Page 48 of The Sweetest Return

My hand lifted an inch, then curled at my side because I wanted to touch that spot so bad it made my fingers ache.

I wanted my thumb on the ink. Wanted to feel her heartbeat under it. Wanted to know if my name still had any power there.

Her lips parted. “Andre?”

I leaned down until my mouth was near her ear.

She shivered.

“My name is still branded on you, Imani.”

I heard her take a deep breath.

“It’s mine,” she whispered.

I pulled back just enough to see her face.

Her eyes were on mine now, brown and bright under the lights, lashes low, mouth soft from the breath she had not gotten all the way back.

“It may be on your body,” I said, “but that’s my name there.”

Her throat moved.

“It’s an infinity symbol.”

“With my name in it.”

Her eyes stayed on mine.

The room kept moving around us, but I was back in that tattoo shop with her hand wrapped around mine. She had been twenty-one, nervous and pretending not to be, lying still while the needle worked over the place above her heart. She told me not to get sentimental about it.

I did anyway.

A woman like Imani putting your name on her body was the kind of thing a young man could mistake for forever being easy.

I knew better now.

Seeing it still hit places in me I had not given permission.

“You kept it,” I said.

Her voice came softer. “I told you. It was mine.”

I nodded slowly.

Maybe the tattoo was hers. The body was hers. The life she had built after me belonged to her completely.

But my name was still there, sitting over her heart beneath all that silk, and I did not know how to be casual about that.

“You walked in here with my name showing and expected me to act right?”

A small smile touched her mouth.

“You were doing fine until now.”

“No, I wasn’t.”

Her smile faded, but the heat stayed.