said. “That must have been very upsetting and difficult.”
He shrugged. “I had an aunt who looked out for me.”
“Does she still live in New Cassel?”
“She died when I was seventeen,” he said. “Drunk driver hit her car.”
A flicker of pain flashed in his eyes and without thinking about it, she scooted across the couch until she was pressed against him. She took his hand, squeezing it gently. “I’m so sorry.”
He studied their clasped hands. “It was a long time ago.”
She didn’t reply and he rubbed his thumb absently against the palm of her hand. “After my aunt died, my mom started using every day. My aunt used to keep her somewhat in line, but with her gone… my dad was doing a stint in prison and Mom was prostituting herself out to buy drugs. There was a line up of strange men in and out of our fucking apartment every goddamn night.”
She pressed even closer and rested her free hand on his arm, rubbing lightly as he continued to stare at their clasped hands. “She was using all the money she got to buy more drugs and eventually we were evicted from our apartment. She went to live with some guy she knew.”
“Where did you go?” she said.
“I was a couple months from graduating high school and a friend let me crash at his place until we graduated. But then his folks wanted me out, so I lived on the street for a while.”
“You were homeless?”
“Yeah, for about six months. I was good at art, and I’d go to one of the dog parks and sketch people’s dogs in exchange for cash. One day this big dude who’s covered head to toe in tattoos is at the park and he’s got this ridiculous tiny dog. It was one of those miniature poodle crosses, some yappy little shit, and he’s fucking babying this thing. You know? Like, the dog’s got on a damn leather jacket and the collar around its neck probably cost more than any of my clothes ever did.”
She smiled at him. “People love their pets.”
“I sketched out his dog and then showed it to him, did my usual song and dance, and the guy looked at my drawing and then looked at me, and said, ‘Son, you got some fucking talent, don’t you?’”
He traced more patterns on her palm with his thumb. “He asked if I ever drew anything other than dogs, I said yeah, and showed him a few of my other sketches. He gave me a business card for his shop. Told me to come by the next day and we’d talk about a job opportunity.”
“He was a tattoo artist?” Addison said.
Preacher nodded. “One of the best in the city, although I didn’t know that at the time. I showed up at the shop the next morning, and he offered me the chance to apprentice.”
“That’s what Nolan does at your shop, right?” she said.
“Right. An apprentice cleans the shop, books appointments, and takes out the trash. Basically, you do all the grunt work in the shop in exchange for being taught how to tattoo. Jorge even let me sleep on a cot in the back of the shop.”
“That was nice of him,” she said.
“Yeah.” A smile crossed his face. “Until his wife, Maria, found out. He caught so much hell from her. I was eighteen by then, but she said a tattoo shop was no place for a kid to be sleeping.”
“Where did you stay once Maria kicked you out of the shop?”
His small smile became a full-grown grin. “Maria and Jorge’s house.”
She laughed and squeezed his hand. “Seriously?”
“Maria gave Jorge shit for not bringing me back to their place where I would have a proper bed and food to eat. I lived with them until I finished apprenticing a few years later and got my tattooing licence.”
“They sound like good people.”
“They are. Better than I deserved.”
She frowned at him. “Don’t say that.”
He just shrugged. “Anyway, then I met Gideon and we became friends. He moved back here to take care of Kira and about a year later I moved here and opened up the Crimson Door.”
She knew that Preacher was around Gideon’s age, which meant he had skipped over a significant chunk of time between becoming a tattoo artist and moving to Harmony Falls. She was intensely curious about what had happened in those years, but she wasn’t going to push him for details. It was a miracle he’d even told her this much. Other