I can’t help but wonder what story she saw, what narrative my absence created on his body. How many hours did he spend under her needle, welcoming the pain as a distraction from searching for a ghost?
My fingers find another piece on his right arm. A shattered hourglass, sand spilling across his skin in a constellation of scattered dots. Time lost. Time wasted. The symbolism isn’t subtle, but not everything has to be.
“Did it hurt?” A stupid question. Of course, it hurt.
Ezra’s laugh ruffles my hair. “That was the point.”
I trace a path down his sternum, following the central line of his body where the tattoos thin out, giving way to unmarked skin.
“And this one?” My finger circles a simple design above his heart, smaller than the others, a stylized key inked in black.
His hand covers mine, flattening my palm over the tattoo. His heart beats steady beneath my touch, a metronome of life and warmth. “That one’s for you.”
The admission steals my breath. I want to pull away, put distance between us, but his hand holds mine in place.
“Why a key?” I manage.
“You know why.” His golden-hazel eyes find mine, intense in the afternoon light. “You had the key to everything, and you took it with you when you left.”
The room becomes too small, the air too thick. I focus on breathing, on the steady rise and fall of his chest beneath my hand. “I never meant to?—”
“Yes, you did.” No anger, just a simple statement of fact. “You understood what you were doing when you took that check and disappeared.”
He’s right, and we both know it. So I remain silent, my fingers resuming their exploration of his skin, tracing patterns between the islands of ink.
Ezra shifts, his free hand finding my chin, tilting my face up to his. “But you came back.”
“Not by choice,” I remind him.
“Does it matter? You’re here now.” His thumb brushes across my lower lip. “You gave me your real name.”
I look away. “It could have been another lie.”
“No, it wasn’t,Ren,” he murmurs, testing it again, and a response rings through me, striking a chord tied to my broken soul. “MyRen.”
He leans down, kissing my temple in a gesture so gentle that my chest aches. His breath ghosts warm across my skin, and for a dangerous, foolish moment, I let myself believe it means more than it can.
That somewhere beneath the pain and the hunt and the obsession, a real connection exists between us. That the boy whoonce looked at me like I was the answer to questions he hadn’t yet learned to ask is still there, beneath the harder edges of the man he’s become.
But I know better. I’ve spent fifteen years in the forgery business, learning to see beneath the surface of beautiful things. And Ezra Rockford has become a weapon, a beautiful, dangerous thing crafted with precise intention.
His expression used to soften when he looked at me. Now he calculates even moments like this. Measuring my reactions, cataloging my weaknesses. The Ezra I knew burned with idealism and passion for beauty.
This Ezra has learned to weaponize both.
And yet, his heartbeat beneath my palm remains steady and true, his fingers in my hair tender. For this suspended moment between night and day, between the lies of yesterday and the truths of tomorrow, I let myself melt into his touch.
His free hand traces patterns on my bare shoulder, mirroring my exploration of his tattoos. We map each other in silence, charting territories both familiar and strange.
“What are you thinking?” he asks, breaking the quiet.
The honest answer would be too revealing, too dangerous. So I offer a partial truth instead. “Your tattoo artist is talented.”
His chest rumbles with silent laughter. “There you go, lying again.”
My lips curve despite myself. “Guess you didn’t break the habit.”
“I will.” His fingers tighten in my hair. “I’m going to break you apart and then put you back together.”
