It is.
I find Zane in the back room, which is not surprising because if something exists near a wall, a shelf, or a tool, Zane will eventually materialize beside it like a very handsome maintenance spirit.
He’s changing out a hinge that was only mildly squeaky, which in Zane language means it was obviously a threat to civilization.
“Hi,” I say, leaning against the doorframe.
He glances up, and that soft brown-eyed thing he does to me happens immediately. The one where it feels like he sees every moving part under my skin and likes me anyway.
“Hey.”
“That hinge offend you personally?”
“It knew what it did.”
I laugh, because of course I do.
Then he straightens, wipes his hands on a rag, and I catch a glimpse of it once more. The tattoo. The dark pane, almost solid, with fractures running through it—veins of gold, bright and stubborn and impossible to ignore.
I can’t help it,
I reach out carefully, my fingertips brushing over the lines, tracing the gold where it threads through the cracks.
“I still love this,” I say. “It looks like… like something that got hit and refused to stop being itself.”
His jaw shifts a little.
“Yeah,” he says quietly. “That was the point. I got it to represent you. It represented you before I even knew you were going to stay.”
“What?”
He nods. “It’s my tattoo for you.”
Cool.
Great.
I’m fine.
I’m just going to emotionally combust in this storage room and become one with the mop bucket.
I lift his wrist and press my lips right over the gold.
It feels instinctive. Sacred, almost. Like sealing something I don’t need words for because he already knows.
A vow without the performance.
When I look back up, his eyes are darker.
His thumb brushes once along my jaw.
“You okay?” he asks.
Which is such a Zane question. Here I am, nearly crying over symbolic ink, and this man is still checking whether I’m okay.
“Hopelessly,” I say.
That gets the smallest smile out of him.
