Page 75 of Moth
Chapter Eighteen
Idon’t think either one of us ever sleeps, but when dawn breaches the darkness of my room, he stands first, shrugging off my twisted yellow blankets.
By the time I stagger to my feet and throw on a dress, he’s at my fridge, scouring the meager offerings. He’s already discovered my loaf of bread when I approach the counter.
He eats a piece and shoves another toward me. I copy him, maintaining what little distance between us allowed by this narrow space.
At first.
Eventually, I can’t resist the impulse drawing me toward him. That same need emboldens me to slide my hand down his bare shoulder even as he stiffens. Energy blazes from him, growing hotter the more of him I dare to touch, but I can’t stop. My greedy hands brush his hips as my chest conforms to his back, bringing me face-to-face with that snarling dragon.
“Why this tattoo?” I ask.
Muscles ripple beneath his skin—recoiling against me only to relax a heartbeat later. “Do I need a reason?” His voice is low, containing an unmistakable dare.
For once, I feel brave enough to tackle it head-on. “Yes. Someone who has an elaborate explanation for calling a stranger ‘bunny.’ You wouldn’t pick a dragon for yourself without a reason—”
“It’s a fucking tattoo,” he says dismissively. “Let’s not get too deep about it.”
But there’s more to it. I can sense it in the way he keeps his face turned from me, and his shoulders tensed. This beautiful image beneath my fingertips means so much more to him than a meaningless ornament undertaken on a whim.
“It’s beautiful,” I say, watching the dragon coil and move with every flex of his shoulders. It’s anticlimactic in a sense—someone who claims to be a writer should be able to come up with a better descriptor. Something worthy of the blend of color and swirls of ink. “It’s beautiful… Where did you learn to draw?”
“Nowhere.” His voice falls flat, devoid of emotion. “I’ve always done it. Where did you learn to write?”
“I’ve always done it,” I say, parroting his explanation. But I’m not as guarded as he is. “Sometimes… Sometimes it felt like the only way I could get my thoughts out of my head without screaming. If I didn’t have it as an outlet, I don’t know what I would have done. It was easier to endure it all as long as I had an escape.”
A safe place to voice the complaints my parents never wanted to hear.
The emotions enduring Branden’s control forced me to suppress.
Everything.
“Endure?” he prods, his tone gruffer. “Don’t tell me that talk about your innocent, perfect childhood was bullshit?”
If anything, he doesn’t sound surprised. Did he suspect as much all along?
I incline my head, gazing at him with a newer perspective. However, his face is still angled away from me, keeping whatever emotions it may reveal to himself.
“Everyone has their problems,” I murmur. “Writing was the one thing that always gave me…a way out? It got me a scholarship to come here. Chasing that dream gave me enough courage to leave. I still feel like it was worth it, even if Bran—” I break off, alarmed by how close I’ve come to slipping up. Confessing.
“He followed you?” He sounds so deceptively calm. So nonjudgmental.
I’m woefully unprepared for the spell his baritone can cast when uttered so gently.
“He followed me.” I close my eyes and inhale, fighting back the wave of anger I’m not expecting. Pain. “I was stupid enough to think that he wouldn’t. That he would ever let me go.”
But he didn’t, forcing me to leave the dorms the week I’d moved in. Using his career as a police officer back in Wellington, he’d had no trouble joining the local force, and I had no choice but to move into his home.You need me,he’d insisted. Even after he met Kaitlin over a year ago, it seemed like I would never get the chance to leave him.
Break free.
“If I didn’t have my writing, I would have suffocated. I…” Confusion leaves me frowning. I’ve never admitted this to anyone.
No one’s ever asked.
I’ve never met anyone so open in his own expression yet so secretive at the same time. Displaying his drawings for the world to see but tensing up the moment he’s questioned on the meaning behind them. He told me once that his writing was in flesh. Pain. And I understand now more than ever what he meant. Hidden prose lurks within every inch of ink, locked away behind his silence.
And I can’t stop myself from chasing his secrets with the same fervor he delved into my notebook with.
