Page 22 of Devilish Ink

Ry sighed and twirled a bite of pasta around her fork, only for an overhead light to go out.

“Not again,” I heard her say, frustration clouding her voice.

In the dark she made her way back toward the kitchen and switched on the light above the stove. She then returned to eat in the dim amber glow.

In my mind, she never had to get up.

“I’ve got this, babe,”I’d tell her, patting her knee in the dark.

I’d twist the new bulb in and catch her with her fork buried in my pasta.

She’d say,“It always tastes better stolen,”and her sheepish look would turn into the doe-eyed smile I could never get angry with.

I’d kiss her on the forehead before taking my seat again.

I ached to sit with her, ask her about her day as our fingers intertwined, slipping so effortlessly into one another’s, playing as we ate. Our knees touching under the table because we’ve both known what it was like to be alone, because neither of us ever wanted to feel that again now that we had each other.

Conversation flowing like water, laughter easily given and received, our eyes finding each other’s and every once in a while pausing, lingering.

Ry finished her meal and tidied up before going into her bedroom. Her silhouette moved through the room and for a while she disappeared into the bathroom, leaving me waiting with an ache in my chest.

Her hair was down when she returned. It caught the light of the moon as it cascaded around her shoulders. She was little more than a shadow as she gripped the hem of her sweatshirt and pulled it over her head. I only saw an outline of her naked body before she slipped beneath the sheets.

As I shivered in the lonely cold, I imagined her shivering, too. I imagined her reaching out across the sheets for me.

“I’m here,”I’d tell her, bringing her against the heat of my chest.“I’ll never leave you.”

Where the fuck was Rian to do all of this for her?

He left.

He went…away.

An anger rose up in me. How dare he leave her behind to suffer on her own, to fight stubborn jars alone, to walk home late at nightalone.

I vowed that she wouldn’t be alone. I’d look after her, watch her from the shadows, make sure she was safe.

And to do that, I had to break into her apartment.

LIAM

It worried me how easy it was to break into her apartment.

Alan was right about that, at least. “They build things fast and quick and cheap and wonder when they all fall apart,” he grumbled at least a dozen times at the dinner table after we heard that Rian had moved to Dublin.

All I had to do was flip the teardrop latch on Ry’s shitty casement window with nothing more than a credit card slipped through the crack, and I was in.

She was at work, of course.

I’d “walked” her there earlier myself, made sure she was safe inside with at least one of the other tattoo artists—Conor, the big gruff one—before I turned back.

It was dark inside her bedroom and for a moment I crouched on the old wooden floors without reaching for a light. I believed what they said about losing one sense. I could smell her so intensely.

I closed my eyes to block out even the faint haze of the city’s lights through the heavy mist and breathed her in.

There was the musk of her perfume. But there was more.

I could smell her scent of wild cherries and Easter liliesfrom her lotions and oils in the bathroom. I imagined her hands trailing up her long tattooed legs, foot propped on the toilet.

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