“I know you won’t. I don’t think I was the only one hurting.”
“You weren’t,” he admits. “Let me get us cleaned up and then we can talk.” He pulls out and we both groan. “I can’twait to be inside you again.” He kisses my forehead and then rushes off to the bathroom.
We clean up quickly and grab a bite to eat. We even cleaned up our mess in the kitchen. I guess we’ll have to learn how to cook another day.
“I like this,” he says, when I lay my head against his bare chest.
“Me too. Can I ask you something?” I lift my head and balance my chin on his pec.
“You can ask me anything.”
“Hmm…where have I heard that before?” I tease him, remembering he said that exact phrase to me once online. He just rolls his eyes. “It might ruin the vibe.”
“What do you want to know, trouble?”
I nibble at my lip, debating how badly I want to know the number of people Koa has been with. “How many sexual partners have you had?” I blurt out.
“Including you?” he questions. I nod. “One. You are the only person I’ve ever seen. You are the only person I’ve ever wanted. You were my first and you’ll be my last.”
I drop my head. He’s never been with anyone. He stayed faithful to me the entire time even though we weren’t together. And I…
“Don’t do that,” he says, lifting me onto him like a blanket. “I don’t give a fuck who you were with in the past. I knew they meant nothing before you even got with them because you were always going to end up here.”
“You seem pretty confident.”
“I am. If you look close enough, you would have seen it all along too. Really look,” he says, pointing to his tattoos.
“I felt it. Loving you was too easy but I had to ignore it to protect myself,” I say then start looking at his tattoos on his chest and arm.
He sighs and kisses my forehead. “I hate that you went through that.”
“Trouble,” I read his tattoo out loud. I never thought twice about this word being tattooed over his heart. For years I saw the tattoo thinking it was about turning eighteen and being rebellious. “It was for me.”
He nods. “They all are.” He places my palm on his chest. I trace over the lines of the tattoo that coil around my nickname.
“What is all of this?” I ask, examining the decorative lines of his tattoo that covers his pecs and doesn’t end until it reaches his left shoulder. Upon closer inspection they look like leaves lined up end to end in various shapes and sizes to create a geometric pattern.
“What do you think it is?”
“It looks like leaves.”
“Willow tree leaves. One for every week since we were together the first time. I added to it every year,” he confesses. Water instantly fills my lash line. I inhale a deep breath hoping it can stop the wave of emotions I’m feeling. “While you were fighting hard to forget, I was doing whatever I could to holdon.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry. You were hurting because of me.”
“And you were hurting because of me.” I kiss the tattoo over his heart.
“But we’re together now. No matter what, remember?” he asks, twisting his right arm to show me his newest tattoo.
I gasp noticing the upgraded version of my body paint job from our date. I graze my fingers over the stars that seem to shimmer in the sky with whatever technique the artist used. I swallow hard. “You did it.”
“What did I do?”
“I don’t remember why I ever stopped loving you.”
24
