Page 63 of Call My Bluff
Olivia snorted and rolled her eyes. “Wow,” she drawled, “that was cheesy. You got any other lines in there?”
Noah finished his nachos and rose to stand, discarding his trash the same way she had. “No, but I have something else,” he said, reaching into his back pocket. He withdrew a square of white paper that appeared to be blank—at least as far as Olivia could tell.
“What’s that?” she asked.
“Your prize,” Noah replied. He came back and slung one leg over the bench so he was straddling it beside her. “Turn around,” he ordered.
Olivia crossed her arms in protest. “I don’t remember giving you permission to boss me around quite so much,” she said, but Noah only grinned.
“I prefer to ask for forgiveness instead of permission,” he quipped. “Now, turn.” He twirled his index finger in a circle, and Olivia finally turned her back to him.
“Close your eyes,” he said.
“But—”
“Are you going to argue about every single thing?”
Olivia almost laughed, though she bit down on her lip hard enough to keep most of it in check. “Fine,” she huffed, and she closed her eyes. The sights of the park disappeared, but her other senses went into overdrive. Laughter from the playground nearby drifted through the early spring air, which played with her hair and ruffled the sleeves of her shirt. She felt Noah move closer behind her, and his body heat seeped through her clothes as he pressed his chest against her back.
His left hand drifted down the outside of her arm, and when he reached her wrist, he turned it over—palm up—and laid it across the top of her leg. Then he held something against her skin just below the joint. “This will be cold,” he warned, and a moment later he wiped what felt like ice water across her arm.
A tattoo! He was giving her a temporary tattoo!
Olivia’s eyes flew open and darted down to the white square on her arm where an image was now barely visible through the wet paper.
Noah chuckled, the sound rumbling through her body everywhere they touched. “I didn’t say you could look yet,” he reminded her, but she didn’t care.
“What is it?” she asked, and Noah carefully peeled the paper away before dabbing at the moisture with a dry napkin. She cocked her head in confusion, looking at the honeybee on her arm. It was surrounded by flowers and the faint shape of a hexagon. It was beautiful, really, but why would he—
Laughter rolled out unhindered as she got the punchline. “It’s ahoney bug!” she exclaimed, delighted. She twisted to see his face over her shoulder. “Where did you find this?”
“It’s amazing what you can win at the arcade,” he said with a shrug. “I looked for birds, but I didn’t figure you wanted a parrot in a pirate’s hat. If you don’t like it, you can wash it off.”
Olivia held her arm protectively against her chest, appalled by the very idea. “No!” she blurted. “I love it! I’m going to have it stenciled on my face!”
“That might be a bit much.”
“Absolutely not! And you’re going to get one, too, so we can match.”
Noah laughed faintly. “What if I get a pixie fairy instead?” he compromised.
Olivia pretended to consider this. “Alright,” she agreed, “but when people ask about it, you have to tell them it’s a birthmark.”
His smile faded slightly, and his eyes darted down to one side. Olivia followed his gaze and saw him turn his arm over, showing his own tattoo—the one that definitelywasn’ta birthmark. “This is a Daria knot,” he said. “In Celtic stories, it stands for inner strength and wisdom.”
Olivia sucked in a breath and held it, afraid to break whatever spell had compelled him to tell her the truth.
He tilted his arm from side to side, as if examining the ink in the evening light. “My dad disappeared when I was fourteen—just packed a bag, cleaned out the bank account and vanished. Turns out he had a girlfriend with a baby on the way, and he chose them over us.”
Olivia’s chest tightened as she listened. He’d said his father was a magician; now his answer made sense.
“Everything changed after that,” he went on. “Mom had been planning to open a restaurant, but instead we lost our house. I had to transfer schools, and I stopped playing baseball because I was working every hour I wasn’t asleep or in class. One summer, I cleaned bathrooms at a gas station and got paid in Rice-A-Roni.” His voice changed pitch, as if just saying that out loud was painful. “So I got the tattoo to remind me that what didn’t kill me made me stronger—that I can withstand a whole lot more than I thought I could.”
Olivia turned all the way to one side, until she was basically sitting in his lap. “You didn’t have to tell me that,” she whispered, watching his eyes. “I was kidding about the bee.”
“I know,” he answered quickly, “but I just started feeling like you should know. Iwantyou to know. It’s part of who I am.”
Olivia had no idea what to say. She watched the shadows on his face shift as the lamppost beside their table came on. Then, in a totally impulsive move, she took his chin in her hand and planted a kiss along the edge of his jaw. “Thank you,” she murmured.
