My hand rubbed softly up and down her back as I nestled my face against the top of her head. I inhaled her scent, committing it to memory.
When she left, it was going to rip me apart, but I wasn’t fighting it anymore. It didn’t matter how long Skye stayed away…my soul longed for hers. She’d branded herself on me, and I could not forget her.
“Are you ever going to tell me about your tattoos?”
Her voice startled me. I glanced down, meeting her sleepy, half-hooded eyes.
I’d forgotten I didn’t have a shirt on, leaving my skin bare for her to see every stroke of ink. The thought hadn’t even crossed my mind to hide them from her.
“What about them?” I asked, my voice rough and low.
Goose bumps appeared on her arms.
“Are you cold?” I asked.
“No.” She focused back on my chest. “When did you decide to get them? The tattoos, I mean.”
I wasn’t sure I was ready to let her into this part of my heart. It was a piece I’d claimed for myself, and letting her touch it would be another shattered piece when she left.
“It’s a long story.”
“I have time.”
I paused. My pulse spiked, stuttered. “A year after you left. I add more every year.”
She scanned the lines of ink and symbols. Only I knew their meaning. Only I held the secrets of my scars.
And they were heavy.
She pressed her palm against my chest, right over my heart. My throat tightened. My eyes fluttered closed. It was like she knew.
How could she know?
Her fingers slid over my skin, tracing the lines that she was somehow drawn to over all the others that covered me.
“What does this mean?”
She was asking about the tattoo over my heart. It was a vertical infinity symbol with a small triangle embedded in the lower loop. It was simple. All my tattoos were minimalistic and modern. Clean black lines. But they also held intense meaning.
“How long have your panic attacks been happening?” I asked, blunt and to the point. She was going to have to open up to me if I was going to bleed for her.
She tensed, and I thought she might pull away. Skye had become very good at running away, and part of me wished she would in this moment. I could hide forever, too, if she let me.
Her jaw clenched. “Ever since I got discharged from the hospital after…after everything that happened with the pregnancy and all that.”
And all that.
My heart clenched. Years. She’d been burdened by attacks like that for years.
“Tell me about them.”
She pressed her lips tight. “It’s silly. I can’t control it. I just…something will set me off and I’m somehow convinced that I might be dying. There doesn’t even have to be a reason sometimes. I feel it in my body, though. I feel like I’m dying and I—spiral.”
I reached for her, running my fingers through the short hair that had fallen into her face.
“It’s not silly,” I said, seriously.
She looked away. “It is.”
