A family who had coincidentally just gotten on a plane back to Connecticut, leaving just Harper and me.
And my new tattoo!
“Vamos, Oso!” I said excitedly, defaulting to the pet name he’d earned in our year together after those brown bear eyes–and I guess now the hand drawn tattoo to match! “Today please. I’ll be old and gray before you rip this thing off me.”
“And married. With three kids and six grandkids and a nice, patient, very good-looking husband.” He said, painting the scene as clearly as he drew his art.
I snickered. “And I assume this husband and father of my children is…”
He nipped at my thigh, dragging his teeth across my skin until I giggled. “Me, you smartass!”
“Oh right, right.” I teased. But I was warm with the light of himconsidering me as his even in his hypothetical scenarios. “How could I forget?”
Gingerly, he began peeling the adhesive tapings of the gauze up at the sides while he crouched beside my half-naked body in his bedroom.
As the image etched into my skin became revealed to him alone, his warm lip came over the bone of my hip and his eyes flickered up to me one last time. Nervously, I realized. He was nervous to show me what he’d done. What he’d chosen for me.
“Ready?” he asked again, more for him than for me at this point.
My hand went to his hair, pushing through the curls and sweeping back around to the underside of his jaw so he would look at me. He held his breath.
“Like a gift,” I reminded him. Just like he told me when I’d given him his tattoo. “I will love anything you’ve given me, amor. So show me.”
He took a deep breath, a huge breath. Readying himself as if this was his first tattoo, not mine. And then he peeled the last barrier between him and me away. Letting me see into his mind. Letting me see what he saw in me.
And it was beautiful.
From waist to hip, running the side of my body was the creeping tendrils of a cracking bolt of lightning. It bracketed out in several branches with smaller streaks surging from the main ones. And periodically at the ends of different lightning rods, there were sprouting flowers, simple and beautiful.
As if that wasn’t enough, looking closer I could see that, drawn into the image of two unsuspecting streaks of lightning, were small words that read “Beautiful Storm.”
My breath shuddered, and tears pooled in my eyes. Harper was on me in a second. Gathering me up, his head pressed to my head, his nose on my nose, his words apologetic, of all things.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I can cover it up. It’s mostly lines, it’ll be easy to change?—”
I kissed him, hoping my lips could convey what my reaction obviously wasn’t able to. When I pulled away and looked at him, he looked unconvinced.
“You think I’m beautiful?” I asked, happy–sohappy.
He shook his head. “Baby, you know that. I think you’re the most precious thing.”
I smiled, but my emotion took over, more tears bursting free and making me laugh. “You think I’m a storm?”
Realization washed over him and finally he understood that I wasn’t crying because I hated it. I was crying because of him. Because all this time he had thought of me this way and I had no idea.
Ever since that day we promised ourselves to each other truly he had taken our new agreement as seriously as an oath, making good on our promises, easy and hard.
But somehow I suspected it was easy for Harper—my Harper—to rise to his feet and take my face in his hands to tell me another ode to our love.
“Alta, you are the most breathtaking wind that has ever blown into my life. You’re the most jarring mixture of beauty and strength I’ve ever known. You’re the most decisive strike of fate that’s ever cut through my world,” he said. “You are the most beautiful storm, baby. And anyone who gets the pleasure of having you wash over them should be damn grateful. Because I know I am. Forever.”
That word sounded like a promise falling off his lips.
“Forever,” I promised right back.
***
