Page 50 of Worth the Trouble

Rome swallows hard and something dark flashes in his eyes. I’ve never seen eyes hold the depth his do. What I read as arrogance when I first met him, I now recognize as something more. A life lived—experience. It’s stained glass he hides behind, yet in this moment, he offers me a glance through it.

“She died.” Rome doesn’t blink. But the words cut the air and make me flinch.

While normally I’d respond as I did with his father, I don’t this time because his crisp tone stops me.

“She died giving birth to me,” Rome says, letting out a breath it feels he’s held a long time. “I’ve never told anyone that before.”

“Anyone?”

He shakes his head only once, but it’s enough for me to know he just trusted me with a piece of him. And even if I have so many questions, I keep them to myself. Rome isn’t the type of person who opens up. But for some reason, he chose to pick this particular scab off and share it in this moment.

It’s heavy. It’s beautiful. It’s going to haunt me.

Maybe he’s not the man he tries to make me believe after all.

I reach for his hand on the bed between us, and he takes it as an invitation to pull me closer to him. He tugs me against his body, and I curl into his chest, burying myself in the distinct scent of fall. Leaves shedding and seasons changing. A sky full of colors that no camera can fully capture.

Rome buries his nose in my hair and breathes me in the way I do him. I wonder if I’m fresh air or fog. I wonder if he feels closer or farther. Because I feel all of it.

I pull back and dare to reach out and trace the scars and tattoos on his forearm. Like maybe I can feel the story out of them. Things he’s hiding beneath the veiled comments he’s made about his father.

Rome watches my fingers move over him, letting out a slow exhale as I trace the marks that look like cigarette burns. It takes everything in me not to ask him about them because if he wanted to share his pain with me, he would.

When I reach a jagged mark on his shoulder, he plants his hand over mine, stopping me.

“Did they hurt?” I look up at him, not clarifying if I’m talking about his scars or his tattoos because I’m honestly not sure what I want to know—just that it’s everything.

Rome works his jaw, biting the inside corner of his lip. “Not more than anything else.”

The amount of physical pain Rome’s experienced is beyond that of most people.

“I’ve never even broken a bone.”

Rome slides his palm up my arm, to my shoulder, brushing my hair back and tracing my unmarked skin with his fingertips. There’s nothing for him to follow like there is on him. But with his eyes fixed on me, a part of me wonders what it is he’s seeing.

“You’ve felt it all,” I say. “And I’m just numb, in every way.”

Except when you touch me.

But I don’t dare say those words. They’re too honest. They expose everything I’m not ready for. They slither into cracks I didn’t realize were showing.

“There’s a fine line between pain and numbness, Lili.” Rome trails his hand back up until his fingers wrap around my throat gently.

His thumb rests on my pulse, making it impossible for me to hide from him.

“I’m numb in ways you’ll never know.” His thumb traces up over my chin, playing with my bottom lip. “At least, I thought I was.”

Panic flashes in his eyes, and I wonder if deep down he can relate to how I feel around him—out of control and desperate.

And I can’t help but meet his thumb with my tongue as he trails it over the crease of my mouth. I can’t help but love the taste when he pushes it into my mouth, and I wrap my lips around it.

Everything about Rome is explicit and sexual. But it’s the intimacy that consumes me.

How he drags his wet thumb from my mouth and runs it once more over my lips. How he hangs his head a breath away but doesn’t reach for more. How he’s total chaos, and somehow, in complete control.

A dichotomy.

A yin and yang like the tattoo on his stomach.

---