You.
Dawn poured itself across the room in soft strokes, touching the sheets, the wooden floorboards, the curve of Dane’s back. He lay on his stomach beside me, one arm tucked beneath the pillow, the other draped over my waist like I might disappear if he loosened his hold.
I’d been awake for five quiet minutes, watching the way the morning light gathered in the ink of his tattoos.
They shifted with each slow breath he took; a living tapestry carved across the terrain of him.
My fingers hovered above the closest one, a line of script that curled along the inside of his forearm, the flourished letters warm against his skin.
He stirred when I finally touched him, a low hum vibrating in his chest.
“Peach,” he murmured, voice rough from sleep.
“Hi,” I whispered.
He turned his head toward me. His eyes were heavy, impossibly soft. When he smiled, it was small and slow, like sunlight warming stone.
“What are you staring at?” he asked.
“You.”
“Good.” His hand slid higher up my thigh, thumb brushing skin still tender from last night. “I’m yours to stare at.”
Heat unfurled low in my belly.
But instead of giving in to the gravity of him, I traced the tattoo again. “What does this one say?”
He shifted onto his side so he could see where my fingers moved. “That one?” A ghost of a smile touched his lips. “It says light up the darkness.”
“In Italian,” I whispered.
“Yeah.”
“It’s beautiful.”
“It was my nana’s favorite thing to say to me,” he said. “She’d kiss my forehead and say it every night. Even when things were… rough.”
I traced the script again, slower. “You have more from her.”
“Most of them.” His voice softened, dipped. “She saved me in more ways than one.”
My hand drifted across his arm, following the scattered lines of tiny quotes, dates, symbols. All of it capturing a life he’d fought through. All of it inked into the skin I’d kissed last night like I’d been memorising a map I’d known forever without realising it.
“What does this one mean?” I asked, touching a delicate row of dots.
“Morse code,” he said. “Fall down seven times, stand up eight.”
“And this one?” I traced a faint black arrow, its point touching a line that curved under his bicep.
“The past does not equal the future.” His breath warmed my cheek. “Another one she drilled into me.”
“And here…” My hand slipped to his ribs where the script curved along the inside of his cage. The intimate place. The place I’d kissed last night. The place that stole my breath even now. “This one is beautiful.”
He watched me touch it. Watched me read it without saying it aloud.
“Calm her chaos,” he whispered, “but never silence her storm.”
My throat tightened. “That’s my favourite.”
“I know.” His fingers tucked a strand of hair behind my ear. “It already was, even before you said it.”
A shiver rippled through me.
My hand roamed farther. More ink. More stories.
I paused when I reached the plane. Then the shipping container. Then the boat pressed against waves inked in sharp, A book and pages floating on what looked like air, delicate lines.
“Your childhood?” I asked.
“Some of it.”
“And this…” I touched the set of eyes—so hauntingly detailed they looked alive. Depth. Shadow. Grief. Hope. A person standing inside the iris, small and unreachable.
He inhaled sharply.
“They are yours,” he said. “Your beautiful eyes. And the silhouette is my nana. She always felt just out of reach after she passed.”
My chest ached.
“And here…” I slid my fingers to his spine, tracing the dates etched down the vertebrae. “Her birth. And death.”
“Yeah.” His voice was barely audible. “And the coordinates along my shoulders…that’s her village. In Italy.”
“You carry her with you.”
“Everywhere.”
I didn’t realise I was crying until he brushed his thumb across my cheek.
“Peach…” His tone cracked. “Don’t.”
“But it’s so beautiful,” I whispered. “You’re so beautiful.”
He didn’t answer. Speechless, maybe. Or breaking.
I moved slowly, letting my fingers drift over the forget-me-nots inked above his hipbone, the tiny bee near his rib, the swallow skimming along his collarbone, the rain droplets cascading into stars. Tiny constellations. Fractured memories. A world shaped into skin.
“I was not built to break.” I said, reading the typewritten line over his heart.
He nodded. “That’s my great-grandfather. He’d say it every night to my nana when he tucked her in.”
My hand settled over it. His heartbeat thudded against my palm.
“And this one?”
“Everything happens for a reason,”
His gaze locked with mine. “I needed that reminder a lot.”
“And this…”
“Not all those who wander are lost.”
“And this…”
“Turn the pain into power.”
My fingers trembled. “Dane…”
“There’s more,” he said. “If you want to see.”
“I want everything.”
He rolled onto his back, pulling me with him. My thigh slid across his hip, settling me exactly where he wanted me. His hands held my waist, strong and reverent, as if touching me was a prayer.
“Here,” he whispered, guiding my hand to the tattoo along his ribs on the other side. “In Italian. Insanity.”
I let out a breath that wasn’t really a laugh, more an exhale that cracked open the softer parts of me. “Why?”
“Because my life has been everything but calm.” His hand stroked the inside of my thigh. “And somehow… you’ve always been the quiet in it. Even when we were kids.”
My heart paused. Stopped. Restarted with a stutter.
“Dane…”
He shook his head gently, like he already knew I wasn’t ready to hear the rest of that sentence.
But the memories… God, they fluttered like trapped birds behind my ribs. Soft flashes. Schoolyard laughter. Rain. A boy with dark eyes who always sat near me. A boy who watched. A boy who protected.
“I’m remembering things,” I whispered. “Small things. Fragments.”
“Take your time,” he said, thumb brushing the curve of my hip. “I’m not going anywhere.”
The quiet between us thickened.
Slow.
Charged.
Alive.
I lowered my mouth to the tattoo along his ribs—her chaos, never silence her storm—and kissed it. Light. Barely there. A vow disguised as breath.
His jaw clenched.
“Peach.”
I kissed it again, slower.
He sucked in a shaky breath. “You keep doing that, and every good intention I have is going to die right here.”
“Maybe I want them to die.”
His hands tightened on my hips. I felt him growing hard beneath me.
Heat.
Pressure.
Need.
“Penn,” he warned.
But it was a threadbare warning.
A surrender wearing armor.
I dragged my lips up his chest, tracing the script, the lines, the art. My body moved over him, a slow grind that made his breath punch out of him.
“Tell me what this one says,” I whispered, kissing the line over his sternum.
His hand cupped the back of my neck, pulling me down until our mouths were a breath apart.
“It says,” he murmured, “that I have wanted you my entire life.”
The world shattered.
His mouth crashed into mine—hungry, reverent, desperate in a way that rewired me from the inside. He rolled us, pinning me beneath him. His hands slid up my thighs, spreading them wide as his hips settled between them.
“You’re mine,” he whispered against my throat. “I don’t care how long it took. I don’t care how much we lost. I’m not letting anything steal this again.”
I arched into him. “Then take me.”
Oh, God, he did.
It was slow at first—long, deep strokes that felt like they carved pieces of him into me. Then harder, desperate, our bodies colliding in a rhythm that felt ancient. Fingers digging. Lips bruising. His forehead against mine while we breathed each other’s lungs.
I didn’t know where I ended or he began. Didn’t want to. We were one impossible, tangled shape—need and memory and rebirth tied into a knot that neither of us could untangle even if we tried.
When we came, it wasn’t quiet.
It was a falling.
A breaking.
A becoming.
His body trembled against mine. My fingers gripped his back, nails catching on ink and heat and skin I now knew by heart.
He stayed inside me until the tremors faded, until our breaths synced again, slow and steady, two hearts learning the same rhythm.
After, he kissed my shoulder. My cheek. My mouth. Soft now. Tender.
“We should shower,” he whispered.
I nodded, unable to find words.
He carried me to the bathroom, set me gently on the counter, and started the water. We washed each other quietly. Warm hands. Quiet smiles. His fingers tracing my hips like he was reminding himself I was real.
We dressed slowly. He dried my hair with his hands. I buttoned his shirt for him, one button at a time. He kissed my forehead after each one like it was some old ritual only we knew.
Then we left the house—locking the door behind us, the morning sharp and bright—and stopped at the little café on the corner.
He ordered a flat white. I ordered a warm peach tea. Our hands brushed as we waited. He didn’t pull away.
We walked back to his car with steaming cups, the world humming awake around us.
“I’ll take you to the office,” he said, sliding on sunglasses. “You have a story to deliver.”
I exhaled.
Smiled.
Let him open the passenger door for me.
“Yeah,” I whispered. “I do.”
And as the car rolled down the road, his hand settled on my thigh—easy, sure, claiming—I realised something.
I wasn’t walking into that office alone.
Not anymore.