16. Kayla

Chapter 16

Kayla

After a quick shower, I find Ryan stretched out face down on my bed, half asleep and so hot it hurts to look at him. His back glistens with a thin sheen of sweat, and I run one fingertip along the length of his spine, squeezing his perfect bum to rouse him from his slumber. He murmurs softly, twisting to face me. His hair is a mess from my fingers, his lips a little puffy from kissing so hard.

While I pull on fresh underwear and a t-shirt, my eye catches on something on the back of his arm and I panic. Did I grip him too tight while he fucked me? On closer inspection, it’s too dark to be a bruise. Too intricate. When the lines fall into place, my hand flies to my mouth.

“What the hell is this?”

“Hmm?”

I climb on top of him, straddling his naked frame, and twist his bicep to get a better look.

“This.”

A smile spreads across his face. “Oh that. I was wondering when you’d notice.”

“Since when did you get a tattoo?”

“Since the first winter I didn’t come home,” he confesses, chipping off another piece of my heart .

My blood races as I slowly trace the outline with the tip of my nail. “Two skis.”

“One for you, and one for me.”

They’re propped up in snow, the vast landscape looming behind. “And the mountain?”

“My favourite place in the world. Here with you.”

He rolls over between my legs, and even though it’s obvious I’m crying, I cover my eyes. “Fuck off, Ryan. You did not do that for me.”

“I think I very clearly did, actually.” His warm hands stroke the tops of my thighs, thumbs digging into the flesh at the top.

“Why are you like this?”

He sits up against the headboard and pulls me into my lap. I fit perfectly here, like it’s where I belong. In those first few years after taking our friendship to the next level, all I wanted was for us to have this easy intimacy.

While my university friends were dating boys who they could kiss at parties and spend entire weekends with, I was dreaming of Ryan Richmond, the boy from the mountains who somehow knew me better than anyone.

Nothing about us makes sense. Sure, we have some things in common; our love of skiing and eating, our taste in music and films, our stubborn determination to beat each other at whatever challenge we throw down. Not to mention our insane levels of compatibility in the bedroom. Hell, half the shit I’m into is all because we’ve experimented together.

And that’s pretty much it. It’s not fair for two people to have this much chemistry, this much history, and no future. I’ve tangled and untangled the knot of us over and over. I’ve told myself we’re nothing but two idiots who like to fuck and happen to be in the same location once a year .

Other times I’ve slipped hard in the opposite direction. Flirted with the fantasy of a life with him. Breakfasts, and weekends. Picking out bedsheets and paint swatches. Wedding dresses and babies.

That’s how far gone I am for this man.

Two weeks a year doesn’t mean you know a person, no matter how much of that time is spent in bed, at your most naked and vulnerable.

Some years, I’ve wanted to know everything. What does his bedroom look like? Who are his friends? What does he look like on the beaches of California?

Aged nine, I asked my parents for his address, convinced we could become pen-pals, but they didn’t know it, and our grandparents had passed away, so I couldn’t ask them either. The following winter, it seemed daft to have even considered writing to each other. The joy of winter with Ryan was all in the build-up, in catching up and telling stories. It wouldn’t have been so fun if I’d heard them all before.

Now, it’s easier to pretend I don’t care if I don’t ask about his life. L.A., other women, his job. Who gives a shit about all that?

I do. Unfortunately.

I care so much it hurts, even when he’s here, and all mine. There’s a pinch behind my ribs, my little heart warning me. It knows it’s heading for war, and I know there’s no way to avoid it.

Ryan pulls my hands away from my face and presses kisses to each fingertip.

“What’s wrong?”

“We don’t talk all this time and you’re off getting secret tattoos for me?”

He tucks loose strands of my hair behind my ears, thumb sweeping away a tear that’s spilled over. “I got it for me, mostly.”

“Why? ”

“I didn’t have anything of yours, and I wanted to always keep a part of you with me.”

The rest of my heart shatters, and I know there’s no way I can put it back together on my own.

“You cannot be serious.” I wrap my hand around the base of his throat and pretend to throttle him.

“Is that a problem?”

“Yes, it’s a problem, Ryan. I’m trying really fucking hard to get over you and you’re making it impossible.”

“Why are you trying to get over me?”

When he asked at the parade if he could see me today, I should have said no. I knew if I let my guard down, I’d undo all the work I've done to get over him. He could have taken his sexy ass and his secret tattoo back to California, and I could have lived a perfectly reasonable life without ever knowing anything about it.

Now he’s here, all naked and golden, and I know I’d never have said no. His lopsided smile belongs to both the boy I fell for first, and the man I’ll never get over. He’s part of all of my best memories, and now we’re deep under each other’s skin.

Accepting we have no future has been a work in progress. Tattoos make us a permanent part of each other, and I’m too tired, too emotionally wrung out, to think about what any of this means for us.

Fuck it. He’ll find out, eventually.

I twist in his lap until he can see the back of my arm, and he gasps.

“Two skis,” he says, tugging my elbow back so he can press his mouth to the spot that bears similar markings. He doesn’t kiss it, just holds his lips there in some sort of silent worship.

“One for you and one for me,” I whisper.

Repeating his words is no lie, even though I’ve never confessed the true meaning of my tattoo to anyone else. My design is more simple than his, two line drawings crossed in the shape of an X. You can’t even tell they are skis unless you're up close, and so few people are.

“When?” he whispers, and the lump in my throat doubles in size.

“Around the same time, I guess.”

It was a spontaneous decision. I was meeting a friend for lunch and walked past a tattoo shop in Edinburgh. Even now I couldn’t tell you what called me to go inside, but before I knew it, I was in the chair and marked forever.

To think he was doing the same on the other side of the world has me believing in invisible strings and soulmates and forevers. The very stuff I’ve trained myself to ignore. ‘Soulmates’ is a dangerous concept to entertain when there are thousands of miles keeping you apart.

“Baby.” His breath shudders out against my skin, and I twist back to hold him close against my chest. His arms tighten around me, and he buries his face in the crook of my neck, a spot he once told me was his happy place.

‘Baby’ is new.

Soft.

More.

He whispers it again, right into the skin of my throat.

“I’m so sorry I didn’t come back. I don’t know what the fuck I was thinking.”

This wasn’t supposed to happen. I was going to let myself enjoy his company for one last year and move on. There’s no way I can tell him to leave now.

His fingertips trace patterns up my spine, remind me of a night we spent hours pretending to write words on each others backs and guessing what they were. I thought about writing 'I love you' but hoped he 'd do it first.

“You’re so fucking beautiful. I thought about you every day, you know that?”

As scary as it is, I believe him, because I thought of him every day, too. They weren’t always good thoughts. Sometimes I wished for his dick to fall off, or worse, for his dream career to fail, so he wouldn’t have anything to keep him from me. Cold, selfish thoughts mixed in with a million dirty ones. I’m not sure I’ve ever had an orgasm without picturing him behind my eyelids.

Ryan flips me onto my back and pulls the covers up and over our heads.

“Let me make it up to you,” he says, kissing a soft trail down past my belly. “Ask me for what you want.”

I want you to stay.

The thought is more fucked up than anything physical I could ever ask for. With sex, I know he’d give me anything I desired, and I hate my brain for thinking of things he’ll never be able to offer.

“Ask me,” he growls, taking a chunk of thigh between his teeth.

Sinking my fingers through the strands of his hair, I hitch one knee up to the side and make room for him to taste me.

“Just this. Just you. Just like that.”