Page 102 of Your Fault

He hesitated for a few seconds. That only made it worse. “Nothing. Don’t worry about it.”

I imagined him getting in another fight, and I looked him over for more signs of damage, but he didn’t have a scratch on him. Nor were there any bruises on his knuckles.

“Why do you have that bandage, then, Nicholas?” I asked.

He leaned back, with a hard-to-interpret expression on his face. “Don’t freak out or anything, okay?”

Lifting his wrist, I asked him again what had happened, with an alarm sounding faintly inside me.

“Take a look,” he said.

I lifted the bandage and saw a tattoo, the skin around it slightly swollen. “What the…?”

Nick pulled the bandage off the rest of the way and laid it on the table. “I think it’s time for it to breathe, no?”

There, on his smooth skin, in black, in my handwriting, was the thing I had scrawled down there three days before:You’re mine.

“Tell me that’s not a real tattoo,” I said.

“You honestly think I was just going to let that fade away?” he asked, looking at it proudly.

“You’re crazy, Nicholas Leister!” I shouted, feeling all kinds of contrary emotions. A tattoo, that was forever, a mark on his skin that would mean he’d always remember me…two words declaring he was mine.

“You were already a part of me long before I got this tattoo. This is simply a reminder of something I always have inside me, Freckles. No need for you to overthink it.”

I got scared. I realized how much that meant, and despite his gentle words, a pressure in my chest made it hard for me to breathe.

“I gotta go,” I said, starting to stand, but he reached up and held me there, narrowing his eyes, looking serious.

“You’re freaking out. That wasn’t my intention.” He definitely didn’t like where this was going.

I shook my head. I felt like I couldn’t breathe, and I needed to be outside. I could feel everyone in the place watching my every move.

“A tattoo, Nicholas…that’s for life,” I said with a knot in my throat. “You’re going to regret getting it. I know you are. What if one day it turns into a bad memory, a ghost that’s chasing you down? You’ll regret it, and you’ll hate me because it will remind you of me even when you don’t want it to—”

His lips silenced me with a quick kiss. It felt tender, but I could feel the tension in his body.

“Sometimes I don’t know what to do with you, Noah. I really don’t.”

He picked up his laptop and walked back to where he’d been before.

Shit… Had I hurt his feelings?

I couldn’t sleep that night. Nick’s hurt, bitter expression was the reason. I felt guilty for how I’d acted, for reacting that way. And I understood then that I needed to talk to someone about it. I needed someone to help me—to help me be what Nick expected of me.

The next morning, I had my first session with Michael O’Neil.

“Tell me about yourself, Noah. Why do you think you need my help?”

His office wasn’t the way I’d imagined it. There wasn’t a couch to lie down on or a bunch of weird objects or anything like that. It was just a normal office with a desk in the corner, two black couches, a coffee table, some puffy white cushions. The curtains were open on the big windows, letting a warm light in. Michael offered me tea and cookies, and I felt like a five-year-old girl.

I told him more or less what my childhood had been like, my relationship with my father, the problems with Mom. I hadn’t intended to reveal all my secrets in the first session, but Michael was good at getting information out of me without my even realizing it. I told him about falling out the window, my trauma related to the darkness; I told him that just over a year ago, I’d had to leave home and move to LA. I told him about Nick. After all, that was why I was there.

“You mentioned you have a boyfriend,” he said, taking a break from his notes.

I squirmed a little on the sofa.

“Tell me about that relationship.”