“Her quest for perfection was a very big part of my childhood, but I’ve moved past it now. And I want to keep it that way.” Meaning, he didn’t want to talk about it.
“I’m sorry, Max. I’m really, really sorry.” I’d already retracted everything publically, but it didn’t matter. The press seemed more focused on the B&H part of the story now. The executives were probably going to be indicted for fraud. “I can’t say it enough.”
“None of it matters now,” he said. “C.C. is sold—all essential personnel are being moved over to their new home and the others are enjoying generous severance packages—I can let my mother fight in the courts with B&H, and you’re alive. It’s over. And I’m out.”
“What will you do?” Not that he was broke. The press said he’d gotten a tidy sum for the company, shared with his mother of course, but now I knew the truth: This was never about the money for him. He was a man who loved living and wasn’t afraid of challenges. He loved to push people to their fullest potential and believed in being genuine. What you saw was what you got. No bullshit. Just…beautiful. Inside and out.
“I haven’t decided yet,” he said.
“Max, I know you have no reason to forgive me or want to let me back in your life—not after you trusted me so implicitly—but you have to recognize that I was right about one thing: I am absolutely not and never will be good enough for you. You are completely amazing and strong and such an ass and you should’ve told me what you were doing or called me when the shit hit the fan, but nevertheless, I’m sure you had your reasons, which now, knowing you as I do, had to have been because you didn’t want to drag me into all this and you were trying to insulate me because that’s just the sort of guy you are.” I drew a sharp breath, pausing my rushed words. “But I am begging you to give me another chance. I’ll do whatever you want, go anywhere you want, say anything you need to hear, but please, please forgive me, Max. I honestly love you. And I have since the moment you looked at me. Really looked at me.”
I waited for his reply, but all I got was a view of that pulsing jaw, that large hand running through his messy hair, and the other hand parked on his waist.
God, how could I have let that fucking ugly voice inside my head tell me so many lies about him? How had I allowed myself to ignore my heart?
“Thanks for coming by,” he finally said, giving nothing away and glancing at his watch, “but I’ve got to meet with my lawyers to settle a few remaining loose ends.”
Body language says a lot, more than words ever could, and his said he didn’t want anything to do with me. Full circle.
We ended exactly where we started: Maxwell Cole was repulsed by me. Only this time, it wasn’t because of my face and I couldn’t argue.
I held back my tears—not for my pride, but for him. He didn’t deserve to feel bad for rejecting me. He really didn’t.
“Goodbye, Max. And thank you for everything.” Thank you for being the only person to ever really take the time to see me.
My name is Maxwell Cole. I am now thirty-four years old. I am six foot three, and I was once the man millions of women longingly stroked themselves to each night, wishing for a taste. I am also fucking ugly.
Yes, they say that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but so is ugly. And if anyone’s picture were to be posted in the dictionary, surely my photo would deserve the spot beside the word.
No, I am not lacking when it comes to looks—a face that can stop any woman’s heart with a subtle twitch of my lips, and a body I’ve dedicated the last twenty years, several hours each day, to sculpting and perfecting, right down to the diagonal ridges that run below my six-pack and end right at my large dick.
My bank account is nothing to sneeze at either. I am, by most people’s definitions, fucking handsome as hell and a great catch.
Yet, there is a part of me, buried deep inside, that thinks so many ugly thoughts that sometimes I wonder if I’m human. How can anyone with a heart or a soul think such despicable things about women?
Because I do.
Those who fail to meet my standards of beauty have revolted me as long as I can remember.
My mother beat those thoughts into me. She nearly drove my sister mad, too.
But knowing those toxic thoughts weren’t my own, yet feeling them anyway, triggered a lifelong obsession. Ironically, I also found inspiration in these women who cause such deep emotional conflict inside me.
Short, tall, small tits, big asses—didn’t matter. I found a certain fascination in these people who, despite their superficial imperfections, clearly loved themselves. I can learn from them, I’d thought. And I can be that voice that tells them not to listen to the Mrs. Coles of the world.
That was why I founded C.C.—to prove to myself that I did not have to be a product of my mother’s illness. There was a sweet, twisted, vengeful beauty making billions by preaching to the masses how wrong her ideals were.
But everything I had was built on lies. My lies. Because I shared her same sickness.
Then I met Lily.
It’s difficult for a man, especially one like me, to articulate how someone like her affects you. But the moment she refused to accept my disgusting, afflicted ways, the belief inside her that a person was more than what my eyes saw, I knew; I’d never seen a more beautiful woman. And that moment in Milan when I couldn’t stop smiling? That was when I saw her beginning to realize it also. If there was hope for her, there was hope for me.
Unfortunately, too many assholes like me had gotten to her. She wasn’t a lost cause, but it would take some work to get her to see herself through my eyes.
Only I’d failed. I’d failed to get through to her.
She said that she didn’t deserve me, but it’s only because she had no clue what I’d been before I’d met her. And now, I needed to tell her everything, including how I had never planned to keep her as my employee. I’d planned to have her work by my side. Forever. Only, I hadn’t had the balls to come clean before it all went to shit.
A fucking coward.
Yet, here I was, standing outside her little store with daisies painted on the window that she’d created with her own two hands. Those soft, loving, sensual hands.
I stepped inside her small clothing boutique, just a block from the main street in downtown Santa Barbara. I knew she had no employees—yet—worked twelve hours a day, if not more, and had paid off her loans from the settlement with those fucking news vultures who’d stalked her. She would never have full strength in her left arm again, the scar on her forehead would never fade, and despite the surgeries, her nose would always lean slightly to the right, according to Dr. Bloomfield.
But I knew I would love every imperfection more than ever, because despite six months of separation, I couldn’t move on. And I had finally forgiven myself just like I’d forgiven her. Like me, she’d been blinded by that ugly voice in her head. But she’d also given me back my life. Lily was everything to me.
“Hello, Lily.”
She turned, and her beautiful brown eyes went from a warm friendly glow to trepidation.
“Max? What are you doing here?”
Looking at her face, now healed, took me by surprise. It still looked like her, but the bulbous nose was replaced with a thinner more delicate shape. That large square chin had been sculpted down into a rounded point. And those eyes that once had lids sagging over the sides were wide open and round. The scar on her forehead left a little mark that ran into her hairline, but other than that, I couldn’t see much evidence of the meat grinder her face had gone through during the accident.