Chapter 59 #3
He didn’t ask when I’d learned to do it like that, didn’t asked where, didn’t ask with who.
I don’t actually think he cared. It was sixteen months without one another.
Of course there would be other people. One day I would tell him about mine, and he would tell me about his, but in the meantime, the only question he had for me was clearly rhetorical.
I shrugged, unable to hold back my smile. It was my turn to poke fun for a change. “I really did that, huh? You need a minute to catch your breath?”
“Funny,” he replied, his hand circling around to the back of my head and pulling me in closer.
It was me who closed the rest of the space between us, pressing my ear to his chest, breathing out a sigh to the noticeably sped up rhythm of his heart, following his body down as he laid against the pillows of his bed.
Just like old times, I brought up a hand to his chest, tracing the permanent ink etched into the skin of his left pectoral, moving my finger along the lines and curves of the beautifully intricate design.
I propped myself up on an elbow, pulling back a little to get a full view of his beautiful form. My eyes traveled down his naked torso, brushing past his reviving penis, down his thighs and then—wait.
My eyes snapped back to Kain’s naked torso, stopping on something new that hadn’t been saved in my memory.
In the process of comparing parts of Kain to the image of him I’d saved in my head, I’d completely overlooked the newest addition to his body.
A little below the geometric tattoo on his left pectoral muscle, a new line of ink curved along where his ribcage would be seen if not for his muscle mass.
The tattoo was dark, the way they tended to be when they were less than a couple years old, displaying the broad lettering of Roman numerals.
VII.XXXI.MMXVI
It was a date, an all too familiar one.
Feeling a lump in my throat forming, I looked down at my surgery scar, dark and raised, running along the curve of my ribcage, and then back at the large tattoo permanently etched into Kain’s skin.
They were in the same spot—my scar, his tattoo.
VII.XXXI.MMXVI—Roman numerals that spelled out the date July 31st, 2016.
The day I was shot.
“Kain,” I whispered into the silence that fell among us. I was in a state of disbelief, pushing past my stupefied state to get the words out. “Is that…?”
As far as I knew, today was the first time that Kain had seen my scar, and yet somehow he had a tattoo on his body in the exact spot that my scar was on mine. I couldn’t speak.
Kain sat up from the pillows, love radiating off of him like heat. Meeting his gaze, it dawned on me that it had been so long since I had felt this safe around a man. It had been so long since I’d felt this secure.
“Baby, I was there,” he reminded. “In that hospital room, I was there by your bedside through most of it, for two weeks. Every night from ten o’clock at night to eight o’clock in the morning.
I used to fall asleep to the sound of your breathing machine, hoping I’d wake up to discover you woke up on your own in the middle of the night. ”
I brought my hand to my mouth, drawing in a sharp inhale as tears began to pool at the rims of my eyes. Kain reached in and wiped the first tear that fell from my eyes before continuing.
“I was there the morning we lost our baby.” There was something so comforting about hearing him use words like “we” and “our”.
Before I’d lost the baby, I had this irrational fear that Kain would be too angry at me for lying to him.
Angry enough to leave me. Clearly, even though I knew him very well that summer, I still had so much to learn.
“I’d woken up to the smell of blood that morning.
It scared the shit out of me, and the first thing I checked was your stitches. ”
For the first time in our relationship, I got to raise a hand to wipe a tear that glided down his cheek. There was so much love in that moment.
“The moment I saw the incision, I knew it would leave a scar. And in the months that followed, the image never really left my mind. It wasn’t fair, I thought to myself.
I knew that every time you looked at yourself you would be reminded of that night, our baby, me.
And that’s literally torture. You had to suffer with the reminder branded into you, so it was only fair that I live with the same brand. ”
Evidently, Kain didn’t even have to be a witness to it all to know that I was suffering.
One of the worst takeaways from that night in July a year ago, was not the physical scars, but the psychological damage that seemed like it would never heal.
Some days, I could barely stand to look at myself. The permanent reminder of that day carved into my skin was a constant trigger, forever sending me into horrifying flashbacks and devastating memories. I felt unsafe all the time.
Even wrapped around three blankets, tucked into the far end of my bedroom closet some nights, I still felt like death was always around the corner. On the worst days, I remained in a state of constant fear and dread. Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder is what Dr. Eloise diagnosed it as.
Why did Kain feel the need to subject himself to the same torture?
I asked this.
“Because…” he paused, taking a moment to pull me in closer. It was like he was bracing me for impact, like I might crumble under the weight of what he was about to say next. “The bullet that went through you that night, it… it was actually meant for me.”
And with those words, it wasn’t hard to put the final piece to the puzzle. The realization came painfully quick. Even if there were a million people who wanted to hurt Kain, I could only think of one who he would try to keep secret from me.
Why was Kain so apprehensive about telling me the truth?
Because he was trying to protect me from the literal pain of my heart ripping in two. Which was exactly what I felt when I finally understood.