Page 62 of Claim to Fame

“Can I slide inside you one more time, sweetheart? We can go to sleep, just let me sleep inside you. Want to feel you everywhere.”

She smiled and tangled her fingers with his free hand. “I want to feel you everywhere, too.”

Ethan lay down behind her, pulling her back against his chest and slowly slipping his half-hard cock back inside her. It felt right, to sleep with him as close as two people could possibly be. To be wrapped in his warmth, and to wrap him in hers.

Chapter Seventeen

“You’ve been holding out on me!” Hannah laughed, peering into the shoe box Ethan had retrieved from the kitchen around midnight when their third round of incredible sex had left them both feeling snackish. The box was full of every kind of fruity, chewy candy imaginable, bags of sour straws and gummy bears hidden in a box advertising work boots. “It looks like you robbed a candy store.”

Ethan climbed back into bad, sliding under the covers and handing the box to Hannah. “I have a sweet tooth.”

“And Tessa’s regular baked goods delivery doesn’t suffice?”

It had taken Hannah a few days to get used to the idea that there would always be fresh cupcakes, cookies, and scones on Ethan’s counter, appearing out of nowhere. It had taken a few more days for her to decide it was a testament to her recovery that she didn’t inhale the entire tray each morning, that she could instead enjoy the pastries without feeling a crippling urge to atone by skipping dipper, and that she had, in fact, gone an entire day without even thinking about the confections. Was that how the rest of the world felt?

She selected a pack of Sour Patch Kids, tearing into it and fishing out a yellow. The sugary sour goodness made her cheeks pucker. “I forgot how good these are. I haven’t had a Sour Patch Kid in years.”

“Why’s that?” Ethan asked, shaking a few into his hand without a care for which colors he was getting. The philistine.

Hannah shrugged, chewing the last bits of the candy slowly and sifting through the bag for a green one. “It’s not something I let myself have.”

She glanced up at him, meeting his quizzical gaze, and knew he would wait for her to continue. Her therapist had assured her it would get easier to tell people about her struggles with food the more she practiced, but despite having told Liv and Jennifer, Jackson and Micah, her parents, it still didn’t feel any easier when she said, “I am in recovery from an eating disorder.”

To his credit, Ethan didn’t visibly react. His movements slowed, as though he were swimming through molasses, and she got the distinct impression he was working hard not to display any emotion. It reminded her so much of her parents the night after her high school graduation when she’d stumbled home and woken them at two o’clock in the morning to announce she was drunk but had done the responsible thing by leaving her car at the party, and they’d need to drive her there to retrieve it. Her mother hadn’t flinched. She’d simply said, “okay, honey,” then gone back to sleep. Of course, she woke Hannah up at six for that car retrieval, so she wasn’t exactly unphased by her daughter’s announcement, but as time went by, Hannah could appreciate her mother’s restraint.

“What are you thinking?” Hannah asked, her stomach twisting.

“I’m not sure I know what that means,” Ethan said slowly.

“Which part? The eating disorder or the recovery?”

“Both?”

Hannah set the shoebox of candy aside and turned to face him, gathering the sheet around her chest. “I have had an eating disorder since I was a teenager, though I wasn’t officially diagnosed until about a year ago. It means I’ve used food—both eating too much and not eating enough—as a coping mechanism to regulate my emotions. To feel in control. To try to change the size and shape of my body.” She held up the package of Sour Patch Kids. “It means you can look at this and only see a sweet treat, but I see the number of calories and how many hours of working out it would require to counteract them, whether or not having even just one will make me crave sweets so much I can’t stop myself from eating the entire package, or the entire shoebox. Whether I can eat a handful if I skip lunch, or two handfuls if I also skip dinner. Which, naturally, means I’m quite literally starving by the time I eat that handful, so then my biological need to feed myself takes over and convinces me to eat the entire contents of my kitchen cabinets until I feel so ill I have to spend the rest of the afternoon sitting on my shower floor trying not to be sick.”

She clamped her mouth shut, surprised by the way the words had tumbled from her lips, as though they’d been shaken loose, these moments she’d spent the last year making sense of. More than that, she was taken aback by howgoodit felt to tell him. For the first time, the creeping shame that usually followed such a revelation didn’t come.

Ethan tore his eyes away from Hannah’s and stared at the candy in his hands. “All that forthis?”

“It’s not about the candy. It’s hard to explain if you’ve never had an unhealthy relationship with food.”

“And recovery...what does that mean?” he asked tentatively.

“It means I can eat these Sour Patch Kids, despite the thoughts still trying to break through, and know that food doesn’t have to dictate how I feel about myself. It means I can have the candy and stop before I feel sick. It means I have a standing phone call with my therapist every two weeks and a dietitian once a month.” She took a breath, blew it out slowly as she braced herself to tell him the last part. “And it means there’s always a chance I’ll relapse.”

“Like an alcoholic?”

“Not exactly. Unlike an alcoholic, someone with an eating disorder can’t abstain from food. But it’s a similar idea. The thoughts will likely never go away completely, but they get quieter. A little quieter every day. And, even when they’re loud, I know now that I don’t have to listen to them.”

Ethan squeezed her hand back. “How long have you been in recovery?”

“About six months. I was diagnosed during my run inBridget Jones’ Musicaland I managed with therapy for a while, but I knew I needed to get away from the stage for a bit to really recover. It’s hard to let yourself gain weight, and even harder when you’re on stage next toSuperfan’sSexiest Boy Band Member every night. So, when the show closed, I enrolled in an intensive outpatient treatment program.”

“Six months ago was September,” he said, scanning her eyes. “I saw you in Boston in September.”

She nodded. “And the next day I started treatment.”

“Fuck,” he said, more exhale than words. She winced, and he pulled her closer, cradling her head against his chest. “I didn’t know.”

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