I look G in the eyes and silently challenge her to keep them there. She seems annoyed and for some reason, that makes me smile. Her getting fired up does things to me. And I know that sounds awful, but when she’s riled and animated, she’s unpredictable. And I like it.
Her eyes stay on mine as I lift my shirt away from my waist. Up my left ribcage and then higher. I pull my arm out of the sleeve. She doesn’t break our gaze until my shirt is raised high enough to prop on my shoulder. Baring the design that started from my upper back and has since moved over my shoulder, across my collarbone, down the left side of my chest, over my heart, and down the side of my torso. She’s fighting to keep her eyes trained on my face, almost as if she’s not ready to look down. As if, somehow, she might know what awaits her. She loses the battle, though, as her gaze falls. Her cheeks turning pink as she moves her eyes down my body. Canvassing the artwork and my skin. She moves closer and stands on the tips of her toes. She’s much shorter than I am, but barefoot, she’s living up to the nickname I’ve given her.
Haven’t seen it yet, Pixie.
“This looks incredible.” Her eyes trail along my shoulder. “Clean lines. Really beautiful design. I like the graphic-style mountainscape. The way the color is minimal. It doesn’t take away from the black shading, and the—”
There it is.
She looks up at me, stopping her train of thought. Her eyes water slightly, just enough so they shimmer. Being this close to her, looking so closely at me, has relit something within me that I’ve tried to tamp down. I want her hands to trace the places she’s looking.
“The Air Force tattoo is different.” She brings her fingers to my skin, and I’m brimming with tension, a buzz of adrenaline to be felt by her. Her fingers caress across the words that are wrapped in a circle, following their path so lightly that it leaves an eruption of goosebumps along my arms. Words that we toasted. Words that I promised her I would uphold, even if that meant she’d never know it.A una bella vita(to a beautiful life).
“I met a woman one night in a bar. We talked about nothing. And it was…” I shake my head. “It felt like everything.”
My eyes search her face, studying the features all over again. Big brown eyes surrounded by thick lashes, a perfect nose with the hint of a scar from where a nose ring once was, her full upper lip the shape of a half moon. Beautiful.
“I didn’t know that feeling was possible. To connect like that. To just know you had met someone that was going to change you.” I pull my arm back through my shirt, tugging it down over my chest.
“He couldn’t stop going to New York to look for her,” Everly chimes in from behind us. Knocking us both out of the bubble I had just built.
Giselle clears her throat and shifts her stance back, adding some space between our bodies. “What happened?” I look her in the eyes, asking, pleading why she would even ask that. Because she knows exactly what happened. She knows more details than I do.
“It was so awful. He meets this incredible woman. I mean, you should have seen him the next day. He was different. Smiling at nothing. Anyway, it was so sad. She had been killed in a home invasion. It was all over the news,” Everly says, whispering the part about her being killed, as if saying it softer will lessen the impact. I turn around back toward the window. I’m not interested in this conversation any longer. My emotions are far from in-check. I’m frustrated at being interrupted, pissed off at the situation I’m in right now. I need some air.
“I still can’t believe it and it’s been years. He still goes back,” Everly adds.Shut up, Ev.
“Why? I mean, if she’s gone, why?” G asks, but I don’t answer.
My dad shouts from the back of the shop, “Henry, you got any more drop cloths in your truck?”
“Yea, I’ll grab ’em.” I head out the front door. I need to catch my breath a bit. My skin is hot. I’m angry at myself for having felt the need to say any of that to her. Tip my hand at all. Dangle something in front of her that she can’t have.
I hear the door swing back open behind me. But, instead of turning around, I move faster to the cab. I’m not interested in hashing out any of this right now. She asked to see my tattoos, so I showed her. I knew as soon as she saw it, she would need to know more. I should have kept my mouth shut about the rest.
“Is all of that true?”
I open the door to my truck and lean in. No sign of the drop cloths, so I turn around and look in the truck’s bed, but as soon as I move to close the door, G is standing there. I had every intention of keeping away from her. Observe from a distance. But being this close to her, all of those plans fall away.
She should smell like paint and turpentine, but I catch the faintest scent of lemon as the wind picks up. It’s like a drug, the smell of her. I want to drag my nose down her neck. Breathe her in.
“Yes,” I say, stepping closer, knowing that the closer the proximity, the easier it’ll be to touch her. And while I shouldn’t. While I’ve been cautioned to keep my distance, it feels wrong to step away.
“Yes, it’s true.” I crowd her, closing the gap. Backing her into the truck so that her back hits the seat, and she has nowhere left to go. She stares at my chest. I can see her confidence wavering. She doesn’t want to look up at me. She doesn’t want to see how she’s hurt me. That whatever happened to her that night didn’t just destroy her world. That there are repercussions that she had no idea about. One of them is right in front of her.
“I’m not going to lie to you. Even though they told me you were dead, I couldn’t bring myself to stop thinking that maybe they had gotten it wrong. That it didn’t feel like you were gone.”
The wind kicks up again, only this time, it brings a cooler breeze that splits the warmth of the summer evening. I brush my fingers across her forehead, moving away the hair that’s blowing into her face. My hand brushes across her cheek and glides into her hair. I run my thumb back and forth slowly along her cheekbone. I remember what it felt like to kiss this woman. Intoxicating. Purposeful. Addictive. I bring my mouth closer to hers to see if she’ll let me have another taste.
Her eyes flutter closed. “You’re dangerously close to taking something that does not belong to you, Henry.”
I don’t dare move back, instead rubbing my thumb along her lower lip. “That’s where you’re wrong, Pixie.” I lick my lips and the invigorating tension between us becomes overwhelming. “I never take anything that doesn’t belong to me, but we both know this mouth. These lips. They’re as good as mine.”
She swallows roughly and stares at my mouth hovering mere centimeters from hers. But I don’t take a taste. Not yet.
The vibrating in my back pocket is loud enough to break the moment.
“Your ass is buzzing,” she says in a whisper with a smile kicking up the sides of her mouth.Damn that mouth.