Page 86 of Our Secrets and Scars

And I am simply forgotten.

Twenty-Four

Holden

Thetattoogunvibratesin my hand as I drag it across the back of a woman whose name I can’t remember. She’s been trying to make me speak for forty-five minutes, but so far, I’ve responded to every probing question and flirty comment with a disinterested grunt.

“My friend said that it’s trampy to get a tattoo on your lower back, but I think it’s nice for guys to have something to look at, you know?” She giggles, and it’s this irritating high-pitched noise that goes straight through me.

I’m sure she thinks it sounds cute, butfuck, I’d rather listen to someone scratching their nails down a chalkboard.

The only laugh I want to hear right now is one I’m sure I’ll never hear again. It’s a thought that makes my eyes heat and my chest tighten, so I shake myself free of it and go back to tracing the outline of the woman’s love heart centered between two soaring wings.

As a rule, I don’t think lower-back tattoos are trampy, but this one certainly is.

“Do you like having something to look at?” she carries on, clearly unable to take a damn hint. “When you’re with a woman, I mean?”

I’ve only ever been with one woman, and I didn’t need anything but her to look at while we were together. Being with her, inside her, or just next to her as we did something ordinary, it was impossible to look anywhere but at the dappled flecks of gold in her oakwood eyes or the perfect splashes of red that marble one side of her face.

Kinsley Garcia is art.

She’s never needed anything else to make her more interesting to look at.

“No,” I grunt, hoping the woman will finally stop bothering me now that I’ve answered one of her inane questions.

She doesn’t.

“You got a girl, Holden?”

I freeze. My hand holding the gun falters, and I pull it from her skin. Her whiny, irritating voice might be driving me fucking crazy, but I care enough about my job not to screw up her tattoo. No matter how cliché the design may be.

Sucking in a deep breath, I ignore the question and steel myself to finish my work. But despite the silence I’ve been craving, I struggle to properly focus. Her question screams through my head, over and over.

You got a girl?

Do I? In my heart, I do. In my heart, Kinsley still belongs to me, no matter what’s happened between us in the last week. And that’s a fact that will never stop being true. She will always be mine, even if I’m no longer hers.

The truth is, my heart will always beat the rhythm of her name. My mind will always replay the way she looks in the morning when the sunlight seeps through the cracks in the drapes and caresses her body the way I will forever ache to. And my hands will always remember the softness of her skin, the shape of her curves, and the silk-like tresses of her hair.

Losing her is a fact I’m not willing to face. Not until she hears me out.

There is so much about that night that she doesn’t know. So much that if she did, it might make her think differently about what happened. Might make her think differently about me.

Maybe it’s wishful thinking. I don’t know. But I can’t give up hope. I might have deceived her by not telling her that I knew who she was, but I never lied to her about how I felt.

I never faked a thing.

My eyes screw shut as I remember the last time I saw her. The devastation on her face as Owen spat his twisted story at her is seared into my brain, and fuck, the way her eyes that once looked at me with adoration grew colder than the winter snow was like a dagger of ice to my heart.

She told me that she hated me.

I’d never known true pain until that moment. I thought being sentenced to federal prison was the worst thing I’d ever have to go through, but I was wrong. Losing Kinsley is a heartache unlike anything I’ve felt before.

“You got the look of a heartbroken man about you, Holden,” she says with a wry smile, red-painted lips stretching across yellowing teeth. “And you know what they say about getting over someone…”

Dear God.

“Get under someone else,” she finishes, eyes alight with victory, as if I’ve already agreed to go home with her.

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