“Are you seriously getting a blow job while you’re talking to me?”

“Doesn’t matter. I’m done talking.” Before I could end the call, I heard her shout to wait. “What?”

“It was for her, wasn’t it?

“And if it was?”

“I would have to say I’m curious why? I mean it’s obvious you still love her judging by the large sketch on your office wall. Kind of sweet but a little obsessive.”

“I guess I had a moment of weakness. It’s a common trait for sluts.” I hung up the phone and closed my eyes before opening them. My gaze traveled to the sketch I drew of Sheldon the night I took her virginity. She was fast asleep, and even after the things I’d done to her body, she still somehow looked pure.

I reflected on the last four years, and for the millionth time, I wondered about all that I might have missed. Was she still the same? Was she better or worse?

Was I?

Not for the first time, I wondered if the life I led was worth anything. My only other option had been to continue living the life I had before leaving. Eighteen years was a long time to live a lie. I couldn’t sacrifice more time to it.

One might think that if you spent your life living for the wrong reason, then there was no point in living at all.

I had my chance to die, but I was too much of a coward to take it.

Now I’m forced to live another lie.

But this time is different.

This time it would be my own.

I looked over at the blonde who looked near to passing out. “Get out.”

* * * * *

A few hours and a couple of appointments later I stepped out of my shop and locked up for the night.

I opened Broken Ink shortly after I grew bored of being holed up, and I was convinced my brother wasn’t hot on my trail.

Di convinced me to let her tag along after telling me all about the money her father had stashed away in their home. It took careful thinking, but after pulling the caper, we walked away with a fifty-fifty split.

Since I didn’t graduate due to my lengthy stay in the hospital, I settled for a GED and later, a license for the shop.

In the beginning, business was nonexistent. In a big city, it paid to have connections, and the only customers gracing my shop back then were friends of Di. I never thought that doing cheap tats for her friends would pay off until I hit the jackpot by doing some very serious ink for an aspiring band who hit it big six months later. It worked out for me that part of their sex appeal came from the hardcore tats that had all of California and even people out of state rushing to my shop. The boom in business made me forget the reality that I was running because none of these people knew me.

I gave them all a fake story and even more of a fake name, and while I knew my cover wasn’t airtight, it worked so long as I didn’t give anyone a reason to dig.

But it wasn’t them I was worried about. It was everyone I left behind. Knowing my brother, he would look for me because of who he is, but after what I’d done the night I left, I wouldn’t bet on it unless it was to kill me.

He was a vengeful person and no one knew that better than his former pet turned girlfriend.

She was the reason he would come after me if he ever did because four years wasn’t nearly long enough for him to forget what I had done. I wondered what he would do if he knew Lake wasn’t the only one I’d hurt that night? Keiran had never been the knight in shining armor, but even then, I could see the change that Lake had caused in him.

Instead of happiness for my brother and a girl I once called a friend, all I felt was envy and anger. I once believed in my own way that love might have been real until it was shattered the night I met my real father and found out my brother, who I knew as my cousin all my life, killed my mother. Our mother.

Love faded that day.

And when Sheldon turned her back on me, it died completely.

My phone pinged with an incoming text message. It was a Friday night so I already knew what the message held without looking at it. Another invite to a party guaranteed to end with fucked up life choices being made.

And like always, I’d accept without ever answering the invitation.

And why not? I was free to do so. I didn’t have to answer to anyone. I didn’t have to care what anyone thought.

And even more tempting, I didn’t have to feel guilty for hurting anyone but myself.

Most of the people who frequented these parties were either escaping pain or looking for it. I was just another body in a world full of sin that didn’t fit in either category.

The text message, when I finally read it, held an address and nothing else. It didn’t take long for the hosts, or whoever extended the invitation, to catch on to the fact that I would never respond, so after a while, they would only send an address.