Scared of Beautiful by Jacqueline Abrahams

had a chance to deliver the meal. My leg shakes nervously under the table, and I realize that what terrifies me most is not that Maia will judge me, but that she will walk out the door. Maia does something to me that I can’t explain. Her presence is so overwhelming and intoxicating to me. I sound like a fucking stalker thinking like this about a girl I met not so long ago, but it’s the truth. Dinner is painfully quiet. We order two more tequilas, but we both push the food around our plates, neither of us having much of an appetite anymore.
    “So…” Maia’s voice startles me. “For four years you had no idea where she was, or that you had a daughter.” I nod my head. “Wow, that must have been rough on you. I’m guessing you loved her very much.” Maia feigns nonchalance, but she averts her eyes when she says that.
    “I did,” I reply sincerely. “I mean, I may have loved her then, but after what happened I’m not in love with her anymore, if that’s what you’re asking.”
    I reach across the table and cover her hands with mine. “I can’t change the past Maia, I don’t know what will happen with Shana and I as far as our daughter is concerned. But I do know that Brown was a fresh start.” I look down at our intertwined hands. “Everything was so fucked up for so long after Shana left. Her, Jade and I had hoped to come to Brown together. After that day, I barely graduated high school, and spent the next three years working at my dad’s auto shop, using every cent I earned on booze, to get high and to hire PI’s to find her. Truthfully I wasted three years on meaningless sex with so many women that I lost count.” I look down, not proud of my past. Maia deserves to know it all. She deserves the right to make an educated decision about me. “Then one day I woke up and decided to stop being a fuck up, realizing that Shana was probably out there somewhere, living her life, and that I had to respect the fact that she didn’t want me in it, or in our daughter’s. That’s when I came here. And met you, and believe me, I haven’t looked back since.”
    I feel like someone has lifter a huge boulder off my chest, but my body is still tense, waiting for Maia’s reply. She looks up at me with those beautiful brown eyes and smiles. “I can’t change what you were and who you were before I met you. I know what I need to know and that’s all I need right now.” Her words are heavenly, and I can’t believe that this girl is really fucking real. “Just promise me something,” she says somberly.
    “Anything,” I reply, really meaning it.
    “Promise me that if given the chance, you will be a good father to that little girl. I know how important that can be.” Her eyes sweep the ground and I know she remembers how heartbreaking it was for her to feel unwanted by her father growing up. At the end of it all, we’re both wounded in some way. Both victims of a past that we didn’t ask to be a part of. “Take me home,” she says suggestively, biting her bottom lip. She’s so damn hot when she does that. But truthfully, I don’t just want Maia. I need Maia. I need to undress her and feel every inch of her body, explore every last crevice. I don’t think I’ve ever paid a bill in a restaurant that quickly in my life.
    The choice for whose dorm to got to was easy, since Jade was in Atlanta. Thinking of all the ways I would take Maia tonight had me gripping the steering wheel as we made our way back to the campus. Maia walked ahead of me up to her dorm and all I could think about was how her ass would feel in my hands. My hands find her hips as she unlocks the door and she moans softly as I trail a string of kisses down her neck. She opens the door, locks it behind her, and then walks past me to the desk near the window. She slides onto it and pulls her sweater over her head, revealing a black lace bra that holds up the fullest, most amazing tits I have ever seen.
    In less than a second, I was standing