Page 36 of Taken With You

Just as they hung over me.

Chapter 8

Imperfections breed doubt. Or is it the other way around?

~Meadow, journal entry

Meadow

My fingers slid over the tattoo on my ribcage, the other on my hip, the morning light casting shadows along my skin. They were flowers and vines, two inconspicuous tattoos that had been for me, not for anyone else.

The one on my other hip, however, had been lasered off.

I had been stupid and young and not even eighteen when I had Coby’s name tattooed on my hip. He’d asked me to put it there, wanted his name on my flesh where no one else could see. That way, I would know I was his property. That I was always his.

I could still see the scar, the marks. But I couldn’t see his name. And that had been enough for me. It had been healing.

Because I no longer bore the name of the man I’d thought I loved but who really only wanted to own me. Instead, I boasted the scars of my decisions, not ones of ownership.

Beckham had seen my tattoos, my scars. But he hadn’t said anything.

Had he known that Coby’s name had been on my hip? Had he realized that the mark had been erased by a laser because I was ashamed of where I came from? Or the fact that I had actually done it so I could become myself rather than who Coby wanted me to be?

Beckham had known. At least parts of it.

This entire time, he knew.

And I didn’t know what to think about that.

He had been part of Coby’s crew, although he’d said that he hadn’t been part of it when I was there.

But Trace had been. Trace had always been Cliff’s old lady, just like I had been Coby’s.

And since Trace and Coby were twins, she had been my sister. In a weird sort of way that had nothing to do with love but rather ties that no one wanted to break. That others constantly told me could never be broken or severed.

I had hidden from her earlier at the bar, hadn’t said a word, and that was my shame. Far beyond what Beckham had said, or what he had done, I carried the weight of my own decisions and truths.

I had hidden. I didn’t want the others to know I was there.

I could blame part of that on shock. Surprise that they were at the bar and that they knew Beckham.

Shock that Beckham had known things about who I was and hadn’t told me.

I curled my fists at my sides, trying to calm my breathing.

Why did it feel like such a betrayal? I hadn’t been honest either.

And that was my issue.

I’d been to countless therapy sessions and yet I don’t think I could pull anything from those to figure out the answers to why I hadn’t been honest. I’d found my self-worth, but I hadn’t been able to find my courage. Not all of it.

Beckham had known about me, but I hadn’t known about him.

And neither of us had said anything.

We weren’t truthful—not at all.

Instead, we had lived in this odd vacuum where we tried to make our own happiness that was pillowed on a cursed bed of lies.