Page 205 of A Taste of Vanilla

His breathing shifts. “After the job.”

I look up and catch him watching my fingers.

“I was angry,” he says.

“What did you do?”

“I worked somewhere else. Got that tattoo.”

“The snake?”

“A reminder.”

“Of what?”

He’s quiet before saying, “To stop mistaking stillness for safety.”

Oh, Warren.

His eyes lift, and I trace the flowers on his arm. “And did you?”

“No.”

I shift back before leaning forward and kissing the tattoo. Once, then twice. His hand closes around my waist.

I lift my head.

He looks at me like I’ve touched something under his skin, and I put one hand on his chest, over the raven. “You shouldn’t have had to hide. Or earn your own life after raising someone else.”

His fingers tighten around my wrist.

“You should have gotten the job.”

He looks away.

“They were lucky to see your work,” I say. “They were stupid not to keep you.”

For a second, when he looks at me, he looks younger. Not soft, not broken, just surprised.

Like no one has ever handed his hurt back to him and said, “this isn’t yours to carry.”

The ache in my chest becomes unbearable.

His hand slides into my hair, and he kisses me.

It’s slower, but still rough. Like he’s trying to saythank youandplease don’t do thisandI don’t know what to do with all of thisall at once.

I kiss him back because I don’t know either.

Because his tattoos are under my hands, and his past is in this room, and he is here with me.

And because I think I’m falling in love with him.

The thought arrives suddenly and quietly. Without fireworks. Just the truth, sitting in the middle of my unfinished apartment with no shoes on.

I think I’m falling in love with Warren King.

A terrible man to choose emotionally, really. Temporary and deeply attached to lists. Suspicious of whimsy. Somehow both emotionally repressed and devastatingly good at making room for my pain.