her time.
But then again, if I saw a beautiful woman strutting along Main Street with that chin, I might be weak enough, stupid enough, to open my heart and lay it out so it could be stomped on again.
I’m not strong enough for that kinda blow twice in a row.
So I channel my pain. I fight, I take a beating more often than not, because hell, it feels good to be in pain in a tangible way. And when I’m not at the gym, I run. I run hard, long distances, and don’t stop until my legs refuse to carry me anymore.
Back when I was eighteen, I swore I would eat, eat, eat, I would train, and I would gain fifty pounds so I could bump up to the heavyweight division in my cousin’s tournament. I had no true reason for doing that… not in a sporting sense, anyway. I merely wanted to be big because that’s what girls like.
That’s what Cam liked.
But now, after all of my training, all of my running, all of my jitsu, and then there’s that ball of anxiety I’ve been nursing for four years straight, I can only manage to maintain weight. Not gain it.
My body is sculpted, because hell, there ain’t a man alive who trains as many hours as I do. I’m tall, because the Kincaid and Hart genes tend to shine through, and I was genetically destined to be tall. I’m broad, because of the weights I do five days out of seven. I work on my chest, my arms, my shoulders. I build it all up, because hell, I have tournaments to win, money to make, and the competition I face in my division is fierce.
I’m all of the things I wanted to be when I was eighteen – minus a few pounds – but I can’t seem to find pleasure in any of it.
Instead, I drag my ass to Inkalot, the best local tattoo studio in this town and the next, and I pay a dude to draw all over me. I don’t come here with a plan, we don’t sketch it out and lay the stencil on my skin so he can get it right. I just take my shirt off, lay flat, and simply let Ian work through his own stresses by doodling whatever the fuck he wants.
He’s yet to screw it up.
“You excited for the new baby?” Bry lays on the table beside me, shirt off, back exposed, while a chick tattoos something he had drawn up for his girl. “Can you believe there’s a whole new generation already?”
“Lyss started it,” I mumble, speaking of Bry’s sister’s little girl. “Iowa and Brooke brought the kid bug to the estate, and now Smalls is jumping on board.”
“Bets that Uncle Aiden drops dead from worry?” he snickers. “I’m not kidding. He’s gonna be like a wrecking ball to get to his girl.” Bry turns his face so his eyes meet mine. “Those walls had better be soundproof, because if she starts screaming, folks are gonna start dying.”
“Mm…” I turn my head away and stare up at the ceiling. “Does it ever bother you that women have all the power in a relationship?”
Bry’s tattoo artist loses her professionalism when she stops working and looks to me with a scowl.
“What?” Bry chuckles. “Chicks have all the power, Jamie. It’s the way it is. It’s the way it’s supposed to be.”
“Good answer,” Zelda – that’s her name – goes back to work.
“I don’t mean…” I frown and study the lines of the ceiling. The air vents. The stain from an old water leak. “I don’t mean how women have power over men. I mean…” I turn to him. “Hypothetically, Maddi could get knocked up, right?”
He flashes a wide grin. “I’m working on it. Three to five times a day.”
I roll my eyes. “But say you and her were in an unhealthy relationship. Bad blood, a nasty breakup. Then a few weeks later, she pees on a stick and finds out she’s carrying your baby.” I draw in a heavy breath, then let it out on a sigh. “She never has to tell you. You literally aren’t needed from that point on. So she could keep the secret, and you would never know.”
“Did you have an oopsie with a chick at Rhino’s?” he asks. “Or are we going deeper than that?”
“This is a heavy-ass conversation,” Ian murmurs. The bars in his brow twinkle under the light he uses to illuminate his work.