Page 78 of The Outsider

But in this venture she’d been made into an integral part of it all and it was like she mattered. Like it was good she was here, and not just a favor to her. That was how she’d felt when she’d been doing construction work, because she knew there were other people on the ranch who could do the things she did.

But this was something she knew.

They could have found someone else, but not as easily. She’d always struggled with certain parts of her favorite self-help book. She liked the ideas in it; she always had. But it suggested that to be effective you had to think ahead to an end goal, and she was always so busy playing catch-up that she could never get to that place.

Then there was that word. Synergy. Which she’d really never understood. The way you could work with people around you and make something bigger and better than you could alone. That had never been her experience.

But she’d felt that here. With the team she was brewing with, with the King family.

Not as much with Daughtry, who so resolutely had his own life.

But there was something she got from him too. A weird sort of stability. If she got charged up during the day, her mind spinning with everything that came next—because that was the thing about being able to think ahead; now she did it obsessively and anxiously sometimes—he was the calm presence at the end of the day that closed all that down.

He brought her to the moment.

He made her feel calm.

The way he made her feel was scary sometimes. He was a rock. Firm and steady. But he was also more.There was something electric and sharp she could feel radiating from under his skin sometimes, and she knew he didn’t want her to feel it. Didn’t want her to see it.

The truth was, she was really beginning to want him.

More than a crush.

Which she didn’t like or trust. Because where the hell could that possibly lead? Nowhere. And also apart from a few weird clashes—which had felt more electric than others, like that charge inside him had escaped—he didn’t seem like he was... hopelessly, desperately admiring her physical beauty in the way she admired his.

The truth was, she still couldn’t get the image out of her head of herself standing in the mirror looking like an escaped prisoner. Skinny and tragic and injured.

She had been a prisoner, she supposed.

A prisoner of her own inability to imagine a life, a future, that was different and more than the one she’d have if she stayed on the same path.

But she still felt tied to that girl. The one in the mirror. The one with the scab on her chin and the pitifully sunken-in stomach. The one whose body had been like a bag of sticks. A body that was built just for dragging her on through life, not enjoying things.

She didn’t let herself anticipate the taste of food in case she wasn’t going to get it.

She didn’t let herself have favorite foods because who knew when she would be able to have them.

She didn’t let herself feel lonely because there was no guarantee there would ever be a person that shecould trust, a person who would care for her, a person that she would care for in return.

And she definitely didn’t let herself feel desire.

Well. Apart from reading fiction. And there was a reason she was very spare on letting herself pick up any romance novels, because they did open up an ache inside of her that felt unbearable sometimes.

Because at the core of the ones that she had read was always this idea that love was inevitable. No matter how hard the situation you were in, no matter how seemingly unlovable you might be, in the end, it would be there for you.

And nothing in her life had ever demonstrated that to her. Nothing in her life had ever given her any indication that could be the case.

So she could only read them when she wasn’t tempted to trust them. When it was a nice thing to let herself hurt, because some days it was.

She didn’t trust herself to touch that book now. Not with Daughtry so close. Not with that keen need much more focused than it ever had been.

Because now it was personal. Now she understood what it was to want somebody.

Now that she didn’t have to ignore the feelings in her body—because when all you had was hunger, discomfort and bruises, why would you ever focus on what you felt?—she knew that she wanted him.

And that was the other place that romance novels had helped her and hurt her. Because she had read how it could be. Because even though she had never done it, she could feel, really feel what it would be like to beheld tightly by strong hands, to have a firm masculine mouth on her skin, to get lost in the sensation of being held.

She’d had a taste of it when they’d danced. The promise of all that pleasure in his touch.

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