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because I wasn’t
the one he wanted to hurt.”
    Which was
only the start of her coming in second place. It was always someone else that
everyone wanted, not her. Instead, they would use her to get to whomever it was
they really wanted.
    “I used
to have really curly black hair. I guess I looked just like our mother.” She
touched her too-sensitive scalp. “He set it on fire when I was five. That’s
when we were taken from him. They realized as I was in ICU just how abused I’d
been.” She shrugged.
    “I was
always second best. I had a guy date me once, not because he liked me or wanted
to be with me, but because he wanted to get close to Vivian. Not that I blame
him. She’s beautiful and outgoing and doesn’t have a shy bone in her body, and
I’m not any of those things.” Even to James, she had been second place, and she
knew it.
    “Damn,”
he breathed out. He set his bottle of water aside and moved her into his lap,
his arms wrapping around her. “Then I go and be a complete asshole, reinforcing
it all again for you. No, don’t even pretend to deny it. I hear it in your
voice. Shit, Sophia. I’m amazed you didn’t kick me to the curb from the word go . You should have, honey. Why you
stuck it out as long as you did, I’ll never know.
    “I’m
eternally glad you gave me half a chance to get my head out of my ass, but I’ll
never understand it. You’re gorgeous, smart, talented, and the sweetest person
I’ve ever met. And don’t you dare say you don’t have a backbone. You were
giving me grief that night just fine, so I know you’ve got some serious iron
running down that spine of yours.”
    Fia blushed
and pressed her face into the curve of James’s shoulder. “How could I not stick
it out?” she asked finally and pulled back to look at him. “You’re the only
reason I survived childhood. When I was being beaten, I would have flashes of
your life, the things you were doing, and I would feel your loneliness even
though you were surrounded by others. I knew I had to live, had to survive for
you. You saved me and didn’t even know it.
    “I have
to admit to you, however, I don’t like being second best. I hate it,” she
whispered.
    “You’re
number one in my life,” he assured her, softly. “You’re the only reason I won’t
fall to the dark. Sophia, you’re everything. The light that will keep me from
the darkness, the hope that will keep me going, and the goodness to counteract
my less-than-pure tendencies. You hold everything inside of you that is pure,
right, and good. Hell, you’re damn well too good for the likes of me, but I’m
never, ever letting you go. The Fates, Gods, whoever, chose you as mine, and
I’m keeping you. Period.”
    Fia was
perfectly fine with that. She smiled and moved to touch her fingers to his
cheeks. “Good. Whoever put me with you knew what they were doing, and I’m very
happy that they did.” She leaned in and brushed her lips to his very lightly.
“And when my paintings come here, you’ll see just how much of your life I’ve
lived.
    “They’re
scenes from your memories or past or whatever it is. I did them to keep myself
sane and not give in to the pain and the desire to just slip away forever.”
    “Now,
I’m really not sure I want to see them.” James made a face. “I didn’t exactly
have a pillar-of-the-earth sort of life. Hell, I didn’t even have a good one
until I came to the Guardians. Even then, it was a little sketchy for a time.
Wait…” He lifted his head and sent her a narrow-eyed look. “Are there any of me
naked?”
    She
shook her head. “I painted what I saw through your eyes. The horses, the towns,
your guns, fields of flowers. Things like that.” She had refused to paint the
numerous naked women that had invaded her psyche until she had learned how to
tune them out. “And you lived in a pure time, a time before Mother Earth began
being abused and stripped of her beauty.”
    “So,
there are none of me personally?”