Adrianna Bosco.
On her tiptoes, reaching for a can of spray paint sitting way too high on a shelf made for giants or well, anyone over five foot three inches.
The corner of my mouth twitches.
Her fingers stretch, barely brushing the metal, and she lets out this tiny, frustrated huff that punches me right in the solar plexus.
She bends down, dropping whatever she was holding on the floor as if that is somehow going to make her taller, and this time I do smile.And I stare.
Because goddamn.
I’d know those curves anywhere.
Her long brown hair hangs down her back in glossy waves that curl at the ends, exactly the way they used to when she’d fall asleep on my shoulder after a late-night writing session.
Her jeans hug her hips, tight in all the ways that used to make me forget lyrics mid-sentence.
And when she stretches—just a little more—her shirt lifts.
And I see it.
A flash of warm skin.
And there it is.
The tattoo at the base of her spine.
Two music notes.
The opening chords to our song.
My breath leaves my body in one violent exhale.
She still has it.
Not covered up.
Not altered.
Not erased.
I look at my wrist where the same two notes are inked right over my pulse.
And something shifts inside my chest—like someone reached in and twisted a dial that had been gathering dust for over a decade.
Suddenly, every buried chord wakes up, humming with memory.
I was there when she got that tattoo.
Seventeen.
So brave and young.Beautiful and honest and too damn good for the boy I was.
It was true then.
It’s true now.
And yet my heart is slamming so hard it feels like it might crack a rib.
