I don’t answer right away.
Because the truth takes a second to settle into words.
“Because I finally feel like I’m choosing my life instead of reacting to it,” I say.
His hand tightens around mine slightly.
“I like that answer,” he says.
“I like you,” I reply.
He laughs softly.
“That’s becoming a theme.”
“It’s a good theme.”
When the artist finishes and wipes the last line clean, I look down at my arm and for a moment I don’t recognize what I’m seeing, not because it looks unfamiliar but because it looks like something that was always supposed to be there and just wasn’t until now.
The rose is small. Elegant. Alive.
“You did it,” Blake says.
“I did,” I answer quietly.
Outside again, the night feels different than it did before we went inside the shop, like something invisible shifted while we were gone and left the world slightly clearer when we stepped back into it.
“How does it feel?” he asks.
“Like I made a decision I can’t undo,” I say.
“Do you want to undo it?”
“No,” I answer immediately.
“Good.”
He reaches for my arm carefully, not touching the fresh ink but tracing the air just beside it like he already understands it means something important even if I haven’t explained it all, yet.
“It suits you,” he says.
“It does?”
“Yeah.”
“Why?”
“Because it looks like something that was waiting for you,” he replies.
We start walking again without deciding where we’re going.
Back toward the hotel. Back toward whatever comes next. And for the first time in a long time, I don’t feel like I’m carrying anything unfinished behind me anymore.
By the time we step back into the hotel room, the city is still glowing outside the windows like Nashville itself isn’t ready to sleep yet, but the moment the door closes behind us something changes in the quiet between us, something softer and heavier at the same time, like the entire night finally catches up with us all at once now that there’s nowhere else we have to be.
Neither of us reaches for the lights.
The room stays lit only by the gold spill of streetlamps through the curtains and the faint reflections of passing headlights sliding slowly across the walls, and somehow that feels right, like turning on the overhead light would interrupt something that already started long before we made it back upstairs.
