Misadventures of a Curvy Girl (Misadventures #18)(35)

When we part for air, her tears are gone, although her eyes are still vulnerable and glinting with turbulent feeling. “How?” she whispers. “How can you kiss me like this when just a couple hours ago…?”

I need to tell her about this part of me, but I don’t want it to sound like an excuse, like I’m justifying my awful actions because I’ve had awful things happen to me in the past. I press my forehead to hers and accept there’s no easy way to talk about the busted parts of one’s mind, the broken and the healing parts. “Did Caleb tell you I was in the army?”

“Yes,” she answers softly. “Afghanistan. PTSD?”

“And a sprinkling of garden-variety depression and anxiety. It’s—well, it’s a work in progress. I’m a work in progress. I was already on the edge after seeing the town like that, but when I thought you might have died, when I saw you were in danger…” My fist is clenched in the material of her tank top at the small of her back, and I force myself to uncurl my fingers. “We went through so many villages that looked exactly like that. Just heaps of stones and bricks. And you never knew what would happen when you were walking through. Would you be shot at? Step on an IED? Find the bodies of a dead family left out in the sun? It’s like being turned up to maximum volume for hours…days. And then the volume knob breaks clean off and you can’t turn it down anymore.”

I stare at her, letting her see something I’ve only ever let Caleb see. Me, as I am, part shell and part sensitive boy who got beat to shit after school every day. “I’m so sorry, Ireland. I didn’t want to hurt you. I wanted you safe…and I was so desperate to get you away from anything unsafe that I hurt you to do it. It’s unforgivable, and I know that… I just also want you to know why. It’s not because I don’t want you or care for you. Just the fucking opposite.”

Her eyes are huge and liquid, like deep-blue waters of emotion, and her lower lip trembles the slightest bit as she asks, “How can I trust you won’t be awful to me again?”

All over again, I’m stabbed with shame and regret and self-directed fury. I know it’s not helpful—I’ve spent the last five years listening to therapists and other veterans tell me it’s not helpful—but the shame comes all the same.

And yet with it comes the faintest note of something else. Hope? Optimism?

Certainty?

Yes, I think, it’s because I’m certain about Ireland. I’ve never had a reason to believe in things like fate or destiny—the war was very effective at proving there’s nothing but chaos in this world—but Ireland makes me doubt all that now.

“Because you’re mine.”

Her eyes flick over my face, searching me. “You mean that?”

My hold tightens on her. “Yes, baby. You’re mine and Caleb’s, and you’ll remain ours until you don’t want to be any longer.”

“Yours.” She tries out the word, as if the entire concept is foreign to her. As if no one’s ever tried to possess her before.

Then they were all fucking fools.

“Ours,” I confirm roughly, yanking her close once again. “As long as you want us.”

She nibbles on her lower lip, and I can’t help it. I bend down and bite that lip for her. “Do you still want us, Ireland?” I murmur against her mouth. “Will you stay and let me make it up to you?”





Chapter Thirteen





Ireland





A couple of years ago, I was watching a movie with a handful of girlfriends as we traded gossip and passed around popcorn and bottles of wine. And we got to the part of the movie where the hero makes his grand gesture, chasing after the heroine and declaring his love for her. Declaring that she was his.

The room gave a collective groan at this, popcorn flying at the screen, and someone pronounced how utterly backward and chauvinistic that was and how she’d never be caught dead with a man who looked at her and said mine. A man who looked at her like she was a prize in the machine simply waiting to be claimed.

I stayed silent.

Because I wasn’t going to argue that on a structural level men should act proprietary with women, and I never would. But on a personal level, well…

It was hard to look at my friend, who was slender and sleek and would no doubt have men wanting her everywhere she went and not think easy for you to say. Her body was the kind of body that people wanted to claim, wanted to stake some kind of sexual ownership of, and mine was not—never had been, and as years of pointless diet torture had taught me, never would be.

So it was hard not to wish I had the luxury of scoffing at male desire. It was hard to watch those movies and know that, according to them, people like me didn’t have heroes chasing after them. People like me are the best friends, the comic relief, maybe even the villain.

And in real life? In real life, the kind of male attention I received was dangerous and demeaning. Aggressive frat boys who told me I should feel “lucky” to have them fuck me and then got belligerent and nasty when I refused them. Mean men at bars who grabbed and groped and assumed I’d be grateful for the assault since clearly nobody else would ever want to touch my body.

Girls like me, we didn’t get chased, we didn’t get claimed, we didn’t get the happily ever after. Not in movies. Not in real life.