“I’ve been thinking about this all fucking week,” Devlin murmurs into my sweaty hair as he collapses on top of me an hour later. We skipped the postgame party again—the last one of the season—so we can be together. It’s quiet at Devlin’s, and I can be as loud as he makes me. I hate that he’s missing his party, but it’s the only time we can really be together. This, and science class, which doesn’t include quite the same perks.
“Me, too,” I admit, cradling his head against my chest and running my fingertips over the tattooed skin of his forearm. “What do these mean?”
“Different things,” he says, pulling the blankets over us without moving from his position on top of me. “Why, you want me to put your name in ink so everyone knows I’m yours?”
“No,” I say, laughing. “What if I changed my name or something?”
“Don’t worry,” he says. “I’ll make it sayCrystal Darling.”
My heart does a little flip. “Devlin…”
“Kidding,” he says. “I’ll just have them writeSugar.But we’ll both know what it means.”
“You’re not going to tell me what they mean, are you?”
“Some of them mean something,” he says. “Some of them don’t mean anything.” He turns his arm over, letting me see the morning glory vine winding up the back of his arm, blooming on his tricep. “This is my biggest one, and I just got it because a guy from Faulkner High wanted to practice on someone.”
“Wow,” I say. “That’s brave.”
“Not really,” he says with a chuckle. “I was drunk off my ass. Good thing he was actually really fucking good. I could have ended up with a cartoon animal.”
“What about this one?” I ask, rubbing my thumb over the one I saw the first time I met him, when he was standing in the parking lot with his arms crossed, and I could see the ink on the back of his forearm. It’s a Latin phrase written in fancy script.
“It’s the Swan’s motto.”
“Oh,” I say, swallowing hard. He never talks about that with me. “They make you tattoo that on yourself?”
“I like ink,” he says. “It’s addictive.”
“Hm,” I say. “Maybe I’ll get one.”
“I don’t think so.”
I pull back and look down at him. “You don’t think I’m brave enough to get a tattoo?”
Devlin leans up on his elbows, his eyes darkening as he looks down at me. I can feel him hardening inside me again. “I like your virgin skin,” he says. “I want to be the only one to leave marks on you.”
“Me, too,” I whisper. “I love the marks you leave. They help me know it’s real even though I can’t even talk to you all week. I wait for it all week, every week, Devlin.”
I know we’re digging our own grave, that there’s no way for this to end except in disaster. Every time we’re together, it’s as precious and bittersweet as if it were the last time. Each time, it could be. We’re both willing to risk it for now, even knowing it can’t end any other way. We’re a toxic, doomed, beautiful disaster waiting to happen. But it will happen. There’s no way around that, no matter how hard we pretend.
He tightens his arms around me, scooting down and pressing his lips to my hammering heart again. “It kills me that we can’t be together at school.”
“Me, too.”
Since the day he refused to fight Royal, the day he stepped in to defend me to my own brother, Royal has barely spoken to me. As far as I can tell, he hasn’t ratted me out to anyone else in the family, but he must know what that meant. At school, my brothers rarely leave my side, escorting me like bodyguards and refusing to let me so much as speak to a Darling. With the way my family talks, I’ve been too afraid to let Devlin even climb through my window. I might make noise, and if they came in and saw him fucking me, they’d shoot him while he was still inside me.
“You can’t talk your brothers into giving me even one chance?” Devlin asks, pushing himself up on his elbows and leaning down to kiss me. “I can prove to them that I’m going to do right by you. I’ll keep trying until the day I die, Crystal. One day, I’ll show you I’m worthy.”
“I know you’re worthy,” I say lightly. “But I don’t mind you proving it. Especially with jewelry.”
Devlin smiles. “You’re one of those girls?”
“Every girl likes shiny, expensive things.”
“Noted,” he says, rubbing his nose back and forth against mine. “And you know my family’s cool with you already. It’s just your brothers we have to convince now.”
“So, you’re the liar in the family,” I say, rolling us onto our sides, my legs still locked around his hips. “I would have thought it was Colt.”