Secret Curves (Dangerous Curves Book 5) by Marysol James Page B

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