They stared at each other, totally unaware that a few other men were walking in to the gym now. All they saw was one another, and the air between them crackled. Finally, Curtis pulled himself together a bit.
“Gimme ten minutes and I’ll take you for coffee. Breakfast, too.”
Out of habit, she stiffened at the mere mention of food. It was just a bit, but he saw it.
“You are gonna eat, right?” he asked softly.
Tessa nodded again. “Yes. I promise.”
“And you’ll keep it down?” His blue eyes were hard as he scanned her face, looking for a lie. “No running off to the bathroom after?”
“No.” She felt shame work its way up her body when she thought about that night at Curves. “I’ll never do that again, Curtis.”
He stroked her hair, reminded himself to be careful with her. Tessa was still fragile, and his usual bulldozing methods weren’t going to be all that helpful here. Curtis knew he wasn’t the softest, most sensitive man on the planet, and now seemed to be a damn good time to work on those skills and character traits.
“I believe you.” He kissed the top of her head, then pulled back and gazed at her. “Let’s talk, OK?”
“OK.”
Chapter Eight
Curtis let Tessa sit down in the restaurant booth first, then he hesitated. He supposed that since this was, technically, their first date, he should show the woman some basic respect, and sit across from her. But it was, technically, their first date, and they’d had their first kiss, so he felt like she’d permit him to sit right next to her.
This is what comes from not dating properly, man. You have no damn clue how to act.
Tessa smiled up at him as he stood there, a look of panic on his gorgeous face. She patted the seat next to her. “Sit here, OK?”
“You sure?”
“Totally.”
He slid his bulk in to the booth and right away, she curled up against his side. Without one second of hesitation, Curtis wrapped his arm around her, pulled her in tight.
“You good, baby?” he asked softly, his lips in her glorious hair.
She nodded in to his chest. “So good.”
He lifted her chin with his finger. “I love you.”
“Oh, Curtis.” She blinked back tears. “I love you, too.”
He stiffened. “You don’t have to say that, Tessa. No pressure, I swear.”
“I know.” She traced the surprisingly full curve of his lips. “I’m not saying it because you said it first, and I feel like I should reciprocate. I’m saying it because it’s true. It’s been true for a long while, but I was with Kevin and couldn’t do anything about it… I didn’t even know how to begin doing anything about it, so I just pretended I didn’t feel that way.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.” She rested her hand on his cheek, and Curtis closed his eyes, loving her touch. “You know when I fell in love with you?”
“Nuh-uh.”
“That night at Curves when that guy punched me in the head, and you carried me in to the staff room.”
“Really?” He opened his eyes again. “Why that night?”
“Because you were so… loving. So careful and gentle.” Tessa stroked his face, liking the rasp of dark-blond stubble against her fingers. “I was scared and shaking, and you just – you were there. You were all around me, so solid and steady, and I knew you weren’t going to leave me all alone. I knew you’d take care of me, and I remember opening my eyes to tell you how good you felt, and I saw how you looked at me.”
“How’d I look at you?”
She smiled up at him. “Just like you are now. Your eyes…” She stared in to their blue depths, felt like she was falling in to a summer sky. “They were so full of feeling, Curtis. I’d seen glimpses of it before that night, but you were always so guarded and emotionless, like you had a protective barrier up all the time. That night, you let everything down, let me see you. You let me in, and what I saw was so damn amazing, I fell in love with it.”
“Wow.” He spoke softly. “I didn’t think you remembered much about that night, baby. You had a concussion, and you were in and out of consciousness, and then you passed out cold.”
“I remember you.”
She tugged him down to her lips and kissed him, so damn sweet and hot, it smashed the breath out of his broad chest. Right away, Curtis just gave over to her completely. He had no desire whatsoever to hold himself back from this woman: no bullshit, no games, no withholding. She was it, as far as he was concerned, and she was going to get him. All of him, all his strength and caring, all his love and adoration for her. And Christ knows, he was going to get all of her.
Mine. She’s mine.
Tessa moaned against his mouth, and she clutched his t-shirt. His hands moved up her body, gripped her hair tight. He held her in place, held her so that he could kiss her over and over again, harder and deeper. She shuddered against him, and Curtis loosened his hold, just a bit.
“OK?” he grated out, seconds away from dragging her back to his place and ravishing her. “Tessa? OK?”
“Yes.” She looked dazed. “Just – I can’t believe this is happening. I never thought it would.”
He forced himself to pull back. “Breakfast and talking first… kissing and other such activities later.”
“‘Other such activities’?” she repeated. “What ‘other such activities’?”
“Oh, I have a few ideas.”
Her eyes lit up. “Yeah?”
“Hell, yeah.” He ran his hand over her face in a rough caress. “I have a few things to show you.”
“Hmmm.” Tessa blinked up at him, alight with happiness. His heart squeezed that he was the one to make her look like this. “I can’t wait to see them.”
“Well, you’ll have to.” He grabbed the menu on the table, and gave it to her. “Food first.”
She nodded and scanned the menu, looking for something that she’d be able to eat without getting too stressed out. It was a daily challenge – sometimes an hourly one – to not think of food as the enemy.
She’d learned a lot in the hospital and the clinic, and she’d followed up with her daily group sessions faithfully since she’d left. The biggest lesson, the one that Tessa still struggled with, was to enjoy food. To just taste it, relish it, let it offer her sensation on her tongue. To not worry about how many calories it had, or how many pounds she was sure to gain this week. To just let it nourish her, and make her healthy.
Curtis watched her read the menu, wondered what was going through her head. When she looked up at him and saw his worry, she smiled.
“I’ll get a fruit salad, some toast with peanut butter, and coffee.”
“That’s enough?” he said doubtfully. He planned to get eggs and bacon and sausages and toast, and somehow fruit seemed like a pathetic little entrée, not a main course.
“Yes.” She set the menu down. “I eat several small meals a day, so I eat a bit every two hours. It – it’s working for me. It doesn’t mess with my head when I do things that way.”
“OK.” He paused. “Will it bother you if I order a metric fuck-ton of food? I was at the gym for two hours, and I went at the bag pretty hard.”
She laughed. “No. Go for it.”
“And you’ll be putting sugar in your coffee, right?” he said. “None of that sweetener crap?”
“Nope. Pure sugar, I swear. Two spoons of it.”
“Good girl.” He kissed the top of her head, then waved the hovering waitress over. “Order first, baby.”
As they waited for the food to arrive, they drank their coffee and chatted about nothing much: he told her a bit of news from Curves, mostly about Jax’s upcoming wedding. He wanted to ask her about how she was managing and coping back at home on her own, but he wasn’t totally sure how to bring it up. Tessa knew it w
as on his mind, though, and she paused.
“Curtis?”
“Yeah?”
“You can ask, you know.”
“Ask what?”
She shrugged. “Anything you want.”
“Really?” he said cautiously.
“Really.” She touched his massive forearm, traced the tattoo there. “Ask.”
“OK.” He took a deep breath, launched in. “Why’d this all start, baby? This way of thinking about food? Was it a way to – to hurt yourself for some reason?”
“Honestly? At the end, yeah. It was. It was some complicated form of self-punishment to deny myself nourishment.”
“Punishment for what?” This was the part that baffled Curtis. “What did you do that was so bad, it needed to be punished?”
Tessa gave him a small smile. “I lost control. And I can never, never lose control.”
“OK, whoa.” Curtis shook his head. “Why do you think losing control is so bad? I mean, what do you think will happen if you lose control?”
“Something horrible.” Her voice was shaking now. “Something – cataclysmic. It’s like the end of the world will come.”
“My God, Tessa. Why?”
“Because.” She took a deep breath. “Every single time I’ve ever lost control, something awful has happened.”
“Like what?”
“You name it.” She sighed and shifted in the booth, leaned back against the wall and faced him. “I lost focus for a split second in rehearsal, and I fell and wrecked my knee, and ended my dance career. I stopped working out and counting calories, and I gained almost eighty pounds.” She hesitated. “I – I didn’t pay attention, and my Mom died.”
“What?” Curtis was horrified. “What about your Mom?”
She fell silent as the waitress brought over her breakfast and Curtis’ toast. He didn’t even glance at the woman: his eyes were nailed on Tessa. He waited until the waitress had refilled their coffee cups and moved on to the next table, then he repeated his question. Tessa sighed again.
“She – she wasn’t well the whole time I was growing up,” she said quietly. “My Dad couldn’t deal, and he left us when I was three, so I don’t remember a time when he was around, really. But my childhood was… unpredictable. Totally out of control. Mom couldn’t handle anything like a job, or paying bills on time, or getting me dressed appropriately for school. She’d forget to buy food and I’d go two or three days without a meal, then she’d freak out and order enough Chinese takeaway to feed a family of eight, and we’d both just gorge ourselves.”
Tessa stared at her toast and fruit, totally uninterested in eating it. She was trying hard to get up the courage to tell Curtis the whole thing.
“She’d have these extreme mood swings. When she was up, she was awake for days at a time, painting the apartment and sewing my ballet costumes,” she said slowly. “When she was down, she’d stay in bed for days, and drink, and take sleeping pills. She was… she was bipolar, I suppose, but I don’t know for sure because she never got diagnosed.”
“Holy fuck.” He took her hand. “You were left all alone with her? What about family? Neighbors? What about the school – didn’t anybody do anything to help you?”
“No. Mom couldn’t keep track of anything practical, but she was totally paranoid about people knowing what was happening in our home. She never allowed visitors, and she cut off all contact with her family. I knew to never say a word at school, no matter what was going on.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“I didn’t want to be taken away from her, I guess, but also, I didn’t really understand how bad it was. I mean, I didn’t know any different, Curtis. It was terrible, but it was normal.”
He thought about his own childhood home, and he knew exactly what she was talking about. Reluctantly, he nodded.
“So.” She exhaled, hard. “I got really, really good at seeing when an extreme situation – either a high or a low – was coming, you know? It’s hard to explain, but I’d know long before it began that it was imminent. It’d look like nothing to someone just casually observing, but for me, it was like… distant thunder or how dogs know that a storm is coming. Mom would just send out these… vibrations, I guess, and I picked up on them long before anything had happened.”
Again, Curtis knew what she was talking about. He and his Mom had both known that his Dad was going to get violent long, long before the man had even raised his voice. It was exactly like Tessa said: it was like silent, invisible vibrations on the air. It was unseeable and untouchable – but it was fucking real.
As real as a black eye and a shattered jaw. As fucking real as a casket.
He shook off his anger, and listened to Tessa.
“When I sensed one of her breakdowns or manic episodes was coming, I’d distract her.”
“How?” he said.
Tessa gave him a sad little smile. “I danced.”
“Oh, Tessa.” His heart twisted at the thought of Tessa as a child handling all this shit in such a sweet, earnest way. “Oh, God.”
“When she was on an upswing, she’d dance with me. When she was down, it made her smile sometimes. It seemed to help.”
He shook his head, furious and sad for her. No, her mother had never beaten the crap out of her, but then again, Tessa had been all alone. At least Curtis had had his Mom to hold on to through all the hell – until his Dad had killed her, of course.
“But this one day…” Tessa held his hand harder. “This one day, I missed it. I had a ballet recital at school, and I was so damn excited about it. I was totally distracted, not tuned in at all. She was spinning down, and I was running late and I just – I just left. I left her.”
“What happened?”
She stared at the table.
“Tessa?” Curtis touched her face. “Baby, what happened?”
“She killed herself,” Tessa whispered, tears running down her cheeks. “I came home from the recital, and found her dead in bed from an overdose. I was eight years old.”
“Goddammit.” Curtis hauled her in to his arms, not caring who was watching. “Tessa, I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.”
She wept softly, her face buried in his chest. Curtis clutched her as close as he could, shielding her from the rest of the room with his broad back. He just held her as she fell apart, just held on as she let go. He’d be there to put her back together when she realized that she’d broken in to million pieces, when she just shattered with grief.
Tessa had no idea how much time had passed, but she knew it had been a while. Embarrassed now, horrified to have lost control and made yet another scene in public, she tried to draw back, but he didn’t let her. Those strong arms tightened, those huge hands gripped her head, forcing her to meet his hard gaze.
“Talk to me, baby.” It came out harsher than he intended, and he softened a bit. “You doing OK?”
She nodded, wiped her face with the back of her hand.
“Nuh-uh, Tessa. You talk to me. You alright?”
“Yes.”
He examined her face, and knew she was lying. But she was pulling herself together now, and he loosened his iron grip around her body but still held on to her. She sighed, and absently ran her hands up and down his arms as she kept talking.
“My father was nowhere to be found, so I was given to my maternal grandmother to raise, but she never really wanted me. The first chance she got, she had me audition and enrol for a ballet school in New York. It was residential, of course, and I was lucky enough to be accepted. So I moved away from Colorado when I was nine, started training professionally then.”
“She sent you away?” Once more, Curtis was angry for her, but he tried to hide it. “She just dumped you at a boarding school?”
“Yeah, that was definitely what happened, and I knew it even then. But the truth was, I loved the sch
ool. It was heaven for me.”
“Because of the dancing?”
“For sure, but not only.”
Tessa stopped talking again as the waitress brought Curtis’ breakfast over. The woman shot her a curious look, but almost sprinted away when Curtis turned and levelled her with a ferocious glare. Tessa grinned at that familiar expression, then saw how it slid right off his face the second that he glanced back down at her again. Jesus, she never thought he’d be so emotionally open with her, and she felt the urge to cry again, this time from happiness.
“Go on, Tessa. Tell me everything.”
“OK. Well… I loved the routine. You know? After years and years of never having a clue what might happen next, I found the rigid structure and scheduling a relief. I knew what was going to happen and when, I knew what my teachers expected, both academically and in dance classes. I had rules and I had timetables, I had a set bedtime and a uniform. It was an incredibly stressful and competitive environment, obviously, but I thrived in it. I felt like I had control over my life for the first time ever. I loved it, Curtis.”
“I can see that.”
“The big problem came when I turned twelve.” Tessa picked at her fruit salad, ate a grape. “My body changed.”
Curtis nodded. “Yeah.”
“It was a problem that many girls had. We developed breasts and hips, we started to get our periods… that’s the time that lots of girls leave dance, or at least give up any hopes of a professional career. But I was determined to hold on to my shot. No way I was being sent away, no way I was going to live in Denver with a woman who had zero interest in me. New York was my home by then, and I was going to stay.”
“What did you do?”
“The only thing I could do. I controlled my weight to stay in the dance school. I starved off my breasts and ass and thighs, delayed my period for years, kept myself below a certain number on the scale even through my growth spurts.”
“Shit.” Suddenly, Curtis saw it all so clearly. “Bad combination, huh? Your incredible need for control, and then an unhealthy relationship with food? One that ended up being rewarded by keeping your place?”
Secret Curves (Dangerous Curves Book 5) Page 8
