I roll my eyes at her as I reach into a lower cabinet and pull out Stella’s markers.
When Amelia sees them, she skips over to me and plucks them out of my hand with a smile on her face. “To the couch we go.”
I’m honestly surprised at myself that I’m letting this happen. This would be a hard-core no if someone else wanted to color in my tattoos. But I’m developing a soft spot for Amelia Drakos, and that’s a scary feeling.
My tattoos all have important meaning. It’s how I express my thoughts and feelings when I don’t know how to voice them. So, as I lie on the couch, Amelia sits on the ground, slightly hovering above me, with a hand on my abs while the other colors in a heart on my chest with an electrocardiogram bar going through it. I’m tenser than I should be. I’ve never let anyone look at them this closely. I don’t want them to see my pain that I expressed through the tattoos.
“I think this is my favorite one,” she says softly as the marker lightly skims across my skin, covering my olive skin tone in a vibrant red.
“Yeah? Why?” I whisper, looking at her intently.
“Because it looks simple, but I’m sure it has a deeper meaning to you,” she says, looking up at me through her thick, long lashes.
And at this moment, I wonder how she can’t see her beauty.
“It does.” I clear my throat, my chest flexing as she goes back down to focus.
I don’t say anything more, and that doesn’t seem to bother her.
After thirty minutes of Amelia having the time of her life, filling in as many tattoos as she can, while my body feels super tense because all I want to do is pull her down on top of me, she rolls back onto her heels with a smile on her face.
My chest looks like a child’s coloring book with splashes of green, pink, orange, red, purple, and light blue all over it. But seeing that smile as she appreciates her work? I’d let her do this to me any day as long as I got to see that smile every time.
“Damn, you’re talented,” I tease her while looking down at my chest.
“Why, thank you, sir,” she says before sticking her tongue out at me.
* * *
I’m putting on my shirt, when she says simply, “I’m sending you the photos I just took.”
Not a second later, I get a text message from Amelia. Looking down at the photos in my phone, I understand why people would love this. Amelia snapped a shot of her coloring my chest with her hand lying across my abs.
She looks up at me from her phone. “You should at least post one. It’ll look weird if my boyfriend hasn’t posted about me yet.”
“I already posted you on my Instagram.” When she frowns, I frown at her. “I tagged you.”
“When? And what did you post?” Pulling out a chair, she sits beside me. “I’m not logged in to Instagram at the moment.”
Ah, must be because of the question about her eating disorder in the club that’s gone viral. Good girl.
I pull up my Instagram page and slide my phone toward her. “I posted this the day after we went to the club.”
Zooming into the picture with her fingers, she examines herself. “When did you take this?”
I know she’s overthinking the way she looks—the slight tremble in her voice gave it away.
I take my phone back from her hands. “You look beautiful, and I took it when you weren’t looking.”
I didn’t think what I had done would upset her. I think she looks stunning in the photo.
When I was lying on my bed, waiting for her, I could see her through the door, applying her red lipstick. So, I captured that moment and posted it. Thought it would be very boyfriend-like.
“I can delete the picture.” I soften my voice, not liking her frown.
Slouching in her chair, she sighs, looking sad all of a sudden. “No, no. It’s okay. You can keep it up.”
I hook her chin between my fingers, and her watery eyes bore into my own, breaking my heart a little.
