Page 105 of Try Hard
I definitely didn’t want to think about Soph, but her next statement whipped any thoughts of her straight from my struggling mind. She was right. I’d been around her for days now, we’d shared a bed, and I hadn’t had a clue. But I did now. Shewantedme to know. The fitted, white t-shirt had been a very purposeful choice.
I cleared my throat, trying for words. All that came out was a garbled sound like I was dying. Emotionally, I was.
Ophelia laughed and took another step closer to me. “I’m guessing this reaction means you approve?”
“Approve?” I asked slowly. Thinking through the fog of emotion in my head was more difficult than it should have been, but I knew this mattered. “I do, but you don’t need my approval of your body or what you do with it.”
Her smile was mind-boggling—and my mind was already boggled enough. So sweet and calm and real. “I know,” she said, like she’d worked long and hard to know that was true. “But what if I want it?”
“Take it. All of it. Every bit of approval I’ve ever had. It’s always been yours.”
She moved right into my space, wrapping her arms around my neck, and I wasn’t going to miss a chance to hold her. My arms around her back, pulling her close, felt like the most right thing in the world. Perhaps that came with finally getting to hold the person you’d spent most of your life wanting. Whatever the reason, I was just grateful to be in her orbit.
“I was right,” she murmured, looking up at me far more adoringly than I thought I deserved.
“About what?”
“Physical compliments from you feel different.”
“I, uh, don’t know if I really made it to the compliment part…”
She laughed, soft and musical and entirely mesmerising. “I beg to differ. That response wasquitethe compliment.”
Nobody in the world made me blush like she did. I’d be embarrassed if I weren’t so eager for her to spend the rest of time doing it if that pleased her. “Well, I’m glad that came across.”
“Ah,” she said, moving one hand to trace along my jaw, “your fancy British accent again.”
“Right.” When I thought about my accent, I couldn’t make it sound like it usually did. I knew Brits thought it sounded American, and Americans tended to know it wasn’t a fully American accent, sometimes hearing the British once I pointed it out.
But Ophelia, of course, had picked up on how obnoxiously British it became when I was… flustered beyond belief. That accent I’d never once in my life actually spoken routinely with.
She smiled at me, amused, for several long moments and, despite the embarrassment, all I could think about was how beautiful she was, how close she was, how it felt to have her touching me, and how badly I wanted to kiss her.
Eventually, she looked down at my throat. “They were another way of reclaiming my body.”
My mind came back in screaming clarity. Of course it was that. She’d had her sense of self ripped from under her, and she’d been so strong and so brave, reclaiming who she was, her physical self. Soph had been doing something similar—if less extreme—with a lot of her early tattoos. Staking a claim on her body, doing what she wanted with it rather than what everyone else told her she should be. Now, she was always so amused when people told her she’d regret them when she was old. She knew she never would. They were her.
“My apologies for not having a more… eloquent reaction.” I smiled with her when she smirked at the weird accent still permeating my words.
“I don’t know. I kind of liked your reaction.”
“Yeah?” I asked, so hopeful it felt like my lungs might explode.
“Yeah. I… Well. As you know, I’ve done a lot of stuff trying to reclaim my body, and it’s not always easy, but, for the first time in a long time—probably ever, honestly—I feel comfortable with someone else. Physically. With you, I feel safe. I…” She ducked her head, blushing furiously, before she looked very pointedly at my lips. “I want physical things again.”
The breath rushed out of my body. It wasn’t like I didn’t know how she felt, but I’d been happy to wait for her, for however long she needed. I hadn’t expectedthis.“You don’t have to—”
“I know. Iwantto. And part of that is because I know you’d never push me. And, I suppose, it’s reassuring to have learnt you always liked me.”
I felt like I was going to cry with how perfect she was and how much of a dream come true this moment was.Iwas the one she was letting read the pages of that perfectly bound book she was. There was no way in the world I deserved it—deserved her—but I was sure as hell going to spend every single day trying to be worthy, giving her everything she’d ever needed, wanted, and deserved.
“I guess,” she said warmly, tracing her fingertips over my lips and guiding my head down so our noses brushed, “it was a little unfair of me to… reveal the piercings—”
“That wasmanythings but unfair is not one of them.”
She laughed and it waseverything.“Okay. Well, I still think it was a little bit teasing given that I’m not ready for sex. Yet.”
I froze as the emphasis hit my mind and felt like it bounced around my skull. “Yet…”
