Misadventures of a Curvy Girl (Misadventures #18)(32)

I reach automatically for my camera in the bag on the passenger seat, shoving my hand through my clothes in search of its reassuring shape, its familiar heft. But even as I riffle through the bag, a vision suddenly comes to me of my camera on the bed in the farmhouse’s guest room. I put it there while Caleb was telling me about Ben and him, and I got so caught up in the story that I completely forgot to shove it into the bag before I left.

Which means it’s still at the farmhouse.

Fuck.

I pointlessly and stupidly smack the steering wheel with my palm, which only hurts my hand and makes me feel childish. And childish is not something I can afford to feel right now—not when I’m already the awkward sausage who couldn’t take a hint and had to be told to leave.

Humiliation and anger burn at me as I yank on the wheel of the car to make a vicious U-turn back to the farm. The humiliation is for obvious reasons, I suppose, but even I don’t entirely understand the anger. I’m not an angry person normally; in fact, I’m always the first to say sorry, the first to make peace. I usually do everything I can to avoid conflict, to keep people liking me.

You’re done with that now. No more apologizing just because you’re scared of people walking away.

I straighten in my seat as I drive back to the farmhouse, and I allow the anger to wash away the humiliation. I allow myself, for the first time in my life, to hang on to my anger, to feed it and embrace it. Even with Brian and my sister, I never gave myself permission to be angry. Escaping those relationships were acts of desperate survival and retreat, not blazing righteousness. But it’s like the storm—and what happened in Caleb’s bed as it raged around us—has finally unlocked some new store of pride I’ve never had before.

I’m furious that these men made me feel any doubt or embarrassment about the night we spent together. I’m furious that the way Ben treated me made me feel like a stereotype. I’m furious that the whole thing made me feel ugly and unlovable.

And mostly, I’m furious that I live in a world that has the power to make me feel ugly and unlovable because of my body.

I’m very aware that Ben is still scowling and prowling his way around his wrecked business, that Caleb is off playing Farmer Do-Gooder, and that the farmhouse will be empty. All the same, I find myself rehearsing triumphant speeches and searing retorts all the way back to the Carpenter farm. For the first time in my life, I feel emboldened to defend my body. I feel proud of it, and I almost want someone to be at the house so I can tell them exactly how I feel. So I can hear my words scorching the air as I stand in my own skin and assert my right to be treated with dignity and to be loved. My right to live as everyone else lives.

In fucking peace.

Since the storm broke up this morning, the sun has been baking down on the prairie, and even the gloppy mud of the road has hardened enough for the Prius to wobble over it without issue. It wobbles back to the farm, and as I pull into the driveway, I see with a surge of excitement, dismay—and yes, lust—that it seems like I’ll be getting my wish.

Ben is here.





Chapter Twelve





Ben





I know it the moment it happens. Telling Ireland to go is the biggest mistake of my life.

I know it like I know the Kansas sun on my back or the weight of body armor on my shoulders. I know it like I know the green of Caleb’s eyes.

I know it so much it hurts.

But even as I watched her wheel around to leave—gorgeous even covered in dust—I still couldn’t make myself go after her. She almost died because of me, and how many people were hurt and killed right in front of me in rubble-strewn hellholes just like this one? It’s sheer luck she’s alive, and the knives of terror that stabbed through me while we were digging her out drove so deep I couldn’t think straight.

Then the soldier in me took over, because that’s what happens when I panic now. The sensitive boy who would have cowered behind Caleb at the first sign of trouble—he had no one to cower behind in Afghanistan. And so he learned to survive on his own.

I don’t even really know what all I said to Ireland to make her leave—only that I followed her flinches to the words that would hurt the most, the ones that would drive her away. Words that would condemn me to hell, but even as I held her in my arms frantically kissing her hair, my brain wouldn’t stop shouting get her to safety, keep her safe, keep her safe, get her out—

It was the only thing that penetrated the lingering terror and the relief she was okay—relief so deep that I knew I was already falling in love with her.

Keep her safe.

Keep her from harm.

Get her out.

“What the fuck?” Caleb demands. He’s scrubbing at his face like he does when he’s frustrated. When he’s furious. “Why the fuck would you say something like that?”

My mind is still looping through its carousel of nightmares—the ceiling coming down over Ireland, blood-spattered dust in Helmand, yanking on debris not knowing if I’ll find a corpse underneath—and I can’t force out the right words. “She needed to leave,” I say instead, my voice harsh and shaking. “She needed to go.”

“No, asshole, she didn’t,” Caleb spits out. “I thought you liked her. I thought you understood that I liked her. That I wanted more than just a night with her.”