Page 33 of Branded Souls (Ember Hollow Romance #3)

Skye

I traced the tattoos on Fox’s bare chest in the low light from the sconces above the bed.

My head rested under his shoulder. His right arm was wrapped around me, tucking me against him.

It was late, but I couldn’t sleep. I didn’t want to.

I’d turned off the part of my brain that was rational, that was telling me how very bad of an idea sleeping with Fox was.

I ignored the fear clawing inside me like a caged lion, thrashing against the bars and begging me to run.

In this moment, all I wanted to do was bask in the peace he brought. The comfort. I hadn’t realized this feeling had been missing from my life for so long. I’d forgotten it was possible to feel this…whole. Cared for.

Loved .

I hadn’t thought about that word in this context in a very long time, but it had been making its way up from the dead place I’d buried it since the moment I crashed back into Fox Ramsey .

It was ridiculous, really. Sixteen years had gone by since I’d run away from this tiny town. I had thought I’d moved on with my life. I’d grown and made a career for myself. I thought I knew what I wanted.

It was all a facade.

Yes, I loved what I did for work. I enjoyed the journey and learning and doing things I’d only ever dreamed of.

But in many ways, I was incredibly unhappy. I was fulfilled in my career, but when I came home, there was nothing but emptiness. I’d forgotten what it felt like to be alive. To be…happy.

The Ramseys made me happy.

Fox made me happy.

Even after the mess I’d made, this family took me back without hesitation. Without judgment.

I wasn’t used to being accepted, despite my flaws.

Fox’s eyes were closed, but he wasn’t sleeping, either. He always snored a little when he was. Sometimes he mumbled a word or two while he was dreaming, and this room was nothing but quiet tranquility.

I continued to trace the lines of black ink across his smooth skin.

It still amazed me that he’d gotten so much art imprinted onto his skin.

I wanted to know what every line and symbol meant.

I longed to know everything about the man who had always taken care of my heart, even when I’d been careless with his.

My hand stilled as my fingers caressed a raised, jagged ridge along the left side of his ribs.

His muscles instantly bunched with tension.

I raised my head, trying to look at the spot I’d touched. “What’s that? ”

He didn’t even open his eyes as he grabbed my hand and moved it away. “Nothing.”

It wasn’t nothing, but he didn’t release my hand. He pressed it against his chest, over his heart. It fluttered beneath my palm.

“Fox.” I propped myself up higher to get a better look at his ribs.

A lot of ink was on that section of his body.

Over the place on his side where I was pretty sure I’d touched, was something that I could best describe as resembling a spider’s web.

Thirteen lines radiated from a central point.

Many small precise angles connected them like spokes of a wheel, forming an intricate pattern—like a web, but not quite.

It was too perfect to be natural, too sharp.

It was only when I leaned in closer that I noticed it. I yanked my hand from Fox’s grasp, and brushed my fingers near the center of the web. It wasn’t the smooth stretch of muscle that it should’ve been. Under the cover of the tattoo, was an uneven, raised line.

“Is that a scar?” I breathed, my heart pounding.

He let out a long, slow breath, eyelids fluttering open. “It’s nothing, Skye.”

“It doesn’t look like nothing.”

The scar was thicker and longer than anything superficial. This had been something serious. A wound that had left a permanent mark.

Fox took my hand again. He brought it to his lips and left a warm kiss on my palm. Right on top of the scab were the glass from the mirror had sliced me. “It’s in the past,” he said softly. “It doesn’t matter anymore.”

My gaze shifted from the scar on his ribs, back to his face. The peace from a moment ago was gone. He was hiding something.

If there was one thing I was good at, it was uncovering the truth when people were desperately trying to keep it hidden .

“Why don’t you want to tell me what happened?”

Fox shifted from kissing my palm, to placing quick kisses on each of my fingertips. “Because I would rather continue enjoying you.”

He was trying to distract me, but I was having none of it. “It looks like it was painful.” I stared at his ribs. I inspected some of the other tattoos with a new perspective, focusing less on the art, and more of the skin underneath. On what could be hiding underneath them.

“I’ve endured worse.” He leisurely pressed his lips to the inside of my wrist once he was out of fingers to kiss.

My eyes snapped back to his face. “Do you have more scars like that?”

He let out a long sigh, finally dropping my hand. It landed on his chest, and I felt around his tattoos again. This time I wasn’t tracing ink, but looking for masked injuries.

Fox shifted uncomfortably under my touch, trying to pull the sheet up to cover himself. “Stop, Skye.” His words were pointed, steady and sharp.

Instantly, I stopped and pulled my hand back, curling it tight against my own chest. I wasn’t sure why, but my heart raced.

A tense silence settled around us, punctured only by my heavy breathing.

“You can’t just—” I cut myself off, not knowing how to ask him for this. Fox always held his pain so close. Perhaps I didn’t deserve the truth. But something inside me knew I needed it. “Please,” I whispered. “Talk to me.”

I saw the break in his hard exterior when the words he usually asked of me spilled from my mouth. Something softened in his expression; his steadiness waned .

He tilted his head up toward the ceiling, staring at nothing as he spoke next. “The scar is from a broken rib a long time ago. It was a compound fracture and needed surgery.”

A pang of panic went through me. Compound rib fracture? I wasn’t sure I’d ever heard of such a thing. The thought alone had nausea rolling through me.

“What happened? Were you in some kind of accident?”

He swallowed hard. “No.”

Instead of asking again, I waited. The quiet was long and heavy, but I needed an explanation.

I barely breathed as the silence stretched between us, taut and trembling.

“It wasn’t an accident,” he finally said, his voice low and rough. Like the words hurt to speak.

I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t. Something in me already knew this was going to be bad.

“It was a fight.”

My stomach turned.

He didn’t look at me. He stared at the ceiling, as if he could pretend I wasn’t here at all.

“Not the kind with refs and gloves,” he went on, jaw clenching. “Underground. No rules. No medics waiting on the sidelines. Just you, the other guy, and a crowd chanting for blood.”

My lips parted, but no sound came out. Underground fighting? My Fox?

No. He wasn’t mine anymore.

“Since when do you…fight? How—” My voice broke. “How did you find something like that around here?”

His face pinched. He still didn’t look at me. “I’m not proud of it,” he muttered. “You’d be surprised what people will do during the dead of night, in the middle of nowhere, when they’re bored…or needing something to blow off steam.”

Something in my chest cracked. “Why would you go looking for something like that?” Most of me didn’t want the answer, but maybe I needed it.

He shook his head. “The details aren’t that important.”

I scoffed. “Of course they are.”

He finally glanced at me then from the corner of his eyes. His chest deflated with a long breath.

“I started because of Ash,” he said, slowly. “When you first left, I started keeping an eye on him when I could. I never went to your house or anything, but sometimes I’d give him a ride to or from school. He was young, and reckless, and pissed at the world.”

He licked his dry lips. “One time I was out late and caught a glimpse of him walking at night. I didn’t have time to follow him then, but I thought it was strange.

He was sixteen at this point, but I don’t think he was allowed to have a car.

” He shook his head, like he was shaking away the memory.

“I wanted to keep him out of trouble, so the next time I saw him out that late, I followed him.”

My eyes widened in horror. “He was—fighting?”

Fox stilled. “He was in deep. That night was bad for him. I had to step in and finish the fight, but he wasn’t in good shape.”

This was my fault. All my fault. I’d left Ash. I’d left them both.

Fox shifted his gaze back toward the ceiling, but it didn’t hide the pain.

“But I couldn’t save him,” he breathed. “And then, I stopped trying. ”

“What do you mean?” I balled my shaking hands into fists.

“After the first night, I went to more. I told myself it was to keep Ash safe.” His voice trembled.

“But I started fighting regularly. Even when Ash was inconsistent, I still went. There was almost a year where he didn’t show up at all, and I never checked in with him.

I was too preoccupied with my own demons. ”

He cleared his throat, like he was trying to steady his voice. “The truth was, after you left, and then after what happened to Thea… I was angry. I was hurting, and I didn’t know what to do with any of it. So, I fought. I bled. It made everything else go quiet. I did it for years.”

My vision blurred. I covered my mouth, suddenly nauseous. “Oh, Fox.” I didn’t know what else to say.

“I didn’t care if I got hurt,” he admitted. “Sometimes, I wanted to.”

My stomach twisted violently.

“You could have died.”

His expression didn’t change. It gutted me, his quiet acceptance of it.

“It was usually nothing that serious.” His fingers absently brushed over the scar on his ribs. “But I got kicked straight into a steel railing. Broke a rib clean through. I managed to call August and he got me to the hospital, but it wasn’t pretty.”

I pressed a hand to my chest. I couldn’t breathe.

“I quit after that,” he said, softer now. “I couldn’t hide what I was doing anymore, and it crushed my family—there are few times I’d seen August scared and the moment he saw me that night was one of them. I couldn’t keep doing that to them, or to myself.”

Tears were falling before I even realized they’d started. “I’m so sorry,” I choked out. “I—this is my fault.”

He frowned, looking over at me again. “Skye— ”

“No, don’t.” I shook my head, burying my face in his chest. “I left. I left Ash, and you tried to take care of him. I abandoned both of you and—God, you could’ve died and I never would’ve known.”

“Skye, stop—”

“I thought I was doing the right thing,” I sobbed. “I thought you’d be better off, but everything I did hurt the people I love the most.”

He sat up, reaching for me, but I flinched back.

Looking at him—at the scar on his ribs and the pain in his eyes—I felt like a failure. Like everything I’d built in my life meant nothing, because the people I loved most were bleeding in the rubble I left behind.

Fox tried again, reaching for me and whispering soothing words that did nothing but strengthen my guilt.

Eventually I gave in from pure exhaustion. He wrapped his arm around me, tugging me against him until my cheek settled under his collarbone. He held me there, his thumb brushing softly over the curve of my shoulder.

“I’m okay,” he reiterated after a while, voice low and calm. “Whatever happened…it’s over. It’s not something you need to worry about.”

I wanted to believe him. I wanted the warmth of his body and the weight of his words to be enough. But the ache in my chest didn’t go away. The questions didn’t stop circling in my head like buzzards over a carcass.

“You don’t have to protect me from your past,” I whispered.

He kissed the top of my head. “Maybe not. But I still want to.”

I didn’t respond. Not because I agreed, but because I didn’t know how to keep pressing without ruining this moment. I could feel the tension coiled in him. The worry in his voice for me .

His hand traced slow, rhythmic circles over my spine, lulling my body into stillness even if my thoughts wouldn’t follow.

We settled into silence. He pulled the sheet up around us, keeping me close as he settled back into the pillows.

“You okay?” he asked gently.

I wasn’t, but I nodded anyway. “Yes. Are you?”

“I am.” He kissed the top of my head, inhaling deep and slow. His body finally relaxed.

After a while, his breathing grew heavier—slower. Sleep pulled him under as his soft snoring filled the room.

But I lay there wide awake, my stare fixed on nothing in particular. All I saw, running in my head in a loop, was Fox bleeding, in pain.

He’d been in the hospital. Had gotten surgery.

I knew he had scars, but I didn’t know that they were entirely my fault.