Page 51 of Blue Norther
I nodded, my greedy little heart wishing that maybe there would be a day when the chivalry slipped…
Colt
“Go to sleep, Violet.” I sighed as I watched her eyes pop up to my face. She’d been caught red handed staring at me, and I had to shove it to the back of my mind because that heat in her eyes was sending signals to my body that I didn’t want to press her on.
Grabbing the bottom edge of my shirt, I yanked it up over my head. Violet gasped, and my head whipped around to see what was wrong.
Her mouth dropped open, and she pointed at my chest.
“What is that?”
Shit. There was a reason I’d been changing in the bathroom all this time. Aside from it being a little weird to get naked in front of each other when we hadn’t been that intimate in years, I wasn’t sure how she would react to the newest tattoo on my body.
“It’s a tattoo,” I answered, trying to keep my voice even and unaffected by how wide her eyes were.
“Obviously it’s a tattoo,” she whispered, pointing to my chest. “I’m asking why the hell you have aviolettattooed on you.”
“Are you mad?”
I’d told her seven years ago, I would never give up on us. I’d already had the tattoo for two years at that point. She was always with me.
“I’m confused. Why would you do that?”
Come on, Vi. I told you the truth. You know it. You know you’ll always be the only person I want.
“You can’t think of any reason?”
“Why a violet, Colt?” She wasn’t going to back down.
“It’s my favorite flower.” I winked at her, but she just crossed her arms and sighed.
“No it’s not. Tulips are.”
There was no way I could hold back my laughter. “YouknowI only said that because it riled you up, Vi. I like it when you’re flustered with me.”
“Colt.”
“It’s not a big deal.” I shrugged my shoulders, turning to the dresser.
“It’s a very, very big deal.”
I could feel her gaze roaming across my body again. My tattoos were all special to me. In fact, Violet was there, sitting next to me for each one I put on my body. In a weird way, it felt fitting that the one I would carry with me through the void of our divorce to feel close to her, was the singular tattoo she had no idea about. My tattoos covered my arms, my thighs—but my chest was clear, except for two dates. The first was when we met, all those years ago in middle school. And the second was the day we were married. They were faded now, both more than a decade old. The flowers were faded, too. They’d been on my skin, a part of my body, for years.
It made my heart ache. All that time, gone.
“When did you get it?” she asked.
“The day our divorce was finalized.” There was no use lying.
She nodded, but her eyes went unfocused and drifted toward the ceiling. “Why?”
“Because I wanted to have you with me. Always. I knew I needed to let you go, but I couldn’t. Not completely. This was my way of giving you what you needed, and still holding on to you.”
I finally pulled a fresh shirt over my head. My hand slid along the wall until it hit the light switch and drenched the room in darkness. I marched over to the bed and got in beside her, wrapping my arms around Vi so that she was pressed against my chest and I could hold her belly. And then I did something frivolous. Silly. Wonderfully reminiscent of a time I'd wanted for so long to go back to. I kissed her temple.
“You’re the only woman I’ve ever wanted, Vi. I let you go knowing that. There isn’t another person out in the world that I want to lay down next to at night and wake up with my arms wrapped around in the morning. It’s always been you.”
And it always will be.
