Page 63 of Waiting for You

"Okay," she accepted, her tone shifting to professional. "So what do you want?"

I locked my eyes onto hers. "The ring."

She stared right back. "You just said you wanted something simpler."

"I changed my mind."

"Why'd you claim you didn't want the ring if the ring is what you wanted?"

"Because I sat down, thought about it, and realized there isn't a single other piece of art I want on my body."

She held my gaze without flinching. "Where's the placement?"

I lifted two fingers and tapped over my heart. I looked up at her, a slow smile spreading across my face.

She stared at where my fingers rested against my shirt. Her chin dropped a fraction as the placement registered. Then she spun away, turning her attention back to unpacking the kit.

"You're going to have to take your shirt off," she ordered, keeping her back to me.

"It's not like you haven't seen it before," I teased.

The millisecond the sentence left my mouth, I wanted to snatch it back. The statement was true, that was the problem, and I'd just handed her the dynamic I'd been trying to suppress for days. I couldn't help it. I was physically incapable of helping any of it. That was the reality I kept circling. Every time I stood in her orbit, whatever script I'd prepared went up in flames, and I kept blurring lines I hadn't authorized myself to cross. I couldn't take the flirtation back. There was Andrew, there was Eliza, and I was failing to restrain myself.

She stayed facing the desk, laying out her tools, her eyes glued to the kit as her hands moved with practiced precision. I unfastened the buttons of my shirt and shrugged it off my shoulders.

She turned around and pulled up a rolling stool to sit in front of me. She sterilized the skin over my heart with an alcohol wipe and started drawing the purple stencil from memory, her dark eyes locked on my chest, refusing to look at a reference photo. I watched her concentrated face before forcing myself to look at the ceiling.

"Why are you getting a ring tattooed over your heart?" she asked over the buzzing machine.

"Is that the question you want to ask me right now?" I countered.

She paused the machine and looked up.

"Why the hell do you still have my engagement ring?" she demanded.

"The ring, this tattoo, all of it, it's for Eliza," I lied.

I'd boarded the plane with the ring fully intending to hand it back to Sloane. I wanted closure, to shove the velvet box into her hands and announce: Here. This is your wreckage. I'm finished carrying this ghost. And then I'd walked into that cramped cellar, watched her freezing hands trace the velvet box, seen the devastation on her face, and I couldn't do it. I hadn't been ready. I still didn't know what the hell I wanted.

But what I knew with terrifying certainty was that I didn't want to give her back the ring. I hadn't wanted to hand it over in the cellar, and I didn't want to hand it over now.

She fired the machine back up, the needle buzzing against my skin.

"Why would you propose to a brand-new girlfriend with the same custom ring you already proposed to someone else with?" she challenged.

I kept my eyes on the ceiling tiles.

"The ring is a masterpiece," I defended. "I worked through every exhausting hour of my residency to afford the stones. It cost more money than I had. I'm not going to toss it into the ocean because there are toxic memories attached to the metal." I took a slow breath. "Anytime I look at that box, my brain replays the courier dropping off your package and reading that note. I don't want to keep carrying that. I want to rewrite what the ring means. Instead of agony, I want it to stand for something present. Something good."

She swallowed hard over the hum of the needle.

A suffocating silence filled the room.

"That's a logical plan," she finally whispered. She didn't lift her eyes from my chest when she said it.

The rest of the session dragged on without much conversation. She worked the ink, and I kept my eyes up.

"What reference are you even using for this?" I finally asked, breaking the silence.