“It’s the truth.”
Even so, I knew he was lying. I just had no idea why.
After we got married, the tattoo bothered me more and more. It wasn’t because I suspected Ryan was cheating on me. It was because people don’t permanently put a stranger’s face on their bodies.
Not like that. Not with that level of detail.
Finally, I asked him to cover it up. I wasn’t asking him to take it off. I just wanted something else. A compass. A mountain range. A dragon. Anything.
At first he agreed. Then months passed. The tattoo artist moved on. Money became scarce. Work got busy. There was always another excuse.
In the end, I stopped asking. Not because I didn’t care anymore, but because I was exhausted. Exhausted from losing the same argument over and over. Exhausted from feeling like I was competing with a woman whose name I didn’t even know.
So I taught myself to ignore her.
Or at least that’s what I thought.
Until last week.
