Page 34 of All or Nothing
She made a noise of distress and pulled back, trailing her little finger over the injury in a featherlight touch that tickled. “Idid this? Oh god, I beat you up in my sleep, didn’t I?” When I nodded she groaned. “You should have woken me up and sent me packing! I hate that I hurt you.” Her pout was adorable.
“And miss out on the spectacle of your sleep acrobatics?” I grinned at her, catching her chin and tilting her face up to meet my gaze. “I regret nothing, sweet one. I will do it again tonight if you let me. Besides, if you turn me into one big bruise right away and just get it over with—”
“Xollen!”she groaned, rolling her eyes.
I kissed her gently, pouring all of my affection into the soft sweep of my lips on hers. She melted against me, her arms slipping around my neck and pulling herself closer to me. Derris was right; the chances of her faking such ready affection were slim.
I released her, nuzzling my nose against hers before pulling back and smiling down at her. “Are you hungry? I can get the food synth set up and make us some breakfast.”
She nodded, her eyes still heavy-lidded from our kiss. I stood, setting her down on the spot I was vacating. After a moment of hesitation I turned my tablet back on and handed it to her to look at. “Do not refer to the fact that you have seen this.Ever. I don’t think I could handle it.”
She laughed, taking the tablet and hugging it to her chest. “I promise nothing, you goof.”
I turned and headed into the kitchen to grab us our food, nervous about how she would react to the digital canvas covered in drawings of her beauty. Would she be flattered, or would it repulse her like it had Verilla? I was glad for the distraction of setting up the machine and preparing our food, my hearts in my throat as I wondered what she would think.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Joss is Beautiful
JOSS
IT’S…IT’Sme.Xollen had filled up the entire digital canvas with drawing after drawing of me. He was such a talented artist that there was no mistaking my face, but somehow, it didn’t feel like I was looking at myself, either.
I mean, there wasn’t anything about my face that was worthy of this much care and attention, was there? But seeing all of those sketches, one after the other, rendered with so much care and emotion, I could see what Xollen saw when he looked at me…and it was lovely.Iwas lovely. Even though this wasn’t an idealized version of me—I snorted and winced at the drawing he did of my smooshed-up sleep face—I could still see nothing but my own beauty in the dozen drawings he’d done of me.
Immediately, I was tearing up. There had been a part of me that had thought Xollen was into me for my personality, and that he just didn’t mind how I looked because he didn’t know any better. But this…you couldn’t fake this kind of care and affection. The way he’d drawn me made me look like I was every inch the star he kept calling me. It made me feel like I was swelling up with emotion, ready to burst apart at the seams with it.
It was so different from when I was with Alex. I’d had to change just about everything about myself to keep that asshole with me, and even then he’d barely hung around for a couple of months. He was the reason my beautiful hair was fried, the reason I sucked my stomach in all the time when I was around new people, why I didn’t believe that anyone would ever think I was attractive as-is. I’d thought Xollen’s attraction had been in spite of my weight, but from these pictures, he was justintome, rolls and all.
He strolled back in a few minutes later, a smile bright on his handsome mint-colored face, proudly holding two bowls of cereal aloft. But when he saw my expression, saw me crying, he set the bowls down on the first flat surface he could find—a box that got a healthy amount of our breakfast sloshed onto it—and rushed to my side, taking the tablet from my hands so he could grab them tightly.
“Joss, my hearts, what’s wrong? What happened?” He combed my hair back from my face, his violet eyes swirling sadly. “Did my drawings upset you? I’m sorry they’re not very good, I shouldn’t have shown you them…” When that only made me sob harder he made a distressed sound in the back of his throat, almost like a dog whining, and flinched away from me.
Sucking in a breath, I slipped off the couch to join him kneeling on the floor, flinging myself into his arms. He was stiff against me for a second, then wrapped me up tight, running his hands soothingly up and down my back as I sobbed into his chest.
Once I could get enough air to speak, I pulled back, surprised to see we were back on the couch, me cradled in his lap. Jeez, I’d been super out of it. And I was amazed he could lift me that easily, considering how slim he was. “I’m sorry for all the tears,” I croaked, swiping at his soaked shirt with my fingers like it would do anything. “They’re good tears though, believe it or not.”
“I will be honest with you and admit I do not entirely believe those tears were happy, but I trust you would not lie to me.” He was combing my hair back from my face while he rocked me gently. I nuzzled into the warmth of his chest, letting the strange rhythm of his heartbeats soothe me. “Was it something I did?” He sounded so tense, so scared, that I couldn’t help pulling him down into a kiss.
“It was good, I promise babe,” I told him in between kisses. “The drawings you did of me were just so beautiful, it overwhelmed me.”
He nodded, looking like he understood. “Yes, I am also overwhelmed by your beauty. I am just shocked that my silly sketches were able to capture you well enough to elicit that reaction.” I started crying again at that, making him squeak in panic and swipe his thumbs over my cheeks to try and capture my tears.
“I don’t think I’m beautiful,” I admitted in a whisper, my voice sounding so small and scared in the quiet of the living room. “Because I’m fat, and kind of plain, and—and no one’s thought I was beautiful before. So that’s—that’s what I find so overwhelming. The girl in those pictures…that’s not who I see, and it’s amazing to me that that’s what you see when you look at me. I-I wish I could see myself like that,” I confessed in a rush, my voice cracking on the last bit as fresh tears stole his sweet face from my vision.
He pulled me in close against him again, rocking me harder and trying his best to comfort me even though he still seemed very confused about what, exactly, I was so upset about. “Joss, Joss, my sweet heart, the star in my skies…I don’t understand how you can’t see how gorgeous and perfect you are in all ways, but I can understand the feeling. Because of my own struggles with my face, and how it is so different from others billieuans.” Okay, so maybe he was less confused than I’d thought. It was so easy to forget that he saw himself as ugly when all I saw when I looked at him was miles of drop-dead gorgeous alien hunk.
Oh shit. That was it, wasn’t it? He saw me with the same kind of attraction that I saw him with…and we each saw ourselves as hideously ugly. What a fucking pair we were.
“How do you know exactly what to say?” I murmured into his chest, clinging to him tightly.
“I have helped?”
I nodded, swiping the moisture from under my eyes. “You helped a lot. Thank you, baby.” I got to my feet, grabbing the congealing cereal and handing him the bowl that had lost less to his panic. But he just held it, not making any move to start eating.
“You’re sure you’re alright, my star?” He set the bowl on top of another box so that he could cup my face in both of his big warm hands, his thumbs tracing along my cheeks and wiping away the leftover moisture. “I didn’t hurt your feelings with my drawings?”
I shook my head, chuckling and smiling up at him. “Not at all. It made me very happy. You’re an amazing artist, Xoll. We really have to figure out a way to show the world what amazing talent you have.” I took a bite of the soggy cereal, grimacing at the texture but choking it down anyway. But then my eyes landed on the tablet again, and suddenly I remembered the conversation we’d had back on the shuttle, when he’d told me that aliens didn’t have comics. “Oh my god!” I shouted, putting my food down, too. I wasn’t really all that hungry anyway, and with their recycling system, the waste would be minimal. “We have to get you drawing a comic!”
