Page 177 of I Was Always Yours (RCA: Royal Crown Academy)

He smiles to himself as he thinks back on that memory.His eyes find mine and there’s a world of softness in them.

“I have no idea what happens on pages eight hundred and forty two and eight hundred and forty three of this book, Six, and I don’t care.”

Closing the book, he places it back on the shelf next to us.

“I kept rereading it because it was my way of being close to you when I couldn’t allow myself to actually be. Every time I got to those pages and saw the flower crown, I felt connected to you. That’s why I wanted it to be the first item we put in our first house together.”

“I can’t believe you kept it.” I tell him, bewildered.

“Why not?”

“For the obvious reasons, Phoenix.” I answer, bitterly. “You did a fantastic job of hating me for the years that followed me giving it to you.”

I hadn’t noticed that he was inching closer to me until he’s suddenly towering over me.

“I have agonized at the thought of you for seven fucking years, Six. Every damn day, attempting to suffocate thoughts of you with hate before they could submerge me. Every time I smelled even a hint of rose perfume. Every time I heard someone speak French. I live in Switzerland, it’s been torture,” he rasps.

“I tried to hate you, but even when I was pretending to, I couldn’t.” He steps away from me and turns his back on me.

I watch with unhealthy fascination as he grabs the hem of his t-shirt and lifts it up his body, giving me my first glance at his back. I make out a panther and a host of other smaller tattoos spread out across the muscled planes of his body.

He turns slowly towards me and my breath hitches as my heart skitters to a stop. I prepare myself for deforming scars and brace myself to react accordingly.

Instead, I find… ink.

Lots of it.

Covering his entire torso like it covers his arms and stretching down his abdomen and obliques into the deep V.

I don’t understand why he’d keep tattoos from me, especially since I’m intimately familiar with the other ones on the rest of his body.

Obsessive curiosity makes me take a step towards him and then another. I near him and he licks his lips as he watches me approach with hawk-like attention.

My mouth parts and blood flows to my heart when I get close enough to make out the first tattoo. My eyes widen in recognition and fly to meet his. He scratches the bridge of his lips with his thumb as he considers me, watching my every reaction to the art on his body.

I reach out with my hand. When my fingers make contact with the skin of his abdomen, he shudders. Time moves as if in half speed as I brush the tips of my fingers down the stem of a marguerite daisy on his right oblique.

Next to it, a flower crown. A piece of mistletoe.

On his ribs, a fine line realistic luge.

Mirroring the luge on his other side, the outline of a faceless woman with red hair and freckles.A replica of The Creation of Adam, a fresco found on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, my namesake.

Centered on his chest, looking darker and fresher than the rest, Sirius shining bright within Orion’s Belt.

On his right pec, the words “un peu, beaucoup, passionnément, à la folie.”

And on his left, right above the steady thrum of his heart, the tattoo melding perfectly with his skin like it’s been there for years, the letterVfollowed by the letterI.

The Roman numeral spelling for the number six.

Emotion clogs my throat and chokes me. Fresh tears fall down my cheeks as I place my palm on theVItattoo over his heart.

“I got the first one when I was fourteen,” he says, his eyes flaring and his breathing turning ragged as he takes in my reaction. “I kept meaning to get other things after that, but every time I’d walk into a tattoo parlor, I’d inevitably walk out with something connected to you.”

His body is a shrine to the story of us.

To me, immortalizing me on him forever.

---