Page 51 of Forty

“But you stayed.”

She shrugs, glancing down at her lap.

“Why?”

She completely ignores the question. “I want to see your shoulder.”

This girl can give your brain whiplash. “Why?”

“I want to see where you got hurt. The rest of it.”

“Why would you want to see that?”

“I just do. Come on. Take your shirt off.” She starts tugging at my flannel.

“You can’t just ask someone to show you their scars.”

“Why not? You do.Why are you here, Nevaeh? What’s your game? Why, Nevaeh? Why? Why? Why?”Now she’s mimicking me. She’s making me sound like one of the big, dumb Muppets.

“You never give me a straight answer.”

“Okay. I’ll give you a straight answer if you let me see your arm.”

I raise an eyebrow. She narrows her eyes.

“Okay. Deal.”

I take off my cut, fold it, and place it behind us on the bed. Then I unbutton the red plaid flannel underneath. She jumps to her feet and comes to stand between my legs. For once, she’s inches away, and I’m not hard enough to pound nails. Instead, my stomach churns.

The burns aren’t pretty.

Fuck. If she wants to see, she can see. I peel off my shirt, and I bring it to my lap to fold it, but Nevaeh snatches it from me before I can. She tucks it under her chin and starts rebuttoning as she eyes my tats.

“You got a full sleeve?”

I rotate my shoulder so she can see the work on my tricep. Creech did it. He’s an artist. My dick twitches. I don’t mind her looking at my ink.

“Is that a long-haired black cat eating a human heart?”

“Yeah.”

“Is the cat leaping out of a bomb?”

“Yeah.”

“Is that me?”

There’s no sense in denying it. “I asked Creech to make you a rat, but he thought this was more badass.”

Her mouth turns down. “That’s mean.”

Yeah. When we joked about it years ago, Nevaeh was in the past. Saying it now…I feel like an asshole. ”I’m sorry. That was a dick thing to say.”

Her brown eyes flick up to meet mine. “It’s okay. If I got a tattoo animal of you, it’d be an enormous ass.”

“Fair enough.” I picture all the glimpses I’ve had of her naked. I haven’t seen all of her, but I don’t think she’s got any ink. “How come you don’t have any tattoos?”

“I was gonna. When I turned eighteen, I was gonna have Creech put your name on my left tit. The number, not the letters. That kind of fell through, for obvious reasons, and it occurred to me that maybe I’m not a lifetime commitment kind of girl.”

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