Page 10 of Rex's Honor
“It’s late. I’m tired.” No way. She didn’t dare to tell him. And it didn’t matter.
“Come on, just tell me.”
She squeezed her eyes closed and let out a long sigh. “The same one you have on your biceps.”
3
“Are you serious?” Rex bolted upright, ripping the covers from their bodies. He reached across her and flicked on the reading lamp. “You’ve got this on your neck?” He tapped the tattoo he’d gotten right before they graduated from high school. The intention had been that they would both get the tattoo, but after watching the needles dig into his arm, Tilly had chickened out. He couldn’t blame her. It did hurt, and the smell of burning flesh was an acquired taste. “When?”
“About seven years ago.” She sat up and rubbed the back of her neck, her hair flowing over her shoulders. “I’d finished my initial service for the Peace Corps and extended my stay. I went home for a week for a family wedding, and I found a box of stuff from high school. The drawing we took to the guy who did yours was there, and I remembered my promise. So, I got it.”
He ignored the fact that the wedding she referred to had been his mother's to her father, a thought that still weirded him out on so many levels. “Can I see it?” His pulse raced faster than the first time he’d run into a burning building. Of course, the second he’d crossed the threshold, he didn’t notice his heartbeat, and his training kicked in.
No one had ever trained him on how to deal with an ex-girlfriend who fulfilled a promise long after the relationship ended, never telling him about it either.
She turned, raising her hair up, exposing the back of her neck and a matching tattoo.
“Why? Why did you do that?” He reached out with a shaky hand, his index finger hovering over the letters. He recoiled when she let her hair fall. The wavy locks bounced over her shoulders.
“I don’t know. Maybe in a weird way, I thought I owed it to you. Or maybe it was closure.”
He pushed her hair to the side, unmasking the symbol that once represented their undying love. He inched closer, studying the design. “This is a little different than mine.”
“No, it’s not.” She tried to turn, but he grabbed her arms, holding her steady.
“What’s this?” He followed the lines—there were letters etched in the lining of one of the hearts—R K J. “My initials?” His throat dropped to his stomach. A woman didn’t permanently scar her skin with a man’s name when she was looking for closure.
She cleared her throat, smoothing down her hair as she scooted to the edge of the bed. “I was feeling sentimental.”
“Seriously? You tattooed my initials into your neck over an emotional moment about the past?”
She sprang from the bed, her head hitting the low ceiling.
“Shit,” she whispered, sitting back down.
“Are you okay?” He palmed her shoulder, his fingers tangling in her soft hair.
“My head is fine, but I’m not.” She shrugged his arm off. “It wasn’t an emotional moment, as you called it. You’re a huge part of my past, and I wanted something from that time. My dad and your mom had just gotten married and?—”
“And their union made you want to engrave me on your neck?”
“I’m sorry this is freaking you out.”
“I’m not the one who just leaped from the bed.” He patted the mattress. “I am, however, very curious.” He was more than curious. He was utterly fascinated, not to mention it inflated his bruised ego when it came to how easily Tilly let him walk away. For the first time in ten years, he felt connected to the past that had ultimately betrayed him in the worst way.
“I never had any intention of telling you.” She pulled her hair to the side, twirling it in her hands as she leaned back against the headboard. “I thought if I got the tattoo, I would be able to prove to myself that I was finally over you leaving me. The initials I had done a year later when I got the butterflies.”
“So, I was an afterthought,” he mumbled, unsure of the sensations swirling in his gut. He positioned himself next to her, their arms touching ever so slightly, but enough that it generated the kind of raw heat that reminded him she was every bit a woman.
“I wouldn’t say an afterthought, exactly. I really don’t know how to explain it all without sounding like a crazy, psycho ex-girlfriend.”
“Yeah, it’s a little nuts.” His thoughts bounced through his past like a rubber ball from one memory to the next, landing on the last time he saw her and the utter pain it had put in his soul. He didn’t deny that she felt it too. He never had. But she chose everything but him and that hurt more than what his mother had done.
“Trust me, I know. But getting over you dumping me was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do.”
“Harder than living in a third-world country?” he asked. Dumbass question, but the mood was too intense, and he neededa little lightness to get through it. “And I need to clear up one thing. I didn’t dump you.”
“Oh my God. Yes, you did. Why can’t you admit it? Sometimes you are most definitely more stubborn than I am.”
