AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Me too. It’s where I got the shirt.”
“Maybe we saw each other that night,” she said.
“Maybe,” he said as he took a seat on the edge of the bathtub.
“Are you going to watch me change?”
“Not if you don’t want me to. I’ll watch you do the other stuff though.”
She hesitated. “No one has seen me do my nighttime routine since my ex.”
“What was his name?”
“Brandon.”
“Brandon’s a shitbag. He and your parents deserve each other.”
A smile confiscated her face, and she ducked her gaze. She did like someone sticking up for her.
“Um, do you want to brush our teeth together?”
He immediately pushed off the bathtub and plucked his own toothbrush from the coffee mug he kept it in. She squirted some toothpaste on his, and they began to brush their teeth together. She had to admit, she enjoyed this comfort with another person.
“You kissed me,” she blurted out around a mouthful of toothpaste.
“I did,” he said, eyes on her reflection in the mirror. “It’s been awhile.”
“Hey, it hasn’t been that long. I will have you know I kissed someone in a bar after I broke up with Brandon.”
A long, low clicking sound filled the room. “Let’s change the subject,” Wreck gritted out.
The flames had reappeared in his eyes.
“Oh, like you haven’t kissed a million women.”
“I meant it had been awhile for me,” he said. He spat toothpaste and rinsed his mouth. He still wasn’t wearing a T-shirt, and she could see the tattoos on his back so clearly. There were two massive wings tattooed from the spine between his shoulders, and they spread all the way down the back of his arms, fading at his elbows. Along the backs of his forearms, the tattoos were very faint, and wouldn’t be recognizable if she didn’t know what the feathers were from the darker tattoo on his back.
She leaned forward and brushed her finger along the tattooed feather on the top of his shoulder. “I would’ve guessed it eventually.”
“How?” he asked.
She rinsed her mouth and set her toothbrush next to his in the cup.
“How?” he asked again as she turned toward him.
“Because phoenixes have always been important to me. You have a tattoo of the wings. I have a tattoo of the phoenix.”
He stood straighter, and his muscular chest rose as he crossed his arms over his chest. “You don’t have a phoenix tattoo,” he argued.
A small smile stretched her face as she turned her hip toward him, lifted the hem of her T-shirt, and pulled down the top of her shorts, exposing the phoenix tattoo she had going down the entire length of her thigh.
“It’s black-and-white,” he uttered. Shock was etched into every angle of his face.
“I like color on other people, but for me, just black ink. I’ll leave the fire colors to you.”
His eyes were so full of…something. “You have a phoenix tattoo,” he whispered. “Why?”
“I got it after I went no-contact with my parents. That saying you recited earlier—the one where the phoenix rises from the ashes? I needed a reminder that I was rising, even on the hard days. And then you tell me you’re a phoenix?” She shook her head. “Everything feels so big, and so important right now.”
