But she is beautiful, she always was, and I want her to know.
“Beautiful? I…?” She can’t finish her sentence. “You said that before in the cell, but I didn’t believe it was true. I—”
“It was true then, and it’s true now,” I interrupt.
I lift her hand and bring it to my face, looking at it thoroughly. But I don’t see what she sees. I don’t see the monster her father made her out to be. I see the girl who went through all the pain in the world just to protect the people she loved.
I pull her hand closer and bring her fingers to my lips to kiss the tips.
Her lips part, and I can tell she’s struggling to breathe.
“You’re beautiful,” I say, planting more and more kisses all over her fingers and hand.
“You don’t have to say that,” she says. “You don’t have to make me feel better after—”
“I’ll say it a million times more until you believe it too.” I interject, pausing my kisses only to look into her eyes so she knows I mean it.
And I’ll make do on my promise right now as I pull her hand closer and kiss every inch of her fingers—every ridge, every bump, every scar. All of it is beautiful because it’s a part of her, and she is nothing but beauty. Not only on the outside but on the inside too. Her heart is too huge for her tiny body. She brought kindness where there was only corruption, and for that, I’ll be eternally grateful.
So I kiss her with everything I have, dragging my lips along her hand and arm, snaking around her body until I’m right behind her. And I wrap my arms around her body and sink my teeth into her shoulders just like before.
“Oh God, what are you doing?” she mutters.
“Making you forget,” I reply, licking up the tiny blood droplet before kissing the small wound. “Just like you made me forget in that cell.”
She whimpers as I drag my mouth along her skin all the way up to her neck, leaving pecks all over. And I move her along with me, dragging her body from behind all the way to a large mirror standing in the bedroom where I force her to stand.
And together, we look at how I lick the wound on her neck, then kiss her other arm and fingers, and all the scars left behind by her past.
“I’ll cover every inch of your skin with kisses until you believe me,” I whisper into her ear.
Tears roll down her cheeks. “But all I’ve done is cause pain to the people I love.”
There it is. The pain behind all the lies.
The scar she kept hidden from the world.
The lies her father made her believe.
“You are not responsible for your father’s actions,” I say. “Do you hear me?”
She nods.
I grab her chin and force her to look at herself in the mirror. “Did you love your mother, even when you never knew her?”
She nods again.
“She knew you too, even before you were born. Your mother made you with love.” When I grab her throat, I add, “Say it.”
“My mother made me with love,” she says.
“She made you exactly how you were meant to be,” I say, never breaking our eye contact.
“How I was meant …” she mutters. “To be.”
“She made you to be loved,” I say. “And your father broke that oath.”
More tears roll down her cheeks.