Chapter Seventeen
“You’ve been holding out on me!”
Hannah laughed, peering into the shoe box Ethan had retrieved from the kitchen around midnight when their third round of incredible sex had left them both feeling snackish. The box was full of every kind of fruity, chewy candy imaginable, bags of sour straws and gummy bears hidden in a box advertising work boots. “It looks like you robbed a candy store.”
Ethan climbed back into bad, sliding under the covers and handing the box to Hannah. “I have a sweet tooth.”
“And Tessa’s regular baked goods delivery doesn’t suffice?”
It had taken Hannah a few days to get used to the idea that there would always be fresh cupcakes, cookies, and scones on Ethan’s counter, appearing out of nowhere. It had taken a few more days for her to decide it was a testament to her recovery that she didn’t inhale the entire tray each morning, that she could instead enjoy the pastries without feeling a crippling urge to atone by skipping dipper, and that she had, in fact, gone an entire day without even thinking about the confections. Was that how the rest of the world felt?
She selected a pack of Sour Patch Kids, tearing into it and fishing out a yellow. The sugary sour goodness made her cheeks pucker. “I forgot how good these are. I haven’t had a Sour Patch Kid in years.”
“Why’s that?”
Ethan asked, shaking a few into his hand without a care for which colors he was getting. The philistine.
Hannah shrugged, chewing the last bits of the candy slowly and sifting through the bag for a green one. “It’s not something I let myself have.”
She glanced up at him, meeting his quizzical gaze, and knew he would wait for her to continue. Her therapist had assured her it would get easier to tell people about her struggles with food the more she practiced, but despite having told Liv and Jennifer, Jackson and Micah, her parents, it still didn’t feel any easier when she said, “I am in recovery from an eating disorder.”
To his credit, Ethan didn’t visibly react. His movements slowed, as though he were swimming through molasses, and she got the distinct impression he was working hard not to display any emotion. It reminded her so much of her parents the night after her high school graduation when she’d stumbled home and woken them at two o’clock in the morning to announce she was drunk but had done the responsible thing by leaving her car at the party, and they’d need to drive her there to retrieve it. Her mother hadn’t flinched. She’d simply said, “okay, honey,”
then gone back to sleep. Of course, she woke Hannah up at six for that car retrieval, so she wasn’t exactly unphased by her daughter’s announcement, but as time went by, Hannah could appreciate her mother’s restraint.
“What are you thinking?”
Hannah asked, her stomach twisting.
“I’m not sure I know what that means,”
Ethan said slowly.
“Which part? The eating disorder or the recovery?”
“Both?”
Hannah set the shoebox of candy aside and turned to face him, gathering the sheet around her chest. “I have had an eating disorder since I was a teenager, though I wasn’t officially diagnosed until about a year ago. It means I’ve used food—both eating too much and not eating enough—as a coping mechanism to regulate my emotions. To feel in control. To try to change the size and shape of my body.”
She held up the package of Sour Patch Kids. “It means you can look at this and only see a sweet treat, but I see the number of calories and how many hours of working out it would require to counteract them, whether or not having even just one will make me crave sweets so much I can’t stop myself from eating the entire package, or the entire shoebox. Whether I can eat a handful if I skip lunch, or two handfuls if I also skip dinner. Which, naturally, means I’m quite literally starving by the time I eat that handful, so then my biological need to feed myself takes over and convinces me to eat the entire contents of my kitchen cabinets until I feel so ill I have to spend the rest of the afternoon sitting on my shower floor trying not to be sick.”
She clamped her mouth shut, surprised by the way the words had tumbled from her lips, as though they’d been shaken loose, these moments she’d spent the last year making sense of. More than that, she was taken aback by how good it felt to tell him. For the first time, the creeping shame that usually followed such a revelation didn’t come.
Ethan tore his eyes away from Hannah’s and stared at the candy in his hands. “All that for this?”
“It’s not about the candy. It’s hard to explain if you’ve never had an unhealthy relationship with food.”
“And recovery...what does that mean?”
he asked tentatively.
“It means I can eat these Sour Patch Kids, despite the thoughts still trying to break through, and know that food doesn’t have to dictate how I feel about myself. It means I can have the candy and stop before I feel sick. It means I have a standing phone call with my therapist every two weeks and a dietitian once a month.”
She took a breath, blew it out slowly as she braced herself to tell him the last part. “And it means there’s always a chance I’ll relapse.”
“Like an alcoholic?”
“Not exactly. Unlike an alcoholic, someone with an eating disorder can’t abstain from food. But it’s a similar idea. The thoughts will likely never go away completely, but they get quieter. A little quieter every day. And, even when they’re loud, I know now that I don’t have to listen to them.”
Ethan squeezed her hand back. “How long have you been in recovery?”
“About six months. I was diagnosed during my run in Bridget Jones’ Musical and I managed with therapy for a while, but I knew I needed to get away from the stage for a bit to really recover. It’s hard to let yourself gain weight, and even harder when you’re on stage next to Superfan’s Sexiest Boy Band Member every night. So, when the show closed, I enrolled in an intensive outpatient treatment program.”
“Six months ago was September,”
he said, scanning her eyes. “I saw you in Boston in September.”
She nodded. “And the next day I started treatment.”
“Fuck,”
he said, more exhale than words. She winced, and he pulled her closer, cradling her head against his chest. “I didn’t know.”
“How could you? I didn’t tell you.”
She looked up at him with his big, worried, blue eyes and his scruffy beard, and her heart swelled in her chest. “I liked that you didn’t see me that way.”
“What way?”
“Damaged. Broken.”
A low noise of disapproval sounded in his throat. “You’re not either of those things.”
“I liked that you didn’t get your worried face every time we ordered nachos from room service.”
“I don’t have a worried face.”
“You absolutely have a worried face.”
She stroked her thumb between his brows. “You’re making it right now.”
He caught her hand and kissed the inside of her wrist. “I wish I could have been there for you.”
“You’re here now.”
“Did you let anyone be there for you, city girl?”
“Not at first. But eventually... Liv and my parents… and Jackson.”
He smoothed his thumb between her eyes. “Now you’re making a worried face,”
he said softly.
“My insurance sucks. And Jackson was—is—a good friend. He’d known other people who’d gone through eating disorder treatments. Pop stars and actresses. He got me a recommendation for the treatment center, and when I told him I couldn’t afford it, he paid for the treatment.”
“In exchange for you pretending to be his girlfriend?”
Ethan asked, his lips pressing together and his jaw clenching.
“No. He would never ask for anything in exchange for helping someone. The fake dating was my idea. Part of the treatment plan was abstaining from new relationships for a few months. Especially physical ones. I sometimes...”
She bit her lip again, looked away. “I sometimes used sex in the same way I used food. Overindulging to sort of numb out everything else. I was afraid that if I was single, I’d turn to those types of relationships to fill the void, and replace one self-destructive behavior with another. But if I was supposed to be dating Jackson, then there wasn’t any risk of me slipping up. He needed to make the press believe he had settled down, and I needed to know that the next time I called you, it was because of how much I liked you, and not because I wanted to hide from my feelings.”
“You used to do that with me?”
He looked pained and she scrambled closer to him, cupping his face in her hands.
“No,”
she said vehemently. “But in the middle of treatment, I wasn’t sure if the way you made me feel was an extension of my disorder or if it was real.”
She scratched her fingers over his beard, and he closed his eyes, sinking into her touch despite the tortured furrow of his brow. “When I called you this last time to meet me in Boston, my therapist and I had finally decided I was ready. And I hadn’t been able to stop thinking about you. I knew then that what we had...what we have...has nothing to do with the disorder. I knew that my feelings for you were real.”
“Then why did you say no when I asked to see you again?”
“I was afraid.”
Her voice wavered, but she continued. “I fought so hard for my recovery—I still fight for it every day—and I was afraid I’d mess it up by wanting you too much.”
She looked away, tears stinging her nose and the back of her eyes. “It’s not something I’m proud of.”
“Hey.”
He caught her chin between his thumb and forefinger, turning her to face him. “You asked for help. You did what you needed to do to take care of yourself. You should be so proud of that.”
She dashed away an errant tear, and his eyes softened. “Don’t cry, city girl. I’ll be proud enough of you for both of us.”
From The Lady’s Knights by A K Wild, narrated by Slade Hardcastle
For three days and three nights, Lady Windtorn slept by Sir Llewellyn’s side, his men taking turns keeping watch over their camp. On the morning of the fourth day, before the sun gilded the hill beyond their camp, its rays advancing like so many soldiers with blades drawn to slice apart their nighttime happiness, Sir Llewellyn woke. He brushed the hair from his lady’s face and told himself to prepare for the inevitable.
“I cannot sleep while you stare,”
she said without opening her eyes.
He kissed her closed eyelids. “’Tis but a dream, my lady. You do not yet wake.”
“I do.”
She opened her eyes, blue like the summer’s sky.
“It is not yet morning.”
He lifted her hands above her head, held them fast as he moved to cover her with his body. She was soft where he was hard, smooth where he was rough, and when she parted her legs that he might settle between them, she was warm.
“The dawn has come, Sir,”
she said, smiling, though there was a sadness in her eyes. “My hus— The castle awaits.”
She’d caught the distasteful word before it was fully formed, but he heard it still, felt the sting of it. “Do not speak of that life while I am inside you,”
he growled.
She had to return to Lord Havenbrook. He knew it and yet he hated it.
When the time came, he would accompany her to the edge of the keep, see her safely returned to the life he’d stolen her away from, but not yet. Their interlude had been far too brief.
He worked himself between her legs, reveled in the salt of her skin beneath his lips, and cursed the sun’s ceaseless ascent.
Lady Windtorn met him movement for movement, opening herself to him, pulling him closer, deeper, with her legs around his waist. “You are correct, Sir,”
she said, her breathing quickening. “The sun has not yet risen. It is the moon. We still have time.”
“Aye, but a little longer,”
he said, his fingers laced with hers, face buried in her raven-dark hair, eyes squeezed shut against the blasted sun. Then, softer, so she would not hear his heart breaking, “Would that it were enough.”