Page 81 of Voracious

To hold

I turn them over and he’s written his name on the ring finger of each hand. Continuing my reading, I go back to my collar bones and up to my neck.

My hand here

Beautiful?

There’s an arrow to my hair and emotion continues to choke me.

Moving my gaze to my face, there’s an arrow pointing to my mouth from my chin.

Sweet

My lips here ?

The arrow on my cheek points in the same direction towards my lips.

? And here

The other cheek.

Best sound in the world →

Under each eye.

Beautiful

My forehead.

And my lips here

The red ink turns pink with my tears coming back and I turn, wrapping my arms around Dima’s middle. He does know me because he put psycho and not just random things that sounded nice. It’s all little things built together, covering every scar that was put there with the opposite sentiment. I don’t know why I don’t tell him that and force different words out instead as my voice cracks.

“You have really neat backwards writing.”

His chest shakes and he kisses my crown before he picks me up and gets into bed, covering all the words on my body. It’s like I’ve been drowning under the weight of all the brands put on me, but he’s pulled me out of the water by making a tie with everything that I am. No one else could see under the murky depths but he did and now I can breathe — I’m not a ghost anymore.

I’m a real person and someone knows I exist.

For the first and only time in my life, I’m safe. Yulia can’t get me anymore and Dima won’t let her if she tries.

I lay on his chest, my face hidden below his chin and the tears don’t stop as he strokes my back.

“You’re okay, no one will ever hurt you again, and you don’t need a name because I know everything about you.”

I weakly nod and burrow closer.

“My beautiful hellion, wash it all away and I’ll rewrite it.”

THIRTY-TWO

Dima

She’s so good and her tears mix with the ink on her skin as I stroke down her back. The only thing wrong about my hellion is sadness, it’s not meant to be an emotion she knows never mind experiences. Once the sniffles stop, she pokes her head out from my chest, exposing the pink splotches on her skin. There’s a new lightness in her eyes as she blinks up at me with wet lashes, those light flecks get brighter as I clean her face with the unused washcloth.

Ana tracks my movements as I move down her neck, her brows coming together as she slowly looks at mine and contemplates whatever thought has come to her. Delicately tracing the stones around her neck, she says, “You don’t have one.”

So fucking sweet. I’ve never worn jewelry since becoming an adult, there was a chain my mother gave me that I left in the house when Katya and I left, I never had her faith, so it was redundant to risk going back for it.

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