We just… drifted. Closer. Then closer still, until we collapsed back onto the bed together. I turned and tucked myself into his side, head on his chest, leg flung across his hips as the early morning sunlight snuck through the linen curtains and wrapped us in silence. The air was warm, sea-salted, still heavy with wine and sweat and something reverent. Something permanent.
We were still sweaty from the night before. Still inked. Still in love.
And still, apparently, not done.
Because when I finally pushed up on one elbow to look at him again—smiling, sleepy, wrecked and married—I noticed something.
Something inked just beneath the faded edge of an old scar on his hip, along the top of his right thigh, high enough that you’d have to be on your knees to see it properly.
I stilled, my heart hammering. “Ummm…”
He blinked at me, flushed and smiling. “Hmm?”
“What the fuck is that?”
“Oh,” he said, voice suddenly quiet. “Yeah.” He paused and bit his bottom lip. “I don’t know. Why don’t you get on your knees and find out?”
My jaw dropped. “Youdid not?—”
He smirked. “Pretty sure I did.”
“Youabsolute menace,” I breathed, already crawling down the sheets, hands skimming his stomach, dragging my fingertips lower until I was level with it.
I already knew the words. Already loved the ones that were there before.
elle saura
She’ll know.
But now—above it, in bolder script,alsoin my handwriting like it belonged there all along—was a name.
Aurélie…
Just that. Just mine. So the tattoo now read:
Aurélie…
she’ll know.
Something in me cracked. Split clean open.
“Oh, Cal, you didn’t,” I whispered. “You branded yourself with my name.”
“I did,” he said simply. “Because it was ours. Because I needed something of you on me. I have your love, your words, your body. But this… this was something else.”
I just looked at him, ruined and radiant and tattooed with a prophecy that finally came true. And then I pressed my mouth tothe plastic covering the ink. Right over my name. Right over the spot he swore he’d always ache for me.
My throat tightened, my heart splitting open all over again. “Mon amour…”
He lifted one brow. “Do you?”
“Do I what?”
“Know,” he rasped, voice suddenly serious. “Do you know?”
I kissed the ink, then pressed my cheek to his thigh, eyes fluttering closed.
“I’ve always known,” I whispered. “Even when I tried not to.”
