There Are No Saints (Sinners Duet #1)(49)

The closest comparison would be a gymnast or a dancer—that level of lean, tight, fluid muscle. A coiled spring, ready for release.

Even gymnasts aren’t this aesthetic. The slabs of muscle across his chest, the perfect V of his waist, the way the ripples of muscle seem designed to draw the eye down, down, to button of his trousers . . .

His flesh is pale next to the loose, dark waves of hair that fall almost to his shoulders. There’s no hair anywhere on his body. No ink, either. His skin is smooth and unmarked.

“You want me to tattoo you?” I say.

He nods.

“Do you have other tattoos?”

“This will be the first.”

I swallow hard.

Cole’s beauty is way past intimidating—it’s fucking flawless.

I’ve never given a tattoo in my life. If I fuck this up, I’ll feel worse than if I scrawled a mustache across the Mona Lisa.

“I don’t think I should.”

Cole’s brows drop low across his eyes, narrowing them to slits.

“I don’t give a fuck what you think.”

My fingers tighten on the gun.

Now I want to write FUCK YOU in six-inch letters across his back.

“I hope you have enough ink,” I say.

“I have exactly what I need,” he replies.

I bet he does.

I grab the stool and drag it over in front of the mirror.

“Sit down,” I say.

Cole sits, leaning forward with his elbows resting on his knees. Without discussing it, we’ve both intuited that his back is the best canvas—smooth and relatively flat. Actually, it’s as muscular as the rest of him. As soon as I hover the needle over his skin, I can see that I’ll have to navigate the scapula, the ribs, and the long sheets of muscle that radiate out from the spine—the lats, the traps, and the obliques.

“You want me to . . . sketch it out first?” I say weakly.

Cole doesn’t move. He doesn’t even turn his head.

“I trust you,” he says.

I’m a hot mess. Nobody has ever trusted me, especially not with something as irreversible as this.

But I don’t argue. Taking a deep breath, I fire up the gun.

By the time I’m finished, the first morning light is streaming in through the floor-to-ceiling windows. It illuminates Cole’s skin, turning marble to gold.

I’ve fallen so deeply into the design that all I can see is those flowing black lines, running like a river down the right side of his back. With a little practice, I’ve even figured out the shading.

He’s bleeding in a couple of spots. He never flinched. Never asked me to stop. He hardly seemed to feel it at all.

I clean his back with the green soap, just as he did to me.

Then I say, “It’s finished.”

Cole stands with his back to the mirror. He looks over his shoulder to see the design.

Two snakes: one white, one black. Twisted and entwined with one another—their alternating coils tightly wrapped, but their mouths open to show their snarling fangs.

I branded him just as he did to me.





23





Cole





The tattoo's complete, and I feel strangely peaceful.

The sun is rising. The sky outside the window looks transparent as glass.

Mara notices the same thing, pressing her palm flat against the window, as if she could reach through and touch the clear space beyond.

“No fog today,” she says.

“Do you want to walk with me?”

She turns her head, dark hair sliding across her bare shoulder in a way that makes me want to trace my fingers over the same spot. The light illuminates her profile, a burning line down her forehead, the bridge of her nose, the indent above her upper lip . . .

“Yes,” she says. “I do.”

We leave the building together.

I tore off her top, and the overalls barely cover her tits. Mara doesn’t seem to notice. I’ve never seen someone so comfortable in their own body, or so careless of other people’s opinions.

Her attention is entirely consumed by the world around her. She looks at everything we pass: the vintage mustang pulled up to the curb, top down to show off its creamy leather seats. The laurel dropping its leaves onto the street in slow, lazy drifts. A raven breaking open a snail by beating its shell against the cornice of a bank.

This is why Mara is so easy to stalk. When I’m outside, I’m constantly scanning the street. Watching for cameras, cops, anyone who might be following me. Looking for people I know, people I don’t know. Watching everyone all the time.

Mara is consumed by whatever catches her attention. Anything beautiful, anything interesting.

lovely — Billie Eilish

Spotify → geni.us/no-saints-spotify

Apple Music → geni.us/no-saints-apple





She points it all out to me. A rose-covered trellis on Scott Street. The stained-glass window of a church. A girl gliding down the hill on roller derby skates.

“Those are Eclipse,” Mara says. “They’re the best.”

My back burns. I bet her ribs are burning too.

I like that we’re feeling the same pain at the same time.

I like that I marked her, and she marked me.

We’re bound together now, her art on my skin and mine on hers.