Leif didn’t even bother to look at us. Instead, he flipped us off, and Brooke laughed, blushing slightly as she waved and said her goodbyes.
“I need to head out too. I promised Marley I would meet her for lunch between classes. I have a night class tonight, then labs all day tomorrow.”
“Sounds good. You have clients on Friday, right?” Leif asked.
Technically, Sebastian was an apprentice. He needed more time to learn and was going to business school so he could help out and we could grow as a company. While MIL was a subsidiary of the original Montgomery Ink, just like Montgomery Ink Too was down in Colorado Springs, we were the heavy investors. This was our company. And we didn’t want it to fail.
I had all the hope and trust and faith in my partners, in the Montgomery family.
After all, they had practically raised me. They had been there when nobody else had, so I wasn’t about to not believe in what they could do.
“Yep. You’ll be there too, right? To hover over me to make sure I don’t fuck up?” Sebastian was teasing, but I heard the worry in his tone.
It was daunting and exhilarating, and I knew that Sebastian was feeling everything that we had when we had first started.
Of course, we hadn’t had impending fatherhood and marriage on our shoulders like he did.
“We’ll be here. Watching over you like mother hens, don’t worry,” Leif teased, and I snorted, narrowing my eyes at the sketch in front of me.
It wasn’t right yet, and I had two more versions to show my client.
She wanted a full side piece of broken and growing branches, to show where she had been, and where she wanted to go.
She wanted it in grayscale. I didn’t blame her. She had had a full-color tattoo about a decade ago from another artist, and the color had faded to almost nothing in a couple of years, her skin not reacting in the way that most other skin did. The outline had also blown out, and she had been hesitant for another tattoo for a while.
We had done a smaller tattoo on her hip in the meantime, just to see if she could handle another one, and it had worked out.
So we didn’t know what had happened, other than we needed to be careful, and she wasn’t going full color. I didn’t mind, but that meant that I had to be careful with my shading, and have the drawing and sketch work with what I wanted, to enhance the drawing, rather than just have something in black and white that didn’t make much sense.
“I have our coffees. No cayenne pepper,” Leo said as he came in, the coffees already sweating in his hands.
It was humid outside, which was a rare gift to most of Colorado.
Colorado was dry as hell and always led to dehydration and altitude sickness for people who hadn’t lived here before. But the fact that we had humidity right now was weird. I didn’t like it, and never wanted to ever visit a place that was high humidity. For instance, Florida was never going to be on my bucket list, even though I knew that our friends all wanted to go down to EPCOT one year and eat and drink our way around the world. That sounded fun, but doing so in Satan’s hellhole of humidity didn’t.
“Thanks, I’m headed out,” Sebastian said, and Leo nodded.
“Have fun. Learn all the things.”
“I’m trying.”
Sebastian said his goodbyes as Leif leaned back in his chair and stared at his phone.
“What is it?” I asked.
“Lake was going to stop by, but just texted to say that she had another meeting. I hate that she’s working herself too hard.”
Leo looked between us and kept silent.
Everyone in this room knew part of what had happened to Lake. It wasn’t like we could hide it since we were all friends and family.
But I had been the one to first see her.
I had been watching Luke for the night, staying at Brooke’s place while Brooke and Leif went out for a date. I liked the kid, and I hadn’t minded staying.
And I don’t know, maybe part of me had wanted to be there, knowing that Lake lived next door.
Because part of me had known something was wrong. I didn’t know what it was, and I should have known.
I should have thought about more than just the fact that asshole Zach had given me the creeps.
I had told myself I needed to get over my overprotectiveness, that Lake wasn’t my sister, was only my friend, and even then, we fought more than we actually liked each other.
But I had been the one that she had asked for help.
Help.
One word, four letters, something I hadn’t even known she knew.
Because Lake Montgomery did not ask for help. She had become a Montgomery later in her life and had worked her ass off to prove that she was worthy of becoming part of that family.
Which in my head was fucking ridiculous because she didn’t need to work at all to become a Montgomery. That family loved all of their people, even ones that sometimes fucked up, because no matter what, they were family, and they took care of each other. There was no sniping or growling beyond the usual. They cared for one another. There was no jealousy or trying to outdo one another. The Montgomerys took care of their own.
And somehow, along the way, I had become one of their own too. Because their own weren’t just those with the Montgomery iris tattoo—a flowered circle with their family crest that each member of the family got tattooed on their bodies because they wanted to, not because they had to.
So I didn’t know why Lake had worked so hard to try to fit in with a family that loved her beyond all measure.
But maybe I didn’t know Lake. All I knew was that we growled at each other and fought no matter what we did. We were co-owners of this damn place and always yelled at one another.
And I wasn’t going to dive too deep into the why of that.
Yet I had been the one standing there, the one watching her as she put her hands to her neck; and the bruises etched on her skin would forever haunt my dreams.
Because she had tried to cover them up. So many different kinds of makeup all blended together, but I could still see.
That bastard had wrapped his hands around her throat and tried to kill her.
Though the cops didn’t believe that.
They let her put a restraining order on him, but that was it. Zach was still out there, not in jail because apparently those bruises only meant that he might have hurt her once. Because Lake hadn’t gone to the authorities the other times he had hit her or emotionally put her into a cage and treated her like shit, so when she began to wear sweatshirts with baggy pants and her hair up in a bun instead of done to the nines like she always did, it wasn’t worth putting the man in jail.
Then again, I knew all too well what happened when somebody broke your spirit, but not the law.
There was only so much you could do, so Zach was out there, but so was Lake.
And she wasn’t here again today.
I didn’t want to be the selfish asshole who thought it was because of me.
But she didn’t see me anymore.
In the three months since that day, I had only seen her a handful of times.
The others saw her, and I knew she came into work on the days that I wasn’t here. And I didn’t know if it was on purpose or not.
But Lake Montgomery seemed to be avoiding me. It was the only thing that made sense.
And I fucking hated it.
I didn’t know why I hated it so much.
“She’ll be here tomorrow, though,” Leif added, looking down at his phone.