He was my person, and I had been hiding this one singular part of myself because I was ashamed. This part of me was hidden, buried so no one could find it. No one knew about it. People noticed, of course, that I was slender. Naturally thin. With a great rack—given to me by a great plastic surgeon.
And this was LA. Everyone in my circle was half starved. I wasn’t even the worst of them. Not by far.
It wasn’t original to have an eating disorder in this town. Wasn’t special. It was one of the great failures of society, what it did to our girls.
Nonetheless, I kept this secret. This shame. This weakness.
But now there was nothing but weakness inside of me. Now I couldn’t hide from him. I wasn’t going to disappear. Couldn’t. He wasn’t going to let me.
“Let me feed you,” he said after a long silence.
I had been waiting for him to speak with a pounding heart. My palms were sweaty, yet my teeth chattered from a chill that didn’t exist.
That’s what happened when you were underweight. Your body couldn’t regulate temperature. You were constantly cold, freezing in fact, because you didn’t have body fat to keep you warm.
“You are not disappearing,” he murmured. “I will not let you. So I am going to feed you.” His eyes reached into me, warming every inch. “Let me feed you.” A whisper.
Of course, an eating disorder relapse wasn’t overcome with something as easy as ‘let me feed you’, but it wasn’t the eating disorder that caused me to want to disappear.
So I followed him to the kitchen and let him feed me.
I was at Klutch.
I was drunk.
Very fucking drunk.
In order for me to be able to do this, I had to get very fucking drunk. Even though I could barely stand, I was still paralyzed with dread and shame about what I was about to do.
I’d woken up with Karson this morning. He’d brushed the hair from my face and kissed me on the head, promising he’d see me later and telling me that I was to eat the breakfast he’d set on my nightstand.
I’d slept through the night. Until late morning. Waking in Karson’s arms.
I didn’t say anything as he left, I was too disorientated. I’d gotten up, sipped at the coffee he’d put beside the food and slowly ate. The entire plate.
It was, of course, delicious.
And it was then that his words hit me. He’d see me later. It was a promise. Not open to debate. He’d told me last night that he was done. That he was no longer standing on the sidelines.
My first White Fang attempt had failed.
Most people would be shouting at me, screaming at me to sink into the feeling of wholeness I’d felt when I woke up. To sink into him. Us.
Most people, I hoped, I prayed, did not know what it felt like to live inside this skin.
It was most rational to fight my way back to the man who loved me. Whom I loved. But rational thought did not exist quite yet. I was fighting to survive. I wasn’t making good decisions. I was still self-destructing. Still acting like the asshole.
So I was at Klutch.
Karson was here. I knew that because I knew his schedule from our previous life together. Sure, he could’ve been out running errands for Jay, like punishing enemies or kidnapping Russian Mob bosses or whatever the fuck, but the odds were definitely in my favor.
If he was here, he would’ve clocked me the second I walked through the door. I knew that Jay had an office overlooking the entire club, but I also knew he had a wife and child at home, so most likely, he wasn’t sitting up there like some criminal overlord. He was being a criminal overload in his home office, with his wife and baby in the immediate vicinity.
But Karson didn’t have a wife.
Or a child.
So he was here.