Playing with Fire

The melted complexion of my left side. My slightly crooked left eye, a tad smaller than my right one due to the scar tissue pulled around it after the reconstructive surgery. The missing eyebrow. The purple … everything.

Gingerly, I moved toward the door. I put my hand on the handle and threw it open before I lost my nerve.

West and I stood in front of one another silently.

I watched him watching me. He took it all in, gulping every inch of me. His eyes ran the length of my left side, inking it to memory.

He cannot unsee what he is seeing, I reminded myself. From now on, every time he looks at you, with or without makeup, this is what he will see.

West’s expression didn’t give away what he was thinking. I felt my insides collapsing like a demolished skyscraper imploding and knew that if he chose to walk away from me, my phoenix wasn’t going to be able to fight its way past the ruins.

But he didn’t walk away.

He took a step into my room, raising his hand. He traced his fingers over my scars so gently that I wanted to cry, staring into my eyes, gazing at my naked soul. His fingers were trembling. I snatched his hand and kissed it. One of my tears caught between his index and middle finger.

“Listen to me carefully, Grace Shaw. You’re the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen in my entire life. When I look at you, I see a fighter. I see resilience and strength and defiance that no one can touch. You take my breath away, and no one—and nothing—will change that.”

I closed my eyes and opened my mouth to speak, but nothing came out. I tried again, searching for my own voice. I didn’t know what was going to come out of my mouth.

The truth, I supposed. The most vulnerable secret a person could tell.

“I love you. I’m terrified of loving you, but I do, nonetheless,” I admitted gruffly. “Have since the moment you helped me find Grams that terrible night, not letting me refuse the help I so obviously needed. My heart is in your fist.”

He kicked the door shut behind him, diving in for the kiss to end all kisses.

It was the kiss that rewrote our history.

A kiss that made me feel like the most beautiful girl in the world.

A kiss that tasted like victory.

“I won’t break it.”

West

 

The kiss tasted like a lie.

I’d said I wouldn’t break Grace’s heart, but I could already see myself doing it.

As I undressed her.

Made love to her.

I needed to put some distance between us. Kade Appleton had been watching me, I knew. And almost living at her house put a target on her.

When dawn broke, I grabbed my stuff and made my way home.

I was waiting at an intersection when a helmeted man on a Harley came out of nowhere and crashed into me. I was thrown off my bike, hurled onto the middle of the road. Luckily, there weren’t any other vehicles at butt-crack o’clock.

I twisted on the gravel, hissing as I held one of my hands tightly with the other. I’d landed wrong and could already tell I’d broken at least two fingers. The sound of heavy boots on concrete came thudding toward me, and I looked up to see who wore them.

When he reached me, the man leaned down, crouching to my eye level, bracing himself on his knees. There was nothing I wanted more than to tear the helmet from his face and introduce his nose to my fist, but I couldn’t move.

“Nice little girlfriend you have there. Shame if somethin’ happened to her, eh?”

He turned around and walked away, back to his Harley.

I had to keep Grace safe, no matter the cost.

Even if it meant losing her.

Grace

 

A week into rehearsals for A Streetcar Named Desire, and even though Marla had been agitated and West had been mysteriously distant (and sported some seriously freaky-looking fingers, presumably after his last fight), I knew I had one thing going for me:

I was thriving onstage.

True, the amount of makeup I required to actually go onstage was sure to make me go bankrupt, but the ball cap was off, and I enjoyed being Blanche. Being trapped in her head was a lot like being in Gram’s head, I assumed. Confused, but smart. Sweet, but feisty. Lost, but found.

I’d decided not to think about the things Grams had told me that day in the bathtub. Something I’d told Tess resonated with me—if I couldn’t change something, I had to let it go. Even if my grandmother truly believed I was the source to all of her woes, I couldn’t change it. Not now. Probably not ever.

Finlay salivated over my performance at rehearsals, and Lauren was always sitting a few rows from the stage, cheering and clapping whenever I nailed a scene.

Even Tess had simmered down. We weren’t exactly friendly, but she was professional and made a point of not throwing any more crappy remarks my way.

We were in the midst of an early morning rehearsal, so close to the night of the premiere I could almost touch it, when we took a ten-minute break. I scurried backstage and grabbed a drink of water, talking to Finlay and Aiden after crushing the scene in which Stanley rapes Blanche.

Tess swaggered up next to me, talking to Kelly, the producer.

“Seriously, I’m so happy I started dating Reign. He is so there for me, you know? I just don’t need complex right now.” She flung her hair to one shoulder.

If it was meant for my ears, she was wasting her breath. I hoped she and Reign were happy together. However, if she thought dating someone who had been mean to me would throw me off-kilter, she was wrong.

Finlay continued talking to me as Tess sighed dramatically behind my back. “I really couldn’t see myself dating someone so dangerous and imbalanced like West. This answers-to-no-one gig just gets old at some point, you know?”

Yeah, I was sure her decision had nothing to do with the fact West had ignored her repeatedly since they’d hooked up.

“I mean, look at him, going on a second fight against this Kade Appleton guy next Friday. Who does that? Only someone with a death wish. No, thank you. I like to sleep at night knowing my boyfriend is in one piece. Even Reign tells him he should back out of the fight. But it’s a well-known fact West cares about money more than he does about the people in his life.”

My mind filled with red fog as her words sank deep into my stomach, settling in there like rocks.

He took the fight after all.

He had lied to me.

I’d asked him … No—I’d begged him to promise me that he wouldn’t pull any of the crap he fed to other girls on me, and he did.