Under Your Scars (Under Your Scars, #1)

by Ariel N. Anderson

“I am painfully, catastrophically in love with you.”

I’m so lucky that he trusts me enough to let his heart be vulnerable around me. I will never take that for granted.

It feels like the worst kind of prison I could have been sentenced to. Trapped in my own mind.

There’s a saying that every seven years, your body will be new. The same, but all your cells will be replaced. In seven years, I’ll have a body that Frank and Neil would have never touched. I wish that gave me comfort.

He’s very good at saying all the right things. I don’t think he’s consciously making an effort to manipulate me; it just comes second nature to him now, and I will bend every time because I don’t want to know what it feels like to break. I think that’s why I crave him so badly, despite everything I’m going through.

Safe isn’t a place. It’s the people that love you.

“I feel dirty. And not just because of what happened to me, but because I don’t think I’ve ever wanted Christian more in my life than I do right now. Isn’t that wrong? Isn’t sex the last thing I should want?”

“Well, everyone reacts to trauma differently. It’s true, many people who have been raped find touch intolerable. For months, years, even for their remaining lifetime, the idea of sex becomes unimaginable for them, even if it’s with someone they love and trust. The very nature of sex demands that someone must give up control, at least to some degree. Many survivors of sex crimes find it hard to give up that control again.”

just because your body is ready to take that step doesn’t mean your mind is. Some survivors of sex crimes distance themselves from touch while others act out sexually in order to regain the control they feel like they’ve lost. I know nothing about your sexual relationship with Christian, but perhaps you feel this way because your sex life involved giving up control to him, and you trusted him to make you feel safe. Maybe that’s what you crave now. Not sex. Safety.” She pauses for a moment. “I think you’re very brave for tolerating touch and affection at all.”

Just because my body craves pleasure doesn’t mean my mind does.