Page 133 of Obsession

Surrounding these numbers was a sea of images whose meaning I couldn’t quite fathom.

Two roses, one with thorns, the other without. The one without thorns was beautiful and lively, the other seemed rotten, with deformed petals, hard to look at. Underneath were two flaming angel wings and above them two hate-filled demonic eyes. Harris was the demon, he had wings on his car, so they were probably describing him. I looked at him again and noticed he was serious, analyzing my every reaction.

“What’s your mom like?” I asked without realizing it.

The word “mom” was a stab to my heart, but I wanted to know more about his family, about why he lived with his friends.

A sweet smile spread across his face.

“She’s the most amazing woman in the world,” he spoke with more admiration than I ever gave him credit for.

It hurt me from the inside out. In the past, I had said the same thing about my mother.

“You don’t live with your family?”

He frowned briefly.

“No,” and he paused, wanting to say something else, but he didn’t seem to know how.

I decided not to put any pressure on him. It was clear that he loved his mother and probably both of his parents, but his rebellious behavior somehow made him want to push them away. He went with his flock.

I lowered my gaze to his body again. There were so many things to see that it would have probably taken me hours to fully analyze him. On his lower abdomen, above his pelvis, he had a tattoo of two wolf cubs. They met below his belly button and stretched their paws towards each other without touching. I thought this was the most beautiful tattoo he had, the hawk and snake were too dark, but these wolf cubs looked almost gentle. I was curious as to what they meant to Harris, but he spoke before me:

“Katherine?!”

I lifted my head to him.

“What happened to your mother?”

I swallowed. I had to remind myself that Harris had been thinking about this since he heard Amber and, when he came here, saw that I was living with my father.

“She left me for money,” I replied quickly, feeling the anger flare up in me again, and I couldn’t suppress my frown.

Harris looked at me, not understanding my sudden anger.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” I added, standing up and trying to get out of bed.

Harris grabbed my hand before I could put a foot on the floor.

“Hey, hey, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you,” he spoke softly and scooted close to me on the edge of the bed. “Come back here.”

I closed my eyes and tried to calm down. What really calmed me was Harris’ kiss on the back of my neck.

“What’s that?” he suddenly jumped up, a hint of amusement in his tone.

I turned to him, uncomprehending, and immediately felt his fingers on my lower back, lifting my tank top. He saw my tattoo.

“What’s that tattoo?” he said like an enthusiastic child, pulling me back onto my stomach in bed and bending over my tattoo as if he’d discovered the map of Atlantis.

I laughed.

“I have two.”

Grinning, I bent my knee and lifted my right foot to show him the ankle where I’d tattooed the thorn bracelet. He looked at it closely.

“Why thorns?”

Shit! No one had ever asked me that before, no one thought this tattoo had any meaning.

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