Kat tried to picture Dean—the perfect image of sophistication—being some sort of wannabe gangster who was running around in a gang and causing trouble. “I can’t picture that,” Kat admitted.
“I was a different person then. When people are trying to survive, they’ll do things they never thought they were capable of.”
“What happened?”
“I figured out eventually that I didn’t want to be that person.”
“Eventually?” Clearly, there was a story behind that word, something he didn’t want to admit to. People didn’t just change for no reason.
He stroked one hand over her arm, the touch absent-minded as if he needed the contact. “I got a call from Ell. She was having problems with the son of a foster parent, a boy who refused to take no for an answer and kept harassing her. I was in the middle of a…job.” He forced that word from his throat as if it were poison. “I dropped everything to go help her, but when I showed up? I had blood on my hands. Actual fucking blood there, and I scared off the boy, made it clear what would happen if he ever so much as looked at her wrong again.”
“So you saved her?”
“I guess. The thing is, I stood there, and I realized that I wasn’t any better than that boy. Ell didn’t know it, hadn’t seen it, didn’t have any idea the sorts of things I did when I wasn’t around her, but I just kept thinking if she did…she’d look at me with that same fear.” His fingers trembled as she stroked across the bare, wet skin of her arm. “I never wanted that, so I got out of that life. I got serious at school, passed my classes, focused on my future, put myself through law school so I could be someone different. These tattoos, I hate them. They’re a reminder of who I was.” His voice dropped so low, Kat struggled to hear the next part over her breathing and the movement of the water in the tub. “Of who I really am.”
That broke her heart, the self-hatred in those words, the fear. Kat shifted, turning so she could see his face even in the dim room. He let her, and she straddled his waist then set her hands on his cheeks. “You’re not who you think you are.”
“No? Can you really say that when you have no idea what I’ve done?”
“Yeah, I can. I know who you are now, and who a person is, deep down, that doesn’t change.” She took one of her hands and dragged her fingers over one of the tattoos on his chest as she spoke. “These are just a part of your past, part of what you had to do so you could get here.”
She jumped when his fingers moved over the mark on her chest.
“You want to maybe tell yourself the same thing?”
His point was clear—and a good one—but harder to accept. Still, Kat didn’t argue it right away, didn’t want to lose the quiet moment with Dean, one where he seemed so unguarded. Instead, she leaned in to kiss him, his fingers still dancing over the tattoos he seemed to so hate.
Still, he spoke softly between the kisses. “I don’t know how you feel about these exactly, but I can guess you hate them. I get it, but, Kat, they’re proof you lived, that you survived, that you’re still breathing and going and that he didn’t win.”
“I didn’t win yet, either,” Kat said.
Dean broke the kiss to stare into her eyes, the moment almost painfully honest between them. “My money’s on you, every damned time.”
Between the nightmare and her exhaustion, Kat let Dean’s words soak into her. She didn’t think she could accept them, didn’t think she believed them, but for tonight? For tonight she didn’t mind pretending at all.