Picture Perfect (23 page)

Her features hardened, weighed down by great sadness as her eyes flicked down to her scar. “I’m hardly perfect. Sometimes I’m not sure if I’m even human. I don’t think or act the way other people do. I can’t. It’s like something’s broken inside, and it takes every ounce of strength I have just to feel something sometimes.”

I followed the ridge of jagged skin marring the smooth pale flesh of her leg. Looking at it nearly made me cringe, not out of disgust, but because it must have hurt like hell. “Who gave that to you?” I asked.

That look of paralyzing fear widened her eyes, and it looked as if she had stopped breathing. She ran her tongue over her lips, taking a shaky breath. “When I was a little girl, the only thing I wanted to do was dance,” she said, the words sounding forced and barely audible.

I held my breath, afraid that if I breathed, it would be too loud
, and I’d miss what she’d said. I couldn’t miss this precious piece of her that was like a glass shard in her heart.

“When I was five years old, my mother
enrolled me in ballet lessons. From that point on, I knew I would be a world-class ballerina. We learned other styles as I got older: jazz, hip-hop, salsa. But my favorite was ballet.” She smiled softly, her gaze far away. “They always looked so perfect, the professional ballerinas, like something out of a fairy tale. The costumes, the glamour… it was incredible.” She swallowed hard, pausing. I swore her shoulders lifted, like she tensed, and I cradled her closer. “As I got older and my father lost his job, he and my mother started arguing more. He said lessons were too expensive and that dancing was useless. It was my mother’s dream to see me dance, not his. He never really supported anything I did, but he didn’t condemn it. So long as I stayed out of his way, he was too content to care I existed. I was supposed to be a boy, the older brother my mom lost six months into her complicated pregnancy. And then there I was, her perfect baby girl. She called me her little angel.”

I smiled. Her mom couldn’t have chosen a better name for my muse.

She took a deep breath, letting it out in a rush and picking at a cuticle on her hand. “The summer I turned ten, my father had been without work for over a year. With his criminal record for assault, it was hard for him to get hired on anywhere that would pay the mortgage, and my mom’s meager salary at the day care center she worked at didn’t bring much in.” Angel’s face grew haunted, her voice nothing but air. “One night, my friend dropped me off after recital practice. I could hear them screaming at each other from outside, the worst I’d ever heard them argue. I’d never been so scared in my life. With trembling hands, I opened the front door and peeked into the kitchen. Papers and broken glass lay everywhere, and my father was still throwing things while my mother begged him to stop. Foreclosure papers littered the floor, drenched in booze. He blamed me. And he blamed my mother for supporting me and spending his unemployment money on furthering my dance education.

“I’d never seen her fight back until that night. But the moment he started choking her, she began pounding her fists onto his big chest. As her face turned blue, I ran toward him, yelling at him to stop or I’d call the cops. He looked at me, and I swear I saw the devil that night. I’d never seen such rage.” Her voice broke up and she started shaking. “He came for me a
s I turned to run for the phone and yanked me backward by my hair. ‘I’ll fix our problem,’ he said, grabbing a shard of glass from the floor and holding it over me while I writhed and screamed beneath him. ‘If you don’t have a leg, you can’t fucking dance. And then you can’t take all my goddamn money.’”

She made a motion mimicking her story. “He plunged the glass into my thigh, severing tendons and shredding muscles as he ran it all the way down my leg. I nearly blacked out from the pain. My mother, with tears streaking down her face, tried to stop him, but he turned on her and slit her throat.”

I blanched but forced myself not to react now that she was finally letting it all out.

A single tear fell from her dead eyes. “As I lay there, dying,
while my mother’s blood and my own pooled on the kitchen floor, all I could think was that I was finally free. I really was going to be an angel. I could fly away from here, away from this awful place.” She closed her eyes, composing herself. “The next thing I remember, I woke up in the hospital. The neighbors had heard the fight and called the police, and they’d taken my dad into custody after a failed suicide attempt. My mother stayed in the ICU for over a month recovering, at which point child services stepped in, and I was given a ‘temporary’ family until my mother could go home. But I never got my mother back. She changed after that night. We both did. She stopped talking to me. Hell, she stopped talking altogether. Her throat was badly damaged, but she could communicate, though it hurt her to do so.”

“Where is she?” I asked after Angel didn’t speak for a while. She seemed locked in her own world for a moment.

Blinking, she said, “She’s in a small apartment her disability check from the government pays for back at home in Chicago.”

“By herself?”

She shook her head. “She has home care nurses. There’s always at least one person staying with her, since she’s on suicide watch thanks to multiple attempts at the hospital.”

Jesus
. I thought I’d had it rough. I couldn’t imagine living through what Angel had to face. “Do you ever get to see her?” I asked.

Her eyes glassed over and she looked away. “She doesn’t want to see me. I think doing so plunges her back into that night. The last time I went to visit, she had a psychotic break. For her own good - and mine, I suppose - her doctor said I can’t go near her for a while.”

“And how long’s that?”

She pressed her lips together. “I don’t know.”

I watched the bliss I’d seen on her face earlier disappear, eclipsed by the tragedy of her past. “Come here,” I said as she began to cry.

She let me hold h
er as her body shook with sobs. I kissed her forehead, clutching my salvation close to my chest. As she succumbed to her grief, I swore right then that I’d never let anyone hurt her again.

Ever.

CHAPTER 26

Devin

I HELD HER UNTIL she passed out, and even then I couldn’t let go. She looked so peaceful when she was sleeping, not like the haunted woman I’d seen only a few minutes earlier. The horrors of her past kept me awake, the scene of her dad burying a piece of glass in his own daughter’s leg turning my stomach. I brushed back some sweat-dampened curls from her forehead. How could someone so delicate-looking be so damn strong? And the whole situation with her mother… I wasn’t sure I could have survived with the pain. My family might not be perfect, but at least I had one.

I eventually dozed off, though I slept lightly. I kept seeing Angel lying in a pool of blood, and I’d wake up with a start after only about fifteen minutes of sleep.

Around five-thirty, Angel roused. “Hmmmm,” she purred, stretching. Her eyes fluttered open, and she gazed at me sleepily, smiling. “Good morning.”

“Actually, it’s good afternoon,” I said, kissing her forehead. “Did you sleep well?”

“Like a baby. I’ve never been so relaxed.”

I was about to ask her, “Really? After the conversation we just had?” but decided against it because I didn’t want to ruin the moment. If she was content, I was content. “Good.”

Her stomach growled loudly and she blushed.

My brows rose. “You hungry?”

She nodded. “Maybe a little. I skipped out on breakfast… and lunch.”

I studied her. Losing her job and trying to pay for rent and school and everything, I wondered how her financial stability was holding up. “Well, then I guess we should eat,” I said, leaning over her and trying to look serious. “But I have to ask you something first.”

She blinked. “Okay?”

“Are you ticklish?”

“Yeah, why?”

I tackled her, going for the soft spots under her arms, right along the top of her rib cage. She shrieked, spewing giggles and thrashing around like a little kid. I smiled. I liked this Angel better, the one who laughed and didn’t have a care in the world. I wondered how often anyone had tickled her as she grew up. Something told me not many times.

I finally relented on my attack and helped her up from bed. Naked, we walked hand in hand to the kitchen, where she scooped up the shirt I gave her yesterday from the floor. “Do you have a bathroom?” she asked.

“Yeah.” I pointed with a spatula. “Down the hall and to the left.”

She chewed on her lip, a wide grin on her face, and blushed again as she walked past me. I watched her ass jiggle until she turned the corner, then had to take a deep breath and think about something else other than the oncoming erection.
Easy now. One step at a time.
To distract myself from the craving to strip her naked and make love to her, I busied myself with making loaded omelets. I heard the shower running while I chopped bell peppers, olives, and tomatoes, singing to myself as I worked. I’d just dumped the battered eggs into the skillet when she padded into the kitchen, her wet hair soaking into my T-shirt, the only article of clothing she had on. Seeing her in my clothes like that, dripping wet, only turned me on more. “I hope you like breakfast food,” I said, trying not to look at the poke of her erect nipples through the shirt.

She sat down at one of the bar stools. “I love it. Tam and I are so busy we don’t hardly make any home-cooked meals. This will be nice. I haven’t had a hot breakfast in a while.”

“Well, I’m glad you like eggs because these are gonna blow your mind.” I scooped bacon bits, shredded cheese, and vegetables into the frying eggs, then flipped over the flap and pressed down on the corners with my spatula. A moment of comfortable silence passed between us. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d felt this at home in my own apartment.

“Listen,” she said carefully, “I’m sorry for dumping all that on you last night. Once I got going, I couldn’t stop.”

“You have nothing to be sorry about,” I said softly, scooping up the finished omelet and dumping it on a plate. I sprinkled more cheese over the top, then added salt and pepper before handing it to her. “Careful. It’s hot.”

“Thanks,” she said, taking it from me and practically salivating. “I didn’t know you could cook.”

I shrugged. “When I need to.”

She devoured the omelet while I made my own. The way a strand of cheese hung off her mouth was so fucking cute. The fact she didn’t hold anything back also filled me with wanting, like she knew what she wanted and just went for it. “You want something to drink?”

She nodded, swallowing a big gooey bite. “Watcha have?”

I opened my fridge. “Beer and some out-of-date milk, apparently.”

She snorted. “Water’s fine.”

I filled a glass from the tap and handed it to her.

“Thanks,” she said again, her fingers brushing mine as she took the glass. Even that small touch, after everything we’d done, sent nervous butterflies through me. God, this woman was weaving a spell over me.

Turning back to my now burning omelet, I said, “So how’d you get into teaching?”

“I’ve always loved kids,” she said, picking at the last corner of egg with her fork. “I used to watch some of them with my mom at the day care. The urge to nurture, to protect never went away I guess. When ballet didn’t work out, teaching seemed like the most logical replacement.”

I cut the stove off and pulled up a seat next to her. “But there’s more to it than that. I can see the glitter in your eyes when you talk about having your own classroom. You genuinely love it.”

She smiled. “Yes, I do.”

“Tell me more about it,” I said, wanting to do anything to keep her smiling. She deserved to smile more. “What all does an education degree entail?”

That got her going. For nearly a half hour straight, she rattled off her degree requirements, what schools she wanted to be stationed in for student teaching, and even how she’d decorate her classroom. Her imagination was incredible. I wished I’d had someone like her as a teacher growing up.

“I think that’s amazing,” I said, stuffing the last bite of egg into my mouth and washing it back with water. “Not many people are as passionate about their professions as you. To you, it’s not just a job. It’s refreshing.”

She beamed, silent for a minute. “Well, you’re pretty passionate about photography. You said you get that from your dad?”

I stiffened, stabbing at the scraps of cheese and olives on my plate. “Do you know what a narcissist is?”

She nodded. “Yeah, it’s someone who loves him- or herself exclusively, like in the Greek myth.”

“Well, that’s what my dad is. He was clinically diagnosed with narcissism about five years ago, though I could have told the doctor he’d been in love with himself a lot longer than that.” Angel sat quietly as I talked. “Every achievement I ever had he found a way to belittle, or made it out like it was solely because of his guidance. Like nothing I ever did could possibly be
because I had talent of my own. If I dared suggest it, he’d get rip-roaring mad and take it out on my mother or siblings. So I kept my mouth shut until I got old enough to move out.”

She reached over and squeezed my hand. I laced my fingers between hers, smiling at our joined hands. “Then along came you, the first inspiration I’ve had he hasn’t been able to destroy.”