Page 44 of Wild Heart
I’d always been an observer, cunningly so. My eyes picked up on the details that made a person, and for Marcos, his anxiety was a part of that.
His body shook with an energy he didn’t know what to do with, and he tugged on his hair like the weight of it was too much for his scalp. His eyes, my goddamn kryptonite, searched wherever he was for a distraction.
A sliver of peace.
Somehow, he’d found that within the lines that made my tattoos. Tracing them assuaged his panic. He’d confessed, not too long ago, that the mindless action combined with the warmth of my skin calmed him down long enough to breathe again.
I’d done a lot of reading that day, researching anxiety and learning what I could about the way his brain worked. Coloring, I’d found, was one hell of a distraction, so I bought him every goddamn marker I could find in Seattle and stashed them until he needed them.
Most of my tattoos were large, detailed pieces with lots of room for color. He could take as much time as he needed, and use my body until his mind was ready to come toe to toe with whatever had sent it into hiding.
“Manny and I used to color a lot,” he said, and I had to hold my breath just to hear him. “It was one of the only things my mama ever let him do.”
“You miss him.”
“All the time. Manny and I never really had a chance to be brothers. It was always about the miracle. How much of myself could I give to save him?”
There was an unnatural stillness about him as he spoke, more to the air than to me. The marker he held was bleeding into my skin, and every once in a while, it twitched.
“Now I have to live with not being enough, and it’s exhausting. Soul numbing. I’m so tired of apologizing for something I didn’t do.”
Baby…
Marcos had only ever wanted to be loved… he just didn’t want to have to beg for it.
Fuck his parents for making him feel like he had to.
“Do you love me because I saved you?”
“Marcos.”
He turned his head then, and our eyes touched. Round and full of unshed tears, his stare was vulnerable, but it was brave too.
Chest collapsing, his lips rolled in on one another while he waited, breathless, for me to tell him that my love was based on an impossible condition.
“I love you, Solnyshko, because how the fuck could I not? I noticed you,wanted you, long before I took that bullet.”
“Why didn’t you come for me?”
“Ah, baby.”
I pressed a knuckle beneath his eye. A single, warm tear rolled down my finger and crested over my wrist.
“I think I was just trying to protect you.”
“From who?”
“Me,” I said. “The moment we touched.Hell.The second youbreathedin my presence, I knew it right then.”
“Knew what?”
“That I’d go to the depths of Hell for you, and if it came down to it, I’d drag you down with me. Not because you belong there, but because I’m fucking selfish.”
“I belong wherever you are.” His pupils grew, and he skimmed his fingers over my jaw and up over my cheeks. “Drag me to hell, Ivan. Just promise me you’ll never leave me behind.”
The words came out choked and full of pain. I felt the sharp pinch of his nails as he dug them into the skin covering my face, clawing with a desperation that split me wide open.
I laid my hands over his. “You and me, Solnyshko, we’re a till death sort of thing.”
