SAMMY POV
He didn’t look at me when I was naked.
Not even the tiniest peek. Not a flicker of his eyes along the line of my collarbone, not a stray glance down my arm. Tabitha hummed at the edge of my mind, a low prickle of satisfaction ‘He’s a gentleman,’ she purred, and in the rational corners of me I wanted to believe her. I wanted to believe the world still held people who didn’t see me as my worst moment, people who could stand in a room with the pieces of me cracked open and not flinch.
But there was that other voice. The small, ugly thing I had wrapped in blankets and taped shut with as much practice as I had put into my smile. It whispered the opposite: he’s not looking because he sees the ruin. Because he knows what’s under the laugh and the bright chatter, and it disgusts him.
