Page 57 of Our Secrets and Scars

She shifts in place. The hem of her cropped sweater rides up, exposing her midriff, and she tugs it back down again, refusing to meet my eye.

“I told you it’s too much,” she whispers.

“You’re scared.”

Her eyes find mine, sad and vulnerable. I want to reach out and hold her, but I don’t. She’s like a small animal right now; any sudden movement or overstep might spook her. Despite my frustration and desperation to touch her, I know I have to tread carefully.

She says nothing, but her silence is confirmation that I’m right.

“Is it the prison thing?”

“No,” she answers hurriedly. “Of course not.”

I thought it would feel different, mentioning my incarceration out loud. She always wrote in her letters that she didn’t judge me for it, that she wasn’t afraid of me, but I still thought it would elicit some sort of awkwardness when addressed in person. It doesn’t though. And that surprises me. Because how could she not be at all bothered by my imprisonment? How could she be so open to getting to know me and so naïve in her trustfulness when I’d never told her what I was charged with?

Maybe if she knew, she’d feel quite differently.

“Then what are you afraid of?”

She shakes her head and takes a step back. A step away from me. A step away fromus.

“Please, Holden,” she begs. “Please don’t do this right now.”

“Then when?” I demand. “If not now, then when, Kinsley? Because I know for a damn fact that if I let you walk away from me now, you won’t be coming back. After all this time, after everything we wrote to each other, every letter, every scribbled word, you’re actually here in front of me. Ifoundyou. And there’s no way you could convince me it’s just a coincidence. It’s fucking fate.” I take a long breath, and in a calmer voice, I say, “We talked about this moment before in our letters, remember? What it would be like if we met in real life. Are you seriously gonna turn your back on what this could be just because you’re scared?”

She blinks up at me, worrying her bottom lip between her teeth. And still, she says nothing.

“I thought you weren’t scared of anything,” I say, remembering the conversation we had in the studio the day I gave her the tattoo and hoping that it might do something to reignite that fire I know blazes so brightly inside of her.

“I’m not,” she says softly.

“Prove it.”

Her eyes flare, and I know I’ve got her. It might be anger fueling the flames right now, but that’s okay. It’s better than the meek ambivalence she was giving me before.

“What do you want from me?” she yells, causing the heads of several students nearby to swing in our direction. “I’m protecting myself, Holden. I’ve lost you once already and yeah, maybe it was because of some stupid misunderstanding, but it hurt too fucking much to go through again.”

“I’m not asking for marriage, Kinsley, just to give this thing a shot.”

“Why? You know nothing about me.”

I laugh. I can’t help myself. It’s the most ridiculous and preposterous thing she could have said, and I can’t see how she could possibly believe the lie herself.

“That’s bullshit and you know it.”

Her eyes dip to the floor, and that’s when I see it. The vulnerability, the insecurity that exists so powerfully inside of her and tricks her into believing things about herself that are simply not true.

“This is about your scars, isn’t it?”

She says nothing. But she can’t hide the tears that instantly dampen her eyes and the way she immediately starts fiddling with the material of her white pleated skirt.

I reach for her and tilt her chin up to look at me, my hand sliding into her hair to cup the back of her head. Even this close, it’s hard to see the scars I know are hidden under the layers of expertly applied makeup. The most I can make out is a ridge or two on one side of her temple, where the texture is a little rougher than the skin on the rest of her face.

“What are you so afraid of?” I whisper.

She shakes her head, biting her lip to the point of drawing blood. I run my thumb along it, soothing her with gentle strokes.

“That I’ll disgust you.” Her voice is so quiet, so shaky and pained, that my heart stops.

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