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She looked up at me, her eyes assessing. “I’m not.”
Lie.
I put down my fork and snagged her wrist. She looked back at me as I asked, “What’s up?”
She heaved a shaky breath. “I’m sorry. I know I’m being weird. It’s just…”
“A lot?” I could sympathize. This thing between us was no joke.
“Yeah.” She laughed shakily. “Everything is just…”
I grinned. “A lot.”
“Yeah.”
We stared at each other before bursting into laughter. It cut the tension as effectively as a scythe and we were able to talk normally after that. Like two human beings who liked each other.
In its own way, this was a first for me. I did not talk to virtual strangers like this.
“Hey, so come on, tell me about that scar on your shoulder. How’d you get it?” she asked.
I remembered how she’d kissed it so gently, reverently, as if it might still hurt.
I shrugged self-deprecatingly. “Why bring the mood down with sob stories? We’re having such a good time.”
“Come on… Okay fine, if not that one, then tell me about another scar you have.”
I smiled sardonically. “You noticed how many there are, huh?”
She shrugged. “Hard not to. The one on your belly… feels like a knife wound,” she said watching me cautiously.
I sighed. “Yeah… I could cover it up with tattoos, but I can’t do anything about the raised surface.”
“Why do you cover them up? Are you ashamed?”
“Nah.” I lifted my shirt so she could see the tattoo that lined the jagged line of that knife wound. It was a leaf design, and the line of the scar was the center of the leaf. She reached out and traced it slowly, tenderly, and I had to work to keep calm at the resulting sparks.
Her hand moved to the rounded bullet wound on my side, surrounded by a broken window, the jagged edges emanating from that rounded center and splintering outward in a circle. It was a work of art, and I was proud of it.
She grinned. “You are fond of inking yourself huh?” Her fingers moved, tracing the skull just below my heart, death’s scythe cutting through it neatly. “Do they all mean something?”
“Every tattoo does. It’s a story in the canvas of my skin.”
Her eyebrow rose and she gave me a look. “What a poetic way to put it.”
“What? Night club owners can’t be Byron too?”
She laughed. “Not in my experience.”
“I live to exceed your expectations.”
She nodded slowly, her eyes still traveling over my chest, not missing a single tattoo. “I see that.” Her eyes lingered on my body before she flicked them back to mine. “So, tell me one.”
It was my turn to quirk an eyebrow. “One what?”
“Story.” She ran her hand over an x-shaped scar in the middle of my chest, around which a crucifixion scene was drawn.
I sighed. “You justhadto pick that one.”
