Playing with Fire

It scared me how well I knew his body language. The way he carried himself around my house. I could practically envision him doing all that.

“Open the door, Texas.”

In my haze, I’d forgotten to reapply my makeup. I didn’t want to face him. Not when I knew he’d heard all the ugly things Grams had said about me while the phone was on. It was bad enough that I was atrocious, without anyone seeing me.

I’d been broken many a times, but never quite like I had been today.

I didn’t answer him.

“I want to see your face.”

The urgency in his voice startled me. He sounded choked up, on the brink of something I didn’t want him to go through.

“Okay. Give me five!” I swung my legs sideways on my bed.

“Bare.”

I stopped dead in my tracks, halfway to my desk to pull out my makeup kit.

Fear glided up my spine like a deadly snake, wrapping its length around my neck, choking my breath.

“You don’t know what you’re askin’,” I said thickly, throwing his words back at him. I still remembered how he thought I wouldn’t be able to forgive him had I known what he did to make him the way he was.

“Fucking try me.”

“You heard her. I’m ugly. The Devil’s daughter.”

“You’re beautiful. My girlfriend,” he countered.

“She wanted to kill us …” I broke down, sobbing, still standing in my room aimlessly. It took him a moment to answer me.

“No. She was confused and vindictive. She wanted to hurt you. She never wanted to kill you. The fire was an accident.”

But there was no way either of us could know. The truth of the matter was that I was never going to be able to ask lucid Grams this question. It was too painful for everyone involved.

I stepped toward the mirror on my study and blinked back at myself, catching a glimpse of what West was about to see in a few seconds. There wasn’t a lick of makeup on my face. My history—my tragedy—was written all over it, like a scream.

The melted complexion of my left side. My slightly crooked left eye, a tad smaller than my right one due to the scar tissue pulled around it after the reconstructive surgery. The missing eyebrow. The purple … everything.

Gingerly, I moved toward the door. I put my hand on the handle and threw it open before I lost my nerve.

West and I stood in front of one another silently.

I watched him watching me. He took it all in, gulping every inch of me. His eyes ran the length of my left side, inking it to memory.

He cannot unsee what he is seeing, I reminded myself. From now on, every time he looks at you, with or without makeup, this is what he will see.

West’s expression didn’t give away what he was thinking. I felt my insides collapsing like a demolished skyscraper imploding and knew that if he chose to walk away from me, my phoenix wasn’t going to be able to fight its way past the ruins.

But he didn’t walk away.

He took a step into my room, raising his hand. He traced his fingers over my scars so gently that I wanted to cry, staring into my eyes, gazing at my naked soul. His fingers were trembling. I snatched his hand and kissed it. One of my tears caught between his index and middle finger.

“Listen to me carefully, Grace Shaw. You’re the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen in my entire life. When I look at you, I see a fighter. I see resilience and strength and defiance that no one can touch. You take my breath away, and no one—and nothing—will change that.”

I closed my eyes and opened my mouth to speak, but nothing came out. I tried again, searching for my own voice. I didn’t know what was going to come out of my mouth.

The truth, I supposed. The most vulnerable secret a person could tell.

“I love you. I’m terrified of loving you, but I do, nonetheless,” I admitted gruffly. “Have since the moment you helped me find Grams that terrible night, not letting me refuse the help I so obviously needed. My heart is in your fist.”

He kicked the door shut behind him, diving in for the kiss to end all kisses.

It was the kiss that rewrote our history.

A kiss that made me feel like the most beautiful girl in the world.

A kiss that tasted like victory.

“I won’t break it.”

West

The kiss tasted like a lie.

I’d said I wouldn’t break Grace’s heart, but I could already see myself doing it.

As I undressed her.

Made love to her.

I needed to put some distance between us. Kade Appleton had been watching me, I knew. And almost living at her house put a target on her.

When dawn broke, I grabbed my stuff and made my way home.