Page 62 of Cruz: Skin Deep
“I think I’d like to go to Fresno then.”
He smiled and told the others where they were going.
After hugs and fist bumps, the pack headed to Death Valley and Cruz and Eden headed to Fresno. They stopped off to spend the night at Bakersfield with a friend of the Skulls, to break up the trip, and the next day they hit the road again…on to Fresno, where Cruz believed he had the key to unlocking Eden’s future.
* * *
Westside Skulls,Fresno, California
When Cruz had first taken Eden to see Xander, Eden had thought she was just there to visit another chapter of the Skulls. Cruz knew that Xander had been working with women who’d had mastectomies from breast cancer. With his natural artistic prowess, he’d already done several 3D nipple tattoos on women, two of whom were Skulls old ladies.
Although the breast was still flat to the feel, from looking at them from even a relatively close distance, due to the shading and coloring, the nipples looked like they were raised and real. It was so hard to tell…almost impossible…and as Eden said, no one was going to get that close her, apart from Cruz.
Cruz loved her before the tattoos, and he loved her the same after. It was what it did for her mind that made all the difference. He could tell her, in truth, a thousand times, how beautiful she was, but every time she looked in the mirror, she saw more than just the scars from the operation.
For her, they carried strong memories of what those scars had done to her life. She would be forever grateful that she had the opportunity to take action about something that had killed her sister…and possibly her mother too, since no one had ever talked about how she had died.
Getting the tattoos hadn’t been easy, but Eden was tough, both mentally and physically. She had a high pain tolerance. Xander had warned her about the problems she could encounter, and the pain she could suffer, from getting tattoos over the scars. Where the nipples were, that was OK…it was clear skin…but where she’d chosen to cover the scars with a pattern that looked like an intricate crocheted fabric adorned with roses and thorns…that hurt. That really hurt.
Cruz had been right about the good weed that Xander offered with his services, and after the first day, she’d taken his advice and used it. It had made all the difference.
With some of the scar, he incorporated it into the design and while she could still see it, it was like the thorns of a rose…dangerously beautifully. She liked to think she was like that too…just a little. She knew Cruz was.
Cruz had told Eden he’d smoked fields of weed when he’d had his body tattooed, and she understood why now. Xander explained to her that Cruz’s burns had left him with scars that had hardened his skin and made it irregular. It made the skin less able to absorb the ink and it was far more difficult for the personalized designs he’d chosen to be clear and unsmudged.
Xander had helped her reclaim her body, and he and Cruz had helped her reclaim her mind.
* * *
Santa Cruz,California
Eden was as nervous as hell, but excited at the same time. They’d been staying at the Westside Skulls MC yet again, having spent a ton of time there, in recent months, in Xander’s studio. He was every bit as good as Cruz had told Eden. He’d said that Xander was the best tattooist in the country. She’d believed him at the time, but now she thought that was an understatement…and she had the proof.
Cruz and Eden had traveled to Santa Cruz, to a quiet spot close to Panther Beach that not too many people knew about. Panther Beach was too busy at this time of the year…summer…attracting people who wanted to party with loud music and often bad behavior. Cruz and Eden didn’t mind loud music, but they liked to choose what type of music they wanted to listen to, and not have strangers make those decisions for them.
When they got to the beach, after parking the Westside Skulls van in the dirt parking area back up the hill, they dropped their backpacks on the sand and as always Cruz got his phone out ready to take photos and record video.
It turned out they’d chosen a fairly busy day. They knew that as soon as they parked, by the number of vehicles already there. They were mostly couples, sunbathing and swimming.
“Ready?” Cruz asked Eden.
“Sure am,” she said. She stripped off her clothes and stood naked looking out at the waves and the surfers who were catching them. Cruz was filming her, and he could see on the screen that people in the background were looking at his beautiful girlfriend. She had an absolutely stunning body, and the nipples and intricate tattoos that Xander had embellished on her firm breasts had made her picture-perfect.
She strolled along the sand with Cruz filming her. Many of the other people at the beach were naked too and some of them were walking in the sand or over the rocky shoreline. Two young guys were staring so hard at her boobs that their eyes looked like they were ready to pop out. Cruz wasn’t a jealous guy and today he was anything but that. He was proud of the way Eden looked, and the way she walked confidently, while totally exposed in public.
It was when she heard one of the guys say to the other, “Wow…Tits…fucking beautiful,” that any of her old self-doubt was washed out of her life like the tide. Cruz had said the same to her many times, and when she looked in the mirror she felt like a new person, but to hear a total stranger say that, she knew it must be real.
By the end of the day, of sunbathing and swimming naked, she not only felt whole again, she felt like a whole new woman that was more confident than the old Eden, who had chosen such a difficult journey years earlier.
She wished other women could be as lucky.
EPILOGUE
NEW ORLEANS, LOUISIANA
“What is this?”Eden walked up to Cruz and Brian. They were sitting in a lounge chair at the cafe where Eden had seen Cruz drinking his coffee all those months earlier. Cruz had asked Eden to meet him there…she was surprised to see it was with Brian. Apart from the reason Brian had first decided to come on their trip across the country, Eden had quite liked the guy. She could understand how the belief that Cruz was responsible for his wife’s death had festered for three years and ultimately led Brian to wanting to kill her man. But Brian never had it in him to kill anyone, anyway. He wasn’t a bad guy, he was just a guy who had been dealt a bad hand, when he chose Wendy for his wife. He’d been working for Jimmy at the time he met her, and one thing led to another. He’d since found out that Cruz hadn’t been the only one she’d had an affair with. It turned out that Jimmy knew all about her indiscretions too…and he didn’t give a damn, as long as his daughter was having fun.
That fun had led to her death, and Jimmy’s unsolved disappearance in another state.