Page 54 of The Confidant

He eats with me, still lounging on him, as if this is a typical day for him. It soothes a lot of the nerves I get when I start overthinking my shining happiness.

“Thank you for cooking,” he says in a soft voice, twirling his fork over what’s left of his eggs. “You didn’t have to do that.”

“Did you have dinner before you came here last night?” I taunt him with a lazy smile. “I’ve got to keep you fed if you want to hit every available surface today.”

The laugh he lets out seems to heal his soul and mine at once. Whatever tension he had about the morning after washes out of him as he squeezes a hand over my knee.

“I’ll do the dishes,” he offers, surprising me. He sees the brow-raised look and frowns at me. “You cook; I’ll clean. I’m willing to make it a routine. My cooking is horrible.”

“Good thing you just hired a cook then,” I kiss his cheek. “I’ll take my payment in the form of orgasms. One for every meal.”

His lips tilt up in a wicked grin. “Only one? Don’t sell my need for food oryouso short. It’s offensive.”

“I’m trying to keep you from performance anxiety,” I give him a wide-eyed, innocent look. “I’m worried about you.”

“That’s it.” He tilts me off his lap and onto my feet as I chuckle.

“You’re so easy to tease,cher.” I give him a quick kiss and slide his plate away to put in the sink.

I turn back to him, ready to tease him some more, and pause. All the humor has wiped out of his face, leaving his intent stare leveled on me.

He’s staring at my thighs. That laser focus is practically burning me.

I give myself a quick look, confused, until I spot what’s missing.

I didn’t notice that we worked the thigh highs off at some point in the night.

I wore shorts. I didn’t even think about it.Anyof it.

I’m at home, my safe space where I don’t have to worry about anything. I’m so comfortable with him that I didn’t consider covering up? I didn’t think about the scars at all.

“Be right back,” I try to sound casual and fail miserably as I escape his stare.

Once I’m in the bedroom, I close the door and start digging through my pajamas for pants. Two pairs. Anything to cover this up so I can pretend that nothing happened.

He’s going to have questions. I know it.

A pair of fleece pants gets pulled on over the shorts. I sit on the edge of the bed and put my face in my hands, trying to compose myself. I didn’t ask about his scar. Maybe he’ll do me the same favor.

I don’t think that’s how this is going to go.

Everything was so easy.Tooeasy. I knew something would break that apart. I just wasn’t expecting it to be this.

A gentle tap at the door makes me cringe.

“Be right out,” I call. My voice is shaky with nerves, and the struggle to hold back my tears.

Only my old therapist knows the full story about the scars on my thigh.

Any relationship I’ve ever had slowly ground to a halt as soon as someone saw them, and I refused to explain it. A brush-off that sets nerves on edge with suspicion.

I’m ashamed of them. I did this to myself.Willingly. I don’t want to have an open discussion of how messed up I am.

It’s the final reason my last boyfriend gave for breaking up with me. I refused to talk about it with him several times, so he was convinced that the cutting was still happening. He didn’t want to be with a crazy chick. I’m sure he’s still expecting me to steal his dog or something.

I force myself to look at the leg with the marks. I don’t need to see them; they’re already branded in my head like a bad movie.

A garter of cuts, one inch long apiece. In as perfect a row as I could make them. A set of four, a space, four, space, all the way around as if I were trying to give myself a nice belt made of pain. The only place I could reasonably hide from my family was high up on my thigh. Right below the cuts, a raccoon is lying on its back, playing with a beach ball. The color of the ball hides the burn mark I gave myself.

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