“You know it. It wasn’t easy for me, since my natural frame is medium, not small, and I’m tall for a ballerina. I was told in no uncertain terms that the only thing for me to do was be thin and light – and as long as I did that, I’d be able to stay.” Her smile was shaky. “Between the need for control in my life, and the need to control every single bite of food I took, it was a recipe for disaster.” She paused. “No pun intended.”
He gave a sharp laugh. “Noted.”
“And that was it, I guess.” She ate some apple, and Curtis almost sighed in relief that she was eating. He picked up his own fork, started his breakfast too. “I held on like that until I was twenty-seven.”
“Wait.” Horrified, he stared at her, his fork held aloft. “You – you starved yourself until what… three years ago?”
“Yep. I’d met Kevin in New York, of course, and he adored me as a thin ballerina. He worked for one of the big investment banks, and we were this glamorous power-couple, you know? I mean, I never made it huge on the stage, but I worked steadily and was in demand. But then it all fell apart.”
“What happened?”
“Well, I fell and ripped my right knee to shreds.” Tessa glanced down at it. “I was told that I’d never dance again, not professionally. And then one month later, Kevin lost his job when the firm he worked for crashed on Wall Street. I started to comfort eat, but I’d messed up my metabolism and starved my body for so many years by then, that the weighed just piled on and… well. That was the beginning of the end, I suppose. By the time I got myself together, I’d put on eighty pounds and I hated myself so much, it was unreal. Kevin called me every name under the sun, and instead of smacking him upside the head and telling him to get the hell away from me, I – I put up with him. Hell, I even agreed with him… that I was a fat, lazy, disgusting pig.”
Curtis breathed slowly, determined not to track Kevin down and kill him with his bare hands. No, that prick was gone, long gone, and Tessa was still here. And she needed Curtis to be everything that Kevin wasn’t and hadn’t been for her.
“So how’d you guys end up back in Denver?” he asked.
“My grandmother helped Kevin get a job here, and she also told me how sorry she was that we’d never had a relationship when I was growing up. She begged us to move back so she and I could get to know each other.”
“She had a change of heart.”
“Oh, yeah. Totally.” Tessa picked up her fork now and speared some orange and grapefruit. “She was sick by then, and she was trying to set some things right. I was one of those things.”
“And did she set things with you right?”
“Yes.” Tessa nodded and took a bite of toast. “We worked it all out, and she died with no regrets or hard feelings between us. She left me a sizable chunk of change, and I've been living off it off-and-on ever since. When things got rough financially, you know.”
“And Curves?”
Tessa shrugged. “I needed a job badly, and as it turns out, writing ‘ballerina’ as the sum total of your job experience doesn’t get you very far in the professional world. Unless you’re an actual, you know, ballerina.”
“You said that you kept your weight below a certain number on the scale until three years ago,” Curtis said abruptly.
“Yes,” she said, startled at the change in topic.
“What was the number?”
She squirmed, but decided to be honest. “One hundred.”
“You… you…” Curtis was floored. “You stayed below one hundred fucking pounds?”
“Yes,” she said quietly. “I kept the scale bang on ninety-nine.”
“What’s a healthy weight for you? For your body and height?”
“Rianna, the woman who’s my dietician and counsellor, says that I should aim to stay between one hundred and thirty-eight and one hundred and forty-eight pounds. No less than one-thirty-six.”
He was frozen with rage. “And when you ended up in the hospital a few weeks ago, what did you weight?”
Tessa paused. “One hundred and two.”
“You lost – what? Eighty pounds in less than half-a-year?”
“Almost. Yes.”
“Christ, Tessa.” His voice was strained. “It damn near killed you.”
“I know.”
“Fuck.” Anger was rising in him again, but this was anger at himself. “I knew it was bad, baby, but I had no idea…” He took a deep breath, not wanting to upset her. “I should have done something sooner.”
“I wouldn’t have listened to you.” She gave a small, helpless shrug. “I didn’t listen to you.”
“I know. But I should have forced the issue harder. Talked to Mac sooner, talked to a counsellor behind your back and brought them to Curves, staged an intervention… something. Fucking anything to help you.” Guilt and shame were boiling away in his stomach. “I’m sorry. I’m just so damn sorry.”
“Hey,” she said softly. “You did what nobody else did, Curtis. You made me stop. You do know that, right? I wasn’t going to stop, I know that, and you made me stop. You – you saved me from myself. You saved my life.”
He sucked in some air, sucked in a bit more. OK, the past was the past, and nothing to be done about it. All that mattered now was what he did from this moment on. And in order for him to do the right thing for her – do the goddamn right thing at last, you moron – he needed all the information.
“And where are you now?” he asked. “Your weight?”
She managed a grin. “Are you actually asking a lady how much she weighs?”
“Damn straight.”
She paused, peered up at him. Curtis wasn’t messing around right now, she saw.
“I weigh one hundred and nineteen pounds.” She averted her eyes, knowing from his tense arms that he wasn’t happy with that information.
“Still too little,” he snapped, astounded that she weighed exactly one hundred pounds less than he did. “You need to eat more, Tessa.”
“I know. I’m – I’m working on it.” She fought back tears yet again; God, she was sick of crying. “I’ve put on seventeen pounds in almost three weeks. That’s – that’s terrifying for me, Curtis. The last time I weighed this much, I’d just blown out my knee and lost everything I’d ever wanted and worked for. I was depressed, and pigging out on pizza, and I saw nothing good in my life. To be back at this weight, it’s… it’s scary. I don’t like how it makes me feel – it makes me remember all the shit that was going on in my life then, and it’s only going to get worse as I get heavier. I don’t want to go back to that time in my life, but with every pound I gain, that’s exactly what I’m doing.”
“And you’d do a lot to avoid going back there, huh?” he said, understanding better now. “Including losing weight again to escape the feelings?”
“Yes.” She bit her lip. “That’s one of the things that I talk about with Rianna. How to gain weight slowly and with healthy food, and not panic and stop eating as the numbers get higher and higher on the scale. How to handle all the feelings and memories that come up as they do. For me, gaining weight is – complicated. It’s way more than just going to McDonald’s every day and stuffing my face with abandon. Lots goes on in my head every time I step on the scale and see the numbers going up, and none of it is good.”
“Fuck, baby. I’m sorry.” Curtis felt like a monster. “I have no right to tell you that you’re too thin, or you’re not doing this fast enough… that was an asshole thing for me to say.”
“It’s alright. I know I’ve got a ways to go yet, and I’m trying to do it properly. I mean, I can follow the diet OK, but I’m struggling with some other parts of it all.”
“Like what?”
She ate some more fruit. “Like… enjoying food.”
That was an alien concept to Curtis as he finished his last piece of bacon. “You don’t enjoy f
ood?”
“No. Food was never about enjoyment for me.”
“Never?”
“No. With my Mom, it was something that was unpredictable and irregular, so I’d eat it when it appeared, since I had no idea when I’d see more of it again. At the ballet school, it was restricted and controlled for optimal weight control and energy. When I hit puberty, it was the goddamn enemy, conspiring with my body to make me gain weight and lose my place in the company. After I got hurt, it was comfort, at least for a while, before it became the enemy again as my weight spiraled out of control.”
“You’ve never just thought of food as delicious? As something that gives pleasure?”
“Never.”
Curtis stared at her. “Do you think food tastes good?”
“I suppose it does, but again, I’ve never thought about it that way.” She glanced down at her half-eaten breakfast. “ I have to learn to taste it properly, you see. Rianna says I have to let myself experience all the tastes, and not be afraid of them.”
In some ways, it felt like Tessa was speaking a foreign language. Curtis understood her words, yet they seemed to have no meaning, or at least, no meaning for him. Clearly, this was a language she was fluent in, though: the language of self-denial, and bland flavors, and terror of losing control.
“Why would you be afraid of them?” he asked gently.
“Because a part of me still feels like if I like a taste too much, I’ll lose all control, and I won’t be able to stop eating it.” She smiled. “And it’s just my luck that I love sweet stuff.”
Curtis laughed as he remembered their first tentative flirtation over his birthday cake. “Yeah. Me too.”
She looked at his incredible body, at its rippling muscles and defined planes, then at his empty plate. “But you eat like crazy, Curtis, and there’s not an ounce of fat on you anywhere.”
“I work at it, baby.”
“Yeah, I know.” She gave him another slow once-over. “I can see it.”
His eyes flared at her husky tone. “Can you?”
“Ummm-hmmm.” Tessa ran her hand over his chest, loving how his breath started to get tight and fast. “I can feel it, too.”
“I love you.” Curtis never thought he’d say this to anyone in his life, not ever, and now that he’d started saying it to Tessa, he didn’t think he’d ever stop saying it. “I’m so damn proud of you, Tessa. I think you’re amazing.”
“I love you, too.”
He gave her a smile so full of sweetness and happiness, she almost fell over. Curtis was a drop-dead sexy man when he was all growly, but when he smiled like this? Dear sweet Lord, the hotness factor went up about six thousand percent. Tessa was only human, after all, and she was seconds away from tearing off his clothes, and checking out just exactly how hot his whole body was. If his upper body was any indication of the rest of him, she might have a coronary on the spot the first time she saw him revealed in all his glory.
“Tessa?”
“Hmmmm?” She gave herself a mental shake, blinked away the fantasy that had started to play like a dirty movie in her mind. “Yeah?”
“What did you…” He hesitated. “Do you have a picture of what you looked like back then? Back at ninety-nine pounds?”
She went very still. “Yes.”
“You have it with you?”
“Yes. I – I carried it with me all the time, as motivation. Now, it's more of a visual cautionary tale.”
“Can I see it?”
“You want to?”
“I do.”
Tessa nodded. “OK.” She reached for her purse and pulled out her wallet. She paused, then took out the folded-up picture and handed it to Curtis. “This was me.”
He unfolded it, stared down at it. Shock and horror moved over him slowly in a wave of dawning realization. Suddenly, Curtis really, truly understood just how sick, tired, and scared she must have been back then. Worse, she’d been that way for a long time, and she’d been surrounded by people who'd enabled this behavior. He wanted to kill someone.
Instead, he just looked at the picture, really looked at the woman that he loved. When he glanced up at her, he saw the worry on her face, and he shook his head.
“Is this what you were trying to get back to?” Curtis said. “This is what you wanted to be again?”
“Yes.”
“Why, baby?” He made sure the question wasn’t an accusation or attack, but he heard the sadness and confusion in his own voice. “You look so stressed and miserable here. Why’d you want to go back to this?”
“Because this was the only time in my life that things ever made sense to me. When I was this weight and in this place, I had routine and predictability… I had a profession and money and a boyfriend, and I was totally in control of everything, all the time. I was – I thought I was happy. But what I see now is that being in control isn’t being happy… not when it hurts you.”
“OK.” Curtis set the picture down. “So it represented things that you wanted and needed badly. Control. Predictability. Being settled and belonging somewhere. Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“I get that. But what does it mean to you now?”
She stared at herself in the photo. “Fear.”
“Of what? What were you so damn afraid of?”
“Everything. Of – living.”
“So why do you hang on to it?”
She shook her head slowly, her blonde hair glowing bright in the weak winter sun. “I have no idea. Not anymore.”
“Tessa. Look at me.”
She did, and he saw that she was near tears again. God, she was so fragile right now, and not just physically, and that knowledge made Curtis even more gentle than he already was.
“You have to let all this history go, baby. You know that, right?”
Tessa nodded.
“You want me to help you with that?”
Her beautiful eyes widened. “You – you’d do that? You’d help?”
“You thought I wouldn’t?”
“I didn’t think about it at all.” She gave him a small smile. “I’m still only really thinking about numbers on a scale. My focus is kind of… ummm…. limited.”
“Well, I thought about it,” he growled. “It’s all I’ve thought about for months, how the hell to help you. It’s all I want to do, baby, and I’ll do whatever the hell you need.”
“Curtis,” she said, her voice breaking. “What did I do to deserve you?”
“You got that backwards,” he said, signaling for the check. “I’m fighting like hell to deserve you, Tessa, and I’m not gonna stop trying. Now…” He stood up, extended his large hand to her, palm-up. An idea came to him at this moment, and he wondered if he’d be able to convince her to go along with it, decided to give it a shot. “We’ve both got the day off today and tomorrow, so we’re going back to my place.”
“Your place?” she whispered, taking his hand. He pulled her to her feet easily. “What are we going to do at your place?”
“You’ll see when we get there.” He left some cash on the table, then held her coat for her. “Oh, by the way? We’re going to stop by the grocery store. I need a few things.”
“OK,” she said, clutching his hand as they headed for the exit. “No problem.”
Curtis held the door for her, then looked back at the table, his heart in his throat. He was sure that she’d left it there, but he hadn’t wanted to make a big deal about it in case he was wrong. He needn’t have worried, though. She’d made her choice, and she’d chosen well.
The photo of Tessa was folded up, still on the table. He smiled.
Message received, baby, loud and clear. You want to let all that go – and I’m the man to help you do that. Just trust me.
Chapter Nine
Curtis unlocked his apartment door, and paused.
“Tessa?”
“Yeah?”
“My place – it’s not very nice.”
She peered up at his face. “OK.”
“No, I mean it. It’s small, and it’s kind of ugly.”
“OK,” she repeated.
“OK.” He sighed and swung the door open, grateful that at least he was a neat-freak by nature, and so didn’t have to dash around picking up socks and underwear off the floor. “Come on in. Make yourself at home.”
Tessa stepped in, and looked around. She smiled. Curtis was being hard on his home, she saw immediately. Alright, it wasn’t the biggest apartment on the planet, that was for sure. And it was pretty sparse in terms of décor, with some basic furniture, a few prints on the walls, and lots of books. But it had good light, and there was a view of the Rockies from his living room, and his kitchen was open-plan and gleaming.
She turned to look at him, saw the anxiety on his face.
“It’s not much,” he said. “I mean, it’s just me here.”
“I love it,” she told him.
“You do?” Curtis looked around, wondering if they were looking at the same place. “How can you?”
“Because you live here, babe,” she said. “And I love you.”
His eyes sparked at the endearment. God, he loved how it sounded coming out of her sweet, sexy mouth.
“Say that again,” he said, his voice low.
Tessa smiled, knowing exactly what he was asking for. “Babe.”
“And the other part?”
“I love you.”
“Fuck, baby.” He wrapped his arms around her, loving how she slipped right on in to his body, like a puzzle piece just sliding in to place. “I love you, too.”
“I know,” she said. “I can feel it.”
“I sure as hell hope so.” He lowered his lips to her forehead, and mouthed a gentle kiss on her soft skin, loving her pure, clean scent. Reluctantly, he released her, helped her take off her coat. “Sit, Tessa. You want some tea?”
“No, thanks.” She watched him take off his own coat, and carry the two bags of groceries to the kitchen. “You want some help with putting the food away?”
Secret Curves (Dangerous Curves Book 5) Page 9