MAGGIE: Thanksgiving in three weeks during your bye week. Your ass better be here, and you better bring your lady “friend.”
MAGGIE: Or. . .we’ll come to you. So make room. *Smiling face emoji*
Chapter 19
RYDER
“Have you shaved your legs recently?”
I throw an ugly red dress with a huge ruffle across the chest at Lyla. “Are you for real? I own a razor.”
She laughs. “I’ve seen it. I’m surprised it’s not adding to your scars.” She mumbles the last part under her breath, but I ignore her, tugging on another zipper that won’t freaking budge.
She already made me get sprayed with some kind of chemical that gave my skin a tan glow. It’s strange, but I willneveradmit to her that it does make my legs look a thousand times better in these damn tiny dresses.
She steps closer, taking my hands in hers. “Just chill out. Even if it’s only for this one night, I want you to feel like a woman. You deserve to know what that feels like.”
My eyes take a trip so far back in my head that it’s painful. “Where am I going to put my Sig?”
Lyla bursts out laughing, but I’m dead serious.
I give the zipper another swift tug.
“Don’t kill the dress.” Lyla raises my arm and glides the zipper up like a professional dresser.
I lift my arm again to make sure my mark is covered.
“I don’t have anything here that will reveal that.” Her tone is tender, and my queasy stomach grabs hold of my esophagus, rolling it up into a fat lump and thrusting it into my throat.
She peeks over my shoulder to examine me in the bathroom mirror. “You know, if anyone saw that, it’d be ok.” Her soft,brown eyes meet mine. “First, they wouldn’t know what it was, and second. . . ” She gathers my hair and lays it over my shoulder. “That thing is the mark of a warrior.”
She says it as if it’s something I should be proud of.
“There’s a reason you haven’t gotten it removed.” She steps away to pull another dress off the bed.
“It’s a reminder of what I’ve been and what I’ll never be again. It could fade, but it doesn’t change anything.”
She hands me another dress. A black one this time. “True. We can try to hide the scars, but they’re always there, lurking underneath.” She fiddles with the rejects. “Maybe it’s ok for us to be proud of the battles we survived and the wounds we’ve suffered in the process.” Her tone makes it sound like a question she’s trying on for size.
Her long, dark hair is pulled back tight. Her leggings hide most of her petite frame, but her crop top reveals a sliver of golden-tan skin.
Lyla doesn’t have to do a thing, and she’s amazingly beautiful. The kind of beauty that makes people pause.
She’s brave and smart and has one of the kindest hearts I’ll ever know. She spends her days helping ordinary women like me learn how to feel beautiful in the bodies and skin we’re dealt. Sometimes, bodies that will never quite feel like our own again.
“Yeah, it just doesn’t feel like that all the time, though.” I offer, slipping the sleeve of a one-armed dress up and over my shoulder, knowing it certainly won’t feel like that tomorrow night.
Her head tips to the side, inspecting the tight, thigh-length black dress. “You’re going to do just fine with this.” She slides the zipper up the back that hangs low with a large cut-out, exposing my middle back but covering the ugly scar on my shoulder. “He’s really nice, in that genuine way you can’t fake.”
She’s right. Cole is. . .nice. He’s kind, respectful, and almost lost his shit when his jackass of a teammate began to make comments about me.
Tracker and TJ are one thing, but I’ve never had a man get riled about anything having to do with me. I’m not sure what to make of that.
He woke me from another dream last night. I won’t ever forget the look on his face as he knelt by my bed. The memories are my own, but they wound others just the same. When my eyes finally came into focus, I saw the worry and concern in his eyes. The warm sympathy in his tone caused something deep inside the center of my chest to flare with a burning ache.
I wanted to crawl into a hole and hide, never letting him see, but he stayed. He sat beside my bed until I quit shaking. He didn’t say a word. He just…stayed while I came down from the high and caught my breath. Then, he told me he’d be up for a while if I wanted company.
It’s proof that Cole’s beauty and goodness run deep, which, for some reason, is making this silly event all the more challenging. My nerves are standing on the ledge of something new, and they don’t know how to react. I detest the unknown, but here I am.
