“And the bra.” I could hear the smile in his voice.

I took that off too. He then fitted the opening of the t-shirt over my head and I put my arms through the sleeves. I felt like a kid being dressed, but it also felt like an act of affection from him.

He threw his own clothes off as I moved onto the large king sized bed and pulled the covers back. He crawled in after me and pressed himself against me, giving me all his body heat as he pulled the covers over top of us. I was on my side, facing him, and while I was tired, I was incredibly aware of my surroundings. This was going to take some adjusting to.

His hand trailed up and down my spine. He kissed me softly as that hand slid up and cupped the bad side of my face to him.

“So beautiful,” he whispered to me.

“You don’t have to keep saying that,” I whispered back.

“Why? Am I boring you?”

“No.”

“Does it bother you that I find you so beautiful?”

I shook my head. “No, not really.”

“Not really? Explain. I want you to open up to me.”

I sighed, looking down at his chin to avoid looking into his eyes. “I’m not what I once was. Don’t pretend it’s not there, and please don’t feed me the bullshit of it doesn’t look bad. It does, and I know you can see it, and you see it every time I look at you. So… don’t keep telling me I’m beautiful as a way to boost my confidence, or whatever it is you’re hoping to achieve.”

He surprised me by chuckling, and I scowled at him. “What’s so funny?”

He shook his head. “Bloody hell, Claire. Are you so self-conscious you think the world revolves around your bloody scars? Of course they’re there. Of course I see them. Of course you look different than you did when I met you on that train. But I’d never feed you bullshit just to make you happy. I say what’s on my mind. I say what’s in my heart. I don’t lie, and I certainly don’t pity you – and even if I did, I wouldn’t have some kind of agenda to make you feel better about them. I know whatever happened to you wasn’t deserved, so I’m not going to pester you to tell me either.”

To say his words knocked me back a step was the biggest understatement of the century. Maybe a part of me expected him to deny telling me I was beautiful to make me feel better, but I certainly didn’t word it in my head the way he just did.

Ben Costigan was blunt and brutally honest.

I loved that.

“Well,” I said, “now that we’re talking about it, just so you know, I did deserve what happened to me.”

I went rigid when his thumb stroked the harsh lines. “I find that incredibly unbelievable,” he replied solemnly. “Whatever happened here would have been very painful, and I can’t for a second believe you’d ever deserve that.”

“Maybe I attacked someone first and this was their retaliation.”

“No, I’m positive that didn’t happen.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Yes, I do. You didn’t deserve it.”

“You’re wrong.”

“Then tell me what happened so I can be the judge of that.” He then quickly added, “If you’re comfortable to, of course.”

I wasn’t uncomfortable talking about it. I often found a way to detach when I had to explain it – which hadn’t been often. Most people looked like they were walking on eggshells around me, as if asking me would somehow make me crumble into a million pieces.

But telling it to Ben was different. I was very hesitant.

“It might change how you think of me,” I warned him. “And that’s the only thing that makes me uncomfortable.”

He kissed me again. “It won’t. I promise.”

“You can’t promise something you don’t know about.”

“I can and I just did. I’m a man of my word, remember?”

This time I did look into his eyes. I searched them, and all I saw staring back at me was his genuine honesty.

Okay, Claire. Just tell him. Don’t ramble on either. Cut to the chase. The sooner it’s out, the faster you can put it behind you.

“I won’t say I was drunk and stupid,” I started quietly, “because that would be a coward’s explanation. Truth is I knew exactly what I was doing. I seduced a taken man at a bar, feet away from his girlfriend. He was very attractive, and I was very shallow. It didn’t bother me that he was taken because I felt like his girlfriend was inferior to me, and that he deserved the best.”

I paused for a moment, expecting some kind of reaction from Ben. But he just stared at me, patiently waiting.

I continued. “When she was preoccupied with her friends, I slipped a note into his pocket, telling him to meet me in the alleyway. I waited not even a minute before he showed up. There was something exciting about trying not to get caught. Like he was so desperate, he was risking it all just to have me. It was naïve thinking at the time, but it made me feel alive. He took me against the wall, and I remember feeling his warmth against me. We’d only made out before the world started spinning and the sounds of screams broke through the haze.

“I knew immediately that we’d been caught, and I felt this horrible ache in my chest. I’d really thought we wouldn’t, and the reality was unlike anything I’d ever expected it to be. The man didn’t defend me, and it wasn’t like I expected it or anything, but I certainly didn’t think she’d put the entire blame on to me. He was pulled aside, forgotten, like a kid that would get scolded as an afterthought when all was said and done. Meanwhile, her and her friends turned to me, and I knew what was coming. They were going to beat on me. I took off running and barely made it out of the alleyway before my hair was yanked back. I fell to the ground and before anything started to make sense, this enormous sudden pain crashed into the side of my face. My whole head felt like it’d exploded, and I couldn’t hear or feel anything. I fell back, and they continued beating me. I passed out somewhere along the way.

“I don’t know how long I stayed like that, but my thoughts returned to me before I even opened my eyes. I remembered everything as I started to stir awake. And when I remembered the pain, I instantly stopped moving. I was paralysed to the ground, scared that if they’d see me move, they’d continue hurting me. I was panicked. My stomach churned and my skin broke out in cold sweat. The pain on the side of my face felt like it had its own pulse, and it was going a million miles an hour.

“It was only so long before my body couldn’t handle it anymore. I turned to my side and threw up, and when I opened my eyes, I realized I wasn’t in the alleyway. I was in a hospital. They told me I’d been glassed in the face. The girl and her friends did a lot of damage. Thirty stitches to the face, two broken ribs, a concussion, and a body full of scrapes and bruises.”

So much for short and to the point.

“So there you go,” I said lamely, finishing off my epic monologue. Why did I have to talk so much?

He was quiet. Probably judging me. Probably wondering why he just bedded a whore. He had the right to.

His silence was making this weird now. Deciding to rest on my back as a pathetic attempt to escape the rotten feeling in my chest, I turned away from him.

“Stop,” he suddenly said, pulling me back to my side. “Don’t run off.”

“You haven’t said anything in, like, two minutes, and it’s weird now.”

“It’s not weird. I’m just thinking.”

“What’re you thinking about?”

“Your story, of course.”

“And?”

“And I’m sorry you had to go through that.”

Ugh. I sighed. “I don’t want a ‘sorry’, Ben.”

“What do you want then?”

“The truth. Your true feelings! Lay it to me thick. I know it was whorish, and I just wish people would start telling me that instead of saying ‘sorry’.”

“You’re right,” he then said firmly. “It was whorish. It was wrong. It was a stupid cry for attention that backfired. But that doesn’t mean you have to carry that reminder on your face every day for the rest of your life. You. Didn’t. Deserve. It.”

I looked at him warily. “You’re not just saying that?”

He stroked the scars again, and brought his face inches from mine. “No, I’m not just saying that. But you’re letting them win by giving them control over your feelings. Instead of looking into the mirror and remembering the night they did this to you, remember the mistake you learned from. Because it has changed you, right?”

I nodded.

“Good. Imagine the road you’d have been on if you’d kept going, and then think of what you’ve filled your life with now. Tell me which life you prefer.”

“This one,” I said without question.

He smiled. “So what the hell do you have to be depressed about?”

I smiled back. “Nothing, I guess.”

But I knew all this already, didn’t I? It was the message Mom and Emily had been telling me for months now. One that didn’t seem to stick. Yet when they were said by Ben, it made sense in a way I’d been desperately wanting to grasp.

“Like I said,” he added with a tender kiss, “you’re beautiful, and don’t tell me otherwise.”

I didn’t because I wanted to believe him.

He thought I was beautiful, and it was about time I really tried to think so too.

*****

Emily: Did you get laid tonight. Text me ASAP if you did.

Me: Sure did.

Emily: Skank.

Me: Correction – “happy” skank, thank you very much! Did you get lucky too?

Emily: Another limp dick. I think there’s something in the water. Why else are they all so deformed? *and I’m talking bent at the tip kinda deformed*

Me: Ha. Sorry, babe. Can’t always get it good.

Emily: It’s going good for you!

Me: Yep =)

Emily: Is he big?

Me: Yep =)

Emily: Like, really big?

Me: Yep =)

Emily: Is he good?

Me: Yep =)

Emily: Did he go down on you?

Me: Yep =)

Emily: Fuuuuuck! I hate you.

Me: We did it in a taxi too ;)

Emily: OMG!!!!!!! :0

Me: & we were soaking wet. It was hot.

Emily: …:0 :0 :0

Me: Now we’re cuddling and you’re distracting me. Good night, ho.

Emily: :0

Chapter Thirteen

The Royal Show

After we had breakfast and another raunchy love fest in the shower, I took the taxi home. I reflected on our shower together all the way there. It was hotter than the first time, especially because his shower was freaking massive and bending down didn’t warrant having my face plastered to the glass.

I was walking on sunshine, and singing that silly tune in my head as I walked into the house only to climb the stairs and find Emily asleep on my bed. I paused by the doorway and watched her in concern. It’d been a while since she’d come to sleep over because she’d had a fight with her father. She did it to escape him, and seeing her in my bed again made my heart clench.

I quietly grabbed a change of clothes and backed out of the bedroom, shutting it quietly behind me. Halfway down the stairs my phone rang, and seeing “PRIVATE NUMBER CALLING” made me smile from ear to ear.

“Hello.”

“Hey, beauty,” said Ben, “just making sure you made it home.”

“I did. You know, it wouldn’t kill to give me your cell phone number so I can text you all day.”

“I can’t. I only have a work phone at the moment.”

“Is that what you’re calling me on right now?”

“Yes, it is.”

“So then get yourself a normal phone for private use. Hint, hint.”

He chuckled at my double meaning. “I’ll think of that. I prefer coming to see you instead of texting. Makes things a little more real. Plus you don’t know who is behind the scenes reading.”

“Well, if you want to be medieval about our relationship then I’ll just have to accept that, so long as you’re around a lot.”

He hummed in thought. “Relationship, huh?”

I froze in the hallway. “What else would you describe this? You said last night it was more than sex, so I automatically assumed that –”

He silenced me with his laugh. “I’m kidding, sweetheart.”

I relaxed. “It’s good you weren’t here to make that joke.”

“Or what?”

“Or I’d have kicked you up the ass. Or, wait,” I mused, “you’re English, so it must be ‘arse’, right? Or is it bollocks?”

“You’re being painfully stereotypical.”

“Stereotypical would have been inviting you over for scones and tea.”

“Yeah, let’s not push it. You do forget I immigrated here fifteen years ago.”

“I came here ten years ago and I’m still catching up.”

“No,” he disagreed, “you’ve got a jumbled accent. Another giveaway you weren’t a tourist.”

I strode into the kitchen and opened the fridge. I pulled out a chocolate bar and tore it open.

“What’re you doing?” he asked curiously.

“Pulled my chocolate out of the fridge,” I answered, taking a bite and leaning back against the counter.            

“You store your chocolate in the fridge?”

“Yep.”