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The problem was, Siena never seemed to get around to fixing or using any of this crap. Mom would have repaired the chair right away. She would have taken Geneva’s hand-me-downs to the consignment shop as soon as they were no longer useful to Geneva. She would have repaired and unpacked and organized and generally done the best with the little she had. But Siena got a big brick wall of a mental block whenever she tried to think about the crap in this room. It made her anxious and depressed.
Anxious and depressed was pretty much constant for her. She tried to think when she’d felt happy—or not happy, she’d have to reach way back to her childhood for that, but at least like she was managing her life reasonably well andI hate thiswasn’t her very first thought upon waking every single morning.
Not since Mom died. More than five years since she’d felt justokay.
For a tiny moment earlier in the day, a microscopic moment, really, she’d felt good. Lying on the mat with Cooper on her, inside her, coming off a double-barreled orgasm, she’d looked up at him staring wide-eyed down at her, and she’d beenhappy.
Right before everything fell apart again.
Had she kicked it apart? Had she fucked everything up?
The things she’d told her sister this evening had been jostling uncomfortably in her crowded mind all night. Was she so shut down and suspicious, soscared, that she could see only lies and artifice when interest and affection were offered? Did Cooper truly want her?
It didn’t make sense. Even now, on balance, most of their interactions had been negative. He was an objectively gorgeous man with mountains of hot-bad-boy cred. He could have pretty much any woman he wanted. She was an admittedly prickly female without any of the body parts that had made her a woman.
Like her body, her life was a broken mess.
Those thoughts drove Siena back to her bedroom. She closed the door and pulled off her t-shirt and boxers, then stood before her full-length mirror and examined her naked body.
Usually when she stood before the mirror like this, she focused only on her chest, trying to convince herself she was beautiful despite the absence there. Now, she started at the floor and considered all of her.
Her feet weren’t beautiful; too many working hours on them, wearing stilettos with pointy toes, for that. But she was good at DIY mani-pedis, so she kept her nails pretty. All in all, they weren’t bad. Her legs were good: delicate ankles, shapely calves—stilettos did tend to develop the calves nicely—and firm, sleek thighs. No thigh gap, but not a lot of rub, either. One or two dimples of cellulite. She used an electric trimmer to keep her bush tidy, simply because she didn’t like the feel of hair there. Her hips flared nicely from a slim waist. Her belly was on the soft side, maybe—sit-ups were such a bore—but it was flat. Probably because the space behind it was half empty. With a little twist, she examined her ass. That, she knew, was objectively great. Not round, not flat, just pert and firm.
From the ribcage down, she was pretty hot. Her face was okay, too, she thought. She and Geneva had both gotten their mom’s gold hair, blue eyes, high cheekbones, and a mouth that curved up a tiny bit at the corners and had a bottom lip just a touch fuller than proportional. Her nose turned up a little; that must have been her father’s. Geneva’s was ruler-straight like their mom’s.
From the shoulders up, she wasn’t too bad, either. It was the area between those points she couldn’t get right with no matter how hard she tried. She’d thought she was okay with it. She’d told herself almost daily that she was okay with it. This was who she was, and she was okay. Until Cooper, she’d been okay.
Or she’d been flagrantly lying to herself all this time.
She’d had the ink on her chest done not just to camouflage her scars but to make something beautiful in place of what she’d lost. She’d had great tits. Symmetrical and, for Ds, firm. Rose-pink areolas. Nicely shaped nipples that stood out just right. And god, they’d been so delightfully sensitive. Back in junior high, when she first started to fill out, she’d been utterly fascinated by the feeling. She remembered many instances of sitting in class, curled over her desk working on some assignment, brushing her thumb discreetly back and forth over those magical little nubs and getting wiggly in her seat.
The first time a boy had put his mouth on one and sucked, she’d come. Just like that.
Until today, she’d believed that her nipples had been her only true erogenous zone. Even her clit wasmehabout sex until her nipples got to play. But Cooper had had her throbbing and wet before her pants were even off. He’d turned pretty much every inch of her skin to fire.
Every inch but those under her shirt. She hadn’t let him see. Almost no one had ever seen. She had this beautiful, elaborate tattoo—angel’s wings—that no man but medical professionals had ever laid eyes on.
What would he think to see her? Would he see only what she didn’t have, what she no longer was? Or would he seeher, as she really was? Would he see the beautiful wings, or only the scars they covered?
More importantly, could she trust him if he said he saw the beauty?
And if she couldn’t, was that a him problem or a her problem?
Maybe the real question, the only one that really mattered: was it too late to know?
Staring at herself had offered no new insights, no epiphanies, not even the most mundane of answers. Siena pulled her boxers and t-shirt back on and headed to the living room. Her brain was nowhere near sleep, so she resumed her plan to work on homeschooling stuff until it was.
She’d just sat on the sofa and set her laptop on her lap when she heard Cooper’s Harley pulling onto the street.
The suspicious, fearful part of her—the greatest part by far—quietly, steadily demanded that she ignore the sound and stay buttoned safely up in her own house. Nothing but more humiliation awaited her outside.
It was midnight. He’d been gone hours. Where? To find a better fuck, of course.
But another part of her, the part that wondered if fear and suspicion kept her from happiness, the part that suggested it was possible Cooper hadn’t been pretending in his home gym, encouraged her to hurry outside and see what was real. That part was very small, but it was loud. And it spoke in her sister’s voice.
Is it lonely, protecting your heart?
Siena set her laptop aside and went out the door in her pajamas and bare feet.
