“Whoa,” I say with a shake of my head, leaning away, like I’d be gone if our fingers weren’t threaded together. “This may be the start of our first fight.”
She gasps and pokes my abs. “Don’t even joke about that!” Then she inhales again. “Mmm. I’m sorry to break it to you like this, but I think I’ve met the love of my life.”
“I’m sure you and Big Hank will be very happy together.”
She grins and leans her head against me, so affectionately, so effortlessly endearing. I grab her baseball cap and spin it around on her head, so it’s facing backwards. And then I kiss her nose, because it’s just so dang cute.
“Catch me up on what I missed,” I say, putting an arm around her as we slowly move forward in line.
“Oh! I can’t believe I forgot to tell you this, but Aldridge cheated! While we were engaged!”
I look down at her wide eyes and open brow and wonder what pain she’s hiding. “What an absolute—” I bite back my next word, as there are kids in line. “I’m sorry. Are you okay?”
She gives a light, surprised laugh. “Yes! I don’t know if he wanted to clear his conscience or prove that he still had power over me, but I didn’t have the energy to care. Or the investment, maybe. It’s like … I already sold off all my Aldridge Sinclair stock. Finding out there was a scandal I missed makes me even happier I divested when I did.”
“Boss, I don’t understand about half of what you just said, but you throwing out those sexy business terms has me fixing to propose all over.”
She tips her head back to laugh, and I find myself almost drunk on the sound. Getting through the line takes another twenty minutes, and Kayla gives me a rundown of the last twodays. Every mention of Aldridge has my fists squeezing until my knuckles crack.
“How were you with that guy for so long?”
“You knew Serena was stringing you along. You stayed because you loved Dakota, but I bet there was something more to it than that.”
I shrug, but an uncomfortable prickle spreads across my arms.
It was safer than wanting more?—
I blink away the thought to listen to Kayla. “I think being with Aldridge felt like … cracking a code. Like I had tried for a long time to be accepted by his world, and he was my ticket in. Not armor, but a mask.”
“Why did you feel like you needed a mask at all? Wasn’t his world yours, as well?”
“Yes and no. My family is ‘new money,’ and we didn’t get really wealthy until I was nine or ten. I was obsessed with dance, and so when I pushed for a better dance studio, my dad put me in the best. I thought everyone would be as nice as my last studio, but … they weren’t.”
She ducks her head down, and I tuck her more firmly against my side, wishing I could protect her from the memories and everything that caused them.
“What did your parents say?”
“I didn’t tell them,” she says. “I was embarrassed. I didn’t exactly make it easy for my parents when they suggested keeping me in the studio I was already in. Mom had told me horror stories about bullying in other studios and warned me about body dysmorphia and disordered eating. She talked about all sorts of dangers and pressures, but I didn’t listen. I insisted. I was a monster about it. Fits, freeze outs. Anything to get them to change their minds. Until they relented.”
A cold kind of nausea creeps over me as I think about where this is going …
“So I came home everyday pretending that it was wonderful. The best studio ever. Everyone was so kind, so supportive. I got really good at pretending,” she says with a sad smile. “Then I hit a growth spurt. Early puberty. I kept growing, kept developing, and soon I was taller than everyone in the studio—boys and girls. And I had curves that none of the other girls had. The boys I danced with could hardly pick me up. The instructors and moms made hushed comments. The girls swapped looks. I felt more like an outsider than ever. And it kept getting harder and harder to pretend everything was okay. So I focused on becoming who and what they needed me to be. On … shrinking until I was perfect.”
The words strike like a fist.
She’s talking about that … body dysmorphia. Disordered eating.
I know it to my bones.
I want to argue with Little Kayla. I want to grab that sweet little girl and hold her close and tell her how special and good and beautiful she is. But that girl isn’t here.
This one is. With tears welling in her soft hazel eyes and her lips pursed too tight as she chews the inside of her cheek.
I put my finger on her chin, keeping her gaze on mine. “There was never anything wrong with you. You were never too big or too much. They were too fragile. Too weak. You didn’t need to be smaller, Kayla. You needed people strong enough not to be threatened by you.”
“They weren’t threatened by me,” she says with a dark laugh.
“They were,” I insist. “People who are confident in themselves don’t care what someone else looks like, and they definitely don’t comment on it. Those coaches should have madethose little boys hit the gym and they should have told those little girls how ugly jealousy made them look.”
