I scrub the dirt from her skin and de-nest her hair, and it pleases me more than it should that she hasn’t tried fighting me again. But that doesn’t mean I’ve gotten any softer. Nope, I am very much still hard and prodding around areas that I very much want to sink into.
It isn’t until I start massaging her scalp that she relaxes into me. It makes brushing her hair difficult, but I’m not about to ask her to move. It feels far too nice having her against me, especially when she grabs a cloth and returns the favor. But I don’t quite like the frown she has as she does it.
“What? You—”
“Don’t ruin it.” She silences me with three words without so much as a glance my way, frowning harder as she scrubs the marks on my forearm.
I don’t have the heart to tell her she can scrub all she wants; it isn’t dirt she’s trying to get off. I paid good money to make sure that ink wasn’t going anywhere.
I see the exact moment Bella realizes what it is. Her cheeks go red, and she looks at me from the corner of her eye and pretends she didn’t spend the better part of a minute having a go at trying to rub off the fine-line tattoo of a drawing she made me when she was seven. The first drawing she ever gave me.
Either way, I still take the interaction for what it is: a win.
Deciding her work is done, she drops the cloth onto the corner of the tub, sighing as she relaxes onto my chest.
My heart beats steadily as I watch her and how she curls into me when I wrap an arm around her waist. There are so many things I want to say and do, but I know I’d ruin this moment if I did.
I know she thinks she has changed, but to me, she’s the exact same person. The only difference is that she’s come out of her shell. I always saw hints of her snarkiness and fighting spirit, but she never let it out. Not even in the three months I’ve been watching her.
“What’s this from?” I trace the three little scars on her stomach. One below her belly button and another on either side of her stomach.
“My appendix burst. I was hospitalized.”
I still. “When?”
“Two years ago.”
I can’t think of what to say. I should have been there for her. Millie and Jeremy wouldn’t have sat by her side or waited when she had surgery. I want to kill Marcus all over again for keeping the letters from her. She must have felt all alone.
“Are you okay?”
She lifts a shoulder. “I just don’t have an appendix.”
Bella’s brown eyes fix on the ink covering my skin. She purses her lips as she runs her nimble fingers over the bear standing on its hind legs on my thigh, to the snake coiled around my wrist, then the tiger crawling down my shoulder, to the mouse on my chest, and finally, the bullet wound just under her name. She ends on my inner bicep, where I have a mouse wearing a tiara, her signature on any street art we’d do together.
She traces each one she can reach, even the pieces I’ve drawn, like the one of the barn house, the design on her locket, and the trip we did to Yellowstone—which she hated because of how much walking we had to do, but loved because she was stalked by a stray cat for three hours. She called herself a cat mom for a solid month after.
“Do they have meaning?” she whispers as her hand skates over a fox.
“Yes.”
She looks up at me through her lashes. “Why did you get them?”
“So when you look at me, there isn’t an inch of me you don’t like.”
Realization unfolds behind her brown eyes. Everything she’s ever liked is marked on my skin for the rest of my life: her favorite animals, the trips we’ve done, things that matter to her.
Her bottom lip trembles for the briefest moment before she tears her eyes away from the tattoos and to the chain around my neck.
Fingering the pendant, she turns it over, narrowing her eyes to read the date engraved into the silver coin.
“My first day at Woodside Elementary,” I say before she can ask.
She looks at me in question.
“The first time we met.”
Her lips form into an ‘O,’ and she slowly settles back against my chest so I can’t see her, stiff with tension. Did I do something wrong? I’m pretty sure I didn’t say anything to piss her off.
I turn her around and settle her between my legs. “While I was in prison, I also learned how to play guitar,” I add, to lighten the mood.
“Oh, really?” There’s an air of disinterest in her response. Seriously, what did I do wrong now?
“Yeah,” I say coolly. “I can play Mary Had a Little Lamb with my eyes closed.”