Page 42 of Unwilling Bratva Bride

“You’re really good, Adley.”

She looked up from the paper, smiling as she blew the hair out of her face. “Thanks. It’s not much, but I’ve done it for ages. That much practice is bound to pay off, right?”

An easy laugh let me, and I nodded. “Absolutely. But tell me something.”

She finished a line that depicted the broken glass on my forehead, and I studied the other tattoos she’d drawn on me. They looked like perfect little replicas of the real things.

“Okay, what?”

“Is that actually how you see me?”

She regarded the paper, a bit of concern threading through her brow. But then she seemed to gather what I was alluding to and quickly nodded.

“I took very few liberties with your appearance; just made the tattoos less detailed because I don’t have eight years to perfect them all.”

Adley’s grin was accompanied by her eyebrows up to her hairline as she eyed me.

“Can you answermesomething now?”

I wanted to say no. But fair is fair.

“Shoot.”

“Hmm…all right, I have two. One, what really happened that made you get that tattoo on your forehead? Dumb accident doesn’t seem right. Two, how is it that someone as cocky as you doesn’t think they should be drawn?”

Scoffing hard, I let it meld into a laugh, rolling my eyes all the way around as I leaned back like I’d been punched.

“Not taking it easy on me, are you?”

She shook her head. “Nope. You can take it.”

Ooh, that was good, Adley. “It was a dumb accident, but…I managed to get my brothers and myself really hurt. According to the doctors, I should have died or wound up in a coma for years. I didn’t, and I can’t exactly say why the universe would seize the opportunity to get rid of me. So maybe it was dumb luck. This…”

I pointed to my head and then returned to the pose Adley wanted me in for the picture.

“Is my reminder that luck swings both ways. Disaster bisexual that it is.”

Adley considered me, nodding when she’d determined that I wasn’t bullshitting her. “Okay, and two?”

Narrowing my eyes at her, I chewed on my lip. “I can’t say I really feel like answering that one.”

“Come on. You can ask me something.”

Adley smiled hopefully, and dammit, she was too fucking cute like that. We were broaching some intense territory, though. I didn’t talk about my past much with my brothers and zero with anyone else.

But that past was roped up in the whys about how I got into the line of work and the reason I never looked for anything better for myself. The reason why I didn’t expect shit for myself, kept everyone at arm’s length, and didn’t believe for a second that anyone out there could ever…love me.

Feelings are gross. Ihatethis.

“Ugh, Adley, I—”

“I had to pee while working the register once, and it got bad, so I left to go, and right then, the person at the counter swiped a bunch of cash. We were robbed because I peed.”

I burst out laughing harder than I had in…well, forever, and I couldn’t stop myself from just losing it to the story. It was too damn hilarious and random, and I put my fist to my chest, leaning back again as the laughter took over.

Adley joined right in and lowered her head, her hair falling in a curtain around her as she giggled wildly.

After a good two minutes, I was finally able to stop, wiping the tears that had collected from laughing so hard.

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