Don't Make Me Beautiful (16 page)

Chapter Twenty-Two

NICOLE SITS ON THE BED and stares at the picture on the nightstand.
 
Picking up the frame, she focuses on the faces.
 
They look so happy.
 
The perfect family.

Hearing a noise at the guest bedroom door, she looks up to find Brian standing there looking at her as he leans on the doorframe.

“You okay?” he asks.

“Who’s this?
 
Your wife?”

Brian comes in and sits down next to her on the bed.
 
“That’s Helen. She’s my ex-wife, emphasis on the ex, not the wife.”
 
He points to the little boy.
 
“And that’s Liam.
 
I call him Li-Li sometimes.
 
I’m not sure how much longer he’s going to allow it, though, since he thinks he’s too grown up.”

“How old is he?”

“Six going on sixteen.”

Nicole finds herself smiling, even though it makes her sad in a way.
 
She thinks of Kitten in John’s backyard and realizes that even though she’s two blocks away, the pain is never that far from her heart.

“So, you up for a game of gin rummy?” Brian asks.

Nicole allows him to take the frame from her hand and lean over her legs to put it back on the nightstand.

“Gin rummy?
 
Cards?”
 
He smells nice. Catching a whiff of his shirt and hair as he leans back, she closes her eyes for a moment.
 
Butterflies have taken up residence in her stomach over it.
 
The idea of being nervous in his presence and enjoying his male-ness makes her instantly sad. As beautiful as he his, nothing will change the cold, hard facts of her life.
 
It’s like the fairy tale her mother used to read to her when she was little, only with the roles reversed.
 
She remembers painfully how wrong she’d been back then; she always pictured herself as Beauty and not The Beast she is today.

“Yeah.”
 
Brian stands up.
 
“I’m pretty good though, so if you don’t want to lose, I understand.”

She can’t help but smile at his bravado.
 
“I haven’t played that since I was a kid.
 
I don’t remember how to, actually.”

“Come on.” He holds out a hand to help her up.
 
“I’ll teach you.”

Nicole ignores it and uses the edge of the bed to stand.
 
It’s not that she’s rejecting him, it’s just that it hurts too much to have something pulling on her arms like that.
 
She feels bad when he frowns a little, but not bad enough that she’s going to apologize or explain.
 
It’s better that he not be so nice all the time anyway.
 
It’ll just make it harder to leave in a few days.
 
There will be no happy ending to this little story; she’s not foolish enough to even dream otherwise.
 
Life will never be a fairy tale for a girl like her.

Chapter Twenty-Three

NICOLE LOOKS OVER HER CARDS at him.
 
She’s smiling at whatever she has going on in her hand, and Brian can’t help but grin back.
 
She could easily be the worst card player that ever walked the earth, but her attempts at winning make it fun.

“You look pretty pleased with yourself over there,” he says, taking a handful of peanuts and tossing them back into his mouth.

“I’m pretty sure I’m going to win this one.”
 
Her brows are furrowed in concentration.

He looks down at his own hand and the scoresheet on the table.
 
“I’m feeling pretty scared, let me tell you.”

“Oh, you should be.”

For the first hour they played, Brian worried about teasing her too much or saying things that she might take wrong, like telling her she scared him, for one.
 
But he quickly learned after a few bumbling teases came tumbling out of his mouth that she’s a great sport and likes to tease as much as he does.
 
His heart is feeling really full over the fact that she’s so resilient.
 
Less than a week ago she was beaten within an inch of her life.
 
Today, she’s drinking soda, eating terrible frozen pizza like it’s a gourmet meal, and losing like a boss at cards.

His mouth goes up in a half-smile as he realizes how much fun he’s having just hanging out with her.
 
He hasn’t even noticed her damaged face in hours.

“What are you smiling about over there?
 
I’m about to take you downtown.
 
You should be frowning.”

“Iiiii’m not so sure about that,” he says, adding a seven to a run he’s had building since the deal.
 
He throws down an eight.
 
“Here’s some trash you can take out.”
 
He looks up and grins big, ready for her next volley.

She freezes in place.
 
The sly smile that was there on her lips, ready to tease him once again, disappears and her face goes white.
 
Tears well up in her eyes and she jumps to her feet, throwing her cards down on the table.
 
She opens her mouth to speak, but the words come out rough.
 
“I … I have to go… to the bathroom.”
 
Leaving the table in a hurry, she moves swiftly down the hall.
 
The door slams shut behind her before Brian can completely process what just happened.

“What’d I say?” he says in a low voice, replaying his last words in his mind.
 
Taking out the trash?
 
Is that what bothered her?

He gets up and walks to the bathroom, leaving his cards at the table.
 
Tapping on the door, he leans in so he won’t have to shout to be heard.
 
“Nicole?
 
Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” she says, her voice almost a falsetto.
 
“I’ll be out in a few minutes.”

“Can I get you anything?
 
A newspaper or magazine?”
 
He’s trying to be funny, trying to smooth over the horrible feeling that he’s done something wrong.
 
Cringing at his poor taste, he breathes out a long sigh.
 
Helen is right about him.
 
He’s too goofy sometimes.
 
It’s his fall-back plan when he doesn’t know what to do, and this is definitely one of those times.

She doesn’t respond.

“I’m going to be in the living room waiting for you.
 
When you come out, we can talk or keep playing cards or just quit for the night.
 
It’s up to you.”

He waits until she responds, worried about what he’ll have to do if she doesn’t.
 
The relief in his heart is almost palpable when her voice comes through the door and it sounds less distressed.

“Okay.
 
Just give me a minute.”

Brian goes into the living room and sits on the couch, staring at the entrance to the hallway, hoping she’ll come through and not just disappear into her bedroom.
 
He tortures himself with visions of her leaving and walking back to her house and into the arms of the monster.

Chapter Twenty-Four

NICOLE STARES AT THE MIRROR as the tears fall down her cheeks.
 
She thought she was over this, over the pain and over hating how she looks, but as she stands there and feels her own stomach turn over at her destroyed face, she knows; it’ll never be over.
 
She’ll never be able to forget what John has done to her, and even worse, what she let him do to her.
 
And to Kitten.

Images of that night slip into her conscious mind, refusing to be suppressed. She can’t separate the reality from her nightmares, not even certain this happened but feeling like it must have.
“Take out the trash, Nikki.
 
Bury it.
 
Here it is …”
 
She can still see the small bundle in his hands, held out in front of her.

Taking several deep breaths, she tries to contain her emotions.
 
She swallows over and over to keep from vomiting.
 
No.
 
I won’t think about that.
 
I won’t do that to myself right now.
 
I need time to heal my face first.
 
I’ll heal my soul later.
 
She visually drinks in the damage showing in the mirror.
 
She’s avoided reflective surfaces for two years.
 
Even when John forced her to look, she would purposely blur her vision so she couldn’t truly see what was in front of her.
 
Today, this moment, is the first time she’s actually seen her own face clearly, in detail.

My god, what a horrible mess.
She touches the odd-looking cheekbones that are no longer aligned or even in the right place.
 
Her fingers slide to her flattened nose, pushing it gently from one side to the other, pinching it to see what it might have looked like years ago.
 
She can’t remember her real nose, all she knows is that this is nothing like it used to be when she was nineteen and meeting John for the first time.

There’s a brush on the counter and she uses it to arrange her hair.
 
One of the nurses had taken out all the tangles while she was unconscious at the hospital. She’d fallen asleep with near-dreadlocks and woken up with smooth hair, the bald spots covered with strategic comb-overs.

As Nicole runs her fingers through the soft strands, she finds several spots on her scalp where the missing hair is growing in.
 
It’s only stubble now, but in a year or two, it’ll be long again.
 
She smiles at the idea of having a full head of hair, before she realizes that the chances of that happening are not one hundred percent.

It can only happen if John is just a tiny speck in her rearview mirror.
 
As she pulls back her lips to inspect her mouth, it’s her broken and missing teeth that remind her most effectively about her reality.

Brian can be as nice as an angel and smell like one too, but that’s not going to change the simple facts; she can’t stay here forever, and the longer she stays, the harder it will be to leave.
 
John could easily find her here.
 
Besides, Brian would only ever see her as a welfare case.
 
To dream of anything else would be a waste of time and a recipe for disaster.
 
Her heart is the only thing she has left.
 
She cannot risk getting that shattered too.

She splashes some water on her face and pats it dry with a hand towel, careful especially around the still bruised and cut areas.
 
Staring at herself in the mirror, for the first time in years she’s thinking she can get away and hide forever.
 
But it won’t be possible being only one street over from John.
 
A plan begins to form in her mind.
 
All she needs to do is earn some money somehow and then she can move to the other side of the country, to a place where he’d never think to look for her.

She ignores the pangs of sadness at the idea of never seeing Brian again.
 
He’s been so good to her.
 
Not only has he given her a temporary safe haven, he’s also given her hope.
 
It’s been so very long since she’s felt like she has another option besides waiting for a young death.

She looks at her fingers, cringing at how crooked they are from being broken and the bones left to set themselves.
 
Maybe she could do something online where she wouldn’t have to see people at all.
 
Her fingers still work enough to type.
 
She could have food and things delivered to her house and maybe even own a dog.
 
A big one with giant teeth.
 
She smiles at the vision of this beast as he appears in her mind.
 
No one would be ever able to sneak up on her and catch her without a gun in her hand with him around.

Leaving the bathroom, she takes one last look at her demolished face before turning out the light.
 
She decides then and there that she’ll no longer be avoiding the mirror and hiding from the truth.
 
The sooner she faces facts and gets everything out in the open with herself, the sooner she can move on and heal.
 
The universe has given her another chance at life, and no way is she going to screw this one up too.

Chapter Twenty-Five

BRIAN’S WAITING ON THE LIVING room couch when Nicole reappears.
 
She’s been crying.
 
Her eyes are red-rimmed and her face even puffier than it was before, but she’s wearing a tentative smile and she seems a lot more relaxed than she was when she left the card game.

“Everything okay?” he asks, standing as she moves into the room.

“Don’t get up,” she says, taking a seat on the other end of the couch.
 
“I’m fine.
 
I just had a minor meltdown, but I’m over it now.”

“Playing cards with me can do that to a person.”
 
He smiles awkwardly at his lame attempt at humor.

“You are pretty good, I’ll give you that.
 
But I wasn’t really trying to win, sooo…”

He nods in appreciation.
 
“Nice.
 
Sounds like a definite re-match challenge.
 
Maybe tomorrow you’ll be up to it.”

“Maybe,” Nicole says. “But maybe you’d prefer to go out on a date or something.”

“Sure,” he says without missing a beat, “where’d you like to go?”
 
He’s thrilled she wants to go out somewhere.
 
He had no idea her progress could come so swiftly and boldly like that.