Page 68
His eyes are eating me alive in a way I didn’t expect.
The black ink curves along my upper thigh, half-hidden by shadow. Mortui vivos docent.
“Yeah.” My throat’s dry. “It means ‘the dead teach the living.’ Kind of my version of carpe diem, but you know. Make it morbid.”
“I know what it means,” he says finally.
Before I can ask what’s going through his head, he sits back on his heels and reaches for the hem of his T-shirt. My brain short-circuits as he pulls it over his head in one clean motion.
“What are you—”
He turns slightly, and I see it: ink across his ribs, just under his right pec, the same phrase in nearly the same lettering. Mortui vivos docent.
My mouth opens, then closes again. “You—”
“Got it after… well. You know when,” he says, almost matter-of-fact. “A needed reminder when cases get too complicated. Not that I’ve had any since, but maybe again someday. Sometimes we just have to listen to what the victim says. Drown out everything else.”
I don’t say anything. Mostly because I can't find any words that would properly express all the things going through my mind right now.
He gives me a faint, knowing smile.
Suddenly the space between us doesn’t feel so wide anymore, metaphorically or otherwise.
For a second, I just stare at it. The matching curve of ink on his skin. Same phrase. Same weight behind it.
He’s probably already classified this entire moment as something rational and unremarkable. Meanwhile, my brain is busy sifting through every implication—how much of what drives me also drives him, how maybe I’ve never really understood the full extent of that until now.
“It’s fitting,” I finally say, because it’s the safest thing I can come up with.
“Yeah,” he says, pulling his shirt back on. “It is.”
I sink back against the bedding, trying to will my pulse into something resembling normal, though I’m not sure I know what that feels like anymore.
He pats my thigh, catching my expression. “Better at all?”
He means my sore muscles. The pivot is dizzying.
I nod instead of answering.
“Good.” He leans back on his heels, rubbing a thumb absently across his jaw, seemingly assessing his work.
Something in me lets go. My shoulders finally drop, my breathing levels out, and the vise wrapped around my sternum loosens.
He must notice, because he shifts onto the bed again and settles beside me, one arm sliding around my waist.
I don’t overthink it this time, just let myself sink back into him. The warmth of his body seeps through the thin layers between us, and our breathing falls into the same rhythm.
If he notices the easy way my hand finds his in the dark, he doesn’t call attention to it. He just threads our fingers together, steady and sure, until the noise in my head finally settles.
Theo
Theo lies completely still, her weight warm against him, the room gone quiet except for the small, steady sound of her breathing. She’s already halfway to sleep, fingers curled loosely around his. He should move—should put distance back where it belongs—but he doesn’t.
He watches the rise and fall of her chest, the way her hair fans against the pillow, the tiny crease between her brows that hasn’t quite faded even now. The urge to smooth it away is unbearable. He’s already crossed too many lines in one night.
Still, his mind won’t stop cataloguing details—her scent, the faint warmth where her skin touches his, the subtle weight of her thigh resting against his leg. Every breath she takes feels like a test of his self-control. He tells himself this is nothing more than proximity, that it’s human instinct to hold onto something soft and good when the rest of the world feels hard and cold. It’s a lie he almost believes.
He’s imagined holding her before, in moments he’d rather forget—long nights spent trying to reason his way out of wanting her. But none of those stray thoughts come close to this. Nothing he’s ever pictured accounts for how she fits against him so easily.
