She pressed her hand over his heart, as if grounding herself there might slow the rush inside her.
“I don’t know if I can give you enough,” she whispered, the truth scraped raw at the edges. “Not what you deserve.”
His hand covered hers—strong. Certain.
“You don’t have to know,” he murmured. “You just have to try.”
Her breath trembled.
But the words sank deep—into marrow, into memory, into the soft places she’d once believed were long gone.
And still, here she was.
Here he was.
She closed her eyes, exhaled, and let herself fall.
The room was bathedin the muted glow of the city skyline; amber light stretched across tangled sheets, painting shadows across their skin.
The heat between them hadn’t vanished; it was quieter now, but threaded with depth.
Gideon lay beside her, his arm draped around her waist, fingertips gliding along her skin without urgency.
There was no pattern to it, no destination.
Just a man learning her by touch, slow and reverent, like he wasn’t just memorizing her body, but everything that made her who she was.
His fingers found the curve of the lotus inked into her side.
Dark ink against pale skin.
Her breath caught, sharp and involuntary.
“A lotus,” he murmured, voice low and unreadable.
His thumb brushed over the petals, intentionally delicate.
She swallowed hard, the space between them too close and not close enough.
“Got it after nursing school,” she said softly. “New chapter. I needed something that felt like… survival.”
He didn’t respond right away. Just followed the lines of the bloom, every petal, and shaded edge, like it meant something sacred.
His eyes never left hers.
“Lotuses grow from the mud,” he said finally, voice deeper now. “They bloom through the filth, the dark. That’s the point.”
Grief and gratitude twisted together in her chest—sharp, sudden, and impossible to name.
He wasn’t just touching a tattoo.
He was touching what it meant, who she’d had to become.
And he was doing it like she mattered.
Like all of it did.
“Fits you,” he added quietly. “Even in the dark, you rise.”
