Page 83 of Exposed

“Hmm.” She kept staring at the ceiling, doing her best to hold the pose.

“Back to you,” I said. “Tell me more. Tell me all of it.”

She told me about fall days similar to the one I’d given her at my parents’ house. She talked about playing in the snow and cozy nights in front of the fireplace. She smiled as she reminisced about playing football in the yard and swimming in the lake. The sounds of the cicadas lulling them to sleep during the summer. And her huge garden.

Brooklyn had a simple life. A beautiful life. The life I wanted with her. And as I painted her, and listened to her stories, I felt closer to the real her. The one that had lived. It felt like falling in love all over again.

My hand paused as I painted the dip of her stomach. This was probably the part of her that was the most different. She had a few stretchmarks from her pregnancy. But that wasn’t what I was fixated on.

I stepped away from my easel and walked over to her. I could feel her eyes on me as I knelt down beside her. But she didn’t say a word as I reached out and traced the ragged scar on the side of her stomach.

Chapter 28

Tuesday

Brooklyn

I stared at Matt as he traced the scar from my kidney surgery. The scar was a reminder of what my father had stolen from me. And I didn’t just mean my kidney. He’d also stolen my future with Matt.

The bright light in the room made the scar look worse. It made my stretch marks more pronounced too. I’d never felt so exposed.

“Did it hurt?” he whispered, his thumb lightly touching my scar like he might hurt me all over again.

He hadn’t shied away from any of the hard questions tonight. He didn’t get angry when I’d told him my stories about Miller. I knew he was trying to prove that he still knew me. All of me. But somehow this felt more momentous than the rest of it. Him staring at my scars and not turning away.

I nodded. He deserved to know the truth. And I was done holding back pieces of my life from him. I remembered the white room I was locked up in after the surgery. And I remembered the pain in my chest more vividly than the pain from the surgery. “It hurt. But not as much as my heart hurt thinking you’d moved on.”

“Never, Brooklyn. I’m incapable of loving anyone but you.”

I believed him. I believed all of it. That he’d loved me then. That he still loved me now. Despite everything. We weren’t written in the stars. But my heart was bound to his. Through everything. We were intertwined somehow. I knew that. And I’d never seen it more clearly than I did right now. As he leaned forward and kissed my scar.

“I love every inch of you.” He traced the rest of my scar with his lips.

My back arched even more.

“I’m going to make you my wife.” He touched my rings.

Rings I didn’t know how to take off. But I believed his words. I knew that whenever Matt wanted something, he got it. I’d pushed him away so much when we first met. But he’d won me over. And he was already doing it again. Not that he needed to. It was only my guilt making us not move forward.

His fingers traced my stretch marks. “I’m going to adopt your son.”

I swear my heart skipped a beat.

“We’re going to be a family.” He leaned forward and kissed a thin scar on the side of my thumb. “And it’s going to be perfectly imperfect.” His breath was hot on my skin. “What happened here?”

“When Jacob was a baby, I got distracted while I was baking. He was crying and…” my voice trailed off as he blew on it. Like he could take away the sting from the burn even though he was three years too late.

“I’m not 16 years old anymore either, Brooklyn. I know that real love is messy. I know I’m not untouchable.”

That’s what Daphne had told me. That Matt and his friends stopped calling themselves the Untouchables after I died. Because they realized that their money and prestige didn’t protect them from pain.

He leaned forward and kissed the outside corner of my eyes, where I knew I had a few laugh lines. His lips left a trail of kisses down to one of my breasts. “And these are bigger,” he said with a groan.

I laughed.

His eyes met mine as his tongue swirled around my nipple.

Jesus.

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