Smolder (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter, #29)(38)

Admittedly he rolled out of bed looking this good and it had taken two hours of professionals to get me here, but for the first time I couldn’t argue that I was beautiful. I wanted to, but I couldn’t.

I remembered my grandmother telling me I was ugly, that no man would ever want me, and I better have a career and be able to take care of myself, but I’d held on to the thought that I looked like a paler version of my mother, and my father called her the most beautiful woman in the world. Then after two years of mourning her, he’d married Judith, who was everything my mother wasn’t. If my short, curvy, curly-haired, Hispanic mother had been the most beautiful woman in the world like he said to her constantly until the day she died, then why was his second wife tall, thin, blond, blue-eyed, and pale like him?

My brown eyes looked almost black, large, and shining in my face, framed by the dramatic eye makeup. The red lipstick had been drawn slightly wider than my lower lip so that my mouth looked

pouting and full, and . . . Rodina was right, I looked like a high-end call girl.

“I take it back,” she said, and came to stand behind and to one side of me. She looked short compared to me now. She was three inches taller if we were both in flats.

“No, you were right, it’s slutty, but then I’m supposed to match Jean-Claude’s outfit and he’ll be stripping tonight.”

“Jean-Claude’s outfit will be elegant, because he’s always elegant,” Ru said.

I smiled then, and conceded that much, but I still stared at myself and didn’t know how to feel; not good was the closest I could come. I didn’t feel good about what I saw in the mirror, and even knowing the reasons why, the damage done to me, the lessons I’d taken from my childhood, none of that fixed anything. I had entered therapy thinking it would “fix” me, heal me, make me whole. I’d been right only about the healing; therapy didn’t fix you as if you’d never been broken, it couldn’t do that, but as you accepted all your broken pieces, even the ones you hated most, you gradually realized you were whole. Not because you’d never been broken, but because as you discovered your pain, all the places that hurt, scared you, made you hate others, hate yourself, all the dark stuff, you needed it.

You needed the scary stuff inside you as much as the happy parts, because only by accepting all of it, warts and all, could you be whole. I was working on being whole, and as I stared at this beautiful stranger in the mirror I tried to believe it was me and to be okay with the fact that not only had my grandmother been a lying bitch, but the way my family had treated me was wrong. The man I called Dad, the man I wanted to give me away at my wedding, had told me I looked just like my mother, but never that I was beautiful in my own right, and always on his arm had been Judith, whom he called beautiful, and who was everything that my mother and I would never be.

My eyes sparkled in the mirrors, shining like the jewels on the dress and sandals. I kept my eyes wide and didn’t blink, because I didn’t know if the mascara was waterproof. I would not cry and ruin it. I felt more myself with weapons, but I needed at least a day of practice getting the gun out of the purse before I’d been happy with my timing and body memory. I’d be better off throwing the purse at them and stabbing them with the stilettos. I felt like a fucking victim in this outfit. I widened my eyes and thought the weak thought, I will not cry, I will not cry, I will not cry.





14

FELIX HAD TRIED to ask me if I wanted my hair down like this for the wedding, or up, but Ethan had taken him to the side to ask something, so that Ru could get me out of the shop before I cried, or started to scream, or acted like a damn fool. I was upset enough that I forgot about the heels as we stepped out of the shop and onto the cobblestone road. I nearly twisted my ankle and fell. Only a desperate grab at Ru’s arm saved me. Rodina laughed and said, “I can’t believe you are our queen.”

Ru turned with me in his arms, putting his body between me and his sister. I didn’t feel that threatened, but he knew her better than I did, so I clung to Ru and let him work it out. I was still digging out of the avalanche of issues from seconds ago. I’d let Ru take care of Rodina while I figured out how my family issues might impact tonight’s date with Jean-Claude. “She hasn’t had centuries to perfect herself,” he said.

“It’s a spike heel on cobblestones, guys, anyone can trip,” I said, but I stayed where Ru had put me with his arm around me and him between us. I let myself put most of my energy into shoveling the emotional shit that I could feel inside my head and body. Emotions didn’t just live in the head, or the heart, they burrowed down into your gut, they poured over your skin, they filled up your eyes, they spilled out your fingertips and toes. Emotions were everywhere if you just let yourself feel them, and I’d worked hard to learn how to feel instead of stuff everything out of sight until it erupted in rage or made terrible choices. I was concentrating so hard on working my issues that I didn’t hear what Rodina said to me.

“I’m sorry, Rodina, what did you say?”

“I said, have you ever seen us trip, any of us?” Rodina asked, peering around her brother at me.

I knew the us meant the Harlequin. “I’ve seen you all mess up in fight training.”

“We can lose, but that’s not the same thing as tripping on a stone. You are so damn mortal, my queen.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know I disappoint you, Rodina, you aren’t winning any prizes with me either.”