His words feel heavy with meaning, but I can’t parse it out. Though I know that I want to understand the significance of this thing he felt was important enough to ink on his skin.
“Why did you get a flower? A poppy?”
This time he waits even longer to answer, his eyes searching mine for long moments. One heartbeat turning into two, into five, into ten, until I’m sure he’s not going to tell me. But then his throat bobs in a heavy swallow, and something changes behind his eyes. Determination, I think, and something softer, more vulnerable.
“You have a dress covered in tiny poppies,” he says, so fast I almost don’t hear it. His hands reach out, sliding over my ribs like mine were doing to his just a moment ago. “It’s tight here, and all bunched up.”
“Smocked,” I fill in.
He nods, even though he looks like he has no idea what that means. But I know the dress he’s talking about. I found it at a vintage store in Charlotte when I was visiting Holden during his freshman year of college. If it weren’t for the smocked bodice, there’s no way I’d still fit into it. My thirty-one-year-old body is much different than my sixteen-year-old one.
Even through the thick material of the towel, I can feel the warmth of his palms as they trail down my waist, settling on my hips. “It flares out at the bottom, and you can really see the poppies there. They’re red.”
I nod, unsure of where he’s going with this, too hopeful to think clearly.
“But red isn’t your favorite,” he says.
“I like all of them.”
Grey shakes his head, mouth quirking in a small, knowing grin. The one that makes my pulse flutter, my skin feel hot. “Blue is your favorite. Like my eyes.”
If he didn’t look so devastating right now, I’d roll my eyes, make some comment about how big his head is. But I’m beginning to realize he’s not nearly as confident as I always thought he was. He’s tender in so many places, and I want him to know that what he’s saying is true. That when eleven-year-old me met handsome fourteen-year-old him, the color of my favorite flower changed to match his eyes. That the next year, I planted a whole bed of blue poppies and thought of him every time I tended to them.
“They’re my favorite,” I echo, watching the words seep into him and fill him up with something I can’t quite name.
“Well, red poppies are my favorite.” His eyes are deep with meaning. “Like your dress. I saw you that summer, and that dress was a punch to my gut.Youwere a punch to my gut, Fin.”
He pauses, waiting, and my heart thumps wildly as I try to process his words.
He remembers what I was wearing on a random day almost fifteen years ago. I remember that day too. I remember that although I’d always noticed him, always wanted him to notice me, that day, he looked different. It had been too long since I’d seen him. I remember putting on that dress, hoping he’d look at me the way he is now. I remember feeling his stare following me for the first time, feeling pretty and powerful and desired.
“So you’re saying you liked my dress so much you got it tattooed on you?” I ask, lips curling into a smile.
He just shakes his head. “It wasn’t the dress, Fin. It was you.”
I stare up at his eyes, a hollow, swooping sensation building in my stomach. I can feel my heart beating in my chest, so hard I think he could probably see it moving beneath my skin. “What does that mean?”
Grey moves closer, closing the bit of space between us until there’s nothing but breath left, until his mouth is at my ear, and I can hear the shaky inhale he takes. “There’s only one woman I’ve ever wanted in Fontana Ridge, Finley.”
His words trickle over my skin like warm summer raindrops. I don’t think my lungs are working, and I think my heart has stopped beating, pausing until my breath and heartbeats sync with his.
My eyes trail up the long line of this throat, up the stubble covering his jaw, until they focus on the pale blue eyes that I’ve been dreaming of more and more as the summer has gone on. I don’t want to draw any conclusions about what he’s saying, but the moment my gaze locks on his, I know I’m not. The desire reflected in his eyes is the same as my own.
It’s the kind of desire that transcends the physical, that goes soul deep. Like when you hear a song that feels like it was written for you, and it’s the only thing you want to listen to, over and over again, because it makes you feel like nothing else does. It’s the kind of desire that you have for a piece of art. Art that speaks directly to a broken, fragile piece of your heart, that seems to heal it a little just by looking at it.
It’s the kind of desire you feel to know someone, to want to memorize them. To know them better than anyone else and betheirperson, the first one they call when they get good news or bad. The one they want to celebrate with and share their secrets with and hold on to when their world is falling apart.
“Grey—” I start.
He cuts me off, like he’s wanting to leave nothing up to interpretation. “It’s you, Fin.You’rethe only woman I’ve ever wanted, here or elsewhere. I couldn’t get you out of my head that summer, or any of the ones after. I was so gone for you that I drove two towns over and had someone tattoo your favorite flower on my ribs. And rib tattoos are a bitch, Fin.”
This makes a wet laugh startle out of me, choked with tears.
His hands still haven’t left my hips, and I feel his fingers digging in, pulling me flush against him until I can feel his heart beating against me, fast and hard, mirroring my own. “I wanted you so bad, and Holden knew it. So I told him I didn’t, that you were like an annoying little sister to me.”
I rememberthatmoment vividly, how it crushed me, how I used it as leverage to protect myself for years. And he was doing the same thing.
“You heard. And you hated me,” he breathes into my ear, his voice sounding pained. “I don’t blame you for it, because it was stupid of me. So I thought I’d bide my time. You couldn’t hate me forever. But—”
