Under Your Scars (Under Your Scars, #1)

by Ariel N. Anderson

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. I take off my panties and turn on the shower, tears still streaming down my face as I wash myself. I scrub until my body is red and irritated. I scrub until it becomes painful, and my skin feels raw. Once I’m clean, I sit on the floor of the shower, under the hot spray of water, and stay there staring at the grout in between the stones on the walls until the water runs cold. And in a billionaire’s mansion, the water does not run cold for a very, very, very long time.

feeling an ache in my chest I had never felt before. I didn’t immediately realize it, but that ache was my soul latching on to yours, intertwining itself so deeply that no force on heaven or Earth could ever truly separate us again.

My love isn’t perfect, and it isn’t beautiful. It’s broken and scarred and ugly, but all of it is yours. I will always be yours.

I would do anything for you. If you ask me to move the sun out of your eyes, I will push it with my bare hands. If you ask me for the moon, I will wrap it in a purple ribbon and hand it to you. If you ask me for all the stars in the sky, I will create an entire galaxy, just for you.

Anger has always been my go-to stage of grief. A short fuse and a heartbreak are a volatile combination.

I will do all of this even if you fight me because you know better than anyone that boundaries have never stopped me.

I will chase away all your demons because you know I’m scarier than they’ll ever be.

I’ll do everything for you until the only thing you know how to do is love me back.”

There’s truth to her accusation, but it still stings. I’ve always let her make her own choices, but I’ve used fear to steer her in certain directions. I’ll admit it. I’m ashamed of the methods, but not the outcome.

She doesn’t like me right now. In fact, I’m probably one of her least favorite people on the planet. But she loves me, and those three words are the glue holding our relationship together. Holding me together. I wonder what’s holding her together.

That doesn’t mean I want him alive, necessarily, but if they’re both dead, I’m the only one that has to live with this. I’m the one that has to bear the burden of remembering what they did to me. If they’re dead, they’re free, and I’m not.

He looks me over like he’s committing my sorrow to memory so that he can torture himself with guilt.

“I’m afraid of what you’ll do to yourself if I leave and I’m afraid of what you’ll do to me if I stay.”

Only love can hurt that bad and still be worth it.”

I will never be worth that sacrifice, Elena. Never. Not even if I lived a thousand lifetimes trying to make it up to you.”

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.

“Do they hurt?” I ask. “Not enough.”

He was so focused on the chase. So focused on getting me to fall in love with him that he had no idea what to do once he actually caught me.

“I don’t want your pain to be tolerable, I want it to be nonexistent.

“You’re so perfect it’s infuriating. It almost makes up for all the murder.”

I talk about Elena—God, I talk about Elena so much that I think her name is permanently glued to his ears, even if he can’t remember it.

I promised Elena that I wouldn’t kill anyone else except for Frank, but my methods of interrogation aren’t any less bloody.

One thing I never thought about when I dove head-first into this relationship was the fact that I would have to get comfortable with the idea of having a family again.

She said she did it because she loves me, but if I put her in that position in the first place, am I really worthy of it?

I can’t decide what’s worse, her shattered silence when I found her in the club, or her bloodcurdling scream in the hospital room.

I need to hear his wisdom. I never valued it when I was growing up, but it’s like gold to me now.

“I didn’t know love could be so hard. I feel like no matter what I do, no matter how much I love her, it will never be enough.” “Aye, love is hard. But that’s why we cherish it so much.”

“So how do I make it last an eternity?” “By remembering that a gilded cage is still a cage.”

“If she leaves, then you didn’t love her the way she wanted you to.” I huff. “How am I supposed to know the way she wants to be loved?” Edwin smacks me, again, with the newspaper. “By listening. Something you’ve never been good at."

I’ve been selfish throughout our entire relationship. I’ve manipulated every part of it into my version of perfect, or at least tried. But Elena’s version of perfect is different than mine. She wants trust. She wants that sickeningly sweet kind of love that gives her cavities. I’ve never had a cavity, but I guess it’s never too late.

Something clicks inside her in that moment. I think my words have set her on fire, because she takes a long deep breath, and I can fucking smell the way she opens up for me under her panties. I look and smile wickedly at the wet spot forming there. “There she is,” I murmur to her core as if it’s a separate person.

Elena told me she grew up comfortable, and I suppose I can admit I’m a little jaded when it comes to money, because her idea of comfortable and my idea of comfortable are two very different things.

the scowl he gives me is so hot with fury he could dry up oceans.

Family. That word feels equal parts icy cold and burning hot in my chest. Family is such a distant concept for me that it feels wrong. It feels like I’m betraying my parents somehow by using the word.

Their world seems so disconnected from mine. From ours. Simple won’t do. Not for her. Not after what she’s been through for me. Pretty soon I’ll have to start carving her name into mountains to prove my love.

For the first time in a long time, the man in the mirror staring back at me isn’t so bad.

The memory hits me like a truck, knocking all the wind out of me. It takes my sanity and rationale with it, if there was any left to take.

If you try to tear us apart, my love for Elena won’t save you.”

A soft breeze filters across long grass, providing a soothing white noise to accompany my sorrow.

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

His eyes trace over my face and then he gives me a sign of humanity. A smile.

“New rule. You’re not allowed to call me Mr. Reeves until I can call you Mrs. Reeves.” “Rules are made to be broken,”

“Give me time. I’m not going anywhere. Let our love be simple and let it be complicated too. Let me see all of you, the parts of you that you keep hidden under your scars. Make me fall even more deeply in love with all the dark parts of you. The parts you think are unlovable.

I undress slowly as he watches, my cheeks turning red under the blue heat of his eyes. After all, blue flames are the hottest.

“I used to get off on the thought of breaking you, but now it fills me with fear. I have to be gentle with you now. If I break you one more time, I may never find all the pieces again.” “What if I want you to break me?” I ask, my eyes not leaving his. “What if I don’t want you to be gentle?” “Then I’ll love you violently instead.”

I’m telling you I’m in love with a man who would move the sun with his bare hands if it meant giving me a little shade.”

Brave. That’s the word people use to describe you when you’re a victim and they want to support you but don’t know how.

If anything, all his attitude is doing is pushing her further into my arms, which is fine with me. It’s where she belongs.

I feel Elena’s tiny hand wrap around my forearm, and I wish the fabric of my hoodie wasn’t blocking her skin from mine.

I can give an angel her wings. But I can clip them, too, if it means I get to spend forever with her.