Page 27 of Branded Souls (Ember Hollow Romance #3)

Fox

I hated how impatient I was, waiting for her to come out of the bathroom. I forced myself to lay on the bed, facing the door that separated us. The only thing calming me, letting me know she was up and moving, were the faint shadows cast from under the bathroom door.

My heart continued to race. I laid my hand over my bare chest, willing the thing to calm down. I’d shucked off my wet shirt and it laid forgotten on the floor. The image of her, pale and sobbing, was embedded into my mind. Skye was always the image of strength to me. I had barely ever seen her cry.

Not even when she was in the hospital after losing our baby.

Not even when she hugged her little brother goodbye.

Not even when she left town without me.

But what I’d seen in that bathroom, the pure fear in her…it was shocking. Terrifying. It reminded me that she wasn’t bulletproof. She wasn’t made of stone.

She was broken, too.

And all I wanted to do was help her put those pieces back together .

I glanced quickly up at the ceiling as the bathroom door inched open. Pretending I hadn’t been watching the door like a hawk.

“What did you do with the doorknob?” she asked.

I pointed to the desk, where I’d laid the knob after picking it up off the floor. “I needed to get through that door somehow. It was locked.” I chanced a glance at her.

My breath caught. Her hair was still wet.

The dark, almost black tendrils had been neatly brushed and fell to her shoulders.

My T-shirt was too big for her, the sleeves falling to her elbows.

The hem would’ve almost reached her knees if she hadn’t tucked in the front.

She’d tied the drawstring of the sweats tight around her waist to keep them from falling off.

It probably wouldn’t be the worst thing if they did, though.

I’d seen her in just my T-shirt before, and those were good memories.

Skye shifted on her feet. “Don’t stare at me like that,” she complained.

“Stare at you like…what?”

“I know I look ridiculous.” Her cheeks reddened.

“You don’t look ridiculous.”

She rolled her eyes. “I’m drowning in these clothes.”

“I’ve seen you in my shirt plenty of times…and I’ve never once thought you looked ridiculous. You look perfect.”

She looked away, over at the disassembled doorknob on the desk. “I can’t believe you took that off.”

“What else was I supposed to do? You needed help.”

Her hands fisted at her sides. After a long moment of quiet, she said, “Thanks for that.”

“You don’t need to thank me. ”

When her gaze met mine again, the exhaustion in them was unmistakable. She looked like she might collapse where she stood.

I sat up quickly, swinging my legs over the edge of the bed and planting my feet on the floor. “You should lay down.” I stood up. “It’s been a long day. You need rest.”

She glanced longingly at the bed. Crossing her arms over her chest, she surveyed the room. “One bed,” she mumbled, mostly to herself.

“I can sleep on the floor—”

“No.” She shook her head, some panic returning to her expression. “Don’t.”

I frowned.

“I mean, I’d like you to—to stay close, if that’s okay.” Her teeth caught her bottom lip.

“Sure,” I said softly. “Whatever you need.”

Relief washed over her face. “After a panic attack, it sometimes feels…” She pulled in a deep breath. “It feels like I’m not on solid ground yet. It’s like…like I’m floating on the ocean, but I can sense it there beneath me, waiting to pull me back under.”

I scanned her from her head to her toes. “You sure you’re okay?” I asked, needing reassurance. “Physically, I mean. After what happened on the highway?”

Pink stained her cheeks. “Yeah.” She nodded. “It didn’t hurt or anything. It just…it scared me.”

Concern flooded me. I wanted to ask her so many questions. I wanted to check every inch of her skin and make sure there wasn’t even a scratch on her body. Instead, I jerked my chin toward the bed. “Come on. ”

I stepped back, and she hesitantly walked to the side and crawled in. I followed after her. It was big enough to put plenty of room between the two of us, but that didn’t seem right for this moment. I wanted to feel her against me. I wanted to feel each breath she took.

Lying on my side, I wrapped an arm around her waist and curled myself around her. She fit as perfectly as I remembered. Something inside of me released, like a sigh of relief after holding my breath for too long.

She tensed slightly, and then relaxed back into me. As if she, too, felt some sort of solace.

“Is this okay?” I murmured against her ear, pulling her in even tighter.

She nodded. “Yes.”

“Good.”

We laid in silence. The storm continued to rage outside. Thunder rumbled, but from here in this room, it felt distant and droning. We were safe. The relentless rain that had seemed so threatening on the road was now a comforting soundtrack that calmed our nerves.

I think Skye drifted to sleep eventually; all the tension left her as her breaths evened out.

I stayed awake, though. Everything that had happened ran through my mind.

I had no idea whether whoever ran us off the road had done so on purpose or not.

I might never know. Someone seemed to be after Skye, meaning her harm, and I was no closer to figuring out who it was. No closer to keeping her safe.

My mind whirred as I held her to me, wondering when that moment was going to come, the moment when she disappeared from my life. Because that time would come. Ember Hollow was too small for her and her big dreams. Her big goals. It always had been.

I wasn’t sure how much time had passed when Skye stirred. She turned over, buried her face against my chest. She tangled her legs around mine before settling.

My hand rubbed softly up and down her back as I nestled my face against the top of her head. I inhaled her scent, committing it to memory.

When she left, it was going to rip me apart, but I wasn’t fighting it anymore. It didn’t matter how long Skye stayed away…my soul longed for hers. She’d branded herself on me, and I could not forget her.

“Are you ever going to tell me about your tattoos?”

Her voice startled me. I glanced down, meeting her sleepy, half-hooded eyes.

I’d forgotten I didn’t have a shirt on, leaving my skin bare for her to see every stroke of ink. The thought hadn’t even crossed my mind to hide them from her.

“What about them?” I asked, my voice rough and low.

Goose bumps appeared on her arms.

“Are you cold?” I asked.

“No.” She focused back on my chest. “When did you decide to get them? The tattoos, I mean.”

I wasn’t sure I was ready to let her into this part of my heart. It was a piece I’d claimed for myself, and letting her touch it would be another shattered piece when she left.

“It’s a long story.”

“I have time. ”

I paused. My pulse spiked, stuttered. “A year after you left. I add more every year.”

She scanned the lines of ink and symbols. Only I knew their meaning. Only I held the secrets of my scars.

And they were heavy.

She pressed her palm against my chest, right over my heart. My throat tightened. My eyes fluttered closed. It was like she knew.

How could she know?

Her fingers slid over my skin, tracing the lines that she was somehow drawn to over all the others that covered me.

“What does this mean?”

She was asking about the tattoo over my heart. It was a vertical infinity symbol with a small triangle embedded in the lower loop. It was simple. All my tattoos were minimalistic and modern. Clean black lines. But they also held intense meaning.

“How long have your panic attacks been happening?” I asked, blunt and to the point. She was going to have to open up to me if I was going to bleed for her.

She tensed, and I thought she might pull away. Skye had become very good at running away, and part of me wished she would in this moment. I could hide forever, too, if she let me.

Her jaw clenched. “Ever since I got discharged from the hospital after…after everything that happened with the pregnancy and all that.”

And all that.

My heart clenched. Years. She’d been burdened by attacks like that for years.

“Tell me about them. ”

She pressed her lips tight. “It’s silly. I can’t control it. I just…something will set me off and I’m somehow convinced that I might be dying. There doesn’t even have to be a reason sometimes. I feel it in my body, though. I feel like I’m dying and I—spiral.”

I reached for her, running my fingers through the short hair that had fallen into her face.

“It’s not silly,” I said, seriously.

She looked away. “It is.”

“It’s not.” Hooking a finger under her chin, I gently guided her gaze up to mine.

“Skye, you almost died that day. I saw it. I watched the life drain from your face the moment before you collapsed. You were lifeless when I picked you up.” My thumb touched her bottom lip.

“All the color had left your face, and I thought you were dead. I thought I’d lost you forever. ”

Tears welled in her eyes as a tightness built in my chest. The memory of holding her, waiting for the ambulance to come as she was dying in my arms had branded me, too.

The people I loved died, and there was nothing I could do to stop it.

“It’s not silly that you get scared. Your body remembers what it feels like to be dying. It needs to heal from that trauma. You’re not weak, Skye. You’ve been through too much and survived. That’s not weakness. That’s resilience. It’s strength.”

Her lips trembled, but she didn’t let a tear escape. “You’ve always been too good to me…” she whispered.

I didn’t know what she meant by that. Before I questioned her, she pointed to the symbol over my heart.

“Your turn,” she said .

Grimacing, I looked down at where the tip of her finger touched the bottom of the infinity symbol. Every fiber of me wanted to keep this for myself. I had never explained any of my tattoos to anyone. They were mine.

But this particular one was a part of her, too. I covered her hand with mine to keep it from trembling.

“This,” I guided her hand so that her finger traced the vertical infinity symbol, “symbolized you.” There was an audible hitch in her breath, but I kept going.

“You always stand tall. Always looping through everything. The triangle…” I stilled when her finger touched the tiny triangle in the bottom loop.

“That was supposed to be our anchor. The life we never got to live.”

Her gaze fixated on the little shape. Her chest rose and fell rapidly as the meaning set in for her. Her eyes shot to mine. “The baby?”

I nodded, not knowing how she would react.

I’ve never known how she felt about the loss of that pregnancy.

It had been the reason she’d almost died and I’d always thought she resented me for what happened to her.

Part of me didn’t blame her, but I’d mourned not only the loss of Skye in my life, but also what could have been.

Her silence stretched on and my skin heated. Uncertainty and raw vulnerability had me feeling exposed. I waited for her to yell at me. To pull away.

“I’m sorry if that’s hard for you to hear,” I rasped, unable to stand the silence any longer. I couldn’t read the expression in her wide eyes; all I recognized was shock. “But both of you have been burned into me for a long time, and that’s the truth.”

Her hand started to shake, and I squeezed it tighter, pressing it against my chest .

“Fox.” She said my name like it was a lifeline. A tether that kept her above the water.

She leaned closer. So close the tips of our noses touched.

I didn’t dare move. I didn’t dare even breathe. My heart thundered in my chest, pumping blood hot and fast through my body.

“Skye.” I said her name in return, a sound that was more of a groan than a whisper.

And then her lips were on mine.

There was no hesitation in her movements. The last sixteen years collapsed into nothing between us—like we’d never stopped kissing, like we’d never let go of each other.

I forgot everything but the bliss and the fire of this moment. I forgot to hold my heart close. To be reserved. I wanted more of her.

Her mouth moved against mine with both desperation and tenderness. She tasted like the storm, like memory, like every dream I’d told myself to forget.

I lost myself in the kiss that felt like more. It felt like coming home, like finding the place I belonged after wandering for years in the darkness.

My arms wrapped around her, pulling her in. She melted into me like she was always meant to be there—because she was.

God, she was.

She parted her lips for me, and I deepened the kiss like I was starving for her. My tongue swept into her mouth, tasting her, claiming her, needing her to the very marrow of my bones.

Her hands tangled into my hair, crushing me to her as an ache I didn’t know existed eased .

My hand slid lower, fingers brushing her back, her waist, hungry to relearn every inch of her—

A crack of thunder boomed directly overhead, followed by a blinding flash of lightning that lit up the whole room like a camera flash.

We both startled.

The bubble of intimacy around us burst.

Skye jerked in my arms, and I pulled back at the same time, the kiss breaking like the snap of a taut thread.

We stared at each other, breathless.

Her lips were parted and swollen. Some color had returned to her face.

I gave her a crooked, sheepish grin, feeling embarrassed about the loss of control. As much as I wanted to continue that kiss…the fog of passion waned as reason broke through.

“We should,” I said, still panting, “probably get some rest. We need to leave early tomorrow so we can get home.”

She didn’t answer right away. She just nodded, flustered, like she didn’t quite trust her voice. Slowly, she turned around, settling back into me. Her spine curved against my chest, our bodies finding that familiar shape.

I wrapped my arm around her waist and rested my chin near the crown of her head.

Eventually, our breathing evened out.

But I didn’t fall asleep instantly. I lay there in the dark, staring at the ceiling, listening to the storm rage outside.

Wondering what the hell that kiss meant.

Wondering what it was going to mean going forward.

And trying not to hope too much that it meant everything.