Strider” for the same reason, finding the sentiment about wandering but not being lost apropos when he’d gotten the ink.
But none of those tattoos were easily accessible. “How ’bout Tennyson?”
He pulled up his sleeve to show her the words. They were buried in a design that began just above his inner wrist and circled his forearm, before disappearing beneath his coat.
She took hold of his hand and read the quote for herself. “ ‘To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.’ ” Then she ran her finger along the words, and onto the visuals around which they’d been wound. “Do these have anything to do with the motorcycle club?”
“The words or the pictures?” he asked, surprised at how steady his voice sounded, when her touch had him wound up inside.
“Both. Either.”
“They did. Some I never had altered. Others were too gruesome, and I didn’t want Addy freaking out.”
“The wolf is nice,” she said, holding his hand palm up in hers and tracing the animal’s snout where it nudged against his wrist bone.
“Now it is,” he said, staring at the back of its head, which used to be open, with skulls pouring out as if they’d been scraped of their flesh and humanity and eaten by the beast. He’d covered the wound with a scroll of parchment, then had the Tennyson line—the final one from Ulysses—inked on top.
But mostly he was staring at his hand in Brooklyn’s. She held him like she would a baby bird, her palm barely cupped as if squeezing him too tightly might break him because he was fragile, and wild, and too new to his life not to jump away from what frightened him.
Funny about that, how such a gentle, nonthreatening, understanding touch made him want to leap.
He was just surprised by the direction he was thinking to go.
It was close to one a.m. when Brooklyn finally got home, and for the whole of the drive all she’d been able to think about was what in the world had compelled her to go to Bliss in the middle of the night? Okay, it hadn’t really been the middle of the night, but it had been long after hours.
Calling would’ve been so much easier—and so much warmer—though doing so wouldn’t have made much sense.
The fact that it had been after hours when she’d been struck with this insane idea made Callum still being at work a long shot. And her idea. Really? A kindergarten class field trip to his shop? Was she that desperate to see him? Apparently so. Midnight hadn’t stopped her.
She’d gone because . . . did she even know? She could have easily talked to him next week about the field trip idea. Or, by then, she could have easily talked herself out of it. Bliss wasn’t a big shop. Lining up a row of seven children in front of a row of eight at the window would work.
But the logistics of fitting fifteen five- and six-year-olds into Callum’s confectionery wasn’t the issue. The issue was her grabbing on to any reason to see him. This wasn’t like her, this giving physical attraction more than its due. She refused to believe she