I gasp. “That water was boiling. Here, let me help you. Rowan, can you bring him something to wear?”
Rowan nods and leaves the kitchen. I quickly turn off the stove and grab a towel to help him dry off the scalding water.
"Damn, that looks like it hurts," I say, wincing as I see the red spreading across Sam's chest and arms.
He chuckles, though it's more of a grimace. “Should have been more careful. I don’t spend much time in the kitchen at home.”
I wet the towel with cold water and gently dab at the reddened patches on his chest. Sam inhales sharply. He’s also got a few tattoos on his torso. Not as many as Rowan, but—
Wait, that looks familiar. It's a fish with a man’s face coming out of its mouth.
I move the wet towel out of the way.
“That tattoo…” I frown. “Rowan has the same one.”
Sam freezes.
Rowan returns and hands a clean shirt to Sam, who hastily puts it on, his eyes darting back to me. “Uh, yeah, he does.”
“What are you talking about?” Rowan asks.
I gesture at Sam’s chest. “Your matching tattoos.”
A flicker of unease crosses Rowan’s features. "What about them?"
I give him a befuddled look. Isn’t it obvious I want to know the story? “How come you got them?”
They exchange a quick look, and there's something uneasy about it. “It’s nothing, really,” Sam says. “Just something we got together a while back.”
Rowan rubs the back of his head. “It’s kind of embarrassing.”
“Yeah. We were drunk. Like really drunk.”
I plant my hands on my hips, getting a weird vibe from both of them. “And you got a tattoo of a strangefish? Why?”
Rowan drags his tongue over his teeth. “It’s stupid.”
“Why are you being so cagey? I mean, what could possibly be so embarrassing—”
“We got them when we decided to leave Las Vegas,” Rowan says. “The fish symbolizes our rebirth. The beginning of a new life. It’s sappy, okay? But we wanted to do something to commemorate our decision to work on our own business together.”
I frown. So leaving Vegas was a big deal for them, but Rowan’s always been tight-lipped about what it was that caused them to leave. Why the secrecy?
“Why did you two decide to leave?”
Rowan drags his palm over his chin. There’s something tense about his posture, something weird about this whole conversation, but I can’t quite put a finger on it. Are they really that embarrassed by the tattoos, or is there more to it?
Brett’s warnings come to mind, but I shove them away, refusing to let that asshole poison my thoughts about Rowan.
In fact, he’s probably why I’m suddenly feeling so on edge. He managed to plant a tiny seed of doubt in my head, despite me knowing he’s full of shit.
No. I’m not going to let a bad man manipulate my thoughts about a good man like Rowan. I just need to give Rowan a chance to explain.
“The owner of the company fucked up on a project, but he put the blame on the two of us. We might have gotten…arrested if we stuck around.”
Shock crackles through me. “What?”
“He said we were stealing from the business. Taking materials from the construction site but charging the client for it. I was a manager, and Sam worked for me, but we weren’t stealing anything. The owner was.”
