Page 65 of Back To You

“I love you,” he echoes, and the three words hold more meaning than the world’s longest love confession.

There is still so much more to say, but I let our rushed touches and the swipes of our tongues be enough answers for now.

Luke pulls back, and I have to bite back the embarrassing whimper I almost let out. “Does this mean I’m yours?” he asks, and the smile that makes my heart skip a beat is back and better than ever. His blue eyes are shining in the low light of the living room, the sun of the early summer evening peeking through the blinds.

I roll my eyes. “Are you asking me to be your girlfriend?” I tease, thinking the term sounds so trivial after everything we’ve been through.

“No, silly. I’m asking ifIcan be your boyfriend.”

“I’d say yes, but I don’t see a rose this time around.” The memory of the first time he asked is now at the forefront of my mind for the second time tonight.

“It’s funny you say that.” He taps the tops of my thighs, helping me ease off him as he stands up, unzipping his jeans.

“What have I told you about keeping it in your pants?” I scoff, but I can’t fight the smile as he tugs down his jeans, thinking he probably has roses on his boxers or something.

“You said you wanted a rose,” he replies, and he turns to the side with rose-free black boxer briefs and his jeans at his knees, his thigh exposed but not uncovered. “How’s this one?” he adds, but I can’t look at his face. I’m too busy staring at the rose tattooed on his thigh, the one in black and gray ink, about the size of my palm, with thorned vines. It’s similar to the style of Eddie’s tattoos—what he told me is American Traditional—so the rose is bold and stark against Luke’s skin.

“When the hell did you get that?” I can’t help but exclaim; my feelings for what this rose is and what it stands for going straight to my chest. The placement and look of it going straight to my core.

Luke smirks, raising a brow. “You like it?”

“Tell me when you got it,” I demand, crossing my arms and trying to look him in the eyes and not where Iwantto be looking at him right now.

“I got it for you.”

“I said, ‘when’, not ‘why’, dummy.”

“Same difference.”

I give him a smirk of my own, standing up, ready to take back the upper hand. “Copycat.”

Confusion dawns on his face before he’s hit with a realization. I had an inkling he might have spotted my little secret the night he had me sprawled on his kitchen counter, but he never said anything.

“Show me,” he commands.

My rose tattoo is on my hip, so I hook my thumb in my shorts and bring them down a few inches for him to see.

“Looks like it’s official, huh?”

“What, that I’m yours?” I look down at my small stemmed rose, the fine line tattoo contrasting with Luke’s, and the boldness of his and the softness of mine doesn’t escape me. “This isn’t some brand of ownership.”

“Oh, mine is. I’m yours, Annie girl. You own me—every part of me. Always have, always will.”

Chapter 25

Luke

Annie left before I woke up this morning for her very first day of her vet school rotations. She has a few weeks at her school’s teaching hospital and then a few weeks at the zoo to start off her long year of rotating between different places to work under all kinds of veterinarians.

I made sure her stuff for her matcha was out and ready for her before I went to sleep last night, along with her lunch packed and a note wishing her luck.

The events of last night are still a fresh wound on my skin, and I can’t stop thinking of everything that was thrown out in the open after so many years.

There’s a stinging pain at the thought of how one night had such an impact on Annie and me, but that pain reminds me that it’s not all in the past.

Something I have only been able to imagine, but it is finally a reality: Annie said she never stopped loving me.

She loves me.

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