“Anyway,” I said, pulling in a shaky breath, “I just wanted to come on here and apologize and thank you for everything you’ve done for me.”
I looked directly into the camera, letting them see the redness in my eyes, the blotchiness in my cheeks.
“With my last post, I wanted to show you who I really am. I’m a girl who has let her insecurities rule her life. I’m a girl who camouflaged those insecurities with images of perfection online. But that ends today. Today, I embrace my true self.”
The setting sun cast its final golden rays across my bare face. I squared my shoulders, feeling both lighter and heavier than I had in years.
“Today I’m not signing off as Dakota Fox.” My finger hovered over the end button. “I’m signing off as Dakota Blackwood.”
As the screen went black, my phone immediately exploded with notifications, but I shifted my attention to the floor-length mirror.
I hadn’t realized how much my obsession with perfectionism had chipped away at my self-esteem. By habitually editing every single image of myself, I had trained my mind to hunt for my imperfections.
And remove them.
The way my right eye was slightly bigger than my left, just like my grandmother’s had been. God, I missed her so much, and I had the blessing of seeing her in the mirror every day through my eyes, yet I filtered them out? As if they were something to be ashamed of instead of treasured.
The freckles that dusted my skin. The ones that matched my beautiful mother’s, the ones that linked me to my family’s DNA, that proved I belonged to something bigger than myself. How could I have ever not been proud of them? How could I have seen them as anything but a gift?
The tiny lines around my eyes, the ones I’d been desperately smoothing out in every photo. Those weren’t wrinkles; they were proof of joy, times I’d laughed so hard, the happiness was literally etched into my skin. Every line a memory of doubled-over laughter with friends, of moments so perfect that my face couldn’t contain the smile. And I’d been erasing them like they were mistakes.
And that slight scar on my temple, barely visible, unless you knew where to look. The one I’d gotten when Dad was teaching me to ride a bike, his strong hands steadying me before letting go, trusting me to fly. That tiny mark was proof of his love, of a perfect Saturday afternoon when I was seven and brave. I should have wanted to frame it, not conceal it.
Somewhere along the way, I’d grown to hate these pieces of me, and I no longer looked at images of myself and saw beauty.
I saw flaws.
But they weren’t flaws at all. They were love letters written on my body, proof of where I came from, evidence of being loved. And being unique.
Worse than that, somewhere along the way, I had fallen out of love with the girl that I was. I had let the girl in the mirror down. Convinced her that she needed to be fixed.
How could I have let this happen?
It wasn’t until Axel stormed into my life and made me question all my editing decisions that I finally relooked at my image with a new lens. Seeing myself through a different filter.
Or maybe, for the first time, through no filter at all.
The biggest gift that Axel gave me was making me fall in love with myself again.
My heart broke for the girl staring back at me. The reflection of the woman I had convinced was broken somehow when the only thing that had ever been broken was the cruel voice inside her head: my voice, telling her she wasn’t enough.
“You’re perfect just the way you are. You’re beautiful,” I whispered to the girl in the mirror, “and I’m sorry for making you feel like you weren’t.”
Everyone on this planet was beautiful, if only they’d allow themselves to see it.
Suddenly, something in my peripheral vision grabbed my attention.
Axel.
48
PLOT TWIST: I DIDN’T EXPECT HIS REACTION TO INCLUDE BENDING ME OVER HIS DESK. #HOLYHOTNESS
DAKOTA
“You thought you weren’t perfect?” Axel’s voice cracked through the silence, raw and disbelieving. His anger radiated from him in waves. Not at me. Never at me. At the cruel voice in my head that had whispered lies for so long.
“I …”
