Three Little Words by Jenny Holiday

Author:Jenny Holiday
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Published: 2019-01-28T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Ten

I know,” Bennett said. When she didn’t say anything else, but rather expelled a loud breath that sounded like it was partway to a sob, his heart broke a little. “Oh, sweetheart.” He set down his tea, wrapped his arms around her, and pulled her to his chest. The dark made it easy to make the probably-too-familiar gesture without overthinking it.

“I just…I used to be able to eat whatever I wanted and never gain weight.”

She spoke haltingly. He stroked her back and held her, sensing she was working through her thoughts as she verbalized them.

“But not anymore. Now…I don’t know.”

She sounded disgusted with herself.

“That’s normal,” he said. “That’s just, unfortunately, what happens to your metabolism as you age. It’s true for all of us.”

“I know,” she whispered. “I know that with my mind.”

He tightened his arms around her, feeling a little bad about how sweaty he was, but she didn’t seem to mind. In fact, she burrowed into him, so her next words were somewhat muffled as she spoke them against his skin.

“I’m stuck. Modeling is my thing. It’s what I do. I’m good at it. But I’m getting too fat to keep doing it.”

“Okay, you’re not fat. That’s just objectively not true.” He knew she knew that—she must know that—but he couldn’t let that one slide.

“You know what I mean. I already have a rep in the industry for being difficult.”

“What does that mean?”

“I don’t take shit.”

“What do you mean by shit?”

“Oh, you know, sexual harassment mostly.”

Jesus Christ. Something inside him, some sleeping monster he’d had no idea was in there, got to its feet and bared its fangs. With great effort he leashed the monster and forced his tone to be measured so as not to puncture the astonishing intimacy they seemed to have achieved. “That doesn’t sound like ‘difficult.’ That sounds like ‘smart.’”

She ignored the correction. “So now I’m difficult and fat. On my last job, they had to have me trade dresses with another model because I couldn’t fit into the one they’d wanted me in.”

He thought back to that first evening at the airport, when she’d been raging and then surprised him by blurting out how hungry she was.

Yeah, this was not okay. He knew, rationally, that he couldn’t solve this for her, but there was no way she was going back to that fucked-up world believing that she was somehow not good enough for it. He couldn’t say it like that, though. She would only bristle and remind him that he had no claim on her. And she would be right. So instead he tried, “Maybe it’s time to do something else.”

“But what else? That’s the problem.”

Suddenly it all made sense. All her talk about not having any skills. Which was not true. She was funny and smart. She’d solved a bunch of his problems, little ones like what to do with all the leftovers at the restaurant and big ones like his freaking family.

She probably wouldn’t listen to his objections, though. In fact, she was starting to get restless in his arms.

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