One Tiny Lie A Novel

my eyes pointedly on his shirt.
    Setting my injured hand down, he reaches back over his shoulders and pulls his shirt forward and over his head. Tossing it to a corner, he turns back to take my hand. And I’m facing the chest that I’ve not been able to dislodge from my brain for weeks. The one that instantly makes my breath hitch. The one that I’ve never had a chance to stare at so blatantly while sober. And I do stare now. Like a deer caught in headlights, I can’t seem to turn away as I take in all the ridges and curves.
    “What does that mean?” I ask, jutting my chin toward the inked symbol over his heart.
    Ashton doesn’t answer. He avoids the question completely by sliding his thumb across my bottom lip. “You have a bit of drool there,” he murmurs before turning his focus back to the scrape across my palm, allowing my face to burn without scrutiny.
    “It’s not as bad as it looks,” I hear myself mutter as he shifts my palm over the sink. The leather band around his wrist catches my eye, the one he doesn’t seem to take off. Ever. Reaching over to tap it with my free hand, I ask, “What’s this for?”
    “A lot of questions today, Irish.” By the way his jaw clenches, I know it’s another answer hidden in his vault.
    Reagan was right. He doesn’t talk about anything personal. With a sigh, I watch him unscrew the cap off the antiseptic and hold my hand out. “It doesn’t even—” The word “hurt ” was supposed to come out of my mouth. Instead, a string of obscenities to make a lifelong sailor proud shoot out. “What the fuck are you doing? Shit! You don’t pour it on like that, you fucking jackhole! Fuck! ” I’m seething in pain, the sting agonizing.
    Ashton isn’t paying any heed, turning my hand this way and that to examine it closer. “Looks clean.”
    “Yeah, because you just bleached the shit out of it!”
    “Relax. It’ll stop stinging soon. Distract yourself by staring at me while we wait for this to settle down. That’s how you got yourself into this mess to begin with . . .” Amused eyes flash to mine for a second before dropping back to my hand. “Nice combination there, by the way. ‘Fucking jackhole’? Really?”
    “I meant it in the nicest possible way,” I mutter, but it isn’t long before I’m fighting my lips from curling into a smile. I guess it is kind of funny. Or it will be when I can walk again . . . Determined not to give in to temptation, I let my eyes roam the small bathroom, taking in the tiles in the glass shower stall, the soothing off-white walls, the white fluffy towels . . .
    And then I’m back to Ashton’s body because, let’s face it, it’s so much more appealing than tile and towels. Or anything else, for that matter. I study the black Native American–style bird on his inner forearm. It’s big—a good five inches long, its details intricate. Almost intricate enough to hide the ridge beneath it.
    The scar.
    My mouth opens to ask but then firmly shuts. Peering up at the sizeable Chinese script on his shoulder, I can see another ridge skillfully covered. Another hidden scar.
    I swallow the nausea rising in my throat as I think about the day my sister came home with a giant tattoo of five black ravens on her thigh. It covers one of the more unpleasant scars from that night. Five birds—one for each person who died in that car that night. Including one for her. I didn’t know what it meant at the time. She didn’t tell me until two years ago.
    With a heavy sigh, my eyes shift to the symbol on his chest once again to study it more closely.
    And see another ridge so expertly concealed.
    “What’s wrong?” Ashton asks as he unwraps a bandage. “You’re pale.”
    “What—” I catch myself before I ask what happened, because I won’t get an answer. I avert my gaze to my scraped hand to think. Maybe it’s nothing. It’s probably nothing. People get tattoos to cover scars all the time . . .
    But everything in my gut tells me that it’s not nothing.
    I watch him affix the bandage over the scrape. It’s no longer stinging, but I’m not sure whether that’s due to time or the fact that my mind is working on overdrive, twisting and turning the puzzle pieces to see how they fit together. But I’m missing too many. Simple things like that leather band . . .
    The leather band.
    The leather band .
    It’s not a leather band, I realize, peering closely at it.
    I grab Ashton’s hand and hold it up to inspect