“Hm?” She roused. “Oh. When I went away to college.”
“And this?” His finger traced the scrolling tattoo on her back.
“I’ve had that for ages. After my dad died...” she said and stopped.
Jack’s finger stilled. He studied her upturned face, her mouth closed on a secret, her eyes cloudy with memories.
And then she blinked at him and smiled. “How come you don’t have any tattoos? I mean, you were in the Marines, right?”
She was deflecting again, the way she always did when the focus turned to her.
He didn’t carry his memories on his body. He wanted to forget.
But he had buddies who wore their losses in their skin, the wives and sweethearts they’d left behind, their comrades fallen on the battlefield.
“You got it to remember him,” he guessed.
“Not really.” Her smile quirked, full and infectious. “I mean, it’s not like I got the date of his death tattooed on my arm or my ass or anything. I’m from the Midwest. The suburbs. When somebody dies, you send flowers and a nice covered dish. You don’t get a tramp stamp.”
She made him smile. But she made him wonder, too. He’d spent the past hour learning her body, deciphering her responses. There was more, for a man who cared to look for it.
“You can tell me,” he said. Like they were in an interview room and he was asking her to confess to some crime. “Why did you get a tattoo after your father died?”
For a minute he thought she wasn’t going to answer. But then she shrugged. “I didn’t really have a chance to grieve, you know? My mom was falling apart, and Noah was flipping out, and somebody had to deal with shit, Dad’s shop and the insurance and the funeral arrangements. Somebody had to be the calm, responsible one.”
Jack thought of the girl he’d seen on TV, the one who kept her head in the face of threats and deprivation. Who’d bargained her own life to save others. “You shut down your feelings so you can get the job done.”
Her glance was surprised and grateful.
“Like a sniper. Or a hostage negotiator. Emotion fucks things up,” he said. He was living proof of that. “So you stay calm. You stay in control.”
“Right.” She tilted her head, studying his face with those too-aware eyes. “Except eventually you have to accept your emotions. You need to express them somehow.”
Or you could hit a punching bag until they went away, Jack thought.
“You didn’t have this on TV.” He touched the tiny jewel, bright and defiant, on the side of her nose. “You call that self-expression? Or a disguise?”
Her humor lit her face. “Are you interrogating me, Detective?”
“No more than you’re analyzing me. Doctor.”
She smiled her crooked smile. “I’m not a doctor yet. Maybe... A little of both? I did want to change my appearance. I was so numb after everything happened. I needed to feel something. Even if it hurt, even if it was only temporary, at least I’d know I was alive.”
Even if it hurt, even if it was only temporary.
“Is that what this is?” Jack asked suddenly. “You being with me?”
“Would that bother you?”
That she was using him to make herself feel something? To make herself feel better? “No.”
He wanted her to use him. And then maybe it would be okay if he used her, too. If he let himself feel something, too.
Even if it was only temporary.
He grabbed another condom and rolled with her, pinning her to the mattress. “I feel something now.”
Their bodies pressed together, length to length. There was no disguising what she did to him.
