Whispered Desires

Chapter 10: The Pizza

JASMINE

Photography has always been my passion.

I knew that from a very early age. For my eighth birthday, my father gave me a Polaroid camera. I spent most of that day trying to get a picture of Mila and our dog, completely ignoring all the kids that came to my party. My mother scolded me at the end of the day, saying I should've socialized more and that I should stop hovering over Mila like a helicopter. She also wasn't thrilled when she realized that the entire film was full of pictures of our dog, Mila, and me.

Apparently, that was a waste of money.

I still have those pictures. One of them I carry around in my wallet; It's the one where I managed to get Mila, our dog Rupert, and me, in one picture. It's blurry and you won't really know who's posing in there unless you know. But that doesn't matter.

It's beautiful.

That's a lesson that I've learned and lived by all my life. Beauty is not perfect. Beauty is not a model-sized blonde woman in a bikini.

Beauty is vibrant, messy, subjective. It is what we want it to be, simply.

Objectively, to society's standards, I'm not a beautiful woman. I'm too tall, have too many stretch marks, my hair is too thin and dry, my skin is too blotchy and freckly, my breasts are too small and my ass is too big... At least that's what society tells me.

I've felt that observation all my life. I felt the looks; I felt the whispers behind my back, felt the way people tried to make jokes about me.

I decided I needed my own understanding of beauty. One that makes me the most beautiful person in the world. One that didn't judge a book by its cover, that focused on the inside, not the outside. It made my life so much easier and gave my confidence and self-worth a boost I definitely didn't expect.

I'm my very own beauty now.

What other people thought of me never really mattered to me, from that point on. No man ever made me feel as desired as I feel by myself, by the confidence that I am the best version of me I can be.

No one but him.

I don't know what it is about Kilian, honestly. Maybe it's the way he looks at me, his eyes depicting a fire that burns down all those beauty standards... Every time I feel his gaze on me, it's like I was the only woman he craved, like I held the answer to all the questions he ever asked himself.

But maybe, maybe it's just the fact that I don't jump his bones the second he asked me to, like most women do. I don't even blame them, honestly. I would've done the same if he wasn't Hayden's best friend. That relation makes things messy and complicated. That I feel so drawn to him certainly doesn't help matters either.

I'm not one to play games, but I still need to figure out how to behave around him, where I want him in my life. If I want him in my life. I need to take control of the situation before it gets out of hand, and that just proves to be really damn hard when he shows up literally everywhere I go.

Stop playing. Get your head straight, woman.

"Miss Watson." The unfamiliar voice brings me out of my thoughts, and I look up from the comfortable armchair in the fancy Formula One lounge. A buff-looking security guard stands right in front of me, crossing his arms in front of his chest as he studies me through his dark sunglasses.

"Yep! That's me," I answer with a smile before I jump up, stretching out my hand to the man. He just looks at it though, his brows raising before he wordlessly turns around and walks through a door at the other side of the room.