Ali woke from a terrible dream in which Bobby showed up at the ranch and found Alejandro in her bed. For a moment she lay in a half-dream state, slowly coming back to reality. The buzz of the dryer reminded her that Alejandro wasn’t in her bed, he was in the guest bedroom and as naked as the day he was born because she hadn’t yet brought him his clean clothes.

 

She brushed her teeth and threw on her robe so she could go let Tip out of his stall. Coffee was her first stop. She nursed her steaming mug while she pulled the warm laundry out of the dryer and folded it neatly. A quick peek into the guest room confirmed that Alejandro was still sleeping, so she put the clothes on the chair and headed out to the barn.

 

“Good morning, you silly beast,” she crooned as Tip nuzzled under her hair. She was glad no one was around to see her in her night clothes and Wellies, but the perks of having her own place was that she could do as she damn well pleased. The morning sun filtered softly into the barn and she opened his stall and led him by the bridle into his pasture. She filled his water bucket and patted his rump as he headed into the field for a morning graze.

 

When she arrived back in the house she checked on Alejandro again. He was propped up in bed, eyes bleary and the covers pulled up to his chest. He looked wretched but smiled as she came in.

 

“How’d you sleep?” she asked softly.

 

“Good. The drugs helped. I won’t take any more, but it was good to have them last night.”

 

“I’m glad.” She pointed toward the chair. “Your clothes are clean.”

 

“Thanks. I was wondering if… uh… I could get a shower.”

 

“Sure.” She realized the downstairs bathroom only had a tub and he was going to have to bring him up to her master bath, which meant walking him through her bedroom. “You have to go upstairs. Is that okay?”

 

“I’ll go anywhere right about now to get clean.” He grinned and she felt it in every cell of her body.

 

***

 

She was halfway out of the room, having shown him to her shower, when he called after her, “Come in with me, Ali.”

 

Her heart caught in her throat and she stopped dead in her tracks. Alejandro leaned in the doorway of her bathroom, the towel slung dangerously low on his hips. Her eyes followed the trail of dark hair from his stomach to where it joined a larger patch barely visible above the towel. His intent was clear, and the realization made her mouth dry.

 

“You should—” She took a deep breath to steady herself. “You’re hurt. I shouldn’t.”

 

“I’m fine. But since you’re so concerned, what if I’m overcome by the steam and I faint?” he teased. “You better be there to catch me.”

 

She must’ve looked worried, because he chuckled and shook his head. “I’m kidding. But not about getting in this shower with me. Come on, you need one too. And after the past twenty-four hours I’ve had you’d be doing me a favor.”

 

He straightened and she saw it then. An open ribcage, tattooed on his golden skin with gruesome reality, thorny vines twining and escaping through the bars of bone. The artistry was so precise it made her woozy to stare at what looked to be a giant hole in Alejandro’s chest, crowded with dying roses, the vines growing aggressively, as if they wanted nothing more than to choke his heart. A few wilted petals drifted gracefully down his side, and a few more fluttered into the hollow of his lean hips. She stared at it, unable to process exactly what she was seeing. It was both grotesque and beautiful, stunningly realistic.

 

“What is that?” she asked quietly.

 

“Come here and I’ll tell you.”

 

She crossed the room in seconds and he captured her face in his hands, holding her just inches away, his hands gentle on her. He brushed his lips across mouth and she sighed softly.

 

“It’s a reminder, Ali,” he breathed against her, untying the sash of her robe and slipping it off her shoulders. His lips burned a trail down her jaw to the little space below her ear, and his tongue flicked against the pulse point. At the junction of her thighs she was molten, a keening urge tightening around itself deep within her.

 

“What does it mean?” she whispered.

 

He took her fingers in his calloused grasp and pressed her hand flat over his heart. “I tried to forget… but you grew roots around my ribcage… and sprouted flowers just below my collarbones…”

 

She tried to remember where she knew those words from. Finally she figured it out. Oh, God, the poem. It all came back to her: senior English class, the term spent studying and memorizing poetry. Pablo Neruda. Alejandro’s heart galloped under her palm, and when she looked at his face his dark eyes blazed with need.

 

Alejandro’s mouth hovered mere inches from hers. Fighting back the groan that built in her, Ali closed her eyes and waited for his inevitable kiss.

 

“All day I pluck their petals…” he breathed against her lips, and her veins sizzled with the need to devour his mouth. He was playing her like an instrument only he knew how to use, and all she wanted to do was let him.

 

“…but I have not yet ascertained…” Now he held her arms so that she could only wriggle against him, a whimper escaping her as his lips brushed back and forth across her mouth.

 

“…whether you love me…” He sucked at her lower lip and she choked back a sob of frustration. “…or not.” Finally he held her at arms’ length, studying her face. His eyes gleamed triumphantly but his mouth remained serious.

 

“So tell me, Ali,” he growled. “Tell me if you ever loved me or if it was just a summer fling.”

 

“The tattoo… It’s the poem…” she gasped. Her body betrayed her with its combustion, and she shuddered as the shock of it ripped through her.

 

“Yes, it’s the poem.” He tipped her chin and met the seam of her mouth with the tip of his tongue. She groaned as he slipped inside so easily, loosening his grip on her arms so he could wrap his hands around her waist.

 

“Tell me, Baby…” He kissed a trail to her throat, breathing her in as he nuzzled and nipped his way down the pulsing artery. He traced her collarbone with his tongue and she whimpered and stopped thinking altogether. She was electrified, the sensations he was building in her almost too strong to take. Alejandro, I loved you, I love you still, she heard herself whispering wildly, but the words never slipped from her tongue.

 

Instead she sighed in ecstasy as Alejandro traced inside the neckline of her tank top, over the swell of her unfettered breast. He scraped his finger over the cotton-covered nipple so that it stiffened below the surface, and she moaned softly.

 

With a strangled cry she pulled his face to hers and devoured his mouth, thrusting her tongue against his until she felt him shudder. She seized his bottom lip with her teeth and he moaned, “Fuck, Ali…” Through the towel she could feel his erection twitching, straining wildly toward the heat between her thighs. And then Alejandro loosened the towel and let it drop.

 

***

 

“Oh, God,” she breathed. “Touch me, Alejandro, please.”

 

“You haven’t said yet.”

 

She shook her head. “I can’t.”

 

“Won’t,” he corrected her, and released his grip on her. He stepped into the shower and turned on the spray, adjusting it until it was perfect and then letting the water run over him.

 

Ali stood reeling and breathless. It would be so easy to just tell him. She’d almost told him on the Ridge. She’d wanted to tell him in the garage. And the night before, when he lay in her guest bed, she’d fought the urge to crawl into the bed beside him and whisper everything she’d ever felt into his ear.

 

She stepped in with him and he turned to face her.

 

“It wasn’t a fling,” she sobbed against his mouth. “I loved you before you kissed me at graduation. I loved you all that summer. I loved you after you left, for years and years. I don’t think I ever stopped. Maybe I love you now. I don’t know anymore.” The spray blinded her and he pulled her into his embrace, skin to skin.

 

“We have this. Right now. That’s all that matters,” he murmured, stroking the slick skin of her back. She felt his erection twitch against her stomach and reached between them to grasp it.

 

He gritted his teeth as her fingers wrapped around him. She slicked her hands with soap and bathed him—all of him—lovingly, lathering every inch of him, thorough in her ministrations. Alejandro leaned his head back against the tiles and groaned in pleasure as she tugged him slow and steady, her soapy fist wrapped tightly around his pulsing flesh.

 

Then he unwrapped her fingers from him. He took the soap and washed her, starting with her breasts and arms. Soon his soapy fingers were between her thighs, slipping back and forth until her clit plumped beneath his touch. Her hips bucked at him of their own accord and he seized her mouth with his, plundering her mouth in rhythm with his strokes. “I love you, Ali. I love you, I love you, I love you.” he murmured between her sighs of pleasure.