His hand slid from my shoulder to my neck, awakening every cell in its path. His touch was tentative, like he was giving me time to pull away.
Time seemed to slow, marked only by the steady drip of water and the increasing pace of my heartbeat as his stare found my lips.
Every breath between us felt charged, heavy with years of wanting, of almost moments and might-have-beens, dissolving like fog on the glass.
I tilted my face up slightly, willing him to lower his lips to mine, to claim my mouth with his own. The tension between us was like a live wire, one pulse away from exploding, and somehow, I knew that if we kissed, it wouldn’t stop there. Couldn’t. After years of fantasizing over Blake Morrison, I needed him, all of him, a fresh throb pulsing between my thighs to accentuate the point.
On the outside, this moment would look like a perfect romantic breaking point: two half-naked people, dripping wet, my nipples visible through the thin fabric of my bra beneath the towel that loosened around my shoulders, which could so easily be dropped. But inside our minds was an ocean of reasons.
I could see his playing out in the features of his face, could see it when he shifted back slightly, could hear it when he cleared his throat.
It was then that his attention drifted to the scar on my collarbone, the one he’d noticed in the ER.
His entire body tensed, just like mine had done all those years ago when I’d seen something on his body that he never meant for me to see. Something that had changed everything between us. Intricate patterns of ink now laced around his torso, a beautiful canvas of elements that cohesively blended together. On him, the tattoos looked like they belonged there, like they’d always painted his skin, but I remembered a time when his skin told a different story …
34
TESSA
The memory hit me with startling clarity—standing in Ryker’s doorway, seventeen and clueless about how one moment could change everything between us.
I’d opened the door to discover Blake. In the middle of changing.
His head snapped up, muscles tensing beneath skin that made my breath catch. In all the time he’d spent with my brother, I had never seen him shirtless, not even during pool days when the summer heat assaulted us, when the air conditioner couldn’t keep up. He’d always kept his shirt on, which I’d found strange. I mean, it was clear that beneath his fitted shirts, Blake had the kind of muscles other guys dreamed of, with curved arms and a flat stomach that hinted at defined abs. Any other guy would look for every excuse to show off that body, but Blake always hid it.
Always.
Standing in my brother’s bedroom, I understood why with heartbreaking clarity.
“Get the fuck out, Tessa.” Blake’s voice shattered the silence.
Two things struck me with that one sentence. First, he’d never yelled at me like that before. Not once. Second, he’d also never sworn at me before. This wasn’t the Blake I knew, the one who’d save me the last slice of pizza every time he came over. This was a cornered animal, wounded and terrified.
Other people would probably be offended by his death glare, his cutting tone, but I sensed those were tools in his belt to push anyone away who’d gotten too close to seeing what was all over his torso: scars of various sizes and colors, scars that didn’t belong on a teenage boy’s body. Each one looked like a cry carved into his skin.
“Blake,” I whispered, stepping forward instead of back. “I?—”
“Don’t.” He stepped back, but the movement only emphasized the scars, making them stretch and shift, like pale rivers across his skin. “Just … don’t.”
I thought about everything I knew about Blake’s past: parents dead in an accident he wasn’t in, bouncing between foster homes. One of which he’d only ever described as “bad.” That word echoed in my mind as I took in the unnatural lines carved into his skin. How many nights had he lain awake, carrying these marks alone?
“Get out!” he snapped again.
But I didn’t. Instead, I shut the door behind me, not knowing what had come over me. Maybe it was his eyes, eyes clearly riddled with pain. Or maybe it was the way his chest heaved as his breathing quickened or how incredibly vulnerable this huge, muscular guy now appeared, but something inside me told me not to leave him. That leaving him was the worst thing I could do right now.
He might be Ryker’s best friend, but he’d been in my life for years, too, forging a friendship of our own. One that suddenly felt more fragile and more precious than ever before.
I closed the distance between us, drawn by the raw vulnerability in his eyes, a storm of defiance and desperation that made my heart ache. When I lifted my hand toward the jagged line across his ribs, Blake flinched but held his ground. Our eyes locked, and I watched the war play out in his features: trust or retreat, stay or run. His breath came in short bursts as my fingertips found his skin, tracing the raised ridge of his largest scar—a chapter of his story written in flesh and pain.
“Who did this to you?” I whispered, my vision blurring.
Why? How could they? The thoughts burned in my chest like acid.
He was silent for several seconds, and I was afraid—so afraid—he’d run and never come back, that I’d never see him again.
But instead, he spoke to me, his tone so low that I almost couldn’t hear it. “I couldn’t stop him. I couldn’t—I was too …” His voice cracked, and with it, something in my heart cracked too.
“You survived,” I said firmly, looking up to meet his gaze. “That’s not weakness, Blake. That’s courage.”
