Beg for Me (Be for Me 2)

“So it’s not that I’m just plain attracted to you or that you’re plain attracted to me,” he said.

She sighed. “You’re not that attracted to me. You want a list of my shortcomings?”

“Hit me with it, yeah, let’s have the insecurities.”

Okay, fine. “I stutter.” She looked at his impassive face.

“Not as often as you probably think,” he said calmly. “You don’t stutter that much when you talk to me.”

“Usually because I’m too c-cross to be thinking about what I’m saying.”

“When you’re cross you don’t stutter?” he smiled.

“I can swear without stuttering.” She could really swear.

“Good to know.” he nodded. “So when do you stutter most?”

She sighed. “When I’m scared or embarrassed which makes it worse. Or upset. C-can’t speak at all if I’m c-crying.” So she never cried.

“You stuttered when I said we were going to be engaged.”

“Can you blame me? I was terrified.”

“It’s not so bad though, is it?”

So far? It was excruciating. She glared at him.

“And that’s why you sometimes speak with the whisper?” he asked.

Yeah, he’d noticed a lot, hadn’t he? There was no point trying to cover up now. “When you put on a kind of ‘voice’, it’s like acting. And I rely on phrases that I’ve practiced lots.”

“Does it have to be the sexy-whisper voice?” he asked, that wicked glint reappearing in his eye. “Couldn’t it be some other kind of voice?”

For a second she just stared at him. And then she laughed. The guy was unbelievable. “What did you have in mind?”

“I dunno. Southern accent maybe?” he suggested with playful wink. “Or pirate?”

“You want me to talk p-pirate to you?”

“Aye, me hearty.”

“You didn’t want cowgirl?” she teased back, getting into the spirit of it.

“You gonna saddle me up and ride me hard?” He looked delighted.

At that she laughed. “You’re incorrigible.”

“For someone who stutters you sure can use some long words.”

She knew from the look in his eye he was baiting her. Playing. But she couldn’t resist responding.

“Just because I stutter doesn’t mean I’m stupid,” she said, breathier than ever.

“I don’t think you’re stupid,” he breathed back. “I think you’re as sexy as sin.”

“And I think you’re nothing but a smooth talker.” A silver-tongued devil.

But she’d never joked about her stutter with anyone before. She’d never laughed about it like this. It felt weirdly okay.

“You’ve always had it?” he asked, easing back on the sofa in his relaxed, graceful way.

She shook her head. “I developed it when I was a kid. It was worse for a long while and now, for the most part, I manage to control it.”

“How come you developed it?”

She hesitated, turning back towards the computer screen. “My mother has very high standards.”

Don’t say that. Say this. Speak up. Speak clearly. Speak faster. Speak more slowly. Louder, softer.

She could never get it right. Never ever. And then the endless step-family cycle had started and somehow it had become harder to speak. Harder to fit in. Harder to live up to everyone else. They’d all been so perfect. Her mom had wanted her to be like them. Only she wasn’t. And the more she’d tried, the worse she’d got.

“Oh yeah?” he said sympathetically. “My parents had very high expectations too.”

“Yeah?” She glanced back at him.

“No win, no welcome home.”

He’d said it with a smile, but Min’s blood chilled. “For real?”

“Oh yeah, there are two people in life. Winners and Losers. And losers are not welcome at Summerhill.”

“Is that what they said?” she asked.

“Many, many times over.” He sighed. “They had me on skis before I could walk. Dad was desperate for a champion.”

“How’d that p-play out for you?”

“It meant that I’d do anything to win. In everything.”

“Cheat?” Min held her breath.

He angled his head, studied the big screen on the wall. Then he turned back to meet her gaze. There was fearlessness in his eyes. But also a bitterness?

“A couple of times, personally, yes,” he said quietly.

In her worst moments, she’d imagined that he’d cheated on a woman, but it hurt to hear him admit it. Even though there was part of her impressed at his honesty.

“What about your sport?” she asked, needing to move on.

“No. Never.” Instant response.

And she was sure it was honest again.

“But I took risks,” he added. “Too many. I was too desperate to win.”

“That was how you got injured? One risk too many?” It was the first time she’d mentioned the accident that had ended his career short of a world championship. Any chance of golden glory snatched from his grasp.

He nodded. “But really, it was over before that final race. Maybe I could have come back from it, but I didn’t want to do it anymore.”

He didn’t? He’d wanted to give up a lifetime of training and ambition? That wouldn’t have been easy decision to make, and even harder to enact if it was all that his parents had wanted for him.

Was that why the accident had happened? Had it been the only acceptable way out?

“What happened if you didn’t make the mark?” he asked.

“Disappointment. Disapproval.” She shrugged. “She was only trying to help me make something b-better of myself.”

“But made you feel worse in the process.”

She nodded.

“Parents, huh?”

“Yeah.”

“What about school, kids there give you trouble?” he asked.

“Anyone with something a little different about them is bound to be bullied sometime, right?” She tried to smile it off. For her, it wasn’t so much at school as later, at varsity.

“Some worse than others.”

“So you learn to survive.”

“I guess you do.” He frowned, glanced at the clock in the top right of the media screen. “I have to go, I have an appointment.”

Disappointment flooded her, she’d liked talking to him. She covered up by thinking work. “Anything I can tweet something p-pithy about?”

“No.”

She suppressed the spurt of annoyance at that bald answer and bit her lip to stop asking anything more. When she glanced up, she saw him looking at her, eyebrows lifted, that teasing smile on his face.

“You’re not going to ask?”

“None of my business.” She shrugged and clicked into his tweet stream, she’d been delaying checking it again.

Hopefully the crazy engagement congrats had died down. Surely someone far more famous had done something super out-there to distract the Twitterverse. Instead there was something worse.

“L-Logan.”

He swiftly moved to stand behind her and look at the screen. The picture showed them in Central Park—showed him kissing the brains out of her, his hand on her ass and her leaning into him, her hand twisted in his coat.

Logan swore beneath his breath.

“What?” She swivelled on the chair and looked at him up sarcastically. “Like you didn’t plan that?”

He glanced down to meet her fierce gaze. “Of course I didn’t.”

“You only kissed me because we were out in public.”

“Haven’t we just gone through this?” This time he was the one to roll his eyes. “I kissed you because I wanted to. I’ve wanted to since I first saw you.”

She pressed her lips together.

“Okay,” he raised his hands in surrender. “I won’t kiss you again. At least, never again in public.”

“Never again at all.”

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