His muscles bound and bunched beneath my touch, and his hands curled into fists as I slowly stepped around so I could inspect his back for injuries.
Only the little oxygen I had in my lungs heaved out of me on a rush of grief when I realized there were scars that covered his entire back.
Hidden beneath the designs.
The flesh raised and dented and mottled. A depiction of Hell covered them, the flames licking up his back and rising from the pit to consume the field inscribed above it.
A field of daisies.
Half of them were charred and melted, their petals consumed the same way as a flame would consume paper.
The field extended all the way up to his upper back to his shoulders. Those daisies were blue and thrived beneath the warmth of the sun.
I couldn’t breathe as I stared at the depiction. At the pain he was written in. At his scars that were as distinct as mine.
“It’s what I hoped.” His words had never cut so low. Agonized rasps that cleaved into the tension. “That you stepped out from the shadows and rested beneath the sun. That my Wallflowerbloomed and blossomed and grew. That I hadn’t destroyed all of you.”
“You thought of me?” I couldn’t help but ask it.
Hoarse laughter rolled from him. “Every day.”
There was nothing I could do but press my lips to the scene. To breathe it in like the action might hold the power to soothe the bitter, brutal sting.
He went rigid beneath it, and his hands fisted at his sides.
“Daisy,” he wheezed.
The reverberation of my name floated through the room.
A plea.
A warning.
An apology.
I dropped the washcloth to the floor and splayed my hands out high on his ribs, and I whispered my lips across his flesh. Palms held tight against his sides as if I could seep all the way in.
“I thought of you every day, too,” I mumbled as I kept kissing across the flesh.
So outside of who I normally was.
But Cash had taught me I didn’t have to be reserved. That I didn’t have to hide and shield and make myself smaller so people wouldn’t notice me.
“Daisy.” That time my name was definitely a warning. “You can’t be touchin’ me like this.”
“Why?” I muttered. “Why, when I need it?”
A long groan rolled out of him, and he slowly shuffled around.
His big body vibrated with strength and quickly failing restraint.
The man was covered in scars, and I didn’t know why the small, puckered skin on his neck drew me, but I pushed up on my toes and pressed a kiss to that, too.
My heart feeling like it would fail when I sank back to my heels and reiterated, “I need it.”
A huge hand that had only ever shown me kindness slipped to my cheek.
His forehead dropped to mine.
