As soon as it clicked, Gabriella's eyes glided along the bare skin on his back.
Whoa.
They'd been together for months, technicality of titles aside, and they were living together now, but in all that time, he'd never taken that shirt off in front of her like that. He kept his chest covered, like it had become second nature to him, layering clothing like a second skin, shielding his scars from prying eyes. She never pressed the issue, knowing it made him uncomfortable. He slept with a shirt on. He had sex with a shirt on. For all she knew, he might even shower with a shirt on. Of course, he changed clothes, sometimes with her in the room, but this was deliberate.
He was leaving himself exposed to her.
Dante sat down on the edge of the bed, glancing over his shoulder at her before scrubbing his hands over his face. Nervous.
Her chest ached.
She'd seen them, of course. Nurse Russo saw them every day in the hospital, but he hadn't had a choice then. She'd looked, because she had to, viewing a piece of him without his consent, and she could always tell he felt violated by it. He'd never look her in the eyes when she adjusted wires or listened to his heartbeat, like if he didn't look at her, maybe she wasn't looking at him, either.
"I got stabbed by a pencil when I was thirteen," Gabriella said, sitting up. "I fell asleep doing homework and got woken up by a sharp sting. Pencil was literally sticking out of my thigh. That's how I got this weird gray dot."
She pointed at the small mark on her outer left thigh.
"And I had my appendix removed the summer before I started high school, which is where this came from." She yanked off her dress and tossed it aside, sitting there in only her bra. She sucked in her stomach, trying to get a better view of the two-inch scar on her side. "The whole low-rise jeans and half-shirt combo was hot back then, so everyone saw it. I used to tell people I got stabbed in a fight, because it sounded much cooler than appendicitis, although in hindsight, wow… people actually believed that."
She laughed, chancing a peek at Dante, before continuing.
"Of course, there's also the stretch marks, like on my boobs, courtesy of puberty. I went from nothing to C-cups overnight." She palmed her breasts, catching sight of the small scar between her thumb and pointer finger. "Oh! And this one on my hand—a squirrel bit me. It's kind of a funny story…"
"You don't have to do this," Dante said. "Don't pick yourself apart. That's the last thing I want."
"I'm not picking myself apart," she said. "They're stories. That's what scars are. Some are full of self-depreciating humor. Some are medical dramas. Some are Young Adult novels. And then some… well, some are tragic. Like, Nicholas Sparks meets Shakespeare on the Titanic-level tragic. But something I've come to realize, working where I do, is that having scars means you survived. Scars mean you're alive. Patients come into the hospital all the time with wounds that never get the chance to become scars, and that sucks. The people who do walk away with scars… well, they're the lucky ones."
Dante sat in silence as the room grew darker, the sun disappearing outside. Eventually, he shifted to face her. Gabriella held his gaze before slowly, her eyes drifted down to his chest. Scar tissue covered it in patches, some thicker than others. He'd had multiple extensive surgeries over the years, skin grafts to correct the damage and plastic surgery to hide the evidence, but nothing could erase all signs of his burns.
Reaching over, she ran her fingertips along the rough, rigid skin, not at all surprised when he stared at nothing to avoid seeing her face.
"I love you, Dante."
He looked back at her when she said that. It was the first time she'd said those words to his face, with him awake to hear them. Without responding, he pulled her to him as he climbed into the bed. Gabriella settled into his arms, her hand resting on his bare stomach, stroking the small trail of hair around his belly button. Nuzzling against him, she pressed a kiss to his warm chest.
"I love you, too, Gabriella. More than anything."
Chapter Eighteen
"Dante..."
The room was pitch black, the kind of darkness you could feel, thick enough to overshadow the cloudy haze in the air. It swaddled Dante, infiltrating his lungs when