Page 1 of Second Chances

PROLOGUE

CHLOE

FIVE YEARS AGO

My heart raced as I pushed open the door to the tattoo shop. Not out of fear, but out of pure excitement.

I was about to get my first tattoo.

The ding of the door announced my arrival to the rest of the store, and a handsome man stepped out from the back.

My neighbor and friend Liam Stevens grinned and rubbed his hands together. “You ready to do this, Chloe?”

“I think so?”

“ ‘I think so’ question mark?”

Okay, I’d lied. I was nervous. But I was more nervous about Liam touching me than the pain from the tattoo needle.

See, Liam was my neighbor, and the thing was, I had a tiny crush on him. But he had a girlfriend, whom he lived with, and I lived with my boyfriend. Nothing had ever happened between Liam and me, not even flirting.

Even though I was happy with Darren, I couldn’t help but notice that my neighbor was good-looking, nice, built, and had tattoos.

Which was how I’d ended up here tonight. When I told Liam at my twenty-fifth birthday party that I’d never gotten a tattoo, he told me he would give me one as a birthday gift. A part of me still couldn’t believe I had said yes, but then again, no one knew I had the hots for Liam but me, myself, and I.

“Did you decide on what you’re going to get?” he asked me. “Do you want to look around before we head back?”

Tracy, Liam’s girlfriend, had several tattoos and had offered to help me decide what I wanted and where I wanted it. She had steered me toward something small and in a spot that was safe, but I had left the conversation, knowing what I wanted to do.

If I was finally going to get a tattoo, I wasn’t going to start small and build up to something because I was scared. I was going to go all out and get exactly what I’d wanted the first time.

I shook my head. “No need to look. I already know what I want.” I pulled out the picture from my purse and showed it to Liam.

His eyebrows rose. “Oh. Wow.”

The image I had was a woman with a lace tattoo that started on her shoulder and trailed down to the middle of her chest, overlapping a breast.

“I know you can’t do exactly that,” I told him. I knew that artists didn’t like to copy another artist’s work. “But I was hoping for something similar. And I know that this is bigger than what you wanted to give me for free, so please let me pay you the difference.”

He looked up from the piece of paper I had handed him and eyed my shoulder. “I need to see your clavicle area.”

I’d come prepared for this. I removed the lightweight sweater I had on and slid the strap of the camisole I was wearing down to my arm. I also made sure to brush my blonde hair out of the way.

Liam picked up the picture and placed it in front of me, like he was visualizing how the tattoo would look. After a few seconds, he nodded his head. “I think this will look good on you. Sexy yet classy. Kind of like you.”

I laughed. “Thanks. If you’re saying I’m classy, then you must have left my birthday party before I got too drunk. There’s nothing classy about climbing into bed and falling asleep before all your guests leave.”

Liam winced but also couldn’t seem to hold in his laugh.

“Yeah, that’s my level of class.”

“Hey, at least you didn’t throw up.”

I was too embarrassed to admit that I had come pretty close. “True. It could have been worse.”

He smiled. “Well, I still stand by the classy part. And if it helps, I said, ‘Kind of like you.’”

I chuckled. “Right. I suppose you did.”