The Best Next Thing

“They’re…they’re not…”

“Charity, I know what they are.”

“H-how?”

“A girl I went to university with used to self-harm…the scars are very distinctive. How did you get those? Did you do that to yourself?”

He reached for her arm, and she flinched violently, jumping away from him like a terrified rabbit.

His jaw clenched, and his face whitened. He lowered his arm. The movement was slow and deliberate.

He knew. How could he not know? When she had cowered from his touch like a whipped dog?

Miles wanted to hurt someone. Preferably the fucker who had marked Charity. He wanted to tear that bastard limb from limb. But he couldn’t, because the monster who had taken a lit cigarette to her soft skin and burned her was far beyond his reach.

Miles’s stomach twisted with revulsion at the thought of the pain she must have endured. But he swallowed back the nausea churning in his gut and focused on the wounded, vulnerable woman in front of him.

He hated that she appeared afraid of him. The expression of absolute terror on that lovely face made him want to do violence, but he knew that he couldn’t allow her to see that. Not in in her current fragile state.

She had fucking flinched from his touch. As if he would hurt her. As if he would physically hurt any woman. But he couldn’t be offended or wounded by that. She needed patience. Understanding.

Everything Miles was not.

“May I…” his voice was thick, and he cleared his throat before continuing. “May I see?”

She didn’t respond, keeping her hand clamped protectively over her arm while she watched him through her long fall of hair. She looked feral, half crouched in a defensive stance while she eyed his every move warily.

“Why?” The word floated between them, soft and light as butterfly wings.

“It’s patterned, isn’t it?”

“It’s ugly.”

“Nothing about you is ugly.” The hoarse vehemence in his voice startled him, and he took a moment to compose himself before continuing. “Absolutely nothing.”

She never took her eyes from his face but she did stand up straighter; some of that familiar pride returning to her posture. She hesitated for a moment longer before lifting her chin and defiantly thrusting her arm out for him to see.

This time he was the one who wavered, before ever so slowly reaching out to tenderly grasp her slender wrist. He turned her arm until the delicate underside was exposed to him and then valiantly fought back a surge of fury so fucking hot it actually blinded him for a second.

The small round burns were pink and shiny—obviously quite old by now—and neatly arranged in a circle.

Inside the circle—

Miles blinked back the scalding moisture that pooled in his eyes and gritted his teeth against the snarl he could feel forming in his throat. Monster was too kind a word for the thing who had done this to her. There were no adjectives to describe anyone who could mark, demean and hurt another human being in this way.

He traced the obscene pattern with his trembling forefinger.

He hated knowing how much she must have cried and writhed and pleaded, while this less than human cocksucker had burned a crude smiley face into her skin.

He lifted her arm and unthinkingly kissed the scars there. He didn’t know how to deal with this, and he was absolutely certain that a man like him…irascible, blunt, and lacking in finesse would do more harm than good in a situation like this.

“I’m glad he’s dead.” His voice trembled with suppressed violence. “But part of me wishes he were still alive so that I could hunt him down and end him for doing this to you. For hurting you.”

He kept his gaze diverted, even though he could feel her keen stare on his profile.

“Don’t you want to know why he did it?” she asked in the smallest of voices, and the question succeeded in whipping his head around so that he could meet her eyes incredulously.

“Why? It doesn’t matter why he did it. Nothing you said or did could in any way justify this-this…atrocity.”

“H-he said I didn’t smile enough, that his parishioners would start to wonder why he had taken such a miserable bitch as a wife. So, he gave me a little reminder to k-keep smiling.”

Now you’ll always remember to smile, won’t you, Cherry?

Charity gritted her teeth against the memory of Blaine’s refined voice. How he had enjoyed hurting her like that. He had straddled her chest and pinned her arm down, using his superior strength to keep her helpless and subdued. She had barely registered the agonizing pain, shock and adrenaline shielding her from the worst of it. But seeing it afterward; she shuddered at the recollection. In a marriage filled with degradation after degradation, somehow, this had felt like the worst of it. This brand had been exactly what he had wanted it to be. A mark of complete and utter ownership.