My stomach settled just by having him near, by seeing that he wasn’t going anywhere, that he knew who I was now and he didn’t run.
“Thank you,” I whispered, voice still raw.
“Figured you had to be as tired as I am,” he said, hesitantly sitting on the edge of the bed. He watched me take a sip, my eyes closing on a hum.
The coffee had hazelnut creamer in it.
“I hope you like that flavor,” he said. “I remembered you mentioned that you missed the creamer your dad always had at home, but I couldn’t remember what it was.”
“Toffee,” I said. “But this is wonderful. Thank you.”
My heart squeezed at the thought of him waking up early and going to the store to get creamer for my coffee.
“Did you get any sleep?” he asked.
“A little.”
He nodded. “Yeah, I didn’t get much either.”
I stared at where my fingers curled around the mug, and the realization that he also knew just how I liked my coffee — more creamer than anything else — made me want to smile as much as it made me want to curl up in a ball and sob.
“I wish I could crawl inside your mind right now,” he said softly.
I let out a breath of a laugh. “It’s not a pretty place.”
Leo watched me for a moment longer before he set his cup on the bedside table, taking mine next and doing the same. He wrapped my hands up in his, the warmth of his skin defrosting my icy digits.
“I’ve thought of a million things I want to say to you,” he said. “But I feel like none of it is enough.”
I stayed quiet, letting him work through the fog in his head that I knew had to feel as thick and heavy as mine. Just the fact that he was here gave me more hope than it should have. I wanted to curse myself for being stupid, for believing him, but then I realized that was the part of me that convinced myself Leo was this pig-headed asshole for the last seven years.
Now that I knew the truth, it felt like trying to untangle a web so thick and sticky it latched onto my soul every time I tried to sift through it.
His eyes skated back and forth between mine. “I wish I could tell you what you meant to me back then without sounding like a complete psychopath.”
I chuckled. “Hey, I held a grudge against you for seven years. I think it’s me who’s the crazy one.”
“I haven’t felt for any girl the way I felt for you.”
His words simmered like warm honey in my veins, but I laughed them off, looking down at where his hands intertwined with mine. “Oh yeah, none of the hundred or so?”
“I’m serious,” he said earnestly, and he dipped his head until I met his gaze again. “I… I can’t believe I hurt you.”
I had to look away again at that.
“All this time I thought…”
He didn’t finish the sentence, and when I looked up at him again, he was watching where his thumb drew a line on my wrist, his brow furrowed, a deep line etched into his forehead.
“How do I prove to you that I’ve changed?” Leo lifted his eyes back to mine. “That I’m more than what you think I am, what I used to be.”
My heart twisted, the force so powerful I squirmed beneath it.
When I thought back over the past few months in this house with Leo, I couldn’t think of a single thing I wanted him to change. His kindness was more than I deserved, even when I tried not to see it or to convince myself it was all for show. I wanted so desperately to believe he was this awful human being… and I’d successfully convinced myself of it for so long.
But now, to know the truth…
I sucked in a breath, desperate to lighten the mood, to bring back the ease with which we used to tease each other.
“Oh, I don’t know. I guess you can start with tattooing my name on your chest,” I joked.
But when I looked at Leo again, his face was dead serious.
“Okay.”
I barked out a laugh, shoving him away playfully. “I was kidding.”
“I’m not.”
“You’re not getting a tattoo of my name.”
“I don’t care what it is. Ink me with whatever you want.”
I licked my bottom lip in amusement, folding my arms over my chest. “Do you have any tattoos?”
“Not one.”
“You realize they’re permanent?”
“Yep.”
“And that they hurt?”
He sucked his teeth at that. “Come on, now — I get thrown to the ground and pummeled by three-hundred-pound defensive linemen on a regular basis.”
I chewed the inside of my cheek, watching him for a sign that he was bluffing — but found nothing.
“You’re really serious.”
“I really am. Come on,” he said, standing and holding his hand out for mine. “Let’s do it.”
“Now?”
“Right now.”
I barely got another laugh out before he was hauling me up out of bed.
Leo
Every ounce of cockiness I had drained out of me the second the needle buzzed across my sternum.
Mary had started whatever she was inking into my flesh on my upper chest, and while it had stung, it was manageable — an almost pleasant, little bite of pain that had me feeling like I could sit in this chair all day without so much as a little squirm.
Now, it felt like she had a vibrating knife in her hands and was dragging it through the skin and bone, gutting me like a fish.
I hissed in another breath that I held until she took a little break to drag the folded paper towel in her hands over my skin, and I swore that hurt almost as badly as the tattoo itself. My flesh felt raw, almost like I had a fresh sunburn and she was rubbing sandpaper over it.
“You’re such a baby,” she said on a laugh, and the easy way her lips curled told me she was enjoying seeing me in pain.
Not that I blamed her.
“It feels like you’re scraping the bone.”
She laughed again, but I was too busy holding my breath to join her as she started in again. “Just don’t focus on it. Talk to me, tell me a story or something.”
“You expect me to form sentences right now?”
I gritted my teeth, and then let all the tension go when she removed the needle for a break again.
When I wasn’t writhing in pain, I was memorizing everything about the way Mary looked in this moment. Her hair was piled in a messy bun on top of her head, eyes still a little red and underlined in dark circles from our night together. I liked seeing proof that it happened on her face, that it wasn’t a dream. I liked even more that she was marking me permanently, that she was real and I was about to have proof of her existence forever.
Her hands were covered by black gloves, and I’d watched with fascination as she got everything set up for us — from the stencil I told her I didn’t want to see as she transferred it from the paper to my skin, to sanitizing the needles and setting up her station before she powered up her gun and got to work.
She was in her element, and it was a completely new side of her.
I’d seen her sarcastic shield she wore so effortlessly, heard her sling teasing insults with ease. But in this shop, she held herself differently — chin high, shoulders relaxed — calm and confident in a way only someone truly comfortable with themselves and what they do can be.