Her Name Is Trouble: A small-town contemporary romance (The Daimsbury Chronicles Book 2) by Zee Monodee Read Free Book Online Page B

Missy’s.
    “There...” she paused to take a deep breath. “There was a time when I didn’t have anything to eat, and that’s when I lost weight.” She shrugged. “I just haven’t put it back on again, is all.”
    He gave a sharp, audible intake of breath. “I apologise.”
    She blinked up at him. “For what?”
    “For being a jerk and pushing you to reveal all this. I...it mustn’t be easy for you to relive those times.”
    She shrugged again. “T’was just my life. Period.”
    “Missy, I...” He stopped talking and glanced around.
    “What?”
    When he turned to her, she hitched in a breath. His face had grown sombre, too serious. Then he reached out and clasped her hand. The pad of his thumb rubbed onto her palm, and spirals of heat shot from the point of contact.
    “Why do you always hide your hands under those too-long sleeves?” he asked.
    The question doused her internal fire. The reason why she covered her wrists—he shouldn’t find out about it.
    But the torpor of pleasure had rendered her sluggish, and though her brain fired commands like a tennis ball machine gone haywire, none of her nerves heeded the orders.
    Luke’s thumb had reached her wrist, disappearing under the hem of the sleeve. She felt the moment when he encountered the raised scars, because he froze.
    Then before she could pull her hand from his grip, he pushed the fabric away and smoothed his touch on the mutilated skin. He stared at the sight for what seemed to her like an eternity, then his voice—low and rumbling—broke through the silence.
    “Missy, what...what are these?”
    She bit her lip and looked away. How to tell him the way these came to be? How to admit, or even explain, that she’d felt alive only when she’d done such atrocities to her body?
    Without releasing her hand, he sat up and huddled closer to her, on his knees. The breath lodged in her lungs when he loomed over from that position. With no fire in the grate, the only light in the room came from the dwindling sunshine dying to make way for twilight. Shadows cloaked him, but no sense of menace permeated. She still felt comfortable with him, like she belonged... Silly thought, Missy!
    “Was it,” he started, “a suicide attempt?”
    She wet her lips and shook her head. Words evaded her right then.
    “Then what?” he continued.
    Something inside her wanted to berate him for prying. That’s why she hid her wrists, because everyone who saw them would want to know why and she had no time for their gawking curiosity.
    But not with Luke. This was the man who’d made everything right, even for just a few hours one starry evening in the Hamptons.
    “I...I used to cut myself,” she said in a whisper.
    At her confession, he slouched his back and lowered his frame so he could peer into her face. “Why?”
    She bit her lip hard. “Because sometimes, when everything’s running like a script around you, it’s only when you bleed that you know you’re alive.”
    “I don’t understand.”
    She shrugged. How could she explain this? No one would get it, unless they’d been there, too.
    “Missy, talk to me. I just want to figure out...”
    “Figure out what?” she said softly. “What pushed me to grab a blade and then go all Edward Scissorhands on myself?”
    He winced; her words had been callous, and he didn’t deserve that.
    “What does it feel like when you hurt physically, Luke?”
    He lifted his shoulders. “Pain?”
    “Like, you just know it’s there. You can sense it, grab onto it if needed.”
    Silence followed her explanation.
    “Is that what each cut felt like?” he finally asked.
    She nodded, no sound able to pass through around the lump in her throat and the weight expanding in her chest.
    “Why couldn’t you feel anything else?”
    “Because...” she croaked. “My life wasn’t my own.”
    His grip tightened on her wrist. “Was somebody hurting you?”
    “It wasn’t abuse, if that’s what you mean.” She grimaced. “Let’s