Total pages in book: 150
Estimated words: 136791 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 684(@200wpm)___ 547(@250wpm)___ 456(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 136791 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 684(@200wpm)___ 547(@250wpm)___ 456(@300wpm)
His chest and abdomen are covered in tattoos, too. There's an intricate hourglass tattooed over his heart with a distorted clock inside seemingly being sucked down into the bottom of the hourglass. The glass is shattered, the sand escaping through the cracks to blow away. The hands of the clock are frozen at 10:19—the minute our world shattered.
The words "just breathe" are barely visible in the design, as if he wanted the reminder to keep breathing tattooed on his skin but didn't want it to mean anything to anyone but him.
My name runs along the left side of his ribcage, but each letter is crafted from words I can't quite make out.
The same symbol he had tattooed on him when we were younger, the Aquarius zodiac sign he got to represent me, now litters his skin in a dozen or more different places. Each symbol is blended into the most breathtaking artwork I've ever seen. My face stares back at me from his right pectoral, that symbol reflecting in my eyes. My hair falls around my face like waves. It's me, only I'm so much more beautiful in his skin than I am in my own. Somehow, I seem happy and sad at the same time. Whoever did the artwork had to be incredibly talented to capture so much emotion.
I think all of those tattoos with the zodiac sign are also about me, but I don't understand what they mean. The powerful emotion whispering from each repetition takes my breath away. There's so much grief etched into his skin, so much unspoken pain. It tears at my heart, breaking it into little pieces for him.
There's an angry red scar across his side, like someone took a knife and ripped him open from the bottom of his ribcage, down his abdomen to his hip. There's another jagged scar across the ridges of his abdomen. He's got two smaller scars that look like bullet wounds on his chest and another beneath his ribcage on the other side. There's another cut on his sternum, and two small teardrop-like scars over his collarbone.
"Cade," I whisper, tears springing to my eyes as I try to process what he just revealed to me. My hand trembles as I reach up to trace the scar across his side and then my name.
He freezes, his body going rigid above mine.
I lift my gaze to his face to find his expression twisted into one of intense pain.
"What happened to you?" I whisper, though I'm not sure if I'm talking about the scars, the tattoos, or both. It's obvious the last seven years have been full of suffering for him. I desperately want to understand why he tattooed reminders of that pain all over his body. Why did he tattoo me all over him?
"Life happened," he says, his voice gruff and bitter. His lips twist, self-loathing sliding through his expression. "Nothing I didn't deserve."
"Don't say that." I nudge him, trying to move him so I can sit up.
Once he moves back, I slide up on the couch until we're sitting face to face.
He wipes a tear off my cheek. "Don't cry for me, January. Believe me, I'm not worth the tears."
"Don't say that either," I snap, pissed off that he's acting like this is nothing and hurting for him at the same time. Whatever he thinks he did that was so bad…he's been punishing himself for it for years. I think that's why he left me, too. To punish himself. The evidence of that truth is written all over him in scars and ink not even time will erase. I just don't understand why.
What did he do that was so bad he thinks he deserves all of this pain? All of this torment?
"Will you tell me?" I ask, my gaze flickering over his tattoos. "Tell me what they mean."
He shakes his head and swallows. "I'd rather not talk about it," he says, avoiding my gaze. "It's over and done with, and it doesn't matter now."
"That's not true. Don't tell me they don't matter when I can see how bad they are, Cade."
"I work with gangs, baby girl. You know better than anyone what they're capable of," he says, leaning forward and putting his elbows on his knees. He tips his head forward, pushing his fingers through his hair. "The scars are a hazard of the job."
"I wasn't talking about the scars," I snap at him, annoyed he's pretending he doesn't know what I was talking about. We both know he knows what I meant. The scars are self-explanatory. It's the tattoos currently wrecking me. "I'm talking about the tattoos. They're so sad. I want to know what they mean."
"They mean…fuck, they mean I spent seven goddamn years without you, okay?" He pushes himself to his feet and paces in a restless circle. "I don't want to talk about them."