Other Side of Beautiful (A Beautifully Disturbed #1)

by Sarah Zolton Arthur

  He watches me closely as he continues to blow on my hands, the emotion of his generous actions is too much to handle and I look away, casting my eyes downward to look at the icy pavement. Of course that move goes over with Ben about as well as dropping an iron anchor from a boat made of feathers. When he wants something he goes after it, and right now he wants my eyes back up where he can see them, using his thumb to lift my chin back up.

  “Don’t pull away,” he says softly, yet with every bit of seriousness in his words. “Not when I just got you.”

  “I’m not pulling away.” Even as the words slip free we both know they aren’t true. And when he fixes me with that stare of his, the one that demands no bullshit, I’m a goner. Elle Dinninger is about to fall, and fall hard. I’m happy with him for wanting me and pissed at myself for giving in. Sure it’s all stars and rainbows and unicorns now, but at some point this thing will deteriorate into dragons and hurricanes and evil clowns. Then where will I be? When he leans in to blow on my fingers again, none of that future matters, though. A blizzard could drop around us and I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else. His hot breath caresses my fingers one last time before he kisses the center of my palm and tugs for me to move with him.

  What does a twenty-one-year-old know about life? Maybe not much, but I swear I can see us reflected in every snowflake caught on the tip of my nose. That has to mean something, right? I can see the start of something wonderful with Benton glistening along the surface of every flake to flutter to the ground under our feet.

  Yes, I’ve had sex before, but here right now with Ben, it’s nothing less than the most romantic moment of my life, and we aren’t even kissing.

  “Come on, Brontë, let’s get you inside. Don’t want my girl getting sick.”

  “Your girl? It’s only our first date.”

  “Semantics. You’ve always been my girl.”

  “Are we like peas and carrots?”

  He barks out a beautifully loud laugh, and I hear his happiness mirroring the happiness my heart has already succumbed to, the antithesis of everything I tried to convince myself I wanted or needed or deserved for so very long, too long. “Are you calling me Forest Gump?” he asks. “You’re my girl, Bron-të.” And yes, he says it in a spot on Gump voice.

  “You’ve ruined my girl for me now. I hope you’re happy.”

  “Okay, nix my girl. How about my lady friend?”

  “What are we sixty-five now? Picking me up for the early bird dinner, are you?”

  “Well I suppose we can leave out labels until we figure out something you do like.”

  “I like being with you.”

  When he steps forward, I’m prepared for him to kiss me again, parting my lips in anticipation. But he picks me up and spins me over his back so he carries me piggy back. “Put me down,” I scream while squirming and kicking, trying my best to slide down his back, but the man holds a tight grip and keeps walking. “You’re going to hurt yourself.” I try to keep up my protest. His ears aren’t deaf, but it falls on ignoring ears for sure.

  “Hush now.” He actually says, ‘Hush now’ and bucks his step so I momentarily bounce from his shoulders, which instinctively has me grabbing tighter around his neck to keep from falling off. He turns his head just slightly and pecks my cheek with a soft kiss, then winks. Lovable jerk.

  Chapter 16

  Elle

  And that’s how we walk into the Heron Deli. That’s us after all, the GHU Herons. He would not put me down to save my life, his life, or anyone’s life. Not until we crossed over the threshold into the restaurant, upon which it feels like every head in the place shifts to gawk at us.

  “Great,” I mumble. He turns his head so I know he heard, only he doesn’t respond in words, but helps me slide back down his shoulders until my tiptoes touch the black and white tiled floor. Again, there’s a level of hurt that only I would pick up on, out of anybody in this room. Out of anybody in this room I know him the best. We’re college kids. College kids act silly. But if he understood how easily our budding relationship, our friendship, life, could crash at any moment, maybe he wouldn’t be so brazen. Damage control. It isn’t exactly a secret that Ben and I hang out, so as long as he keeps things low key, I can certainly keep low key.

  The aisles between the tables and booths are pretty narrow, so as Ben walks to get in line at the counter, I fall back to walk single file behind him. Nope. He stops it almost as soon as it starts, not only hanging back so I have no choice except walking next to him, but the man actually has the nerve to take my hand, hold my hand right here in public.

  He has to know how uncomfortable I am with the PDA, even as innocent as it may be. My awkwardness comes out to greet all the diners. It’s not like I’m exactly able to hide the full-on blush my cheeks have going, or the way my breath hitches. “Ben, they’re all staring,” I whisper, tugging lightly to free my hand. It’s of no use. His grip tightens.

  “They’d be stupid not to be,” he whispers back and chuckles. “I haven’t been able to stop since freshman year. You just never noticed before.”

  “But.”

  “No. No buts. We’ve discussed this. I’m going to spin you around and full-on kiss you if you don’t loosen up and enjoy yourself—with tongue,” he finishes. “Fair warning.” That playful look—the one that makes his eyes sparkle like water against the setting sun—is back. And he winks. I like when he winks. Moreover, I like what his winks mean.

  The idea of him kissing me in public creates a buildup of delicious anticipation in a good way, something naughty. Something naughty? I sigh heavily. The thought has my palms sweating now. Another way to embarrass Cricket. I’m certain he’ll want to pull away, at least to wipe his hand down. But Ben is relentless.

  “That doesn’t feel relaxed,” he says, only half smiling this time. “You’re forcing my hand here.” Right, because his threats help calm my nerves. Our friends don’t even know about us yet. I haven’t dropped our little bombshell on Kelly, and she spent the weekend with us. So what would all these people think? Huh. I know exactly what they’d think. Exactly what Callum thought—that I somehow blackmailed Ben or that he just likes fucking fatties. With the entire student and faculty populations aware of the girls he usually dates, it is safe to assume the former over the latter. “Okay.”

  That is all I hear, barely a whisper before Ben captures my mouth right here in front of God and everybody. Hardly a chaste kiss, he tugs at my bottom lip, rough yet full of erotic sensations. His taste of cinnamon gum mixed with his scent of citrus drives my body to the brink, my reactions to him embarrassing although not unwarranted. Kissing Ben…kissing Ben right now feels like kissing someone in a dream, only you wake up in the middle of it and try desperately to fall back asleep, to recapture that monumental kiss. Even if you’re able to force the dream, part of you remains in the conscious realm, making the dream kiss feel weird, awkward. Yes, that’s how it feels kissing Ben right now, because my mind won’t shut off. I want to just enjoy our moment. The past should stay in the past. But no matter how much my brain begs me to stop, not to remember the humiliation of that not real first date, there is no turning back now.

  Everything about Ben scares me. My heart responds to him, actually responds to him. For the longest time I thought I was dead inside. But I wasn’t dead, just hibernating, waiting for Benton to kiss me in Chicago, to wake me up, to take me on this date. So now it feels like I’m just waiting, waiting for the bad to tap me on the shoulder and say, “Hey Elle, I’m here. I didn’t forget about you.”

  Wrapping my arms around his neck, fingering the soft hairs at the nape there, when I try to pull away, his grip on my waist tightens, showing me and everyone else in the room his dominance, the alpha male taking charge. The feel of him sends warm shivers down to my toes curling in my boots. All consuming—those are the only words that seem appropriate enough to accurately describe him. Benton Hayes has invaded every cell of my body on a microscopic level. I’m so in over my head here
.

  Not until he finally breaks away, breaths coming in frantic spurts, his and mine, do I pay attention to the deli full of fellow students. Half of whom fan themselves, while the others have been recording every moment on camera phones. Normally I’d be less than a blip on most of their radars, even if I did turn their dinner into a porno. But Benton is on everyone’s radar. Me and him together? I have a hard time with the logic in it, so how couldn’t anyone else?

  The cell phones. The cell phones. He wouldn’t have set me up, though? Right? Not Ben. We were friends first. I’m not here anymore. I’m back there. Back at that day. Back when it happened. I don’t want to be there. My chest hurts. I can’t catch my breath. The cell phones. People still point them at us. I need him to make it go away. Make that day go away. My words won’t come. Without the lucky pill bottle to rub the anxiety away, my eyes burn with heavy, hot tears that thankfully haven’t begun to fall yet. Superpower. Failure. These people want to hurt me. They want to embarrass Cricket. No, it’s worse than that, they want me to embarrass Cricket. I swallow, feeling myself begin to sway.

  “Shit!” Ben mumbles. He presses his forehead against mine, snaking one arm around my waist to steady me while with the other strokes my hair. “I’ve got you, Brontë. I’ve got you. Breathe.” He keeps repeating it in slow whispers in my ear.

  His hands feel warm through my coat as I let his soft voice lead me back through the catacombs of my memories into the here and now. I’ve never had another person pull me through an attack before. And it was Ben of all people. My lips tremble as I finally feel able to breathe again, breathing in his fresh laundry and citrus fruit to calm down—he is like walking aromatherapy. “Is it the phones?” Nodding, the tears finally begin to fall. “Please don’t cry. I was only trying to help you past your fear, not cause more. I won’t kiss you in public again. I swear it.”

  “I liked the kiss.”

  “You did?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then what?”

  “You wouldn’t rather have sex with a greased pig than me?”

  His mouth literally drops open, but then quickly closes it again, biting on his bottom lip like he wants to laugh. If he laughs, I think I might die right here in this spot. Maybe he senses it, or maybe he’s become good at reading my face, but for whatever reason he swallows back the laugh, tightening his hold on me instead. “Oh, baby, Brontë no—why would you ever think that?”

  “I—I can’t tell you.”

  “We can head to my apartment right now to prove it if you need me to. But what might help, talk to me babe.”

  Talk to him? Of course I want to talk to him. He deserves to know why I spazzed so badly, but there are too many witnesses around—with cell phones. So I don’t tell him. I don’t say anything, just press my cheek into the hand he brings up to swipe my tears away.

  “Okay.” Ben scratches at the back of his head and looks around at all the faces still looking at us, recording us. “Well, haven’t I just sucked up our first date? I’m so sorry, Elle. We’ll get sandwiches to go, then I can walk you home.”

  “I don’t want to go home.”

  “Anything you want. My place, then?” I nod, slight, but he sees it. “Baby, you have to let me in if you’re going to let me in.” When I scrunch my face up at him he brushes a light kiss along my temple. “I need to know what has happened to you, so I don’t put you through situations like tonight ever again.”

  “I owe you that.”

  “No. You owe you that.” He sits me down at an empty table and leaves to place our orders. I watch him point against the safety glass shield, picking out our sandwich toppings. Every so often he looks over his shoulder to check on me, always wearing that caring smile of his. Ben has as many smiles as a baby has cries, and I can tell what each one of them means by just looking at him. No, this man is nothing like the point guard.

  We walk closer together on the way out than on the way over to the deli, before he got all playful. His arm around my waist, I walk with my head against his shoulder. The food bag keeps hitting my thigh, but we’ve finally found a comfortable synergy without need of useless words that I don’t want to risk shaking things up to change it. Being back outside, the brittle cold gives a little bit of clarity to my distorted world. The darkened, saturated clouds help bring my life into some perspective.

  “You honestly care about me, don’t you?”

  He closes his eyes, breathing in pointedly through his nose before opening them, pinching the bridge of his nose. “I hate that your bitchtastic mother has messed with your head so much that me caring for you would come as such a surprise.”

  “I didn’t mean to embarrass you.”

  “That’s just it, baby. You didn’t embarrass me. When you hurt, I hurt. That’s how the whole relationship thing works. Now, you want to tell me who I need to hunt down and destroy for hurting you? Can’t get much more private.”

  Time to bite that big ‘ole ugly bullet. I suck in a deep breath, in no hurry to share my humiliation with the man I’m falling for. But I owe him this, at least this much. The worst part, well, I’ll have to figure out a way to keep the rest from him. That day is going to hang over my head for the rest of my life. And something so monumental…he will never be able to forgive me for not telling him sooner, to give him the opportunity to walk away before things get complicated. They will get complicated. He’s already called me baby four times in the space of a half hour on our first real date. They will get complicated, and then he will never look at me the same way. Feeling the way I feel already, I think it would send me over the edge again.

  Even as the cars race past us, with their large rumbling engines and rubber tires splashing slushy, graying snow on our feet, his attention never wavers while my story of Logan the point guard spills from my lips in a purge of word vomit. At the end of the story, which feels frighteningly long during the retelling, we stop to catch a breath, both of us with tears in our eyes. Somehow we time our stop perfectly in front of The Brew.

  “You need some coffee.”

  I nod my head. “Yes.”

  Chapter 17

  Ben

  She called me her Prince Charming. Says it as I hold the door for her to walk inside. What kind of asshole wouldn’t at least hold the door for a lady? California guys officially suck. Immediately my mood perks up, though. And it’s not just the levity a coffee house brings out of us. I thought she was going to shut down, but no. My Brontë laid it all out there for me and thinks I’m her fairy tale prince. Those always have a happily ever after. I’m counting on it going that way for us too. Because with the sewer of crap we just waded through while I got a firsthand account of the seedier side of high school life in the valley, the potential is there for this to turn bad just as easily. I tried not to show my anger, but she saw my fists ball into white knuckles at my sides while she talked. Felt the absence of my hand in hers. Not that I would ever look differently at her. And I worry that’s what she thinks. She’s a survivor. I could never look down on her. She came back from such a violation.

  I have to force myself to think of anything else, anything else to take my mind off what she told me, otherwise I’ll be obsessing all night. And there’s no way I want to mess with our first date by obsessing over another person.

  My distraction comes with a warmth of yellow light cascading down from the overhead light fixtures. The warmth of this place is one of the reasons we love it here, that and the fantastic coffee. Speaking of coffee, the smells hit with a heady mix of cinnamon, vanilla, and some exotic spice blend. Yet the sounds…it’s the sounds that spark something in me, oddly relaxing and positive. These noises should be grating—spoons tinking against cups, cups clinking against saucers. And the murmurs rise above the tinking. Laughter above the clinking. The room sounds alive, magical, and musical.

  She’s good for all of thirty seconds, until we see our people. They’re sitting at our regular booth tucked against the back wall, and her feet freeze to the spot
where we’re both standing just inside the door. The thing is, just from the look on her face, I know, absolutely know what’s going through her head. What will they think about our pairing, me and her together? And I know she’s worried about Collin. We’re as close as brothers, we’re roommates, and best friends. He tried to get me to go after her for so long now. But I’ll bet she thinks the opposite. Why? She’s everything I’ve ever dreamt of. But I know how her brain works.

  It’s like we timed it. Her response is classic Elle. “How disappointing for him, that your Ms. Right turned out to be a chubby writer with mommy issues and failure for a superpower.”

  “First of all, huh? Failure for a superpower?”

  “Never mind. Listen, you want to go first?” she asks. “I don’t want anyone to get the wrong idea about us.”

  “Wrong idea? Like we’re, I don’t know, on a date maybe?”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “No. I don’t suppose I do. Are you ashamed to be seen with me? Because I sure as hell am proud to be with you,” I say back, running a finger over her cheek. Wow, she melts right there into a puddle of girly-ness. Apparently all it takes is a couple of sweet words and a delicate touch. If she only understood that I’m right there with her melting into a puddle of girly-ness. Which is humiliating and knocks my man points down by ten. She tries to slap my chest, but with fast reflexes, I catch her hand easily, placing a kiss on the knuckle. When she pulls back, my hold tightens, lacing our fingers together. “I understand your nervousness. If what happened to you had happened to me, I’d be skittish too. But these are our friends. They want us to be happy.”

  “But Collin will freak.”

  “He won’t freak.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Elle, trust me. He won’t freak.” I start toward the back of the room. And that’s how we approach our friends. Hand in hand. Stopping first at the counter to grab our drinks, hers a hot mocha, mine a large black with half. Then she called me a sweet jerk because I wouldn’t take her money. I asked her out. I ask, I pay. Period. Of course with Elle, I’d pay anyway. But no need ruffling those feathers just yet.