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“A couple of weeks. We’d been for a few rides in the day. I was very busy with club stuff at that time, and she told me she had other things going on at night… I think she was doing studies or something.” Brian was nodding his head.
“Anyway, it's a shame she ever met me. Maybe she’d still be alive now. Maybe it was me who should have died then. Life deals us many cards. Sometimes it's an ace and sometimes it's a joker,” Cruz said.
“Says the guy who doesn’t know whether he’s a Skull or a Joker,” Collin said.
“You’re jealous you can’t be both,” Cruz said.
“Wouldn’t want to be a Joker,” Collin said. That got him a peanut in the side of the head from Grayson.
* * *
“You saidyou were in the hospital for a long time,” Eden said to Cruz as they lay on their backs in their tent that night.
“I had extensive burns,” he said. “I was in the burns unit for a long time.”
“Really?” She hadn’t seen any burns on him. At least what she’d seen of his body already.
He sat up and pulled out his phone and scrolled through his photos till he found what he was looking for. She was sitting up too when he turned his phone to her, and she looked at the photo. She put her hands over her mouth and seconds later as he started swiping through the images, tears started streaming down her face. He dropped his phone and put his hands on her shoulders. They were the photos of his burns.
“What’s wrong, Edie?”
She was trying to say something, but she was sobbing so hard that every one of her words had come out as a gasp.
Cruz couldn’t make out what she was saying, so he pulled her into his chest and held her, while she buried her face into him. He couldn’t bear to see her like this. He didn’t know why she’d had such a reaction to seeing his photos. Maybe something had happened to her and her mind was as scarred as his skin.
“Hey, hey, hey,” he said. “It’s OK. I’m OK…you can see that, right?”
She sat back and slowly pushed his shirt up. His stomach and chest were covered in the most beautiful tattoos she’d ever seen. She loved tattoos. She always had. She’d even wanted some of her own, but the man she’d been married to thought only trailer trash got inked.
He pulled his shirt off over his head and she could see that the tattoos she’d already seen on his lower arms extended up the rest of his arms and over his shoulders.
She traced them with her fingers and could feel the ridges and lumps…obvious signs that the scars were still there. They just couldn’t be seen now.
“All these tattoos,” he said. “They’re hiding scars all over my body. Wendy was thrown free from the accident and died instantly. The bike went with me and the tank split and caught fire and I was burned. It was a long painful recovery, but the most painful part of all was getting my head around what had happened… The fact that she had died. The guilt. The sorrow. And that’s another reason why I didn’t have much luck dating for long time.”
Eden was nodding her head. She understood. “I looked alright with my clothes on, but as soon as I took my shirt off, I could see the look on their faces… Horror.”
When he mentioned that word, she broke down again, but he heard her mutter, “Like a monster.”
He was taken aback by that comment. “Exactly,” he said. He held her again, rubbing her back as she cried. “I’m so sorry, Eden. I didn’t mean to upset you like this.”
“It’s okay,” she said.
“No, it’s not okay. I really didn’t mean to upset you. I consider myself lucky. I love my tats. I love them better than my own skin…and it really has made me a much better person. Not that I wasn’t a good person at the time,” he said. “But we really are more than skin deep. When I look at you now, I can see a very pretty person with an incredible figure, but what attracted me the most, when I first saw you, were your eyes. They are the most beautiful eyes I have ever seen… So different… The color…but it’s not just that.”
She’d stopped crying and was peering into his eyes now…and she was melting with something she’d never experienced on this level…this level of love.
She wiped her eyes. Her bottom lip was quivering. She wanted to tell him about herself, but fear had stolen her voice.
This beautiful man was telling her that what was most important to him was everything that she’d ever wished a man would want in her. Someone who could love her no matter what she looked like.
“When I look into your eyes, I can see a beautiful person who has suffered a lot of pain,” he told her.
“How can you know that?” she said in a shaky voice.
“Sometimes when the face is smiling, the heart is still broken. I know because I have lived that life. I know, because when I looked in the mirror, for so long…I could see that same look in my eyes, that I get glimpses of when I look into yours.”
She felt numb.God, where did this man come from?
