Total pages in book: 168
Estimated words: 159420 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 797(@200wpm)___ 638(@250wpm)___ 531(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 159420 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 797(@200wpm)___ 638(@250wpm)___ 531(@300wpm)
“’Cause at one point, those words were hard to say.”
I look up.
He breathes deep, shifting his eyes away from me for the first time. “They ain’t particularly difficult, but…” He swallows. “They were for me. They’d bang around in my head, would get real loud, so I… I put ’em somewhere, purged ’em. Gave ’em a place to go.”
“Did you do these?”
“Not the ones on my scar,” he says, shaking his head. “The skin’s… less elastic. It ain’t like the healthy skin. It’s ain’t dead either. Just… different. So you need an expert.”
“But you do do them,” I go on. “I saw the tattoo station in your room.”
He watches me a beat. “Yeah.”
“So around the scar then?”
Another beat passes where his eyes shimmer somewhat mysteriously. “Yeah.”
I finally look at the words around his scar again; there are a bunch, not random, though, because these are all the words he wanted to say but couldn’t. Home, rainbow, help, no. They make emotion swell up in my throat, but I push it down and keep reading. Until I stop at one and my mouth falls open. It may be one word, a name, but after a certain point past his thigh, it is all there is. Repeatedly, multiple times. Ten times, twenty, thirty, maybe even fifty times.
“That’s…” My chest heaves and stutters and I have to press a hand on my trembling belly before I can continue. “That’s my n-name.”
It is, isn’t it? Because for a few seconds, I don’t even remember what my name is. I’ve forgotten everything except that he has Peyton written all over his thigh. Over the bulge of his bronzed, powerful muscles. Oh God. Oh my God. Oh my fucking God.
“Yeah,” he rasps.
My eyes skitter up and clash with his. “But you… you hardly ever say my name. You…” I shake my head. “You call me all these things and I hated them at first. I hated how you called me a princess when I’m not, but then I started to like it because you made me feel like it wasn’t a bad thing. Like I was your princess. And then you called me darling and I love that. God, I love that. I…” I inhale a shaky breath. “I thought you hated my name. So then why do you have it tattooed on your body?”
By the time I finish venting, my words jumbled and hurried, his eyes have started to shimmer with emotion. With intensity and heat and so many things I can’t possibly understand. Then, “’Cause for the longest time, I didn’t know what your name was. All I called you was Princess ’cause that’s what you were to me. My Princess. And then I found out who you were and”—he swallows—“I hated you for it. Hated you for who you were, who you came from. I was an asshole, still am, but back then, I hated knowin’ you were never mine and you’d never be mine. But no matter how much I hated you, I finally had a fuckin’ name. I finally knew what my Princess was called and fuck, it was perfect for her. Peyton. Sweet, delicate, pretty.
“It got stuck in my head. Not ’cause I couldn’t say it but because I wanted to say it all the time. Peyton, Peyton, Peyton. I wanted to shout it from the rooftops; Jesus, tell everyone what your name was when I fuckin’ hate people. Wanted to call out to you through the shadows, through your window. Wanted to moan it out loud when I came in my hand, jerkin’ off to the shows you put on for me. I wanted to say it in my sleep; wanted it to be the first thing I said when I woke up. ’Cause I finally knew the girl I’d been obsessed with has got the prettiest name there ever was. But I couldn’t. Couldn’t want that, didn’t wanna want that. Didn’t wanna call out the name of the Turner Princess. So it banged around in my skull all day long, wouldn’t let me sleep, wouldn’t let me work. Echoin’, hurtin’, drivin’ me goddamn insane. So I did what I always did, gave it a place to go. Purged it, once, twice, ten times, more than that. Because no matter how much I wanted your name out of my head, it wouldn’t leave. It’s still there. In my head. My chest. My body.”
The Turner Princess.
That’s what I am. I know that. I knew that. But God, it hurts. That the reminder of it is everywhere. I can’t escape it. We can’t escape it. It’s our fate. I will always belong to the family that killed his, and there’s nothing either of us can do about it.
“You don’t have to look at it.”
His tight voice breaks into my thoughts, and I look up. Only to find him blurred because I’m crying. Tears are silently flowing down my cheeks, and his body, his features, are so tight, it seems like one wrong move and he’ll break. Sniffling, I ask, “What?”