He’d taken me home because I had told him I needed my own bed, and in that moment, I’d been wrecked enough that he hadn’t argued. But the disagreement or fight or whatever-the-hell-it-was that we’d had about the paparazzi and the boat had still lingered between us.
I know that we will have to deal with that, especially since we will need the boat to get to the island today. Granted, we could take one of the Stark International boats. Or even, god forbid, a helicopter. But Jackson’s office is on his boat, and if he wants to make the most of the trip, then he needs to have his computers, software, and other various gadgets and gizmos with him. But surely he didn’t already leave me to go there. Did he?
My body is stiff as I toss the sheet aside and then sit up in bed. I hug my knees to my chest, my attention drawn to the tattooed star on my ankle. Idly, I trace its design, as if by doing so I’m claiming it all over again. I want to claim it, because this star represents strength. It marks an escape—my flight from the home I’d grown to hate to boarding school in my sophomore year of high school.
I draw a breath, then get slowly out of bed, this time brushing my fingers over the ribbon inked at the juncture of my thigh, a ribbon covered with initials of men I cared nothing for, but needed in order to prove to myself that I was in control. Not Reed, who’d so greedily stolen control from me. Not those men whose initials now mark my legs.
Just me.
Me taking. Me holding. Me keeping so tight a grip on my world that there was no way it could spin out of control.
Slowly, I ease my hand around to my back and the intricately inked “J” entwined with an “S.” Cass had inked that tattoo five years ago, after I’d so brutally broken up with Jackson in Atlanta, shredding both our hearts in the process. At the time, I’d thought I could never have him back, and yet I couldn’t bear the thought of surviving without him. And so I’d kept a piece of him on me, a quiet reminder that he would always have my back—would always give me strength—even if he didn’t know it.
I close my eyes and sigh as I continue to move my hands over my body, this time coming to rest on the newest tattoo—a flame on my breast. Cass inked this one less than a month ago, when I’d pulled Jackson back into my life despite my better judgment. Out of the frying pan, she’d said, because I was leaping headfirst into the fire.
Hadn’t I learned the hard way that my nightmares were too close to the surface with Jackson? That the passion that pulsed between us wiped away all my control, leaving me soft and vulnerable—and too damn close to the nightmares and memories of Reed?
But I was desperate to save my resort and so I’d taken a deep breath, clothed myself in battle armor, and walked through the door into my own personal hell.
Jackson, of course, stripped all my defenses away. More than that, he’d turned everything around. And the man who had once conjured my demons now slays them. He keeps me sane. He keeps me safe.
He makes me feel loved and cherished and beautiful.
With Jackson, I can surrender control without opening the door to fear. To self-loathing.
With Jackson, I can lose myself to submission. To passion. To love.
We’ve come so far, he and I, but now I fear that we are about to hit a wall. That we’ve taunted the gods, and the gods are pissed.
I’m scared to death that he’s going to be arrested for murder. That he’s going to be yanked from me forever, and I hate that it is not just him that I am scared for, but myself, too. Because while I used to rely on my tats to give me strength, now I rely on Jackson.
I do not want to be a woman without the strength to stand on her own. But at the same time, I know that I am stronger with him than without him.
And oh, dear god, what will I do if I lose him?
I shiver, suddenly cold, and put on the T-shirt he’d left hanging over the back of a chair the last time we stayed here. It’s for Dominion Gate, a heavy metal band that he likes, and the hem hangs down almost to my knees and the whole shirt seems to swallow me.
My phone is on a table beside the chair and when I glance down and see that it is past four in the morning, my self-analysis turns into worry.
The door to my bedroom is shut, but now that my eyes have adjusted, I see that there is the faintest glow of light creeping in from the gap below the door. I open it, then step into the tiny area between my bedroom and my living room, moving quietly so that I don’t wake him if he’s fallen asleep out here.
As soon as I pass the utility closet and can see into the living room, I see him. Not inside, but out on my patio. He is perched on the side of the chaise, bent forward so that he is using the fold-up chair that Cass usually sits in as a make-shift desk. He’s got his tablet propped up and he’s sketching furiously on a pad of paper in his lap. His dark hair is tousled, as if he has been running his fingers through it, and I can hear the gentle scrape of lead against paper.
