Mama’s face rose up in a curl of smoke, but I waved it away.
“Anyway,” I said, laying strips of tape on the gauze to hold it in place. “I feel for Miller, but I get where Violet is coming from.” I glanced up at Ronan to find him staring at me with an unreadable expression on his face. “You don’t agree?”
He shrugged.
“So you’re a romantic?”
“No,” he stated flatly. “I don’t like to see him suffer.”
“Ah, a big softy then.”
“I’m not that either.”
I set the tape down and looked him in the eye. “What are you?”
I needed to know. The pragmatic side of me needed to know what in the hell it was about Ronan Wentz that was messing with my head. Sex appeal was the easy answer, but there was more to him than that. He was radioactive, his presence rearranging my atoms, turning me into someone I didn’t recognize. Someone who got flustered, unsettled, whoblushed, for God’s sake.
“I’m nothing,” he said.
“No one is nothing.”
“I was eight when my parents died. I was shuffled around foster homes for ten years before my uncle showed up. Been trying to figure out a lot of shit ever since.”
“Ten yearsin foster care?”
He nodded.
“God, I can’t imagine it,” I said. He stiffened, and I could see he didn’t want to imagine it either. “But I know what you mean. A little. My mother…” I waved a hand. “Never mind.”
He didn’t say a word but watched me, the message clear in his eyes.You can tell me.
“I was just going to say that Violet’s parents were best friends, and now their marriage is falling apart. She’s never seen a healthy relationship. And neither has Miller. And neither have I.”
“Same,” Ronan said.
“So you’re not nothing,” I said. “We’re all just…I don’t know, refugees of broken marriages.”
“Broken,” he said, a slight curl to his lips. “Yeah, you could say that.”
I raised my eyes to his. Talking to Ronan felt like tugging a thread—pull too hard and it would snap. Against my better judgment, I wanted more of him. I wanted to know he’d had something good at least once.
“Did you ever see your parents happy?” I asked gently. “Before they died?”
His arm under my hand stiffened, and his gray eyes went hard and flat again.
“No. Never.”
“I’m sorry. It’s none of my business.” I glanced at his arm, freshly bandaged. “And my work here is done.”
But he didn’t move, and neither did I. Both of us watched my hands that were still touching him. Without thinking, I turned his arm over, revealing the tattoo of one hand stabbing another with a dagger.
“Hands remember,” I said. “What does it mean?”
“It’s part of a quote,” he said. “Hands remember what the mind forgets.It means shit happens, and we want to forget it. Move on. But we can’t. It burrows into our damn cells. Our blood.”
I was still holding his arm. “What kind of shit?”
What happened to your parents, Ronan?