“It explains my sparkling career.” Her smile curved, then faded. “I don’t know if I want to go back exactly the way I was.”
“To Blackbird Ink?”
“To all of it. The shop’s good. My life there wasn’t bad.” She nodded toward the window. “But Crystal’s here. You’re near here. And Whispering Pines doesn’t have a tattoo shop.”
I didn’t move.
She glanced at me. “That’s not me asking you to solve it.”
“I know.”
“Do you? Because men get weird when women mention futures near them.”
“I’m not solving it,” I said. “I’m asking what you want.”
Her fingers stopped on the blanket.
Outside, a car passed on the street, normal and ordinary, with nothing to chase.
“I want a chair that’s mine,” Jade said slowly. “Clients who come because they want my work. A front window with good light. Maybe Crystal doing the books if she wants and if she doesn’t hate the idea after everything. I want to be close enough that she can call me without me driving half the state in a panic.”
I waited.
Her gaze came to mine. “And I want you.”
She held my stare without a joke, a smile, or an escape hatch.
My chest tightened under the ice pack and the old bruises.
“You have me,” I said.
Jade’s eyes narrowed, but not with anger. “Don’t say that because we survived one terrible morning and had excellent sex.”
“The sex was excellent.”
“Dex.”
“I’m not saying it because of that.” I set the cold pack aside and turned toward her. “I wanted you when I thought wantingyou was the worst idea I’d had in years. I still wanted you when I found out your name and had every reason to be furious. And today, at the storage unit, I reached for you first.”
Her lips trembled once.
I touched her knee under the hem of my shirt. “I don’t know exactly what this looks like next week. I know I want to find out with you, as Jade, with no bounty between us and no running unless we’re both choosing it for fun.”
A laugh broke out of her, wet at the edge. “That was almost smooth.”
“I’m injured.”
“That’s your excuse?”
“It’s the one I’m using.”
Jade slid her hand over mine. “I want to find out too.”
I turned my palm up and laced our fingers together.
She took in our joined hands, then the plain room, the half-open blinds, the towel on the floor, and the corner of the dresser where I’d dropped my keys without thinking about who might take them.
Her thumb moved over my scraped knuckles.
