Secret Curves (Dangerous Curves Book 5) (9 page)

“She sent you away?” Once more, Curtis was angry for her, but he tried to hide it. “She just dumped you at a boarding school?”

“Yeah, that was definitely what happened, and I knew it even then. But the truth was, I
loved
the school. It was heaven for me.”

“Because of the dancing?”

“For sure, but not only.”

Tessa stopped talking again as the waitress brought Curtis’ breakfast over. The woman shot her a curious look, but almost sprinted away when Curtis turned and levelled her with a ferocious glare. Tessa grinned at that familiar expression, then saw how it slid right off his face the second that he glanced back down at her again. Jesus, she never thought he’d be so emotionally open with her, and she felt the urge to cry again, this time from happiness.

“Go on, Tessa. Tell me everything.”

“OK. Well… I loved the routine. You know? After years and years of never having a clue what might happen next, I found the rigid structure and scheduling a relief. I knew what was going to happen and when, I knew what my teachers expected, both academically and in dance classes. I had rules and I had timetables, I had a set bedtime and a uniform. It was an incredibly stressful and competitive environment, obviously, but I thrived in it. I felt like I had control over my life for the first time ever. I
loved
it, Curtis.”

“I can see that.”

“The big problem came when I turned twelve.” Tessa picked at her fruit salad, ate a grape. “My body changed.”

Curtis nodded. “Yeah.”

“It was a problem that many girls had. We developed breasts and hips, we started to get our periods… that’s the time that lots of girls leave dance, or at least give up any hopes of a professional career. But I was determined to hold on to my shot. No way I was being sent away, no way I was going to live in Denver with a woman who had zero interest in me. New York was my home by then, and I was going to stay.”

“What did you do?”

“The only thing I
could
do. I controlled my weight to stay in the dance school. I starved off my breasts and ass and thighs, delayed my period for years, kept myself below a certain number on the scale even through my growth spurts.”

“Shit.” Suddenly, Curtis saw it all so clearly. “Bad combination, huh? Your incredible need for control, and then an unhealthy relationship with food? One that ended up being
rewarded
by keeping your place?”

“You know it. It wasn’t easy for me, since my natural frame is medium, not small, and I’m tall for a ballerina. I was told in no uncertain terms that the only thing for me to do was be thin and light – and as long as I did that, I’d be able to stay.” Her smile was shaky. “Between the need for control in my life, and the need to control every single bite of food I took, it was a recipe for disaster.” She paused. “No pun intended.”

He gave a sharp laugh. “Noted.”

“And that was it, I guess.” She ate some apple, and Curtis almost sighed in relief that she was eating. He picked up his own fork, started his breakfast too. “I held on like that until I was twenty-seven.”

“Wait.” Horrified, he stared at her, his fork held aloft. “You – you starved yourself until what… three years ago?”

“Yep. I’d met Kevin in New York, of course, and he adored me as a thin ballerina. He worked for one of the big investment banks, and we were this glamorous power-couple, you know? I mean, I never made it huge on the stage, but I worked steadily and was in demand. But then it all fell apart.”

“What happened?”

“Well, I fell and ripped my right knee to shreds.” Tessa glanced down at it. “I was told that I’d never dance again, not professionally. And then one month later, Kevin lost his job when the firm he worked for crashed on Wall Street. I started to comfort eat, but I’d messed up my metabolism and starved my body for so many years by then, that the weighed just
piled
on and… well. That was the beginning of the end, I suppose. By the time I got myself together, I’d put on eighty pounds and I hated myself so much, it was unreal. Kevin called me every name under the sun, and instead of smacking him upside the head and telling him to get the hell away from me, I – I put up with him. Hell, I even
agreed
with him… that I
was
a fat, lazy, disgusting pig.”

Curtis breathed slowly, determined not to track Kevin down and kill him with his bare hands. No, that prick was gone, long gone, and Tessa was still here. And she needed Curtis to be everything that Kevin wasn’t and hadn’t been for her.

“So how’d you guys end up back in Denver?” he asked.

“My grandmother helped Kevin get a job here, and she also told me how sorry she was that we’d never had a relationship when I was growing up. She begged us to move back so she and I could get to know each other.”

“She had a change of heart.”

“Oh, yeah. Totally.” Tessa picked up her fork now and speared some orange and grapefruit. “She was sick by then, and she was trying to set some things right. I was one of those things.”

“And did she set things with you right?”

“Yes.” Tessa nodded and took a bite of toast. “We worked it all out, and she died with no regrets or hard feelings between us. She left me a sizable chunk of change, and I've been living off it off-and-on ever since. When things got rough financially, you know.”

“And Curves?”

Tessa shrugged. “I needed a job badly, and as it turns out, writing ‘ballerina’ as the sum total of your job experience doesn’t get you very far in the professional world. Unless you’re an actual, you know, ballerina.”

“You said that you kept your weight below a certain number on the scale until three years ago,” Curtis said abruptly.

“Yes,” she said, startled at the change in topic.

“What was the number?”

She squirmed, but decided to be honest. “One hundred.”

“You… you…” Curtis was floored. “You stayed below
one
hundred fucking pounds
?”

“Yes,” she said quietly. “I kept the scale bang on ninety-nine.”

“What’s a healthy weight for you? For your body and height?”

“Rianna, the woman who’s my dietician and counsellor, says that I should aim to stay between one hundred and thirty-eight and one hundred and forty-eight pounds. No less than one-thirty-six.”

He was frozen with rage. “And when you ended up in the hospital a few weeks ago, what did you weight?”

Tessa paused. “One hundred and two.”

“You lost – what? Eighty pounds in less than half-a-year?”

“Almost. Yes.”

“
Christ
, Tessa.” His voice was strained. “It damn near killed you.”

“I know.”

“
Fuck
.” Anger was rising in him again, but this was anger at himself. “I knew it was bad, baby, but I had
no
idea
…” He took a deep breath, not wanting to upset her. “I should have done something sooner.”

“I wouldn’t have listened to you.” She gave a small, helpless shrug. “I
didn’t
listen to you.”

“I know. But I should have forced the issue harder. Talked to Mac sooner, talked to a counsellor behind your back and brought them to Curves, staged an intervention… something. Fucking
anything
to help you.” Guilt and shame were boiling away in his stomach. “I’m sorry. I’m just so damn sorry.”

“Hey,” she said softly. “You did what nobody else did, Curtis. You made me stop. You
do
know that, right? I wasn’t going to stop, I know that, and you
made
me stop. You – you saved me from myself. You saved my life.”

He sucked in some air, sucked in a bit more. OK, the past was the past, and nothing to be done about it. All that mattered now was what he did from this moment on. And in order for him to do the right thing for her –
do the goddamn right thing at last, you moron
– he needed all the information.

“And where are you now?” he asked. “Your weight?”

She managed a grin. “Are you actually asking a lady how much she weighs?”

“Damn straight.”

She paused, peered up at him. Curtis wasn’t messing around right now, she saw.

“I weigh one hundred and nineteen pounds.” She averted her eyes, knowing from his tense arms that he wasn’t happy with that information.

“Still too little,” he snapped, astounded that she weighed exactly one hundred pounds less than he did. “You need to eat more, Tessa.”

“I know. I’m – I’m working on it.” She fought back tears yet again; God, she was
sick
of crying. “I’ve put on seventeen pounds in almost three weeks. That’s – that’s
terrifying
for me, Curtis. The last time I weighed this much, I’d just blown out my knee and lost everything I’d ever wanted and worked for. I was depressed, and pigging out on pizza, and I saw
nothing
good in my life. To be back at this weight, it’s… it’s scary. I don’t like how it makes me feel – it makes me remember all the shit that was going on in my life then, and it’s only going to get worse as I get heavier. I don’t
want
to go back to that time in my life, but with every pound I gain, that’s exactly what I’m doing.”

“And you’d do a lot to avoid going back there, huh?” he said, understanding better now. “Including losing weight again to escape the feelings?”

“Yes.” She bit her lip. “That’s one of the things that I talk about with Rianna. How to gain weight slowly and with healthy food, and not panic and stop eating as the numbers get higher and higher on the scale. How to handle all the feelings and memories that come up as they do. For me, gaining weight is – complicated. It’s way more than just going to McDonald’s every day and stuffing my face with abandon. Lots goes on in my head every time I step on the scale and see the numbers going up, and none of it is good.”

“Fuck, baby. I’m sorry.” Curtis felt like a monster. “I have no right to tell you that you’re too thin, or you’re not doing this fast enough… that was an asshole thing for me to say.”

“It’s alright. I know I’ve got a ways to go yet, and I’m trying to do it properly. I mean, I can follow the diet OK, but I’m struggling with some other parts of it all.”

“Like what?”

She ate some more fruit. “Like… enjoying food.”

That
was an alien concept to Curtis as he finished his last piece of bacon. “You don’t enjoy food?”

“No. Food was never about enjoyment for me.”

“Never?”

“No. With my Mom, it was something that was unpredictable and irregular, so I’d eat it when it appeared, since I had no idea when I’d see more of it again. At the ballet school, it was restricted and controlled for optimal weight control and energy. When I hit puberty, it was the goddamn
enemy
, conspiring with my body to make me gain weight and lose my place in the company. After I got hurt, it was comfort, at least for a while, before it became the enemy again as my weight spiraled out of control.”

“You’ve never just thought of food as delicious? As something that gives pleasure?”

“Never.”

Curtis stared at her. “Do you think food tastes good?”

“I suppose it does, but again, I’ve never thought about it that way.” She glanced down at her half-eaten breakfast. “ I have to learn to taste it properly, you see. Rianna says I have to let myself experience all the tastes, and not be afraid of them.”

In some ways, it felt like Tessa was speaking a foreign language. Curtis understood her words, yet they seemed to have no meaning, or at least, no meaning for him. Clearly, this was a language she was fluent in, though: the language of self-denial, and bland flavors, and terror of losing control.

“Why would you be afraid of them?” he asked gently.

“Because a part of me still feels like if I like a taste too much, I’ll lose all control, and I won’t be able to stop eating it.” She smiled. “And it’s just my luck that I
love
sweet stuff.”

Curtis laughed as he remembered their first tentative flirtation over his birthday cake. “Yeah. Me too.”

She looked at his incredible body, at its rippling muscles and defined planes, then at his empty plate. “But you eat like crazy, Curtis, and there’s not an ounce of fat on you anywhere.”

“I work at it, baby.”

“Yeah, I know.” She gave him another slow once-over. “I can see it.”

His eyes flared at her husky tone. “
Can
you?”

“Ummm-hmmm.” Tessa ran her hand over his chest, loving how his breath started to get tight and fast. “I can
feel
it, too.”

“I love you.” Curtis never thought he’d say this to anyone in his life, not ever, and now that he’d started saying it to Tessa, he didn’t think he’d ever
stop
saying it. “I’m so damn proud of you, Tessa. I think you’re amazing.”

“I love you, too.”

He gave her a smile so full of sweetness and happiness, she almost fell over. Curtis was a drop-dead sexy man when he was all growly, but when he smiled like
this
? Dear sweet Lord, the hotness factor went up about six thousand percent. Tessa was only human, after all, and she was seconds away from tearing off his clothes, and checking out just
exactly
how hot his whole body was. If his upper body was any indication of the rest of him, she might have a coronary on the spot the first time she saw him revealed in all his glory.

“Tessa?”

“Hmmmm?” She gave herself a mental shake, blinked away the fantasy that had started to play like a dirty movie in her mind. “Yeah?”

“What did you…” He hesitated. “Do you have a picture of what you looked like back then? Back at ninety-nine pounds?”

She went very still. “Yes.”

“You have it with you?”

“Yes. I – I carried it with me all the time, as motivation. Now, it's more of a visual cautionary tale.”

“Can I see it?”

“You want to?”

“I do.”

Tessa nodded. “OK.” She reached for her purse and pulled out her wallet. She paused, then took out the folded-up picture and handed it to Curtis. “This was me.”

He unfolded it, stared down at it. Shock and horror moved over him slowly in a wave of dawning realization. Suddenly, Curtis really,
truly
understood just how sick, tired, and scared she must have been back then. Worse, she’d been that way for a long time, and she’d been surrounded by people who'd enabled this behavior. He wanted to kill someone.