Page 48 of Her Ex-Husband's Brother

He doesn’t answer right away.

“That’s how I always felt about it,” he finally says.

He goes back to the work, and I go back to the ceiling, and we don’t say anything else for a while, and the needle keeps moving. The Medusa keeps becoming herself on my skin.

It takes three hours.

When he puts the mirror in my hand I look at myself for a long time.

She’s there. On my inner forearm, starting just below the crook of my elbow, rendered in August’s artistic black and gray—Medusa not as a monster, but powerful before they tell a story making her terrible for it.

Her expression looking back at me from my own arm is the expression I’ve been trying to locate in myself for approximately a decade.

Just… present, in full possession of herself.

My eyes are all hot and my throat is tight again.

I blink at the ceiling until I get myself under control while August takes pictures of the fresh tattoo.

“How much do I owe you?” I ask. “I don’t have the cash now but when my accounts get back up and running, I can?—”

“Nothing.” He places a protective see-through bandage over the new tattoo. “Just leave this on for seven days. It should heal all on its own. No scabbing or anything.”

“August—”

“You don’t owe me anything.” His voice is quiet and completely certain. “Consider it a trade. Marketing for ink.”

I look at the Medusa on my arm.

“That’s not a fair trade,” I say. “This is worth more.” He’s just placed a piece of true art on my skin.

“We’ll see how the marketing goes.”

I look up at him.

He’s methodically cleaning up his station, his broad back to me. There’s something careful in the set of his shoulders.

Like we’ve both just realized we’re in this in-between space between professional and the wild closeness of another intimate experience we’ve just shared, albeit of an entirely different sort than the other night. Still, all alone in this otherwise darkened tattoo shop, it would be so easy to?—

August isJake’s BROTHER, shouts everything reasonable in me.

He’s also the man who touched me in a way that made me feel like I belonged in my own body again. The man who listened when I spoke instead of waiting for me to become more convenient.

My husband’s brother.

I should feel sick about it.

Instead, what makes me sick is realizing I spent nine years married to one brother and felt more seen in a single night with the other.

I jump out of the chair and grab my purse to my stomach. Not like a shield against his handsomeness and charisma and amazing talent. Definitely not like that.

“So, tomorrow?” I squeak. “I definitely want to get the eleven o’clock session on camera. You can give me access to your socials and we can hit the ground running.”

He turns around, and that gaze of his slams into me.

My arm throbs. Along with other parts of me.

I look down at the plastic wrap and at the badass Medusa underneath it.