She dragged a fry through her tomato sauce. “We need to start thinking about it. This is my last year of high school. We can leave soon.”
Leave…
I cleared my throat as that promise did its best to wrap around my heart and free me from every restriction I’d put in place. “But what about your future? What do you want to do?”
“I want to go back to the forest. I’ve told you that.”
“There are no jobs out there, Della. No boys to make a family with. No future apart from—”
“Apart from with you,” she whispered.
I froze, studying her face and the naked desire there.
The restaurant disappeared. Silence descended, turning the world mute.
I stopped breathing.
She stopped breathing.
The only thing we survived on was the vicious, violent bond that we’d always shared but had somehow magnified from virtuous to blistering.
Her eyes filled with promises, pleas—things that filled the chambers of my heart with crucifying futures I could never have.
We stared for an eternity, drowning in each other, before I closed the card with a snap and shoved it back toward her. “I can’t accept this.”
She flinched. “Too late, it’s in our apartment. I didn’t bother bringing it with us as it’s bulky, but it’s already yours.”
“How did you buy—”
“With my salary from the florist. I still do the odd weekend. Enough to save up some spending money.”
I nodded.
I’d known that. Every time she came back from that place, she smelled utterly devine. Honeysuckle and rose petals drove me insane sitting beside her on the couch, pretending to watch TV when really I counted down the seconds for her to go to bed so I could be alone with my traitorous body.
This was too much.
My cast clunked on the table as I shifted uncomfortably, seeking something normal to say. “If you could have anything you wanted for your birthday, what would it be?”
Her eyes burned like blue coal. “Anything?”
I swallowed, cursing her. “Within reason.” Terror at what she’d ask for locked me to the spot. This was a stupid idea.
Her forehead frowned as if thinking of every gift she’d love but knew better than to ask for. Eventually, she murmured, “A tattoo.”
I coughed on a mouthful of Coke. “Excuse me?”
“I’ve wanted one for ages, but I knew you wouldn’t approve.”
Normally, I would agree with her. I’d had a panic attack when she’d come home one afternoon with her ears pierced, let alone her skin inked, but that was then and this was now. Della had once again unsettled me with talks of futures and forest freedoms. I needed to change the subject with something—anything to stop the electricity humming unpermitted between us.
“Okay,” I whispered.
Her eyes widened. “What did you say?”
“I said okay. Let’s go get a tattoo.”
“You’re—you’re serious?” Her head tilted to the side, her hair swishing down her back in one long rope.
“Deadly. If you want to permanently mark your skin and regret it later, who am I to stop you?”
“I’ll need a guardian who is over eighteen to sign the paperwork.” She stood, inching her way around the table to stand in front of me, her tight black dress showing off every sinful curve. “Is that going to be a problem?”
I shook my head. “No problem. You want a tattoo. You can have one.” Keeping my attention on her face, I stood. “Your decision.”
“Yes!” She threw her arms around me, wedging her breasts against my chest, deleting space I dreadfully needed to keep between us.
I swallowed my groan as I nuzzled her against my will, hugging her fierce, missing her hard.
She trembled in my arms, her breathing quick and shallow. Her leg slipped between mine, inappropriate and far too close. “I’ve missed hugging you, Ren. So much.” Her lips pressed against my t-shirt.
My body reacted, my heart smoked, and even though I had to fight every muscle, I pushed her away with a careless shrug as if she hadn’t just crippled me all over again. “A birthday hug before your birthday tattoo.”
She nodded sharply, liquid suspiciously bright in her gaze. “Right.”
It physically stung not to gather her close again, but I held out my arm, the only form of contact I could handle. “Come on. Let’s go get your seventeenth birthday present.”
She looped her arm through mine.
And we pretended things were perfectly normal.
CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN
REN
* * * * * *
2017
SHE GOT A ribbon.
Of course, she did.
A long blue ribbon that wrapped twice around her ankle with one end flared on her calf while the other trailed down the bones of her foot, twisting into a shape that looked suspiciously like an R.
When she showed me after two hours in the tattooist chair, I’d almost beaten up the artist. They’d shown me the original sketch that was drawn and printed on her skin prior to inking and that ribbon had ended with a kick in its tail.