Tangle of Desires by Jillian Neal

Author:Jillian Neal [Neal, J.E.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Jillian Neal
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 27

Dimensions

She shook her head and crawled in his lap. “Look, I can fit in my ball again.”

“Right where you belong.” Dan cradled her to him curled tightly in her cocoon.

Her eyes fell on one of the Motorcycle Babe magazines.

“I seriously considered having mine surgically enhanced.” She pointed to the cover girl splayed across a Honda Fireblade showing off her overtly fake assets.

“Why?”

She tucked her head under Dan’s chin. “I guess I thought mine weren’t big enough. Chloe got hers done. I thought that’s what I should do too.”

“Fi.” Dan leaned back to study her. “Your chest is gorgeous. Why would you mess with perfection?”

“When you’ve been objectified your entire career, it’s easy to begin to think that your worth is entirely dependent on your looks. I haven’t always had a great self-image. I still don’t.”

“That’s why you’re so worried about your weight.” He felt stupid for never realizing that.

She nodded against him. Instead of telling her again how stunningly beautiful she was, he asked, “Is there anything I can do or say to you that would make you believe how amazing you are? Inside and out? Anything at all?”

“You are doing something. I know I don’t always believe you when you tell me, but when you tell me that I’m beautiful and how much I mean to you, it does wonders. And you’re taking me back to my island. You’re taking me back to the people who know me as me, not Fionna Styler, the famous Arlington Angel. I let myself become that identity because I’d lost my own until you found me again. I’m still struggling.

“To the American Realm, I’m a two-dimensional image posed in a program.” She gestured to the old Angels program on the bed. “I’m always supposed to look and act a certain way. I didn’t understand that I could be me when the cameras weren’t there, so I tried to always act and look a certain way. I tried to do what I thought would make everyone else happy because I can feel when they’re happy, and I hoped their happiness would make me less miserable. I lost myself completely. It’s part of being so far away from my island for so long, maybe. I never felt like I belonged here, and it was a lonely place to be for a long time before I met you and took you home that night. But now, I know that you’re where I belong no matter where you might be.”

The horrors of the past could never be explained or reconciled, but they were in the past, and each and every event was woven together into a future. Dan’s future was curled up in her ball in his arms, and that was all he would ever need.

He gathered the magazines into a pile and tossed them in the trash can near his old desk. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I’m sorry that I didn’t understand what you’ve been going through and that I was a part of the machine that turned you into a two-dimensional persona.

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