Her fingers were on his skin, his shirt forgotten, before she realized she had reached out at all. “You … too?”
He chuckled low and pressed her palm flat to his chest, letting her fingers rest over the starburst scar. “Yeah. Me, too. But something tells me mine didn’t leave as much of an impact.” He released her wrist to cup her cheeks with both hands, recapturing and holding her attention. “I’ll tell you everything, Reiko. Everything you need to know, anything you want to know. These scars I bear, they’re badges of honor to me. Proof of strength. But that’s not how you see yours. That’s not your story. I respect that, I won’t tell you how to feel about whatever happened to you, but Ineedto know the ‘what’. I need to know if there’s still someone out there who has to die for what you went through. Please, beautiful. Can you do that for me? Can you share that with me?”
She pulled in a hard breath and licked her lips. Snippets of memories flashed through her. Disjointed fragments she knew would get louder, clearer, longer, before she made it through the tale he asked for. But he wasn’t wrong in wanting it. Even if the assumption he’d obviously made was so off-base.
Reiko allowed herself a brief moment of indulgence and slid her fingers over his skin, enjoying the warmth, the deceiving softness of the skin over the strength of the muscle beneath.
“Trying to distract me?” Santino asked with a low, seductive chuckle.
She swore her entire body tingled. “Myself, maybe.” She pulled her hands away and looked over his arm, toward the table. “Could I get a drink first?”
His expression softened and he released her, pivoting toward the table. “Water or tea? The tea’s probably raspberry. I can have him make something different if you prefer.”
Raspberry iced tea? She hadn’t expected that. “The tea sounds delicious, actually.” It would go well with the fruit, if she could make herself eat after telling her story.
Santino seemed to have the same idea, as he poured two glasses, handed her one, and pulled the fruit bowl to the nearest edge of the table. He then proceeded to lift her onto his lap as he settled on the sofa, holding her against his still-bare chest but upright enough that she could effectively drink her tea.
The tea she nearly dropped with his bold movement. “Santino!”
He laughed openly, the smile on his face alarmingly innocent. Then he cut his laugh off and gave her hip a squeeze. “You finally used my name.”
She blinked. She had, hadn’t she?It’s okay.He’d said some rather intimate and expectant things earlier. He’d touched and kissed and even licked his way over more of her body than any of her two previous partners had bothered with. “Well, that’s— I mean, we’re half-naked already. What’s the point in formalities?”
Santino chuckled. “Oh, I agree. It’s just nice to hear my name on your lips.” He leaned close and murmured into her ear, “I need you used to saying it if I want to get you to scream it.”
A shiver rolled through her and Reiko tipped her glass to her lips in a lame attempt to hide the response. She was out of her depth with him in more ways than one. The tea was nice. Cool against her overheating system. A nearly perfect balance of refreshing and sweet, not too cloying. The fruit flavor somehowtasted bright. And even though it was cold and still sweeter than she would usually go for, the drink helped relax her. Helped her focus. It was a head-game, really, but it did the trick.
She lowered the glass on a quiet exhale. “Promise me one thing,” she said, forcing herself to seek out his gaze again. “Promise you’ll be honest with how you feel when you know the truth. About … everything.”
His smile faded. “Even if you don’t like my reaction?”
She attempted a smile of her own. “Especially if.”
Santino dipped his chin in a nod. “If it means that much to you. You have my word.”
She didn’t really want it. Not in the context they were about to be speaking of. But she wasn’t so self-destructive not to recognize when hard news was necessary. So, she prepared herself to walk away from the day with confusion and the strangest type of heartbreak, even as a part of her held on to the sliver of hope that he might surprise her one more time. And she unlocked the vault in her mind.
“The simple answer you’ve been asking for,” she began, her voice already a whisper, “is me.” Her fingers threaded together around the glass. “It was my own hand that caused the wound which resulted in that hideous scar.”
Santino tensed beneath her, his fingers digging into her hip and his chest expanding on a hard breath. “Your hand.” He didn’t phrase it like a question. “Bullshit. That scar’s at least a decade old. Who are you covering for?Whythe hell would you be covering for them after all this time?”
Of course, he didn’t believe her. Her story only became less believable the deeper into it she went. That was why no one had ever fully believed her. Not even those who’d seen the provable pieces.
Tears threatened again but Reiko held them back, Santino’s controlled anger twisting into someone else’s angry yelling in her mind. “I’m not protecting anyone. I did it.”
“Reiko—”
She snapped her head around, finally meeting his scowl with her strained frown. “Idid it!” She gasped. “I was fourteen, naïve, and desperate. I thought I knew better than I did and a lifetime of yearning had made me soneedyfor the one thing I could never earn any ordinary way that I thought it was my only choice.”
Santino plucked the tea glass from her hands before cupping her face again, the anger he’d briefly worn already replaced by a searching concern. “Desperate for what, baby? What the hell could have driven a fourteen-year-old girl to slice herself open like that?”
The first tear slipped from her eyes at his words. He was at least still listening. She’d lost two therapists to disbelief by this point of the story already in years past. Her hands sought out his skin, his warmth and strength, and she found herself leaning into him. The movement had his fingers sliding into her hair and brought their faces closer, but she didn’t care. She was only speaking for him, anyway.
“The scar I have now … is as much a result of what I did to myself that day, as what the doctors had to do once I was rushed to the hospital.” She paused to swallow, to pace herself, and noted the furrowing of Santino’s brow. “They had to cut it wider or something, to see inside and investigate the depth of the damage I’d done. My parents weren’t concerned with aesthetics, only making sure I had as few long-term health complications as possible. This was the result.” Because in her parents’ minds, a large scar was not a long-term complication. Or if it was, it was one she’d brought on herself.
“You’re telling me your parents took you to some backwater doctor who didn’t know how to doboth?” He nearly growled the question.
Reiko blinked. In all her years, it had never occurred to her to wonder. “I … I suppose that’s possible. I was unconscious before the paramedics got to me, and out of it for most of the procedure. I only remember—”
