I feel tears prick behind my eyes as I turn my head to the side to look at him.
“All I see is what I’ve lost.”
His brows furrow in pain, mimicking the living, breathing monster that still plagues my soul. A single tear begins to trickle down my cheek before Easton’s lips kiss it away.
“I know you do,” he whispers, tugging the elastic holding my ponytail up, letting my hair cascade down to my shoulders in long waves. “But I don’t. I see a survivor who made her way out of the flames and into my heart.” He picks up my chin while his eyes fill to the brim with an emotion we are still too afraid to put into words. “Let me show you, Scar. Let me show you the woman who owns my heart.”
Chapter 23
Easton
Lying naked on top of my bed with nothing on but the black-framed glasses perched on the bridge of her nose, it takes a while for Scarlett to relax completely. The minute I see her stiff shoulders decompress, I rush to get a blank sketch pad off my desk. Once I have everything I need, I sit on the edge of the bed, leaning against the bedpost for support as I take in her stunning nude form. My fingers itch to draw her to my heart’s content, moving at lightning speed to capture her very essence with each charcoal line. Every stroke is faithfully defined to represent her likeness as I see it. Each beautiful curve and crevice on her body is every artist’s dream, even if she doesn’t believe it to be so.
It’s not as if Scarlett suffers from the ugly duckling syndrome. One look at her up on a stage singing is enough to see she owns her sexuality and is not embarrassed by it in any shape or form.
No, that isn’t the reason why she struggles with her nakedness—it’s the scars on her arms. They remind her of the life that was stolen from her, something that is too much for Scarlett to bear. Only tonight did I come to the realization that she wasn’t hiding her burn marks from the world, fearing them to be too ugly to showcase. Scarlett was keeping them carefully hidden, not from others, but from herself. The constant reminder branded on her skin is something she’ll never fully be able to escape. But as long as the scarred tissue remains covered, she can pretend to be whole rather than the victim she believes herself to be.
After what Owen confided in me, I had an inkling of what to expect when fully undressing Scarlett. Not only would I finally see her hidden truths, but I’d also witness, first-hand, the suffering that is branded on her soul. But his recount of that hellish night isn’t the version I want to hear. It’s hers.
I want to bathe in her darkness, wrap my arms around her and take in her misery like my own. And then maybe, just maybe, she’ll be brave enough to do the same with mine.
If anyone could do it, it would be Scarlett.
But first, she’ll have to tell me, in her own melodic voice, the nightmare she survived. Because that’s what she is—a survivor. A warrior that battled her way out of the pits of hell and grew up to be this incredible woman that lays before me today. Where she sees weakness, I see strength. And if I have to follow The Society’s will, I need to remind her of that inner power that can conquer the cruelest of monsters, even if that means offering her my tarnished soul on a silver platter.
“You know what this reminds me of?” she muses with a lighter tone than the one she had an hour ago.
“What’s that?”
“That scene in Titanic where Jack draws Rose a portrait of herself lying on a couch. Did you see that movie?”
“I did.” I chuckle.
“Hmm,” she mumbles. “I never did like that movie. It always bothered me that Rose let Jack die like that. Why couldn’t they both share the door? There was plenty of room.”
“It wasn’t about the room. It was about the weight. There wasn’t enough buoyancy to keep them both above water.”
“Okay, fine. Then why couldn’t they just switch places from time to time?”
“Because then it would only speed up their hypothermia. Instead of one dead Leonardo DiCaprio, you’d have two Academy Award winners dying in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.”
“You’ve given this a lot of thought.” She bites her lower lip to hide her smile.
“Are you making fun of me?” I retort, inwardly loving how at ease she is—all sprawled on top of my bed, naked as the day she was born, and still able to banter with me.
“A little.”
“Careful there, Scar. Your ass is primed for a spanking,” I warn playfully, while tickling the soles of her feet and toes.
Her whole body flushes red at my lighthearted threat, and fuck if it doesn’t get me hard as steel. Not that I wasn’t already. For the past hour, it’s been a monumental struggle to keep myself focused when, in reality, all I want is to pounce on top of her and fill my room with her loud orgasmic cries.
“You know, Jack could have still survived if Rose had taken off her life jacket and tied it beneath the door to give it stability. Both of them would have made it if they only used their heads instead of being led astray by fear,” I explain, hoping the death of the two famous characters is enough to cool my raging hard-on.
“So you’re saying his sacrifice was needless and stupid?” she asks, raising her head off my pillow.
“I’m saying it’s easy to solve a problem when you’re on the outside looking in. The answer isn’t so clear when you’re the one smack in the middle of it.”
She lays back on the bed, staring up at the high ceiling, her playful features turning serious.
“She didn’t love him.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“Because if she did, she wouldn’t want to live in a world where he didn’t exist. She would have died with him that night. There wouldn’t have been any other choice for her if she truly loved him.”
The ferocity in the way she explains her train of thought gives me pause. I put my sketch pad to the side and crawl up from the edge of my bed to where she’s lying, still staring into space.
“You know you can tell me anything, right?” I whisper, kissing the burn marks on her arms.
“I could say the same thing about you,” she counters wistfully, playing with my hair.
“I’m an open book.”
“Hardly.” She laughs.
I rest my chin on her chest, just below her bare breasts, loving the view from here.
“What do you want to know?”
“Hmm, is that an invitation to pick your brain?”
“Consider it a red carpet invite,” I joke before biting the inside of her breast.
She grabs onto my hair, tugging it so that my mouth is nowhere near where it wants to be.
“Will you promise to be honest no matter what I ask?”
“Try me. As I said, I’m an open book,” I tease, falling back to her chest and placing a kiss on her heart.
“Why do you hate your stepdad so much?” she utters, momentarily shocking me with the question on her mind.
“Easy. He’s a dick. Next question.” I shrug off.