I prop myself up on one elbow. “You were three years old when I met you.”
“It’s not like you were twenty! You were four years old yourself, Sebastian,” she exclaims. I want to joke that her argument sounds like some of the books she reads, but I refrain.
“My mom raised us as siblings.”
“We’re different. We weren’t raised in the normal way. Being raised normally doesn’t usually include a dark fucking cloud in the form of a gruesome tragedy hanging over them. We have trauma.”
“That doesn’t mean we can do whatever we want. It’s like that one therapist said, ‘trauma is an explanation for our actions, not an excuse or an absolution of guilt or wrongdoings,’” I repeat in a mocking tone, knowing she hated that particular therapist.
“Fuck that guy,” she growls before she rolls her eyes. “Wild, why are you fighting this so hard? If I showed up tomorrow with a boyfriend, you’d be ready to lose your shit.” I tense because she’s right, and she gives me a look indicating she knows about the mounting tension I was suddenly feeling in my bones. Thetension that Saint and I had spent the past two hours working out of me. “A lifetime is a long time, Wild,” she says. “It’s only been twenty years, and I sometimes feel like I’m a hundred.”
I know this feeling well. The effects of death and grief were so consuming that they had the power to age your soul.
Tears flood her eyes as she plays with the blanket in her lap. “I miss you… every day. My heart aches every second we’re apart. And I know you feel the same.”
I sit up against her headboard and let out a sigh. “I do.” I drag a hand over my face. “I want a fucking cigarette.”
“You told me you quit.” She frowns, and when I look at her, I notice her eyes trailing all over my chest, and then she moves to straddle my lap. “Are you smoking?” she whispers as she drags her fingertips over theHSJfor Halle St. John I have over my heart.
“No,” I tell her. “I quit. Just sometimes…the craving hits me. Usually, it’s when I’m thinking about this.” I point back and forth between us.
She lifts one of my arms and looks at the new ink on my rib cage. I have a tattoo of Saint Michael on my back, but this is a new one where he’s standing atop Satan, preparing to drive a stake through him.
“This is new.”
I nod, and she stares at it a little longer before she drops her eyes even further to the roman numerals marked on my hip. “X VII MMXVI.” Her eyes dart up to meet my gaze. “What date is that?”
I meet her curious gaze, and a slight grin pulls at my lips as I think about the significance of my tattoo. “Tomorrow’s date but in 2016.”
“Why?” she asks, and I put a hand over my heart in mock offense.
“And here I thought women always remembered the night they lost their virginity.”It was also the night I lost mine. Eight years ago. The night Halle and I crossed that line for the first time.
She can’t even stop the smile from finding her face before she leans down and drags her lips over the inked skin. “You know, I don’t know how you think you have a prayer at being with any woman but me because how the hell are you going to explain the shrine to me that you’ve made of your body.” She runs her fingers over the letters. “What is this, like ten?”
“Probably more.” I move her slightly so she can see the addition to my thigh tattoo. I grab her jaw, forcing her gaze back to me. “For the record, I don’t want any woman but you…” I know I’m going to hurt us both with the next part of this statement. “I just don’t know that I can have you either.”
She lets out a sigh before letting her eyes drop to my thigh, and she narrows them as she traces her fingertips over the ink she’s never seen. “I knew something was different here, but I was a little busy getting my mouth reacquainted with your cock.” It twitches in response, and she giggles when she sees the tattoo, embedded in a sea of others, with the wordslove you fiercelyin her handwriting. It’s how she’s always signed any cards or notes to me.
This new tattoo is written just above “For Saint Only” in block letters, the first tattoo I ever got with a fake ID when I was seventeen. The inside joke being that my thigh would always be her seat. I still remember the look she gave me when she saw it for the first time. She then proceeded to ride my thigh for an hour, rubbing her sexy little clit against my bare skin and coming all over it.
“Wild…”
“I told you I can always feel you.”
“Any others?” she asks.
I slide my hand into hers, and she looks it over, confused. I’ve had a full sleeve down to my hand for years, so she’s probably struggling a little to figure out what’s new even though she knows all my tattoos pretty well. “Good, maybe it’s not as noticeable as I thought.” I chuckle thinking about the tattoo I got when I was hammered with one of my friends a few months ago. I lower all of my fingers but my ring finger, and she gasps when she sees a small H on the side.
She runs her finger over it. “You tattooed an H on your ring finger?”
I put a hand over my eyes and burrow myself into her blankets. “I was drunk as fuck with Alex. I made him swear not to let me get any more tattoos for you when I’m that intoxicated.”
She snorts. “That will go over well, I’m sure.”
Alex is my best friend who also lives in Seattle and is the only person who knows about Saint and me.Well, knows that I’m still in love with her all these years later.
She’s still straddling me, so I take a minute to run my finger over the tattoo on her hip that says “keep me wild.” I love the secret meaning behind it, and I still lose my mind whenever I see it. I’ve given her so many hickeys in that exact spot like an extra type of branding. She doesn’t have nearly as many tattoos as I do, only five in total. Three dedicated to me and two for her father, one of which matches one that I also have—a set of angel wings set over his birthday. She also has my initials—SJW for Sebastian Joseph Wilder—on the inside of her wrist, and she rubs her thumb along the skin in the same way I do mine in times of stress.
