Page 45 of Not Our First Rodeo
My heart squeezes at the sight of him.
“I have a bump,” I tell him, and watch as his expression morphs from frantic worry to abstract awe. He moves forward as if on instinct, dropping his hand from the doorframe and closing the distance between us, his gaze trained on my stomach.
When he gets close enough, his eyes flick up to mine, unsure. “Can I touch it?”
I swallow hard and nod, just a barely there jerk of my chin, not trusting my voice when he’s this close and looking at me like I’m magic. My stomach jumps when his palm covers it, large enough to span from one side to the other. His hand is warm, and I can feel the heat of it through my thin leotard.
“Can you feel it?” I ask, voice the scratch of sandpaper, as he moves his hand over the slight swelling at the bottom of my stomach. I wouldn’t be surprised if he couldn’t, but I can.
He nods, his fingers lightly tracing the curve, and my skin burns at the feel of it, the path they take. “Mm-hmm.”
“I found a stretch mark too,” I manage to get out, needing to pull myself out of the trance his touch is lulling me into.
His eyes turn up to mine, warm brown flecked with gold, and I almost want to laugh at the awe I see in them. The reverence. “I want to see it.”
I do laugh then, the sound bouncing in the little space between us. “Why?”
He holds my gaze, expression serious, and I can’t help the way my eyes drop to his tongue as it darts out to wet his lips. “Because there’s a stretch mark on my wife’s skin from growing our baby.”
My breath hitches in my lungs. I hope he doesn’t notice, that he can’t somehow feel my heart pounding faster. Swallowing against the thickness in my throat, I say, “Okay.”
It’s only then that I remember that I’m wearing a leotard.
“I’ll need to—” I motion at the leotard straps and watch as Beau’s eyes change, the color darkening into something that reminds me of late nights, moonlight pouring through our curtains, our breath the only thing between us.
“Yeah, okay,” he responds.
I think his voice is thicker, huskier, that his memories are as relentless as mine. He removes his hands from my stomach, the touch seeming to burn me, and I feel his heavy gaze as I reach for the leotard straps and pull them down my shoulders.
There’s not a sexy way to remove a leotard. They’re tight and require acrobatics to shimmy into, but Beau doesn’t seem to notice. The air in the room seems to thin as his eyes follow the path of my fingers. I slip my arms out and push the rest of the leotard down until it bunches around my waist at the band of my sweatpants. I’m wearing a thin sports bra, but with the way he’s looking at me, I feel like I’m standing in front of him naked.
I have a distinct memory of him watching me the exact same way the last time I had my clothes off for him. It’s not lost on me that we’re just a few feet away from where it happened, that at one point that night, he told me to watch us in the very same mirror we’re standing in front of now.
“Where is it?” Beau asks, breaking the silence, snapping me out of my daydream.
I rip my gaze from his, forcing my eyes down to my stomach. Just below my navel, there’s the tiniest stretch mark, a strip ofskin paler than the rest. I point to it, and Beau moves closer. He reaches out, his thumb smoothing along the strip of skin, and I swear I feel the roughness everywhere—in the backs of my knees and the hollow of my throat and the tips of my fingers.
“It’s perfect,” he breathes.
My lips tip up in the barest of smiles. “It’s a stretch mark.”
His eyes lift to mine, and I’m shocked by the sincerity I see there. There’s not an ounce of teasing in his expression. “It’syourstretch mark,” he says. “That’s what makes it perfect.”
My heart rises to my throat, and I try to think of something to say. Last night, when I saw that lighter piece of skin, I got online and ordered stretch mark cream, determined to get ahead of the inevitable. I didn’t want my skin to scar, and if it’s starting now, when my bump is barely noticeable, then it’ll only get worse.
But looking at Beau now, feeling the reverence in his touch as his thumb swipes absentmindedly over my skin, I don’t know what I was thinking. I don’t know that I’ll ever look at the marks on my body and call them tiger stripes or battle scars or any other body positivity term the media tries to rebrand it as, but I do know that if I ever look down at my body and see another stretch mark, I’ll remember the look on Beau’s face, the sound of his voice calling that little piece of pale skin perfect.
And I don’t think I’ll be able to hate anything about it then.
I swallow against the lump rising in my throat, for some reason feeling the sting of tears at the backs of my eyes. “I better head to the studio,” I say, my voice hoarse.
Beau nods, and to my surprise, his hands move to the straps of my leotard. I have to hold back a shiver as he puts my arms back through them and pulls it slowly back up, calluses scraping against my overheated skin. He’s so gentle as he places the straps back in place, and I don’t think I imagine the way his hands linger, like he doesn’t want to pull them away.
His eyes finally tear away from my shoulders and settle on mine. “Can I come to the studio with you?”
I blink, confused. “Why?”
“I want to spend the day with you,” he says with a shrug, without a hint of bashfulness. “I haven’t seen you dance in ages.”
