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He was on my side, eyes on my exposed legs. He didn’t say a word, but the moment I’d started to undress, those blue eyes of his dilated in desire.
The treehouse wasn’t exactly the definition of well-lit. The canopies of the surrounding trees blocked out most of the light, but sunlight always found a way to come inside. It was enough for him to see the thick scars on my upper thighs.
Three of them, to be exact. Two on my right, one on my left, placed high enough that when I wore shorts, they remained hidden, provided they weren’t the kind of shorts that showed off the bottom curve of your ass. No booty shorts for me, ever—which was fine, because they weren’t really my thing.I had no ass to show off.
Brett didn’t say a word, but his gaze was glued to my thighs. In my chest, my heart hammered so hard I thought it might pop out. Pop out, run away, and hide, like I wanted to. Even though I still wore a shirt and my underwear, I’d never felt more naked than I did in that moment.
Time ticked by, the seconds more like hours. I wished I could hear what he was thinking. Was his opinion of me changing, now that he could see what I’d done to myself in the light of day? How dumb I was for being able to cut myself there but not my wrists?
Too much of a coward for true suicide, but brave enough to make myself hurt.
But that’s the thing. These cuts might’ve hurt superficially, but they were nothing like what I felt deep in my soul. I was a sad, shattered girl, and at the time, I’d been broken even more thanks to Zak and Amelia. The pain these self-inflicted cuts gave me was nothing.
Zak had been my ticket to fake normalcy for years, and I’d foolishly started to believe it was true, that we could be happy together in the long-run. That I could forget about the past and everything Uncle Dave had done, but then it came crashing down.
And now here I was, revealing my scars to the man who’d killed Zak. But the strangest part of it all was that it didn’t feel wrong. Self-conscious? Yes. Scary? Oh, yeah. But wrong? No. I wanted Brett to see me, to really see me.
And maybe if he accepted this part of me without viewing me differently, he could accept the other dark truth I kept to myself about dear Uncle Dave.
Chapter Thirteen – Brett
They were small. Smaller than I’d thought—but then again, I’d never used such tiny blades before, so I guess I wouldn’t know what their cuts looked like. I gutted things. I scalped them, skinned them, dressed them, but I’d never taken a fine blade across skin with the sole intent of hurting someone.
No, if I was cutting into someone, I preferred much bigger knives.
My eyes were glued to the scars. Just three of them, on her inner thighs. Two of them rested on her right thigh, side by side, millimeters apart, and the other on her left. They were so high they practically rested against her panties.
I stared at them for perhaps too long—and the only reason I stared at them so long was because I was trying to imagine this girl taking that tiny blade I’d found in her desk and dragging it along her inner thighs, huddled in the bathroom, maybe over the tub, so it was easy to clean up.
This was a girl in pain, and no one else seemed to realize it. And that, that was something I’d never understand. How could anyone look into her big, brown eyes and think she was fine? She was obviously struggling, clearly depressed. Charlie probably needed to go on meds or something. I didn’t know. I wasn’t a fucking doctor.
What I was… let’s just say when I studied those scars I wasn’t Brett Banks, serial killer extraordinaire, a wanted man on the run. No, when I looked at that white, risen flesh, I was Brett Banks, a man in love.
And if that wasn’t insane, I didn’t know what was.
Charlie must’ve been waiting for me to speak, because she whispered, “Say something.”
I flicked my gaze up to her face, studying the way she watched me. Wide eyes, their brown depths so earnest and nervous. She looked like she wanted to either be sick or run away, but I wouldn’t let her.
She wanted me to say something? I’d do her one better.
I lifted a hand, placing it on her right leg, inside her thigh. Without saying a word, I drew that hand up, stopping when I reached the scars, and I ran my thumb along the risen flesh. Her skin trembled beneath my touch, and Charlie sucked in a breath.
We locked eyes, and I hoped she knew that I wasn’t looking down on her. Literally, yes, I looked down on her because she was fucking pint-sized, but generally speaking, no. I’d never think less of her.
I moved so that I knelt before her, and I spread her legs wide before lowering myself down. Hands on her inner thighs again, this time when my fingertips roamed over the scars, my lips followed. I trailed a slow line of kisses along her scars, each leg, as I murmured the truth, “You have nothing to be ashamed of. Nothing. These scars are a part of you, and now they’re a part of me.” As I ran my lips over her scars, my hand gripped her leg from the outside, stopping her from pulling away.
I didn’t think she would, but you never knew. This was Charlie. She didn’t do things like this without trying to run away after.
Or, you know, telling me to leave.
I was slow in lifting my face away from her thighs, looking up at her. I could see the questioning expression she wore, so I explained, “They’re a part of me because you are a part of me, Charlie.”
Her mouth opened. I didn’t know what she was about to say, but it didn’t matter. I shushed her and lowered my mouth back to her scars, kissing the pair on her right leg while saying, “Let me take care of you.”
I tugged her body down, and together we shimmied until her head rested on my pillow and I was perfectly tucked between her legs. I trailed another line of kisses along her scars, and then I brought my mouth to her panties. I hooked a finger around the fabric and pulled them aside to reveal the lips of her pussy and her clit, beautifully pink and calling my name.
I’d get that pink skin swollen and wet shortly, mark my words.
