Memories of that night two years ago built behind Amber's eyes as she stared at the flabby flesh between her legs. She wanted to hide it, to hide from it, but she couldn't look away. Exposing her shame and talking about it was fitting, right here, right now. When her fractured life couldn't sink any lower. With a man she should be repelling rather than attracting.
“It was the eve of the final competition.” Her voice wavered. “All the icons of the pageant industry were there.” The Master of Ceremony, former pageant winners, handpicked members of the media, and a host of celebrity models and photographers. “It was a night to impress and network with the who's who among the business.”
Van's chest pressed against her back, centering her, his attentive silence an unexpected support. Despite being physically abusive, not once had he degraded her verbally. Wrong or right, it was enough to propel her. “Tawny was there.”
“Tawny?”
She tensed. Oh fuck, why had she mentioned her sister? Would he go after her next?
His palm caressed her belly, a vulnerable place to touch her. He'd punched her there. So why did the intimacy of his hand feel so good?
He kissed the juncture of her neck and shoulder. “If she means something to you, I won't hurt her. I'm only interested in what happened.”
“She means a great deal to me.”
“A best friend? Or a sister?” Understanding warmed his voice. He had no reason to fake that. He could've simply forced her to answer.
“My only sibling. She's a mid-level fashion model, dabbled in pageantry, but didn't have the same success. She was always at my side.” Clinging to Amber's circle of friends, looking for the big break in her own career.
He pushed her hair over one shoulder, and his lips brushed the back of her neck, raising hundreds of tiny bumps across her skin.
She cringed, but didn't lean away. “Brent was entertaining a crowded table with his usual charm when he asked me to grab him a beer. That was his thing. Work the crowd while I...I was an introvert.” Her stomach turned, and bile simmered through her chest. “When I returned, more people had gathered around him, and he was...fla— flapping his arms in the air. Men and women, dressed in tuxes and evening gowns, were doubled over, howling with laughter and wiping tears from their eyes.”
Van's chest hardened behind her as she contemplated the ugly dark folds of skin around her vulva. “I knew it had something to do with me, something awful.” It usually did. Her voice strained. “He was a crowd pleaser. Everybody loved him.” Which was why she fell so hard for him, so fast, at the naive age of eighteen. Her head bent forward, her entire body aching, as visible tremors coursed through her. “Always the center of attention. Even when it was at my expense.”
“Why?” His sharp tone cut through her. “What did he gain from that?”
Her spread legs shook beneath her hands, and her heart twisted painfully. She searched for the right answer, the one Dr. Michaels had helped her come to terms with. “We met in high school and married at eighteen, right about the time I entered the world of pageantry. Things were good. Better than good.” A flutter brushed against the ache in her heart and faded just as quick. “Time and the stress of my career changed him.”
By age thirty, Brent's physique had softened with extra weight. He never looked less handsome to her, but it bothered him, especially as her body continued to firm and tighten with her pursuit of fitness modeling. “He grew angry and unhappy, and I was the target for his bitterness, a way to redirect his insecurities from himself. That realization didn't come until later. At the time, I felt like a constant disappointment.”
Her legs squeezed closed, protectively, but Van caught her thigh and gave her a warning pinch on the tender skin inside her knee.
When his hand returned to her belly, she let her legs fall open and swallowed around the surging emotion. “He nitpicked and scrutinized everything, convinced me to...uh...well, to get this awful boob job, bleach my hair, and bake in a tanning bed. I wanted to please him, to absorb his sadness, so I guess I let him slowly transform me. But his insults grew crueler, more public.”
It was when Brent stopped looking her in the eye, when he stopped looking at her at all, that hurt the most. To think she'd kept the light on back then, hoping he would see her, so driven to please him. She was so goddamned tragic.
Van's thumb shifted upward, along her sternum, and traced circles in the hollow of her throat. “He's fucking weak.”
“Says the man who hits women.” She braced herself for a strangling squeeze of his fist.
The thumb stilled, and his teeth lowered to her nape, scratching gently, his breath shooting sparks of heat down her spine. “I'm far worse than your sissy bitch of an ex. Don't ever forget that.”