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The tattoo rests there as it always has.
“Look at that,” Rex says with a half-smile.
I guide his hand to feel it, just as he guided mine the other day, pressing his hand into my skin. Electricity zooms up my spine and I feel blood rushing between my legs, swelling my center with need.
However, Rex is taking his time with the tattoo. He brushes his thumb across it. “So, I’d always be a part of you…” he says.
That was the agreement. Delete each other’s phone numbers and never seek to contact each other. Always carry a reminder on our skin that a love like ours happened.
“Kind of pales in comparison to the other thing I left you with,” he says wryly.
I giggle. “I mean, yeah, definitely less of a responsibility to care for a tattoo until it heals versus carrying a human, but…”
“Carrying a human and caring for a human and –“ He draws away, running his fingers through his hair. “God, Isabella, I feel like such an asshole.”
“What? Why?”
“Because you’ve been here the whole time and sacrificed so much for Leo and –“
I shake my head. “You didn’t even know he existed until –“
“I should have known,” Rex says. “I should have just known.”
“How could you have known? That’s the silliest thing I’ve ever heard.”
His head dips forward. “I don’t know, I should have felt something was missing because when I’m with him, I feel complete in a way I didn’t know was possible.” Rex’s eyes are heavy with exhaustion and loss. “So, I must have had some innate knowledge he existed, right?”
I’m not going to sit here and make the man blame himself for something he couldn’t have known. Even if I did believe in energy and universal cosmic knowledge, not following through on that is not his failing. “Listen to me,” I say, moving in front of him and taking his cheeks in my hands. “I should never have kept him from you. Even if I was scared.”
Rex touches both of my wrists. “It’s okay, I’ve already forgiven you for –“
“I haven’t forgiven myself,” my voice wobbles. “Because I robbed both of you from so much happiness.” That’s not the whole truth. “I robbed myself of so much happiness. I see you two together and that complete feeling, it’s not just inside you, it’s all around you. I see it in Leo too and to know I hurt him by…”
Rex touches my chin. One of his fingers snakes across my lips. “Why don’t we stop thinking about the past and focus on the now, Isabella?”
I blink and a tear runs down my cheek.
“Because right now…” His other hand slides around my waist and pulls me between his legs. “I’m sitting with the smartest woman in the world.”
I laugh.
“And for some reason she gave a doofus like me a baby.”
My stomach flips. It might have been an accident and it might have taken five years, but whether I like it or not, a part of me followed through with it for Rex. For the love I had for him, one I never thought I’d find again.
“And on top of it all, she is so beautiful it makes me sick because I have spent years trying to find someone to fill the spot she left in me and no one has ever, ever come close to –“
I can’t take it anymore. I throw myself at him, kissing him with everything I have. Rex’s lips welcome mine, velvet and plush, his tongue running along the seam of my lip until I let him inside. He tips back onto the blanket, laid out flat beneath me and I straddle him, aligning our pelvises so he can feel my heat and I can feel his hardness.
I rake my fingers through his hair and hold his head in my hands as I bestow kiss after kiss after kiss.
I’ve missed him so much and I’m done questioning how it’s possible.
Rex Redford was a man I fell in love with. Had a child with. And the part of me that I have been missing all these years.
Rex sneaks his hands under my shirt, pressing them flat against my back and clinging to me.
If I could be any closer to him, I’d be a part of him which might not be so bad.
