“And this one?” I traced a faint black arrow, its point touching a line that curved under his bicep.
“The past does not equal the future.” His breath warmed my cheek. “Another one she drilled into me.”
“And here…” My hand slipped to his ribs where the script curved along the inside of his cage. The intimate place. The place I’d kissed last night. The place that stole my breath even now. “This one is beautiful.”
He watched me touch it. Watched me read it without saying it aloud.
“Calm her chaos,” he whispered, “but never silence her storm.”
My throat tightened. “That’s my favourite.”
“I know.” His fingers tucked a strand of hair behind my ear. “It already was, even before you said it.”
A shiver rippled through me.
My hand roamed farther. More ink. More stories.
I paused when I reached the plane. Then the shipping container. Then the boat pressed against waves inked in sharp, A book and pages floating on what looked like air, delicate lines.
“Your childhood?” I asked.
“Some of it.”
“And this…” I touched the set of eyes—so hauntingly detailed they looked alive. Depth. Shadow. Grief. Hope. A person standing inside the iris, small and unreachable.
He inhaled sharply.
“They are yours,” he said. “Your beautiful eyes. And the silhouette is my nana. She always felt just out of reach after she passed.”
My chest ached.
“And here…” I slid my fingers to his spine, tracing the dates etched down the vertebrae. “Her birth. And death.”
“Yeah.” His voice was barely audible. “And the coordinates along my shoulders…that’s her village. In Italy.”
“You carry her with you.”
“Everywhere.”
I didn’t realise I was crying until he brushed his thumb across my cheek.
“Peach…” His tone cracked. “Don’t.”
“But it’s so beautiful,” I whispered. “You’re so beautiful.”
He didn’t answer. Speechless, maybe. Or breaking.
I moved slowly, letting my fingers drift over the forget-me-nots inked above his hipbone, the tiny bee near his rib, the swallow skimming along his collarbone, the rain droplets cascading into stars. Tiny constellations. Fractured memories. A world shaped into skin.
“I was not built to break.” I said, reading the typewritten line over his heart.
He nodded. “That’s my great-grandfather. He’d say it every night to my nana when he tucked her in.”
My hand settled over it. His heartbeat thudded against my palm.
“And this one?”
“Everything happens for a reason,”
