The look in his eyes turned predatory. “Usually when I’m naked, doll, you seem to focus on… other things.”
“I do not!” I protested.
He gave a knowing nod before glancing down at his heavily tattooed arm. My eyes followed his, and there it was: my name, intricately woven into the shadows of a rose I’d somehow missed.
I traced the lines nestled in the bloom, stunned. Maybe I’d missed it because every time he touches me, the rest of the world simply disappears.
“You didn’t tell me,” I whispered.
“Didn’t need to.” His eyes met mine, steady and terrifyingly sure. “You’re already under my skin. This just made it permanent.” He nipped at my lip playfully. “There’s still four more to find, doll.” He smirked, trailing his fingers down the length of my spine. “Guess you’ll have to strip me down and search.”
The challenge flickered in his gaze, and I took it, tugging at the waistband of his sweatpants as he lifted me effortlessly.
“And if I find them?” I murmured, locking my legs around his waist as he backed me toward the bed.
“Then I’ll fuck you with each one pressed against your skin,” he said, his voice low and wicked. “So you remember they’re not just names. They’re mine…Youare mine.”
When he kissed me again, I stopped thinking entirely.
Our tattoos weren’t just skin-deep. He had claimed me in ink long before I knew how to claim him back.
We weren’t perfect.
In some ways, we were a train wreck.
But we were permanent like the ink that was buried deep in our skin, the names sealed into our bodies like a blood oath.
He etched my name onto his skin for the world to see.
But I’d tattooed his where no needle could ever reach.
Right across my heart.
Second Epilogue
Camila
If I didn’t keep moving, I’d think too damn much… or maybe throw up. Whatever came first. Between the five shots some random guy at the bar paid for and the blunt I’d smoked in the back alley with a girl I didn’t remember the name of… I’d say I was looking towards the latter.
So yeah, dancing in the middle of the club was better. Sweaty strangers, bad decisions, lights strobing like they were trying to shake sins loose. This place didn’t judge. Just swallowed you whole, never letting you see the sun.
I needed that tonight.
My heels blistered my feet, my dress was too tight, my hair smelled like cheap perfume and cheaper weed… but nobody cared, and neither did I.
That was the rule here: Be pretty enough to be ignored, bitchy enough to not be fucked with. Thin line to walk…
But I always did. Because being “Camila Rodriguez,” perfect daughter turned street rat, didn’t matter here. Being Ingrid’s older sister, the protector, didn’t matter here. And being my father’s punching bag definitely didn’t matter here.
I shoved past a guy twice my size as he crowded my space without any manners… I couldn’t be one to judge though.
The room wasn’t staying still… and neither was the liquor I’d sloshed around in my stomach not even a minute ago on the dance floor. Feeling it coming back up the wrong end, I rushed to the bathroom, puking into the nearest toilet as another random girl opened the stall and held my hair back.Girlhood at its finest…
After I freshened up, or tried to in the dirty sink, I gazed at myself in the mirror, eyes dazed as my once straight flipover was now a wavy messy pile of curls. I washed the dried mascara from my face, trying to scrub out the smudged makeup stains from my flushed freckled cheeks. I could’ve cried looking at myself in the mirror… but that was more of my sister’s shtick. Always on the verge of tears, flinching at every sound, the once perfect daughter my father paraded once I fought back… or at least tried to.
But my resolve, in contrast, was turning off my brain, finding solitude in the silence. Trying not to get drowned out by the thoughts that haunted me or the memories that lived in my nightmares.
Tumbling out of the bathroom, I rubbed at my forehead. I felt like absolute shit. But eventually, my feet would take me to the door, force me over to the shitty motel down the road, and land me “safe” in the bed of the room with a broken deadbolt lock. At least that’s what I thought happened when I ended up blacking out and back in my motel room.
