Unwanted Heat

Kenzie

The golf cart ride back to our villa is short but every bump causes the fabric of my cover up to rub against my sunburn, making me wince each time. I hadn’t realized the sun was so strong, that the suntan lotion I put on this morning had worn off or wasn’t strong enough for the sun of the island. When we get back to the villa, I go in the bathroom and remove the offending cover up and realize that my entire back is as sunburned as my shoulders are. Putting as much of the lotion on as I can, I quickly realize that I’m going to need help seeing that I can’t reach my most of my back. I step out into the bedroom and glance at the bed, immediately reminded of the morning that we spent in it.

I was quite taken back by the pajama selection that was packed for me; at first wondering if it was Nicholas’s doing, hoping that something would happen between us. But then I remembered he had a personal shopper arrange for everything to be purchased for our trip. I picked the most tasteful nightie that was packed to wear for our first night. When I put it on, I was so unsure if I should wear it. In fact, I almost took it off and changed it for a T-shirt or something else. However, when I looked in the mirror, I changed my mind. Who knew that something as simple as a nightie could make you feel sexy? I felt sexy and confident; something I haven’t felt in a really long time. Suddenly, his voice was gone from my head. I no longer heard him telling me how fat I was, how ugly I was and unattractive I was.

“Kenzie?” Nicholas knocks on the door, pulling me from my memories of this morning.

“I was just going to come to find you,” I open the door to find him standing there, wearing a pair of casual shorts and a short sleeve shirt.

“Oh? Everything okay?”

“Can you help me? I can’t reach…” I hold up the bottle of lotion.

“Of course. Where did you want…?”

“I think I should lay on the bed, if you untie the straps it’ll make it easier for you.”

“Okay, sure.”

I climb on the bed and lay on my stomach, Nicholas follows me, putting the lotion and towel next to me. With my chest pressed against the bed, I reach behind me and untie the straps of the bathing suit to make it easier for Nicholas. He seems to have difficulty finding a comfortable position and finally ends up sort of straddling my thighs.

“Wow that’s cold,” I hiss when he first pours some of the lotion on my back.

“Sorry.”

Instead of pouring more lotion directly on my back, he pours it into his hands and then rubs it on my back which warms the lotion a bit so it doesn’t feel so cold. Whatever is in this lotion is amazing because it instantly numbs my sunburn.

“Can I ask you something, Kenzie?”

“Sure,” I answer although I’m a little hesitant.

I don’t want him to ask something about this morning-I don’t want to hear that he regretted what happened between us. I never expected to wake up practically on top of Nicholas, but it felt so nice to have his arm around me holding me close to him. I’m still not sure how we went from him kissing me, to full blown making out. I don’t know how it happened, but it felt so… different than anything I’ve ever experienced before.

I’ve never felt so connected to someone as I did to Nicholas this morning. My only fear is what that’s going to mean over the next two years. The thing is, after everything that Nicholas has already done for me… I can easily see myself falling for him. Hell, I think I’m half way there already. I’m scared to death where that will leave me in two years when we get a divorce.

“How come it doesn’t bother you when I touch your scars? I mean… how come it doesn’t cause… what happened the other night?” his hands pause over my lower back, just above the waistband of my bikini bottoms.

The way his hands are positioned, his fingertips are barely touching one of my more prominent scars. I know where each scar is and what caused each one; I can never forget they are there or how they got there.

“I don’t know. It’s never bothered me when someone touched them. I hadn’t realized that having my hands held would… do that.”All content is property © NôvelDrama.Org.

“Are they all from your… ex?”

“No, actually most of them aren’t. There’s a few, like this one,” I take his hand and lower it to my hip where there’s a V shaped scar. “It’s from where I hit the corner of his desk. This one,” I bring his hand to the middle of my back, “is from a bookshelf. The small, really light ones over here… those were from a mirror breaking against my back.”

“God, Kenzie… I swear if I ever get my hands on that bastard…”

“He’s not worth it. Trust me, he isn’t worth anything.”

“You have other scars…” he says a few minutes later. He continues to rub the lotion onto my back, even though I’m pretty sure he is already covered ever section of my back already.

“This one,” I pull my bikini bottoms down about an inch so he can see the dotted scar. “One of my mother’s boyfriends… or maybe it was a husband, I can’t be sure, hit me with one of her belts.”

“Fuck.”

“I was six, maybe seven, it was the first time one of her men hit me. I… knocked over his bottle of beer when I was dragging my blanket on the floor heading to my room. He flipped out. He grabbed the first thing that he could reach which was my mother’s studded belt… he… held me down, lifted up my nightgown and hit me with it.”

“What did you mother do?”

“She told him to stop and sent me to my room.”

“She didn’t kick him out?”

“No, you see he was her meal ticket. She wasn’t working, so she couldn’t just pack us up and leave; she needed him.”

“God, I’m so sorry.”

“There’s nothing you can do. It was what it was-like I said, it was a long time ago.”

“What happened to her?”

“My mother?”

“Yeah… you had said you never saw her after… that night.”

“She’s dead.”

“Oh… I’m-”

“Please don’t say you’re sorry again,” I sigh. “A few weeks after she… after that night, I came home from school one day, did my homework and just before I was about to go to sleep, a cop knocked on the door of the trailer. They were killed in a car accident in Florida the week prior and had only just learned that I existed to inform me.”

“How did you manage when they were gone? You were so young…”

“It wasn’t like I was used to having someone take care of me, so it wasn’t very different from I what was used to. I ate the little bit of food we had in the trailer, trying to make it last as long as possible. I received free breakfast and lunch at school, so I really only had to worry about dinner. There was stale cereal in the cabinets, and a few boxes of stuff I was able to make. I don’t know how long it would have lasted if the cop hadn’t come that night.”

“What happened after that?”

“He was obviously surprised to find me living there alone, so he had to call child protective services. I spent a few nights in a group home before they found a living relative who would take me in.”

“That’s how you ended up on the west coast?”

“Yes, my… grandmother lived in California. She caused the rest of the scars you see on my back-”

“FUCK! Didn’t you ever get a break?”

“No,” I admit. “I mean… not really. When I went to college things were much better; I only had to deal with my grandmother when I came home on school breaks.”

“But then you lost your scholarship.”

“I did,” I shake my head remembering how close I was to my ticket out of her house, only to have it yanked from me. “It was like the universe was playing an evil trick on me. I was right there…”

“Only to have it taken away from you,” he finishes my sentence. “Your grandmother couldn’t help you cover the tuition?”

“Oh, she could if she wanted to; the lady had more money than she ever knew what to do with.”

“Why didn’t she pay for it then? Even if it was just to get you out of her house? I mean… it doesn’t sound like she wanted you there to begin with.”

“She didn’t. She only took me in because she was afraid of how it would look that she let her only granddaughter grow up in the foster care system rather than come to live with her. She never let me forget that she didn’t want me there. She wouldn’t pay for my education because as she said, it wasn’t her responsibility. She took care of my basic needs: I had a roof over my head, food to eat and clothes to wear. That was where her responsibility ended.”

“God, Kenzie…”

“She hated me and she made sure I knew it. I think she hated my mother so much that she took her anger out on me. I couldn’t do anything right as far as she was concerned. My grades were perfect in high school, perfect, Nicholas, as in a 3. 9 GPA, yet it wasn’t good enough. She punished me for anything and never believed anything I said. If I came home late from school because one of the activities ran over, she would insist I was out with a boy. She always told me I would end up like my mother; no man would ever love me and I would be good for nothing but a fuck.”

“Kenzie-”

“You want to know the irony of that? I’m not even good at that!”

“What? What do you mean you’re not even good at that?”