Page 16 of Our Secrets and Scars

I’m not wearing one, perks of being a member of the itty-bitty titty committee, but I wish I’d put one on this morning just to have that extra barrier between us.

I slide the material of my tank top up my body, careful not to pull it too far, and my breath hitches the moment I feel the cool air bite at my exposed skin.

“Do you trust me enough to do it freehand?” he asks.

“Since I don’t even know your name, I don’t think I can answer that question.” I scoff. “But yeah, do whatever you want.”

“Yeah?”

I nod.

“What are the words?”

I don’t answer immediately. Doing so would make this all real before I’m truly ready for it. The words mean so much to me, and yet they come from someone who doesn’t even want to be in my life anymore. Does it make me pathetic to have Fletcher’s words forever written on my skin?

I don’t know.

I don’t know if having his words inked into me will make the loss of him hurt more, make the rejection I still feel even more intense. But the four years I spent exchanging letters with him meant more to me than even I can ever truly understand, so his words don’t mean any less just because he doesn’t want to be in contact with me anymore.

“Scars are stories,” I whisper.

His breath hitches, an odd tension falling over him that I can’t explain.

“You okay?” I ask.

“Yeah.” He shakes his head, shuddering almost imperceptibly. “Sorry, it just reminded me of something.” He clears his throat. “It’s a good choice.”

I don’t say anything, confused by his reaction, but I don’t have time to think more about it because the gentle buzzing of his tattoo gun begins to echo around the room. My eyes clench shut as he brings it to my skin.

“Relax, little one.” He laughs quietly to himself when I flinch. “I haven’t even touched you yet. What happened to not being scared?”

“I’m not scared,” I grumble, but I am, and we both know it.

“Whatever you say.” He chuckles. “Look, it’s not gonna feel great because it’s on your ribs and that’s an area that’s quite close to the bone. But don’t worry, I’ll be gentle.”

He winks, and I’m so distracted by the way it sends electricity fizzing through my veins that I momentarily forget where I am and why I’m here. But then the needle makes first contact with my skin, and air hisses through my teeth at the sensation.

It hurts, but I knew it would.

What I wasn’t expecting was how the burning sensation would be so similar to the first flickers of flames that licked at me in the fire that took my sister and half of my face.

I shudder at the onslaught of memories. The sounds of shattering glass and harrowing screams are so deafening inside my head, it’s as if I can hear for real. The clinical smell of the room is too much like the one in the hospital room where I was trapped for months, and the bright lights above me are just as blinding as the ones that bore down on me in the operating room.

My body seizes as my brain forces me to relive the incident. A whimper escapes me and the man with the tattoo gun and stormy eyes, whose name I still don’t know, misconstrues it as a sound of pain.

He hushes me with gentle whispers and soothing words, and it helps me more than he could ever know. Because, somehow, the noises he makes ground me. His reassurances keep me present and rooted in the room. He makes me feel safe just by telling me I’m doing a good job.

Finally, the buzzing of the tattoo gun ceases, and my skin stops burning. He sits back on his stool and smiles down at me, tugging his bottom lip into his mouth and dragging it between his teeth.

I’ve never met a man so effortlessly sexy.

“All done, little one. You did good, I’m proud of you.”

My skin heats with his praise. I can feel the flush in my cheeks as my body responds to him, aching to see what else I can do to please him and hear him say those words again. But I swallow it down. Those primal instincts have no place here, in a tattoo studio with a man who refuses to tell me his name and gives off a dangerous kind of energy that both thrills and terrifies me.

“Wanna see it before I wrap it up?” he asks, and I nod.

He motions with his head toward a full-length mirror on the wall opposite me, and I make the short walk across the room to stand before it. The words, of course, are backward as they’re reflected back at me in the mirrored glass, but it doesn’t take away from the beauty of his work.

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