“Thanks for checking in, but it’s okay. My health is my concern.” She glanced away. He saw too much but it was the price for opening up to him. “This will be hard for you to sympathize with, I realize, but I was an ugly duckling for a long time. A fat girl. When I finally lost all the weight, I vowed never to gain it back. Portion control is my friend.”
“Elise.” He stroked her knuckles with his thumb in a comforting caress. “I don’t know what it’s like to be fat. But it’s not fair to frame your struggles as if no one else can comprehend them. To deliberately shut me out solely because I have a few strands of DNA that put my face together like this.”
He circled an index finger over his cheekbones, and the darkness underneath the motion, in his expression, startled her.
“I’m not trying to shut you out.” Was she?
The alternative meant she’d have to let him glimpse her innermost secrets, her deepest fears. It would mean trusting him with far more than her body. It would mean trusting him with her soul.
But hadn’t she already done that when she invited him into her bed?
“You may not be consciously trying to. But you are,” he said mildly. “And not only that, you’re making an assumption about me based on my appearance. Like I can’t possibly know what it feels like to have disappointments or pain because of the way I look.”
Speechless, she stared into his snapping, smoky eyes. She’d hurt him with her thoughtless comments.
She had made assumptions and drawn her fat-girl self around her like a familiar, impenetrable blanket.
Dax had called it during their discussion on the park bench. She ran screaming in the other direction before a man could get close enough to hurt her.
Had she already screwed this up—whatever this was—before it started?
“I’m sorry,” she said sincerely and squeezed his hand. He squeezed back and her heart lightened a little. “I’m sensitive about food and about being fat. It’s an ugly part of me. I’m not used to sharing it with anyone.”
“There’s nothing ugly about you,” he shot right back. “Why in the world would you think a few pounds makes you ugly?”
She debated. It was so much easier to make a joke. But she’d been patiently explaining the components of happily ever after to Dax for weeks, which had everything to do with honesty, vulnerability and trust. Was she really going to balk when it was her turn to lay it all out?
“You’ve seen my mother. You’ve been in that world. Surely the pursuit of thinness is not so mysterious an ideal.”
He shrugged. “But you’re not a model. Neither are you your mother. So your weight is not a requirement for your job.”
Easy for him to say. It was different for boys no matter what they looked like.
“It’s not that simple. I grew up surrounded by swans and constantly aware I wasn’t one of them. In case I didn’t feel bad enough about being overweight, my mother made sure I didn’t forget it for a moment.”
“She’s the one who made you self-conscious about being fat?” Dax scowled. “That’s horrible.”
His unconditional support squeezed her heart sweetly. “It turned out okay. I buried myself in algorithms and computer code instead of hanging out in the spotlight, which was, and still is, cruel. I built a business born out of the desire to shut myself away from all the negativity. Only EA International could have gotten me in front of those cameras where we met. Even now, I give deserving women makeovers because I know how it feels to be in the middle of all those swans, with no one on your side.”
“I’m glad you found the fortitude to venture onto my set.” Dax smiled. “And I like that you made something positive out of a bad experience.”
“There’s more.” And it was the really important part. “That’s why my profile questions dig into the heart of who you are. So my clients can find someone to love them for what’s underneath, not what they look like.”
Which was not-so-coincidentally what she wanted too—someone to love her forever, no matter what. She’d never had that before.
The smile slipped from his face and he gazed at her solemnly. “I get that.”
Of course he did. She’d made sweeping generalizations about him because of his appearance and she’d bet it wasn’t the first time someone had done that. Not only did he understand the point about loving someone’s insides; of all the people she’d shared her philosophy with, he had the singular distinction of being the only one who’d seen the pain that had created it.