“So what are you thinking right now?” he huskily asked, in that deep, hypnotising fuck me voice.

“I’m thinking…” I want you here now! I want you to fuck me! Hard and slow like you did before. Make me come twice and leave me breathless and begging for more of you. “That you need to stop talking to me because I have a date tomorrow, and I’d hate to be bad company because I’m tired.”

He was quiet for a few seconds before chuckling. “Right. I’m sure that’s what was on your mind.”

“Can’t prove otherwise.”

“We’ll see. I’ll leave you to it, then, beauty. Would hate to have a tired woman on her hands and knees tomorrow.”

Holy shit. Holy shit.

My breath escaped my lungs. I felt short-winded.

“By the way,” he said after I hadn’t answered, “you’re a blind idiot if you think you’re not beautiful. You’re exquisite. A work of art. And I can’t wait to look into those green eyes tomorrow and tell you that.”

Wow.

“Good night, Claire.”

“Good night,” I replied weakly.

He hung up and I stood still for an eternity and two seconds. Then I slapped my face.

Nope, I wasn’t dreaming.

Dazed, I threw myself back on the bed and stared up at the ceiling.

“You are so fucked,” I whispered to myself. “And you’re probably going to end up hurt. No one can be this happy forever.”

Yeah, but I was going to enjoy every minute of it.

Chapter Ten

Don’t be alarmed

After class early morning, Emily and I went to Harbour Town to peruse for some good deals on clothes. I tried on about ten million outfits, remembering the rush that came with looking good in something. It’d been a damn long time since I felt this alive being out with Emily.

I bought a tight, grey sweater dress and black waist belt to wear for tonight. It was modest but sexy, and seemed perfect for a dinner date in the city. Emily was clubbing again, so she stalked the shoe stores before buying three pairs of five inch heels. I wasn’t sure where she was going to store them back at her house.

“You better not throw them in my guest bedroom,” I warned her.

“It’s practically my bedroom now, so what do you care?” she replied flippantly.

“You might as well just move in then.”

She gasped, stopping in the middle of the shoe aisle to look at me with those blue doe-eyes. “For real?”

“Mom might be moving to Melbourne, and I can’t be in that house alone. Frankenstein needs a minion, right?”

She frowned at me. “Don’t call yourself that, and why does Mama Landon want to move away?”

“Kevin.”

“Well, he can get his ass over here then! She’s the one with the family.”

“He bought a house over there.”

“Is she going to sell yours?”

“No way.”

Mom bought our house outright. It had brought her joy after years of heart ache. She would never let it go, even if she moved to another state.

“So,” I continued, “if you want to move in, you’re more than welcome to. I know how stressful your place can be.”

Just like me, Emily didn’t have a great upbringing. Her mother worked full time while her father was a bit of a deadbeat drunk that didn’t give two shits for either of them. She avoided her house like the plague if it meant escaping him. I often wondered if she wasn’t telling me something when it came to her family life. It was a door she didn’t leave open wide enough for me to walk through.

She said she’d think about it, and I knew she wanted to, but something was stopping her. I wished she’d involve me a little more.

I was waiting for her outside the female restroom, flipping through my phone and reaching out to a few friends when I felt a shiver run down my spine. I looked up from my phone and met the eyes of a middle-aged man in a cheap suit, standing a few feet away from me.

He was facing me, and his gaze was locked to mine without hesitation. I felt rooted in my spot, ignoring the thoughts inside my head telling me to run away and scream. I found I couldn’t. He continued to look at me with curiosity, and when a woman left the restroom, I stirred out of this bizarre trance.

“Do you need anything?” I snapped, irritably.

The man just smirked at me and shook his head. “No,” his gruff voice responded, “not yet.”

He turned away from me and ambled off before rounding the corner and disappearing from view.

What. The. Fuck.

If that wasn’t disturbing and creepy, I didn’t know what was. Alarm bells were ringing their tits off in my head, and I just nodded at them, totally immune to the feeling of worry when it’d been an emotion that was my constant in life these days.

I tried to brush the odd man’s words from out of my head, but they plagued me for hours to come. Was he just a creep that enjoyed scaring young women? It was rational to think so because I’d never seen him before. But it was something I couldn’t be certain about.

Emily and I did a bit more shopping before stopping by McDonalds for a feed. Two Happy Meals later and we were on our way home. All the while I kept an eye out, taking in my surroundings wherever I went.

You just never knew what some people were capable of.

*****

I stared at myself in front of the oval mirror on my dresser. I’d spent the entire afternoon getting ready for my date with Ben. I tried to stand tall and confident, but I spotted my lie from a mile away.

I liked the way the dress looked on me. I liked how long and straight my brown hair was. I liked that my green eyes popped out the way they used to when I spent the hour that I did on make-up. And I liked how tall I felt in my three inch heels because it made my legs look like they went on for miles.

But what I didn’t and couldn’t like were the scars. The way they distorted my left cheek, making them jut out so obviously under the light. The make-up concealed their pinkness, but it couldn’t conceal their shape. Every time I felt good, I just had to look at myself in the mirror and it all had to come crashing down again.

But Emily was right. Some people had it so much worse, yet I couldn’t seem to channel that into my emotions. Was it really my fault for hating them? How does one even come to embrace such obvious imperfections? Ones that spoke of some horrid event in your life. It was like your life story was hanging out for the world to see. They just had to look at you and know, “Well, shit, something bad happened to that poor, poor girl. Just look at her face. She might have been beautiful once.”