Page 31

31

Tovah

B y the time I got out of the shower, I’d regained my equilibrium.

Mostly.

What Isaac had done had completely shaken me to my core. Sure, he’d threatened Veronica and Toby at the editors’ meeting, but I’d never expected him to defend me—or punch the hell out of a stranger for being an asshole to me. Although I hated myself for it, it softened me toward him, making something warm spark in my belly. No man had ever protected me before. I didn’t remember my birth father, and my stepfather had been an abusive nightmare. So to have Isaac’s protection, not just of my physical self, but for my emotional safety—it meant something.

More than it should.

And then the locker room. It should’ve been humiliating, the way he’d used my body. I should’ve hated the way he edged me, playing me like a musician and not letting me come even though I needed to. But not only had I come, hard, I was more satisfied than I’d ever been in my entire life. Isaac didn’t know, of course, that he was the only man who had ever touched me that way. But when he’d told me in that deep growl that I was his and no one else would ever lay a hand on me, part of my heart had detached from my body and spilled out onto his hand. When he’d called me “everything,” even more of it defected to join his team. Maybe they were the parts that had always been his, since we were young children and he’d promised to protect me then, too. I didn’t know. All I knew is that I was losing pieces of myself to this man, even though he’d hurt me.

Possibly because instead of getting angry at me for challenging him at the hockey game, he’d been amused, even impressed.

And then had stood up for me.

Even though he supposedly still hated me.

The goddamned sun could fall out of the sky and the world would still burn bright as long as you’re in it.

God.

I had to face him.

And say what?

Exhaling, I opened the bathroom door. In the bedroom, Isaac was stripping out of his clothes. The lamp beside the bed lit his body with a copper glow.

His eyes landed on me, and they warmed. Opening his arms, he gestured me forward.

I stared at him.

Did he…

…did he want me to hug him?

“Come here,” he said gruffly, and slowly, like I was stepping on eggshells or possibly landmines, I made my way over to him. Once I was within arm’s reach, he grabbed my wrists, pulling me against his body, wrapping my arms around his back, and then wrapping his own around my waist. Isaac was so tall; I barely came up to his chest. As he held me, the world and all my fears and confusion and worries receded, until all that was, was him.

“Do we hug now?” I asked his chest.

It vibrated with his laughter. “I guess. I don’t fucking know. I’m not going to even pretend I know what I’m doing with you anymore, Tovah.”

“Me neither,” I admitted, and the way he laughed again warmed something in my soul, something that had been slowly, cautiously defrosting since the night he’d tied me to the statue.

We stood there for a while, quiet but together, warming each other, protecting each other. Caring about each other, maybe. Although I couldn’t entirely let myself trust that, or him.

Could I?

Deciding to be brave, I pulled away from his chest.

“I’m not done holding you,” he grumbled, but I was already grabbing his hand and tugging him to the bed.

Shockingly, he let me guide him.

“Lie down,” I said, pushing at his arms, and he did.

I climbed onto the bed and over his body, straddling his stomach, still in my towel. His eyes grew hazy.

“This looks fun,” he commented, reaching for my waist.

I stopped him, pulling his arms off me and lowering them to the bed.

Once again, he surprised me by letting me.

I swallowed. “Will you tell me about your tattoos?”

He blinked. “You climbed on top of me in only a towel so you could ask me about my tattoos?”

I nodded. “Almost everything I know about you, Isaac, I know from investigating.”

“Snooping,” he interjected.

“Whatever. I want to know more about you because you told me. So, tell me about your tattoos.”

After a moment, he nodded. Taking my right hand in his, he linked our fingers and guided it to his tricep.

“I started the sleeve when I was fourteen. Didn’t even know it was going to be a sleeve back then. Most Jewish people—well, you know why we don’t get tattoos. But my father likes to be a rule breaker, so he made all his sons get tattoos. Liza got them too, so she wasn’t left out.” He smiled at that. “Anyway, my brothers and I all got a tattoo of a typical-looking gangster from the 20s. We all thought it was pretty badass.”

I leaned down, kissing the tattoo of the gangster. “I’m sure it was—to a fourteen-year-old boy.”

He snorted. “Don’t you start, Millennial Pink.”

“What about this?” I asked, dragging our fingers over the huge pool of blood.

His smile disappeared. “I’ve had nightmares for years about my mother’s death. Reuben—stupidly—thought if I tattooed it to my body, it would be cathartic somehow. Stop the nightmares from coming.”

“Did it?” I asked softly.

Isaac shook his head. “No. I had the nightmares multiple times a week—until you started sleeping in our bed.”

“Oh,” I said.

The implication was almost too much to digest. That I might be the reason he wasn’t having nightmares anymore, that he might be healing…it couldn’t be true.

That the bed was ours.

“Oh,” he mimicked, and a dimple popped.

It was the first time I’d ever seen him dimple naturally when it was just us. I wanted to photograph it. For evidence, and later, when this was all over, for the memory.

I swallowed, changing the subject. “And this one?” I asked, trailing our fingers lower.

“The snake. It’s a constant warning not to fall for my father’s tricks.”

I nodded, finally asking the question that had been plaguing me. “And what about the tattoo on your back?”

Isaac closed his eyes. “The wall is a symbol for my fate. The dying vine is a reminder that no matter how hard I try to climb over it, I’ll never be able to get out.”

Oh, god.

God.

Isaac had told me as much when he’d first kidnapped me, hadn’t he? That he was trapped? Trapped, like I was. By the same man. By his father. We both wanted our freedom from Abe Silver.

And neither of us would ever get it.

My heart rose and fell, rose and fell, from the breathtakingly sweet and devastatingly sad knowledge. We were both that dying vine.

Was there any way I could bring it back to life?

“We’re not so different,” I murmured to him.

“Yeah?” With his free hand, he reached up to cup my cheek, slowly dragging me down until our lips were only a breath apart.

“Yeah,” I breathed against them, and he kissed me.

It was different from any kiss we’d ever had before. There was no ownership in it, no dominance or demand. We met as equals, not opponents. Instead of a power struggle, there was kindness, tenderness. An understanding that said, I see you. Even with my eyes closed, I see you. I know you.

We kissed, and kissed, and kissed, some hidden magic between us casting a spell and weaving us together, changing us in ways I wasn’t sure I was ready for.

Overwhelmed and gasping from the intensity of it, I pulled away.

He opened his eyes, and there was humor in them.

“There’s no such thing as ‘too much’ with us,” he said, like he’d read my mind.

Unable to respond, to verify or validate, knowing that doing so would abandon everything that mattered to me, I asked instead, “Any other tattoos?”

He scanned my face, before shrugging. “Yeah. Remember that little girl I told you about? She had a birthmark under her left armpit in the shape of a crescent moon. I was drunk last year with the team and we all went to get tattoos; for some reason, I asked the artist to put a crescent moon tattoo under my armpit like hers. Don’t really know why.”

He lifted his arm, showing me. It peeked out from the hair, angry and accusatory.

There was something stuck in my throat; I couldn’t breathe.

He’d gotten a tattoo of a birthmark.

My birthmark.

I’d hidden it so well, was careful not to lift my arms too high. But it never occurred to me that he remembered. That he would’ve memorialized it.

That he cared so much about that little girl—the one he claimed he hated.

The one I left behind.

“You okay?” he asked, concerned.

“Just tired,” I said.

And I was, suddenly. Bone tired. Drained and exhausted by the reminder of who we were and what really kept us apart. There was no future for us. We were both dying vines on a wall, unable to ever climb to freedom.

Isaac, unaware of my morose thoughts, pulled me into his arms, stroking my back with his free hand, and murmuring something in Spanish:

“He intentado detenerme, pero no puedo. Me estoy enamorando de ti, amor.”

I knew some Spanish, but before I could try to translate the romantic-sounding words, I was already asleep on his chest.