“You don’t have to keep saying that,” I whispered back.

“Why? Am I boring you?”

“No.”

“Does it bother you that I find you so beautiful?”

I shook my head. “No, not really.”

“Not really? Explain. I want you to open up to me.”

I sighed, looking down at his chin to avoid looking into his eyes. “I’m not what I once was. Don’t pretend it’s not there, and please don’t feed me the bullshit of it doesn’t look bad. It does, and I know you can see it, and you see it every time I look at you. So… don’t keep telling me I’m beautiful as a way to boost my confidence, or whatever it is you’re hoping to achieve.”

He surprised me by chuckling, and I scowled at him. “What’s so funny?”

He shook his head. “Bloody hell, Claire. Are you so self-conscious you think the world revolves around your bloody scars? Of course they’re there. Of course I see them. Of course you look different than you did when I met you on that train. But I’d never feed you bullshit just to make you happy. I say what’s on my mind. I say what’s in my heart. I don’t lie, and I certainly don’t pity you – and even if I did, I wouldn’t have some kind of agenda to make you feel better about them. I know whatever happened to you wasn’t deserved, so I’m not going to pester you to tell me either.”

To say his words knocked me back a step was the biggest understatement of the century. Maybe a part of me expected him to deny telling me I was beautiful to make me feel better, but I certainly didn’t word it in my head the way he just did.

Ben Costigan was blunt and brutally honest.

I loved that.

“Well,” I said, “now that we’re talking about it, just so you know, I did deserve what happened to me.”

I went rigid when his thumb stroked the harsh lines. “I find that incredibly unbelievable,” he replied solemnly. “Whatever happened here would have been very painful, and I can’t for a second believe you’d ever deserve that.”

“Maybe I attacked someone first and this was their retaliation.”

“No, I’m positive that didn’t happen.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Yes, I do. You didn’t deserve it.”

“You’re wrong.”

“Then tell me what happened so I can be the judge of that.” He then quickly added, “If you’re comfortable to, of course.”

I wasn’t uncomfortable talking about it. I often found a way to detach when I had to explain it – which hadn’t been often. Most people looked like they were walking on eggshells around me, as if asking me would somehow make me crumble into a million pieces.

But telling it to Ben was different. I was very hesitant.

“It might change how you think of me,” I warned him. “And that’s the only thing that makes me uncomfortable.”

He kissed me again. “It won’t. I promise.”

“You can’t promise something you don’t know about.”

“I can and I just did. I’m a man of my word, remember?”

This time I did look into his eyes. I searched them, and all I saw staring back at me was his genuine honesty.

Okay, Claire. Just tell him. Don’t ramble on either. Cut to the chase. The sooner it’s out, the faster you can put it behind you.

“I won’t say I was drunk and stupid,” I started quietly, “because that would be a coward’s explanation. Truth is I knew exactly what I was doing. I seduced a taken man at a bar, feet away from his girlfriend. He was very attractive, and I was very shallow. It didn’t bother me that he was taken because I felt like his girlfriend was inferior to me, and that he deserved the best.”

I paused for a moment, expecting some kind of reaction from Ben. But he just stared at me, patiently waiting.

I continued. “When she was preoccupied with her friends, I slipped a note into his pocket, telling him to meet me in the alleyway. I waited not even a minute before he showed up. There was something exciting about trying not to get caught. Like he was so desperate, he was risking it all just to have me. It was naïve thinking at the time, but it made me feel alive. He took me against the wall, and I remember feeling his warmth against me. We’d only made out before the world started spinning and the sounds of screams broke through the haze.

“I knew immediately that we’d been caught, and I felt this horrible ache in my chest. I’d really thought we wouldn’t, and the reality was unlike anything I’d ever expected it to be. The man didn’t defend me, and it wasn’t like I expected it or anything, but I certainly didn’t think she’d put the entire blame on to me. He was pulled aside, forgotten, like a kid that would get scolded as an afterthought when all was said and done. Meanwhile, her and her friends turned to me, and I knew what was coming. They were going to beat on me. I took off running and barely made it out of the alleyway before my hair was yanked back. I fell to the ground and before anything started to make sense, this enormous sudden pain crashed into the side of my face. My whole head felt like it’d exploded, and I couldn’t hear or feel anything. I fell back, and they continued beating me. I passed out somewhere along the way.

“I don’t know how long I stayed like that, but my thoughts returned to me before I even opened my eyes. I remembered everything as I started to stir awake. And when I remembered the pain, I instantly stopped moving. I was paralysed to the ground, scared that if they’d see me move, they’d continue hurting me. I was panicked. My stomach churned and my skin broke out in cold sweat. The pain on the side of my face felt like it had its own pulse, and it was going a million miles an hour.

“It was only so long before my body couldn’t handle it anymore. I turned to my side and threw up, and when I opened my eyes, I realized I wasn’t in the alleyway. I was in a hospital. They told me I’d been glassed in the face. The girl and her friends did a lot of damage. Thirty stitches to the face, two broken ribs, a concussion, and a body full of scrapes and bruises.”

So much for short and to the point.

“So there you go,” I said lamely, finishing off my epic monologue. Why did I have to talk so much?

He was quiet. Probably judging me. Probably wondering why he just bedded a whore. He had the right to.