Wild For You (Always a Bridesmaid 3) (16 page)

The bell above the door tinkled, signaling that John and Kitty had left and Nick turned back to Melody. “Okay, you ready to do this?”

She took a deep breath, excitement in her eyes. “I’m ready.”

“Are you sure?” Nick asked. “No shame if you want to wait. I can always save the sketch and we can do it later.”

Melody shook her head. “No, I’m ready. I love it. The changes you made are perfect. I want it even more now than I did before.”

“Okay,” Nick said, convinced by the assurance in her voice. “Go ahead and put on your playlist, and I’ll get the sketch onto transfer paper and get all my stuff prepped.”

“Yay!” Melody clapped her hands, bouncing lightly on her feet before dancing across the room to the computer.

Nick watched her for a second, loving how uninhibited and childlike she could be, even while maintaining that sexual presence that made him want to worship at the altar of her body forever, before forcing himself back to the task at hand.

Twenty minutes later, he had his station prepared and Melody on his table with her halter top pulled up on one side.

“Last chance,” Nick warned. He pulled on his latex gloves, taking extra care as he carefully shaved the area he was going to work on. Next, he sprayed Melody’s skin with a little soap to help with the transfer of the stencil, and positioned the phoenix where she’d told him she wanted the tattoo.

“Let’s do it,” she said, with a sniff and a wiggle of her nose.

“You like where I’ve got it?” he asked. “Make sure. If not, it’s no trouble to clean the skin and reposition.”

Melody lifted her head and gazed down. “Looks perfect.”

“All right.” Nick picked up his tattoo gun. “Then I’ll get started on the outline. We’ll get through that tonight, but we can always wait to do the color another time if the discomfort gets to be too much.”

“Awesome,” Melody said with another sniff.

“You need a tissue?” Nick asked, rolling his stool toward John’s station and the box of tissues.

“No, it’s all right. Just let me rub my eyes and I’ll be totally still.” She rubbed the tops of her eyes and then tucked one hand under the pillow underneath her head. “Ready.”

Nick rolled back and positioned his hand near her ribs. “Here we go.” He took a breath and started on the phoenix’s face, going slow until he felt Melody start to relax into the process.

“This isn’t as bad as I thought it would be,” she said after a moment, sniffing again before she added, “A little itchy, but not bad.”

Itchy?

Nick pulled the needle away from her skin. She shouldn’t be itching at this point. Most people didn’t complain of itching until days after the tattoo was finished, as the wound was starting to heal.

He stared hard at the skin around the bird’s head, where Melody’s skin was already starting to turn red. A little irritation was normal, but there were several spots surrounding the place where he had begun to work that looked puffy and raised. She was breaking out into hives, hives that continued to pop up in more and more places in the few seconds he paused to watch.

“Oh, shit,” he mumbled beneath his breath, reaching over and shutting down the tattoo machine.

“What’s wrong?” Melody lifted her head off the pillow, turning bloodshot eyes in his direction as she sniffed again.

Nick jumped up from his chair, snatching the paperwork she’d filled out from the desk near his station. “You said you didn’t have an allergy to latex,” he said, hands shaking as he checked the box to be sure.

“I don’t,” she said, rubbing at her eyes. “At least I don’t think I do.”

“You’ve been touched by someone wearing latex gloves before and been okay?” Nick asked, hoping for a miracle even as he watched the hives begin to spread across Melody’s ribs and down onto her bare stomach.

In six years of tattooing, he’d never seen a case of severe latex sensitivity, but he knew the signs and Melody was exhibiting several—hay-fever like symptoms, red eyes, and sudden rash—and he knew things could get worse, depending on the severity of her allergy.

“Um…” Melody sniffed as she pushed up on one arm, careful not to touch her exposed side. “I don’t know, we always use Nitrile…”

She trailed off, her face paling as her red eyes went wide.

“What’s up?” Nick said, heart beating faster with worry. “Talk to me, babe.”

“We always use Nitrile gloves at work because Aria is crazy allergic to latex,” Melody said. “She breaks out in hives and has asthma attacks if she touches the stuff. Oh my god, I’m allergic, too, aren’t I?”

“It’s okay. We caught it quickly, and you’ll be fine,” Nick said, trying to stay calm as he mentally mapped out the route to the Emergency Room. “I’m going to go into the back to take off these gloves. I want them as far away from you as possible. Then I’ll wash my hands and come clean and bandage the area I started on. I wouldn’t normally do that without gloves, but you’re in more danger from the latex than my bare hands.”

“Okay,” Melody said, her breath coming out with a wheeze that made her eyes grow even wider. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry,” Nick said, forcing himself to back away, though all he wanted to do was cross the room and hug her tight. “And don’t worry. Everything’s going to be all right. We’ll get you bandaged and head to the ER. They’ll know what to do.”

Calculating the time to the emergency room under his breath as he stripped off the gloves and scrubbed his hands for a full minute with soap and water—hoping to wash away every last bit of latex dust that might be clinging to his skin—Nick finished up and hurried back into the other room, trying not to let his panic show when he saw Melody.

Her hives had grown so large they formed continents of swollen flesh across her ribs and abdomen. Her eyes were so red they looked filled with blood, and the area below her jawline was way more swollen than it had been a few minutes ago.

“Nick,” she said, her voice scratchy. “I don’t feel so good.”

“I’m sorry, baby. Just a second and we’ll get out of here,” he said, hands shaking as he cleaned and bandaged her up as quickly as possible, then helped pull her shirt down and lift her into a seated position.

“Ugh,” she moaned as she sat up, bracing her hands on her knees to keep herself upright. “Oh my god, I might throw up.”

Thinking fast, Nick grabbed the mostly-empty wastebasket and dumped the contents on the floor before handing it to Melody. She took it, clinging to the edges with white fingers.

“Let me carry you,” he said, reaching for her.

She put a hand to his chest. “No, then I’d definitely be sick,” she said. “It’s okay. I can make it if you help me.”

She clung to him as he wrapped an arm around her waist and helped her down from the table and they began the shuffle toward the door.

“Just hold on,” he said, pushing through the door without bothering to lock it. Thieves could come and steal every damned thing in the store for all he cared. Melody was the only thing in Nick’s world that couldn’t be replaced.

“Almost there,” he said, half-carrying her down the sidewalk to the Midget.

Thirty seconds later, they were at his car. They would have been on their way to the ER less than five minutes after the start of the reaction if a voice hadn’t shouted at them from across the street, or, if a second after that, a fist hadn’t collided with Nick’s jaw.

Chapter Thirteen

Melody tried to scream as Seth charged onto the sidewalk, his fist aimed at Nick’s face, but her throat was too tight. The sound emerged as a strangled yelp, followed by a whimper as Nick’s arm was ripped from her waist and she fell to the pavement, the little plastic trashcan rolling from her hands.

“Your girlfriend’s a whiny bitch,” Seth screamed as he followed the punch to the face with an upper-cut to the gut, throwing Nick off-balance again before he could recover from the first blow. “My lawyer is going to tear that cunt apart.”

Melody rolled onto her hands and knees, willing her body to stop freaking out so she could get up and help Nick, but her legs refused to cooperate.

Her enraged, itching skin had broken out into a cold sweat and she was shivering all over, her arms going numb as her stomach turned into a nasty knot in the center of her body. Her head pulsed and her vision swam and her throat ached like a boa constrictor had wrapped itself around her neck.

There was no way she was going to be able to help Nick herself, but if she could reach her phone…

She fumbled for her back pocket, struggling to work the phone free from her jeans as Nick shouted for someone to help, that he had a medical emergency and a woman’s life was in danger. But everyone on this end of the street was inside
The Horse and Rider
, where the music was likely too loud for them to hear, and Seth obviously couldn’t care less if Nick and Melody both died slow, painful deaths.

In fact, he seemed pretty eager to help the process along.

Melody winced as Seth threw another punch that Nick ducked seconds before it connected, and dug her entire hand into her pocket, leveraging the phone free with an awkward flip of her wrist. Her cell fell to the concrete and Melody grabbed it from the warm sidewalk, tapping in nine-one-one with half-numb fingers. She heard the operator pick up and brought the phone to her ear, but when she spoke her voice emerged as a rasp too soft to be heard over Seth’s screaming.

“Your bitch should have kept her mouth shut!” The veins on Seth’s neck were standing out like swollen, blue worms beneath his skin, and his face was as red as the convertible parked in front of Nick’s car.

“You should have kept your hands to yourself, you piece of shit,” Nick shouted back, dodging another fist intended for his face. “You deserve to rot in jail.”

“Fuck you. It’s that dumb cunt’s word against mine,” Seth said with an ugly laugh, as he and Nick circled each other and Melody laid the phone down on the pavement with the call still active, hoping the operator would be able to trace their location.

“There’s no evidence,” Seth continued, “and even if there were, I’d walk. I’ve fucked a girl, and walked away from it without a day of jail time, let alone this shit.”

“You mean raped a girl. When a woman says stop, a real man stops,” Nick said, the rage in his voice enough to make Melody shiver.

If she were Seth, she would have run right then, but instead Seth said—

“Your girl’s mouth said stop, but her body said go. Even when she was fighting me I could feel how hot she was. The way she was squirming all over, I—”

Seth’s words ended in a grunt as Nick rushed him, knocking the breath out of the shorter, burlier man as Nick grabbed fistfuls of his shirt and spun in a tight circle, slamming Seth into the brick wall of the tattoo shop.

“You don’t talk about her! You don’t even
think
her name!” Nick shouted, slamming Seth into the wall a second time before shoving him away.

The moment Nick released him, Seth charged again, fists flying at Nick’s midsection. Nick shifted to the side as his right arm swung in a circle to collide with Seth’s jaw. The blow connected with a sickening thud and Seth fell to the ground and stayed there for a moment, obviously dazed.

The second the other man was down, Nick ran back to Melody. “Hurry,” he said, gathering her under the arms. “We’ve got to get you to the hospital.”

“My phone. I called nine-one-one,” Melody said in a hoarse voice, pointing back to where her phone still lay on the ground, the world spinning as she turned.

She was hot and itchy and dizzy and her head had begun to pound so hard that for a second she thought the blaring that filled the air was coming from between her ears, the final death cry of her brain as it exploded into a thousand tiny pieces.

But it wasn’t her brain exploding, it was a siren. Many sirens. Sirens that got increasingly louder as they closed in on this end of Main Street just as Nick scooped Melody’s phone off the concrete.

Out of the corner of her eye Melody saw Seth surge to his feet and start to run—a blur of white t-shirt and black jeans—but she couldn’t turn her head fast enough to follow him.

She couldn’t turn her head, couldn’t tell Nick she was dizzy, couldn’t even pull in a deep enough breath. Her chest just got tighter and tighter, while her stomach twisted like a towel being rung out, and her head throbbed with an unhealthy heartbeat that grew slower and slower as her vision went fuzzy.

Melody heard Nick cry out her name, but then she was falling, swallowed into a dark, soft blackness that shut out everything around her.

***

Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep.

Melody awoke to the comforting rhythm of a heartbeat monitor. It took her a few minutes of staring at the white tile ceiling, listening to the hospital noises in the near distance, to realize the heartbeat was her own.

She swallowed, relieved to feel how easy it was now that her throat was no longer swollen, and shifted beneath the cool, white sheets. She took a deep, cleansing breath, catching the familiar scent of her mother’s perfume.

“Mom?” she asked, lifting her head from the pillow long enough to see her Mom startling awake in the hospital recliner in the corner of the room before letting her head drop back to the pillow.

She was feeling much better, but she was still a little woozy.

“Honey, you’re awake,” her mom said, rubbing her make-up free eyes as she hurried to Melody’s bedside. Behind her, pale, early-morning light caught her mussed blond hair, emphasizing the wild fly-away strands sprouting up all over her head.

Her mother was out of the house without make-up or her hair brushed, leaving no doubt just how worried she must have been when she jumped in the car to come to the hospital.

“How are you, baby?” Mom took one of Melody’s hands in both of hers, cradling it like a treasure.

“I’m feeling much better,” Melody said, squeezing her Mom’s hand in reassurance.

“Good. I’m going to get the nurse to check on you again now that your eyes are open,” she said, leaning down to press a kiss to Melody’s cheek before hurrying from the room.

She returned a minute later with a bright-eyed older woman wearing blue scrubs with tiny beagles all over them and a nametag declaring her Candace Carter, LPN. Candace fussed and clucked over Melody like a second mother hen for several moments—checking her vitals and asking how her head and chest were feeling—before making reassuring noises about Melody’s progress. She helped adjust the bed so Melody could sit up comfortably and promised to come back with a big mug of water in a few minutes.