Page 49 of The Sweetest Return

The noise around us seemed to blur at the edges. I could hear laughter near the bar, music under it, Milan’s voice somewhere behind me, but none of it held my attention. Not with Imani standing close enough for me to smell her perfume, see the shimmer on her skin, and watch every little change in her eyes.

“What were you doing?” she asked.

“Trying not to stare too hard.”

“At the tattoo?”

“At everything.”

Her lashes lowered again.

That little look did more than it should have.

I leaned in slightly, keeping enough space between us for the room to keep lying about what this was.

“You know what’s messed up?”

“What?”

“I wondered about the men after me.”

Her expression changed.

“Wondered how they handled seeing it. If they asked about it. If they pretended it didn’t bother them.”

Her lips parted.

“And if it did?” she asked.

“Then they had sense.”

Her mouth trembled like she wanted to smile and didn’t want to give me the satisfaction.

I leaned closer, and my voice dropped with me.

“Wondered if they knew the man they came after earned that tattoo.”

Her lips parted.

“If they knew how much work I put into you before you put my name over your heart.”

Her chest rose with the breath she pulled in, slow and unsteady, and I couldn’t even smile because I was too close to ending the torture for both of us.

Women covered names all the time.

Flowers. Clocks. Wings. Anything pretty enough to hide the evidence of being foolishly in love.

Imani could have done that. Shit, she had eight years to do it.

But she hadn’t.

My name was still there, tucked over her heart beneath purple silk, and every selfish part of me wanted to believe she had kept me somewhere else too.

In her memory.

In her body.

In that wet pussy I still remembered too well for my own peace.