Her mother appeared a moment later. “Mallory? Is that you, baby? What happened to you? I barely recognize you.”
The comment about how different she looked should have registered, but it didn’t. None of it mattered. “Oh, Mom,” she cried. “He kissed her.”
“Who?”
“Finn! I caught him kissing his ex. He’s not coming and…I think…oh God…I think we broke up.”
Her parents glanced at each other like they had a secret and then calmly rubbed her back. “Mallory, baby, we never expected you to bring a boy home. It’s okay. We were excited just to have you.”
She frowned and wiped her eyes. “What?”
Her dad cleared his throat. “Buttercup, we sort of assumed you’d be here by yourself.”
“You assumed…why?”
They looked guilty for a second then shrugged. “Well, it’s just always been you.”
“But I told you about Finn.”
They gave her a skeptical glance.
She gasped. “He’s real!”
“Of course he is, sweetheart,” her mother crooned.
“He is!”
“It doesn’t matter, pumpkin. You’re home now. Your mom made a bunch of pies and I think she should let us tear into one now, with you being upset and all.”
“Vincent!” he mother snapped.
She stood. “I don’t want any pie. I think I just want to go to bed.”
They stared at her as if she’d grown a second head. How pathetic was she that even her parents didn’t believe she had a boyfriend? Well, she didn’t anymore. Today was officially the worst day of her life.
* * * *
The next morning, she woke up and smiled as she realized she was in her old bed. The scent of turkey cooking was incredible. Ahh, Mom’s cooking.
Knowing today would be an ordeal involving lots of food, she went to clean herself up in the bathroom. She looked wretched.
She headed out to her car to grab her suitcase. After lugging it up the stairs she changed into her stretch pants and a sweatshirt. She might not be able to control certain parts of her life, but she still had control over her own choices and today she chose to do something that made the move away from her childhood home worthwhile.
She laced up her sneakers and skipped down the steps. “Where are you going?” her mother called from the kitchen. Mallory turned to say good morning and her mom dropped the saltshaker right in the gravy. “Mallory?”
“Yeah?”
“You look so…your legs…I’ve never seen you so…”
She smiled. “Thanks, Mom.”
“Are you eating out there?”
She laughed. “Yes, I’m eating. I’ve just been exercising.”
“How much have you lost?”
“Only thirty-seven. By the doctor’s standards I’m still obese, but no longer morbidly so.”
“Well, I think you look gorgeous. I mean, you’ve always been beautiful, but you look really good, sweetie. I’m proud of you.”
“Thanks.”
It was odd. She expected some sense of accomplishment to accompany those words, but she felt the same. She knew she looked better. She felt better. She had more energy and her self-esteem was a little stronger. Her parents’ praise didn’t seem to matter. What mattered was her own opinion of herself.
She stood, in the kitchen where she had consumed countless meals, and realized that being home didn’t matter. Her family wasn’t the most sensitive crew, but…none of it mattered. She’d already proven her value to herself. She didn’t have to be skinny to be happy. She’d always thought that was what it would take.
It wasn’t about reaching a certain size or weighing a certain amount. It was about liking herself. At some point over the last few months, she’d begun to like herself and see that she deserved to be happy as much as anyone else.
Today she was going to make herself happy. “I’ll be back in a little bit, Mom.”
“Where are you going?”
“I need to run out for a bit. I should be back in an hour or so.” She grabbed her keys and a bottle of water and headed out the door.
As she pulled her car into the street, she took the one way and turned at the intersection toward Market Street. She parked on the corner of Thirteenth and Market, grabbed her iPod, and stuffed her keys in the pocket of her sweatshirt.
She stretched for a few minutes then hit play. The horns started and then came the drums. Her feet hit the pavement and she was off.
Her pace built as she turned and ran under the blue rails of the El. Her heart was really pumping as she cut the corner by the brick row homes, slapping her hand against the stained concrete that marked Rocky’s home. When she spotted JFK Plaza, she grinned and picked up her pace. Almost there and she was barely breaking a sweat.
Her iPod was set on repeat and as the theme song continued she continued to push herself harder. She could do this. Nothing was stopping her. Nothing!
It occurred to her that she didn’t need to hide from the world to prove something. She only needed to shut them out. All of the media and trendy pop culture that was jammed down her throat on a regular basis made it impossible to see beyond her shortcomings.
Center County had given her the escape she needed. Moving had silenced the judgmental world, hidden her from the critical onlookers, and helped her see her. She finally saw herself as a woman capable of anything.
The peaks of the cathedral showed on the horizon and she was soon cutting around the curve of Race Street. Then she was almost there, on Ben Franklin Parkway, the fountain flowing behind her.
The Philadelphia Museum of Art stood like a castle in the distance. To her right was the famous statue of the boxer. Mallory panted and threw up her arms, mimicking his cast pose, gloves held high.
Just a little further and she would have done it. Her sneakers smacked over the pavement. At the top of those seventy-two concrete steps were Sylvester Stallone’s shoe prints and she wasn’t stopping until her feet filled the marks.
Her thighs burned as she took the stairs hard. Skyscrapers towered behind her, but nothing stood as tall as her in those moments. She crossed the first landing and was climbing again. The next landing arrived and she lengthened her strides. So close. More steps. Her blood was pumping. The bass was thrumming in her ears. There was no stopping her. She was a machine. She was doing this, doing it for herself and she was almost there.
The peaks of the museum crested the horizon the higher she climbed and then the long columns. Just a few more steps and she’d be there. Looking down, she watched her feet cross those last few steps, her arms pumped at her sides as her lungs sawed in her chest and she was finally—
She slammed into some asshole that was standing in her spot!
Her knees hit the pavement hard. Who the hell was standing on her Rocky footprints? She yanked her ear plugs out of her ears, cutting off her awesome theme song, and turned, prepared to give someone hell for screwing up the biggest checkmark on her bucket list yet.
The guy was down. She crawled to her knees and froze in the process of getting to her feet. She knew that flannel.
Oh my God.
He wasn’t moving. She rushed to his side. “Finn? What the hell are you doing here?”
He grunted. “It was the only place I knew to find you.”
She shook her head and panted. “What?”
He moaned and sat up. “We have to stop running into each other like this.”
“You’re in Philadelphia.”
“I know. You did the steps a lot faster than me.”
This was her happy moment. He was ruining it. The sight of him reawakened all those horrible emotions she’d put away to do something nice for herself. “Why are you here?”
He sat up. “You left before I could give you something.”
“Did you drive all night?”
“I left around three in the morning when it occurred to me I’d probably find you here at some point. I’m glad you didn’t make me sleep on the steps.
”
“You were going to camp out at the Museum of Art? Why?”
He met her gaze and smiled sadly. “Because I love you.”
Oh no. She started to blink rapidly and her throat tightened. “What did you have to give me?”
“This.” He reached in his pocket and pulled out a small keychain with a little pink Converse sneaker on the end.
“You drove all this way to give me a shoe?”
“It’s also a keychain.” She frowned at him and he said, “It has a zipper. Open it up.”
She took the little shoe—it was actually kind of cute—and tugged the little zipper. The sun caught on something and she squinted. Her fingers reached inside and cold metal met her fingertips. She gasped as she pulled out a solitaire diamond ring on a platinum band. “What is this?”
“This is what I was trying to tell you. I bought it a few weeks ago. There’s no one else, Philly. You’re it for me. I love you and I want to marry you. Not because I need a wife and want a family, but because I can’t imagine one single day without seeing your beautiful face or hearing your laugh. I want to wake up every morning and look into those blue eyes of yours. I don’t ever want to have to worry about you being home alone at night, because I want to always be there, keeping you safe and warm and I want you to do the same for me. Keep me warm, Mallory. It’s too cold and lonely in this world without you.”
Her chin trembled as she stared at him. He was proposing? To her? “What about Erin?”
“I have five witnesses that will tell you she’s the one who cornered me and I was trying to get away from her the moment I saw her. I was looking for you. I’m always looking for you. You’re who makes me happy, happier than I’ve ever been.”
Her fist closed over the ring and she shut her eyes. “I’m glad you asked me now.”
“Why’s that?”
“Because I’ll always know we got married because you wanted me and not for any other reason.”
“What other reason would there be?” he asked, his brow crinkling.
She smiled. “Remember that time in the woods with the rain?”
“How could I forget?”
“I think I’m pregnant.”
“What?”
She held out her hand as his eyes went wide. “I’m not sure. It just occurred to me this morning as I was lying in bed. My stomachs been upset and—”
He kissed her. He kissed her long and hard right there on Rocky’s footprints. “You could be carrying my baby?” he asked, his smile pressing against her lips and his hand curving over her belly.
She grinned and kissed him some more. “Maybe.”
“Oh, you’re definitely marrying me now, because if you’re not pregnant I’m gonna get you so.”
She giggled. “I didn’t say yes yet.”
He tickled her side. “Say yes.”
“Maybe.”
“Say yes.” He tickled her some more and she laughed.
“Possibly.”
“Mallory Fenton, you agree to be my wife right now or so help me I’ll make a scene.”
She snickered, slyly slipping the ring onto the finger of her left hand. “I guess I could marry you.”
He cupped the back of her head and with his lips still planted against hers, he asked. “Is that a yes?”
“Yes.”
And that was when he stood, arms thrown in the air, fists held tall, and bounced on the footsteps permanently engraved in the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, cheering like an idiot. Ah, my future husband.
When his lunacy had carried on long enough she cleared her throat and stood. He looked at her, smiling like a boy who was just given the best thing in the world and she told him, “Um, you’re sort of stealing my thunder.”
He stepped aside and fanned out his hands. She grinned and fit her shoes right over the ones printed in the cement. She was indeed a champion of the world.
Epilogue
Pregnancy was great. She never felt fat. As a matter of fact, when she went to the doctors to confirm her suspicions, he spent a good ten minutes remarking about how proud he was of her. It didn’t matter. She may have started out doing it for him, at some point she was doing it for her friends at home and her parents and her sister, who would always be dramatically smaller. At one point, she was even doing it for Finn. But in the end, she did it for herself.
She did it because she felt better. She did it because she finally was comfortable in her own skin. She did it for the two little boys growing in her womb. She did it because she was tired of sitting on the sidelines. She wanted to live and that’s what she had done, started living.
She still ran almost every day. Not as hard as she once had. The doctor said it was fine so long as she didn’t overexert herself. Now, at six months along, running was becoming more and more difficult. She and Finn would often walk the field at night and on the way home they’d check on the construction of their new house. It would be done sometime next month, just in time for their sons’ arrivals.
That Thanksgiving last fall had been quite interesting. She’d left for a run, her parents thinking her desperate enough to make up a boyfriend, and she returned with a fiancé. She did eat pie that day, right after she served them up a big slice of the humble sort.
She and Finn got married two weeks later at Colin’s church and Erin finally stopped sniffing around. Rumor had it she was now working at the Dairy Queen and had put on a few pounds.
Mallory had no idea what her body would be like after the twins. She really didn’t care. As long as she felt good and her babies were healthy, she’d figure out the rest later. Finnegan was continuously doting one her.
They made love often and she finally agreed to shower with him. He even bought her clothes now and then. After everything she had put herself through, she realized she would always be her hardest critic. Finn loved her, it didn’t matter what shape, size, or color she came in. He loved her, the real her, the one he saw every time he looked into her eyes and she loved him that much more for it.
*The End*
A Note from the Author
Dear Reader,
I hope you enjoyed reading Skin as much as I enjoyed writing it. Mallory Fenton is indeed a fictional character, but so much of her story is based on truth. I don’t know what you look like, though you may have seen pictures of me. I’m not perfect, far from it. My skin has never been something I’ve been completely comfortable in. Every thought Mallory had, every struggle she overcame, I have also faced.
I wrote this book, because I felt it was needed. It was a joy to write and sometimes more emotional than I expected. Some of the things Mallory went through happened to me. Believe it or not, someone actually sang Carol King to me when I walked into my algebra class sophomore year. I don’t know what ever happened to that girl or any of the other people who made me feel ugly. It took years for me to learn to love myself, but it will take a lifetime to forget the nasty things I’ve heard. I have flaws and I work on them daily, but there are also parts of me that are beautiful, parts that I couldn’t always see.
It takes less than a minute to say something cruel that can stick with a person for a lifetime. Just as easily, and with the same lasting results, we can say something kind. Before I go, I want you to know one thing. You are beautiful. Be you and be proud of who you are. Our skin, the shape, the size, the scars, the color…none of it really matters. True beauty is inside and it takes a beautiful person to realize that.
Stay beautiful,
Lydia
About the Author
Award winning author, Lydia Michaels, writes all forms of hot romance. She presses the bounds of love and surprises readers just when they assume they have her stories figured out. From Amish vampyres, to wild Irishmen, to broken heroes, and heroines no man can match, Lydia takes readers on an emotional journey of the heart, mind, and soul with every story she pens. Her books are intellectual, erotic, haunting, and always centered on love.
Lydia Michaels loves to
here from readers! She can be found of Facebook or contacted by email at
[email protected] www.LydiaMichaels.org
Other Books by Lydia Michaels
White Chocolate
All 4 You
To Catch a Wolfe
Chasing Feathers
Breaking Perfect
Sacred Waters
Skin
Chaste
Simple Man
Call Her Mine
Secret Cravings Publishing
www.secretcravingspublishing.com
Lydia Michaels, Skin (McCullough Mountain 2)
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