I couldn't stop the tears from dampening my mask. I lowered my eyes, preventing my sadness from ruining more of the makeup I never wanted to wear. I couldn't stop the final piece of my heart from breaking . . .or Woodrow’s. When I looked up at him, following the movement of his hand to his throat, he was crying. Sad tears, lots of them.
He pulled me from the crowd, and we dropped down. He sat on a stone seat, his back to a sculpted masterpiece, me in his lap. Turning me to him, he slipped his fingers beneath my mask, exposing my face. . . my scars.
My hands rushed to my cheeks, hiding my face from him and everyone else. I felt my insecurities quash the taste of alcohol.
Woodrow's hands touched me; one starting on the small of my back, the other on my knee. He felt over me; over the weight loss I'd suffered. He didn’t like it. . . skinny girls weren’t his thing. Or Hell’s, and he’d blatantly told me so.
Woodrow’s eyes stayed on me, even as groups upon groups of beautiful girls—many with his preferred body shape—walked by us.
His face burrowed into my hair, his mouth on my hand with a gentle request. “Don't push me away.”
And I didn't.
I couldn’t pull my hands from my face to even consider it.
His head nudged at the clip in my hair. The giant daisy on the top—holding a mass of my curls to the left of my face, hiding where I'd been shaved—loosened its grip on me.
“You're moving my flower.”
He heard my almost silent words. He reeled back, his hands leaving me for a second to fix my hair.
“Shift your hands slightly?”
I did as requested.
“Where's my mask?” I asked as his hand returned to my back, a gentle rub coaxing the words from my tongue.
“In my jacket pocket. It was getting wet.”
I peeked through my fingers, my nail polish shining due to the bright lights surrounding us reflected against my strained vision. I closed my fingers together on my left hand, cloaking that side of my face, and the eye that made everything blurry.
Woodrow's pretty face pixilated in front of me. “You once told me I didn't have to hide away from you. You don't have to hide with me, either.”
He took my hands in his, his fingers careful as they pushed under mine to remove them. With our hands still joined, I looked around quickly. Heavy breaths crashed from my mouth with the panic of someone pointing, laughing, and saying horrible things. I'd been called names for long enough, and it didn't get any easier as time went on. I didn't grow a thicker skin. Instead, the scars deepened, staining my soul.
No one looked in our direction, too much was going on around us.
Gratitude for the busy city flooded me.
I turned back to Woodrow, finding the strength to look him in the eye.
His fingers weaved through my hair, careful not to move it. “You look beautiful.”
“Don't take the piss.” The lowly response had a littlevenom.
The soft gray of his eyes and their delicate stare upon me told me that wasn't his intention.
“To me, you'll always be perfect.” The lie came from his mouth at the same time another tear fell from his eye, and I found myself wiping it away with a shaking hand.
“I missed you. I missed you so much.”
“I didn't want you to get caught. I wanted to follow you, to run with you. I didn't want the outcome you unfortunately had. I didn't want you caught by those people, taken away. I wanted the future you wanted. I wanted to share it all with you. I wanted us together, too.”
“I didn't wait for you. I should have waited for you.”
“I understand why you didn’t. Hell was out of control. He saw you as something else, and he tried to hurt you. Something inside felt different, like he was confused, and he let me in to help, and when I saw you, I tried to force him out.”
“Running from that house, from you, broke my heart. You broke my heart letting me do it. It was the second time you threw me away. But worse, because you had a gun on me.”
