Page 110 of Mine Again
She falls into me like she was meant to. Like her body still remembers where it belongs.
“Isa,” I breathe, steadying her.
Her skin is warm. Too warm.
Her breath is shallow and unsteady. Damn, I wish I didn’t have to drug her to get her here. But I can’t deny that I love how her head rests against my chest like it used to, like the past five years never happened.
I press one hand to the small of her back, the other under her knees, and lift her. She weighs nothing and everything at once.
She’s still out, but her lashes twitch. Her lips part, as if she were mid-sentence with me in a dream.
I carry her to the bed and lower her gently onto the sheets, sitting down next to her. A strand of hair falls across her cheek, and I brush it back.
God, look at her.
She’s so damn beautiful. Much more so than through the surveillance footage or the cold glow of a monitor.
She’s finally here. Back in my arms. In my bed.
And still mine. Forever now.
I let my fingertips trace the line of her jaw. Her cheekbone. I find every freckle and recommit it to memory. Every inch of her is familiar and new at the same time.
The face I’ve studied for years. The skin I’ve ached to touch. The only girl who’s ever had my heart.
But she’s no longer a girl. She’s all woman now.
Her body tells the story.
Defined muscles in her thighs and arms from the workouts her father insisted on and the archery she never gave up, even after I was gone.
There’s a softness in some places, strength in others. The shape of her waist, the slope of her hip. All of it changed, refined, matured.
But it’s more than that.
My eyes catch something new. A thin, pale scar on the inside of her lower arm, barely visible unless you’re this close.
It wasn’t there before. I would have noticed.
I notice everything.
What happened here?
I brush my thumb across it lightly, then scan the rest of her in quiet search for more.
There’s another mark too, fainter, along her ribs. It disappears beneath the edge of the sheet. Something the world doesn’t see. But it’s mine to see now.
These are the details no camera could ever capture. No lens sharp enough to catch the stories written into her skin.
The girl I left behind didn’t have these scars. But this woman does.
And I want to know every one of them and why they’re there.
My hand stills over her arm, fingers curled slightly. Possessive. Anchoring.
Whatever she faced while I was gone, she faced alone.
Never again.
