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‘I don’t know what I’m saying,’ she said honestly, after a beat. ‘But you asked and it’s not an easy question to answer without unravelling all sorts of things I prefer not to think about.’
‘Your mother criticised your appearance so often and so easily that you began to believe it. You still believe it. It robbed you of confidence, so you didn’t want to share yourself with a partner.’
Her lips parted at the accuracy of his assessment, and she heard herself admit something she’d wanted to keep private. ‘There was one time.’ She swallowed past a lump of bitter hurt. ‘The third kiss. I liked him. But he—’
Alejandro tensed—as though bracing for her to confess something terrible, so she shook her head, quickly reassuring him.
‘It wasn’t serious. It’s just, he—’ She forced herself to be honest, and even to smile, because the passage of time helped her see the inept words in a different light. ‘He compared my breasts to melons and I never quite got over that imagery.’
‘Melons?’ Alejandro stared at her.
‘I know it sounds stupid.’
He frowned, his eyes probing hers.
Heat flooded her face. ‘Cantaloupes, okay. He grabbed them in his hands and said, “These are the most terrific things, like ripe, juicy cantaloupes,” and all I could think of was how huge and...fruit-like... I was like a big, chubby berry. Needless to say, it killed my buzz.’ She bit down on her lip. ‘If it had just been his comment, I might have ignored it, but for years I’d had my mother in my ear, pointing out my many flaws at every opportunity, so whatever confidence I had was shattered into a million tiny pieces.’
He was quiet for so long that she found her eyes lifting to his face. He was very still, his features locked in a mask that she couldn’t interpret. ‘And you were how old?’
She lifted her shoulders, imitating nonchalance, as though she couldn’t remember precisely. ‘Seventeen, I think.’
‘And he was...?’
‘Nineteen.’
Alejandro swore. ‘Your breasts are beautiful.’ He cupped them gently, reverently, holding them as his eyes drilled into her soul. ‘You are beautiful.’ He leaned forward, kissing the tip of her nose, then drifting to her mouth. ‘Your hair, your freckles, your eyes, every Irish throwback part of you—whatever cruel lies your mother has fed you over the years, you must know the truth by now.’ He teased the side of her lips, then moved his mouth to her shoulder.
‘It’s just something I accept,’ she said after a beat. ‘I can’t change who I am, so why get upset about it?’
‘Are you trying to tell me that you remained a virgin because you didn’t feel attractive enough to believe anyone would want you?’
She heard the question, the way he’d distilled her worst fears into a neat little box and placed it between them—a box that was morphing into a bomb, silently ticking, growing closer to detonating.
Oh, great.
Tears sparkled on her lashes. ‘You could never understand.’
‘That’s true. I can’t understand. All teenagers go through an awkward phase, but it’s fleeting.’
‘Are you saying even you were hit by hormones and puberty?’
He dipped his head once in agreement. ‘But your mother should have supported you through that, encouraged you.’
‘That’s not really my mother’s style.’
‘Olivia?’
‘Olivia is a wonderful, supportive older sister.’ Her smile, though, was tight. She wanted to break off the conversation, but at the same time her body refused to move. She stayed where she was, feet planted by his, feeling his warmth and nearness and taking comfort from it. ‘She has always wanted to fight my battles for me, but we’re so different. She loves me but I often think she doesn’t understand me.’
‘No?’
‘She is so poised, so completely in control of her thoughts and feelings—’
‘Whereas you say exactly what you think.’
She bit down on her lower lip. ‘It’s a bad habit of mine.’
‘It’s one of the things I found irresistible about you, the night we met. You have no artifice, no pretence. You’re completely authentic.’
