“Is that why you’re hiding a tattoo under your watch, on the inside of your wrist?” she suddenly asks, her eyes flickering to my left arm tucked against my stomach. She smiles when my eyes widen in shock and my stomach drops to my toes. “I saw you get out of the shower the other day when I was brushing my teeth. Guess I should have bought you a waterproof watch, huh?”
Meredith sighs, running her hands through her long, dark hair.
“I’ve seen you run your fingers over the inside band every time your mother speaks to you, every time Landry touches you, and every time you get upset. Now I know why. You gave yourself a permanent fucking reminder.”
The ink on the inside of my wrist suddenly feels like it’s burning under my skin and I have to clench my hands into fists to stop myself from doing what Meredith so keenly noticed and running my fingertips over the band covering it to put me back on solid ground so I don’t feel like I’m spinning out of control. She’s right. Touching the inside of my wrist is my own personal safety net. It’s a way to remind myself that the life I’m living and the dreams I’ve had to say good-bye to are for a reason. A very important reason. Something bigger than my wants and needs, my hopes and dreams. I feel guilty that I’ve kept this from Meredith, but I knew she’d never understand.
“Just so you know, I told Eli about the accident.”
The breath I was holding and the guilt I was feeling leave me in a whoosh, and I can hear the thundering of my heart in my ears. I have to lock my knees together before I collapse onto the floor and curl myself into a ball, wishing I wasn’t hearing these words come out of her mouth. I know I haven’t been completely honest with Meredith, but she’s the only person in the world I trust, and she betrayed me. She shared something personal about me and she had no right to do that.
“I don’t give a rat’s ass if you’re pissed at me, it needed to happen. I will not allow him to come back here, worm his way into your life, and shit all over you when he doesn’t know the truth,” she tells me in a low voice. “Maybe you’re okay with him thinking you made the choice to end your dance career, but I’m not. I’m not okay with him assuming there’s nothing left of the old Shelby in there, fighting to get out. I’m not okay with him ripping you to pieces because he doesn’t know what happened to you. I’m telling you right now, I still don’t know if I like the guy after what he did to you, but he lost it when I told him. Completely lost it. I’ve never seen a man so gutted before, knowing he said things to you he shouldn’t have and things he couldn’t take back. I hope to God he’s worth it, because I’m placing all my bets on him. I’m hoping maybe he can get you to pull your head out of your ass and do something about this shitty life you think you deserve or you think you need to keep living to protect him, because it’s obvious I can’t do that.”
With those words, she turns and walks away from me and down the hall, the slamming of the spare bedroom door making me jump, close my eyes, and wish I could just disappear.
* * *
I shouldn’t be here.
Every time I walk through this door, I tell myself it will be the last time. It hurts so much to look around this room, see the dust clinging to the floors and the foggy floor-to-ceiling mirrors that haven’t been washed in years. I stand in the middle of the hardwood floors, staring at my distorted reflection, and I hate the woman looking back at me.
After Meredith laid it all out for me and stormed off into the spare room, I lost track of time. I stood in front of the living room window, staring over at the stables until the last car of workers from the party had long since pulled away and the main house was shut down for the night.
I don’t even remember leaving the guest house. I don’t remember walking across the acreage to the stables, and I don’t remember unlocking the door and walking into this room, but here I am. The studio always seems to pull me back, even when I don’t want to be here. Being here hurts too much. I want to be angry with Meredith for telling Eli about the accident, but I can’t. I’m honestly surprised he didn’t know, what with the power of Google and all. My mother managed to keep the accident out of national news, but it was plastered all over the front page of Charleston’s small local paper for weeks. It was only a matter of time before someone told him or he found out on his own.
I stare into the dirty mirror in front of me and lower my hand to the long, clingy green skirt that hangs down around my ankles, not having the energy or the care to remove the gown from the party before I came out here. I clutch my hand into the material by my thigh and slowly begin lifting it up, exposing my bare feet, my shin, my knee, and finally my thigh. My nose burns with tears and my eyes fill with them as I hold the material of the skirt, bunched into my hands by my hip and stare at my scarred leg. The indents and ripples where once there was smooth skin and powerful muscles are always so shocking to see. My sobs echo around the room as I stare at the image in the mirror, my other hand coming up to my mouth to try and quiet them. There’s no point in crying over something you can’t change, but I’m unable to stop once I’ve started. I never look at my leg. Not when I’m getting out of the shower, not when I’m changing…never. What’s the point? Why should I stare at something so ugly that I can’t fix? Why should I torture myself even more, looking at a piece of my body that used to be so graceful? Remembering how easily I could lift it above my head when now, I can barely walk from the guest house to the stables without it hurting.
I drop my hand from my mouth and, with a closed fist, thump my knuckles against my thigh.
“I hate you,” I whisper brokenly.
I force myself to open my eyes and look at the damage. I force myself to remember that it used to be beautiful. It used to be my ticket out of this life and it used to be the one thing Eli loved most about me, so much that he gave me the nickname Legs. Now, it’s a mangled piece of flesh that hurts when it rains, my mother always demands I keep hidden because no one likes to be confronted with ugliness, and Landry never touches and visibly winces when he gets a glimpse of it.
I smack my closed fist harder against my broken thigh, ignoring the pain on the outside since I’m too consumed with the hurt on the inside.
“I fucking hate you,” I sob, staring at my hideous leg through the reflection of the mirror.
My head drops forward as I let myself cry for what I’ve lost. My shoulders shake and I move my hand from my thigh and press it against my stomach to try and hold the hurt in, but it’s no use. It’s pouring out of me, dripping down my cheeks and screaming to be let out. My anger and my pain are bubbling right under my skin, clawing to the surface, wanting to be heard.
I feel his presence before my eyes fly up to the mirror and see his face. His arms wrap around my body from behind and I feel myself being pulled back against his hard chest. I let his strong arms soothe me for just a second…just one moment in time to feel protected and loved, and then I pull away, and unleash everything inside me.
Chapter 13
Eli
As soon as I get back to Kat and Daniel’s after my road trip with Meredith, I rush into the office and use their computer to pull up Google. I immediately find a bunch of articles about the accident in the local paper. Seeing the devastation of it in print, reading the truth of the words Meredith spoke to me hurts like a son of a bitch and I have to rub my palm across my chest to ease the ache in my heart.
“Wow, you’re an asshole.”
Rylan chuckles and I take a few calming breaths instead of turning around in the desk chair and punching him in the face.
“First you manhandle her, then you insult her. She’s definitely going to come running back to you know.”
I’m now regretting the fact that I shared everything that happened tonight with him as soon as I walked in the door. I shake my head in frustration, sitting down on the edge of the desk and staring at the screen in front of me like the answers will somehow magically appear.
“Fuck off, I didn’t know about the accident. Jesus Christ, you should have seen th
e car. She’ll never forgive me for all that shit I said to her,” I tell him, clicking away from the article and slamming the laptop lid closed.
“You’ve got a lot of sucking up to do, man. I know your endgame is to nail Georgia Eubanks’s ass to the wall, but is it really worth it to put Shelby through even more bullshit? You said it yourself—she kept you alive when we were in that shithole. For five years you kept fighting the good fight because of her. Sitting here on your ass, feeling sorry for yourself, isn’t going to prove that to her. Being a dick because you hate her mother isn’t going to make her see what she means to you.”
Resting my elbows on the edge of the table, I put my head in my hands and close my eyes, trying not to think about the look on her face when I accused her of giving up.
“She’s not even going to let me get close to her after what I said and did, and I don’t blame her,” I mutter, rubbing my hands down my face and glancing up at Rylan as he pushes off the desk and stands next to me with his arms crossed over his chest.
“Yeah, she’s gonna be pissed at you and you need to let her. You need to take it like a fucking man, let her rip you apart, let it hurt like a bitch, and then show her you aren’t walking away. Marines don’t give up, so stop being a pussy and go to her,” he tells me with a pointed glare.
“Since when did you become a fucking love guru?”
“Since I had to listen to you mutter in your sleep for five years about peaches,” he says with a roll of his eyes, always finding a way to make light of our situation when it was anything but that.
“Now, get the fuck out of here and give me the laptop. I’ve got porn to catch up on.”
Before I know what’s happening, I’ve snagged Kat’s keys from the table by the front door, left Rylan to his porn, and the next thing I know, I’m pulling up behind the stables and walking mindlessly to the hidden room in the back of the building in the middle of the night.
My hands shake as I turn the handle of the door, shocked that it’s unlocked. I don’t even know why I’m here, torturing myself like this. I push open the door, remembering all the times I’ve done this before. A few times picking the lock to get inside, and then one day, suddenly finding it open, knowing she wanted me in there. Knowing she liked seeing me in the back of the room, quietly watching her dance. Walking down the narrow hallway, I stick my hands into the front pockets of my tux pants, having left the jacket and tie back in the spare bedroom at Kat’s. My feet move faster when I hear a muffled noise in the room at the end of the hallway, stopping abruptly when I get to the doorway and see the cause of the sound.
My eyes quickly take in the state of the studio, dusty and unkempt after what I now know have been years of disuse, and it hurts something deep inside me knowing why it’s in this state. My heart thunders in my chest when I see her standing in the middle of the room. Gone is the woman I saw earlier tonight, with her head held high and an elitist air about her. She’s still wearing the fancy, body-hugging green gown, the same color as her eyes, and she still looks just as stunning in it as she did earlier in the night. But in the cloudy reflection of the mirrors in front of her, I see her clutching one side of her long skirt up by her hip, her head bent forward and her shoulders shaking with sobs. She presses a hand against her stomach like she’s trying to hold herself together and it completely wrecks me. I shouldn’t be standing here, watching her in this private moment, but I can’t turn away. I deserve to see her so broken and devastated. I deserve to feel the pain of her tears and her hurt after the things I said to her, the things I accused her of.
My feet start moving me through the doorway and across the floor in her direction, my eyes never leaving her reflection in the mirror, bouncing back and forth between her beautifully scarred leg and the misery on her face as she continues to whimper and sob, so painfully that it breaks me in half. My footsteps falter as her body rocks forward and back with the force of her crying and I can’t stop my own eyes from welling up with tears, wishing I could take away all of her pain.
I move faster, acting without thinking as I silently wrap my arms around her and pull her back to me, wanting to take every ounce of her hurt and pull it inside me so she no longer has to feel it.
Closing my eyes, I tighten my hold on her, feeling her body shake in my arms, and I just want to go back. I want to go back to the night I wrote that fucking letter, back to the night I walked away from her and make it so it never happened. Make it so she never has to feel even an ounce of the pain that I can feel so acutely as it travels from her body to mine. Right when I open my mouth to apologize, say something—anything—to make this better for her, she yanks herself out of my arms so roughly I stumble forward as she whirls around to face me.
Seeing the pain on her face through a distorted image in the mirror is nothing compared to seeing the stark agony face-to-face as she glares at me with tears streaming down her cheeks.
“I HAVE NOTHING!” she shouts brokenly, dropping the hold she has on her skirt to press her palms against my chest and shove me away.
“It was all I had and now I have NOTHING!” she screams through her tears, shoving against my chest again.
“It hurts! It hurts so fucking much I can’t breathe!”
“I know, baby,” I choke out, trying not to cry right along with her as she continues coming at me, pushing and shoving me backward.
“I can’t stand being in this room, remembering what I used to be, but I can’t stop coming here. I can’t stop staring in that fucking mirror, wanting it all back so much I can’t breathe…I can’t breathe,” she sobs, her hands dropping from my chest and wrapping around her waist as she bends forward.
Every bit of anger that I felt toward her disappears in an instant. I can’t stand seeing her like this. My heart can’t handle knowing she’s in so much pain and all I can think about is taking it away.
I move in a flash and wrap my arms around her once again. I move one hand up to cup the back of her head, sliding my fingers through her hair and pushing her face against my chest and kissing the top of her head, smelling the scent of peaches that clings to her hair, the smell that got me through so many days and nights and made me want to keep fighting.
“I can’t breathe…” she whispers against me brokenly. “I can’t breathe.”
My body starts swaying the two of us gently back and forth as I hold her and let her cry. I wish I had the words to tell her how sorry I am, but I can’t find them as I tighten my arm around her waist, knowing nothing I say will take away her pain. Having her in my arms again, so soft and warm and real, feels like a dream that I never want to wake up from. I’m the biggest asshole in the world for loving how she feels against me while she’s dying inside.
“I can’t even hear the music anymore,” she says softly in between gasping breaths when her sobs start to wane. “I used to hear it everywhere I went. I used to hear melodies that weren’t even playing, choreograph entire routines without even knowing it was happening, and now, I can’t even hear the music and it hurts so much.”
I run my fingers through her long, soft hair and continue rocking us back and forth. She’s rambling, speaking so quickly and so unlike the fierce woman with an attitude I’ve encountered the last two times I’ve seen her that I’m afraid to say anything, afraid to stop her from letting this all out. Finding out what happened to her and realizing how deeply she’s kept all of this inside, I know she needs to let it out before it destroys her more than it already has.
“I just want to be able to look at myself in the mirror and not hate everything I see. I hate it. I hate it so much. And I hate myself for feeling like this when you’re here, so strong and perfect after what you went through.”
I want to laugh at her words. I’m not strong and I’m not perfect. I’m a fucking mess. Moving my hand from the back of her head, I slide it to her cheek and tip her face up so I can look into her eyes. Her skin is so soft under my palm and the flush on her cheeks from crying is so warm against my hand that I hav
e to swallow a few times to find my voice instead of just standing here, holding her face in my hand and forgetting about everything I need to say to her.
“Don’t you dare,” I whisper. “I’m not strong and I’m not perfect. I’m barely holding on and I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry for what I said to you. I know you, I know you’d never give up, and I never should have said those things to you. You are stronger than you even know.”
I stare deeply into her eyes and I pray to God she can here the truth and conviction in my words. I need her to be okay. I would give anything right now to take away her pain.
She shakes her head at me, and fresh tears fall from her eyes and down her cheeks.
“You came back here for the girl who could dance. The girl who fought to make her dreams come true, and I’m not that person anymore. I don’t even know who she is.”
I shake my own head in disagreement to her words.
“I was wrong. All of it was wrong, everything I said, and everything I’ve thought since I saw you again was bullshit and I should have known it the first time I touched you again out there in those stables. I came back here for you, Shelby. YOU. Not the dancer. I didn’t fall in love with your dancing, I fell in love with you. The person you are. I don’t care if you’re not dancing, I don’t care about anything but you.”
She turns her face and presses it against my hand as I pull her body closer, hold her tighter against me.
“I’m not her anymore. I’m not Legs anymore and I never will be,” she murmurs with her eyes closed, her breath whispering against my palm.
“I don’t need Legs. I just need you,” I tell her quietly. “I never should have left you the way I did, but I’m here now, and I’m going to make everything right again.”