“Is it hard to?”
“Very,” he says. “I can’t come up with anything at all.”
I scoff. “That can’t be right. There’s so much material to work with.”
“I’d disagree.”
“Maybe you don’t know me that well, then,” I say, and I’m still aiming to sound light, joking, but it’s a real worry ofmine. I’ve been thinking about it ever since I woke up and saw Ares there, still waiting in my room. It feels like a beginning, but I want to start things right. I want to be honest with him in a way that I’ve never been honest with anyone else before. Want him to know me, actuallyknowme, not the image I’ve perfected for other’s eyes.
“What is there that I don’t know, still?” Ares asks, sounding genuinely curious.
“Oh, I could go on.”
The knife pauses in his hand. “I’m listening.”
So much I could say. So many faults and flaws, accumulated over time, hidden from view. Like how sometimes I make plans I’m genuinely excited about in the beginning, then cancel them the night of, not because I hate other people, but because I hate the way I look. But then if I stay indoors too long, I get restless and start feeling like I’m wasting my life away. My mood in the morning is far too dependent on how well my makeup turns out and whether I woke up feeling slim. I know how to make an entrance, but I never know how to leave. I’m too fixated on being skinny, and I’m aware that it’s bad for my health and my sanity but I just can’t seem to eat intuitively anymore; I ruined that intuition fifteen years and five personal trainers ago. I always look up the menu before dining at a restaurant so I can calculate how much I’ll be able to eat and start rationing for it two meals ahead of time. It’s stupid, but I can’t change it, like most of my bad habits. I think there’s something wrong with me, and not in a fixable or relatable way.
Or how I’m secretly a little jealous of all of my friends fortiny, silly things—for the shape of their nose, or their laugh, or their ability to solve a math equation or talk politics at the dinner table or how they’re able to maintain their weight without watching every single morsel of food they put into their mouth—even though I would cross oceans for them, strangle any man who ever tried to hurt them.
Or how there are days where I feel like I have everything—an outrageous amount of money in my bank account, the most coveted designer collections in my closet, a long list of numbers saved to my phone—and other days where it feels like I’ll never have enough of anything. I crave attention so desperately, even if it’s in the form of envy. I occasionally loathe myself, but I always, always want the best for myself.
Yet when the best things do fall in my lap, I find myself questioning if I really deserve it. I suspect that everyone pretends to enjoy hanging out with me far more than they actually do. I laugh loudest when I’m saddest, and I’m vain enough to believe that plenty of people are interested in me—but give it time, and they’ll inevitably find out that I’m not really very interesting at all.
How, when I was eight, a boy in my class pointed out that my lips are too thin and now that’s the first place I zoom in on whenever I look at a photo of myself. Had considered getting fillers, and would have probably gone ahead with it if I didn’t have trust issues, leading me to worry the doctors would somehow mess up the procedure and make me look worse.
I begin to tell him as much, all of it, but I break off somewhere between the eighth and ninth major flaw. Honestly, I’d expectedhim to run out of the room within a minute, but he’s still sitting there, gazing over at me, his expression tender, patient, filled with such irresistible affection that I have to wonder if he’d heard a single word that came out of my mouth just now.
“If you’re trying to scare me off, it’s not working very well,” he says.
“I’m not. I just... I want to be honest. Because you might think you like me right now, but once you get to know me—”
Before I can go on, he’s dropping the knife and crossing the space toward me, and his long, slender fingers are tangled in my hair. His other hand curves around my back.
His lips soft on mine. Warm.
The world tilts.
He kisses me with a hard-repressed hunger, edged by something I can’t quite discern, something almost dangerous. His whole body is trembling with it, his hands deliberately, carefully light over my skin, as though aware of all the parts of me that are still wounded, still hurting. I feel drunk, in a dream, sick with desire. What really hurts now is the too-quick beat of my pulse, the strain of my heart against my chest.
Hot, feverish skin; the smell of his cologne and the blankets falling; the distant, out-of-body shock that this is happening, no games or tricks, we’re just doing this because we want to and we can.
At last, at last, at last.
“Chanel,” he murmurs, his mouth against mine. He tastes like cold, sweet moonlight, everything that’s beautiful and terrible in the world. He pulls away for a second, breathing hard.Then he presses his lips to the hollow of my throat. I stay still and let him, lightheaded, one hand curled tight around his shirt.
“Iwantto know you,” he says. “I want to know everything about you, and none of it could ever, ever scare me off.”
“Is that a threat?”
“A promise,” he says, and I think that I could actually do this. Try it, at least, why not. For once, I want to be the girl who gives love a chance.
“I’m holding you to your promise,” I tell him. “If you break it, I’m going to ruin your life, you realize?”
I can feel his lips on my neck, feel how they curve into a smile. “I wouldn’t expect anything less from you.”
34
Ares
