Read Skin (McCullough Mountain 2) for Free Online Page B

go?”
    “No, I have thirty to go.”
    His brow lifted nearly to the soft hair at
his temple. “That’s a lot of weight to lose. Why is that your magic
number?”
    She leveled him with a stare and sighed.
“Fine. Here goes. I haven’t been small since I was twelve and even
then I thought I was fat. My hips were always a bit wider than my
friends and my legs a little thicker and my boobs a little bigger.
Every year I gained ten pounds like clockwork until I started
fanatically counting everything I put in my mouth. I’m overweight,
but I’m an expert dieter. When I crossed two hundred pounds I
panicked. I didn’t always utilize the healthiest solutions. I’ve
done pills, shakes, starvation, cleanses, nothing but produce, and
things too dangerous and shameful to mention. Nothing worked.”
    “All that quick fix infomercial crap is
bullshit. That’s why.”
    She stared at the carpet, her fingers
wringing on her lap. “I hate what I see when I look in the mirror.”
Her voice cracked. “It hurts sometimes, physically hurts, when you
see yourself and despise it so much.”
    The warm weight of his palm pressed into her
knee. She couldn’t look at him. She was too afraid she’d find pity
in those sharp, blue eyes. Her voice was a low whisper as she went
on. “When I saw my doctor last spring, he scared me. My family
doesn’t have a great medical history and he basically assured me
that if I didn’t do something I was going to die.”
    He scoffed. “That’s a little dramatic. You
know the difference between God and doctors, Philly?”
    “What?”
    “God doesn’t think He’s a doctor.”
    She laughed, but barely. “He’s right,
though. I’m not healthy. I’d love to be skinny, but I don’t think
that’s realistic. But there’s a part of me that felt like such a
fat failure walking out of that office I just wanted to prove that
doctor wrong when I went back for my next check-up. I saw the
arrogant way he looked at me. He thinks I’ll fail and I don’t even
have the track record of willpower to claim he’s wrong.”
    “You’re way too hard on yourself.”
    “Why shouldn’t I be?” she snapped, turning
her glare on him. “Look at me, Finnegan. I don’t look like a
healthy person. I saw your girlfriend and all those other girls at
the pub the other week. You have no idea what it feels like to
always be the biggest person in a room.”
    “Mallory, you were not the biggest
person in the room.” His voice was sharp and anger swirled in the
depths of his denim blue stare.
    “You don’t understand. Look at you! How
could you understand?”
    “You think I don’t have insecurities?” He
demanded. “You think I don’t look at myself and see things I hate?
You’re crazy if you do. Everyone hates some part of himself or
herself. Jesus, I can’t even have a functional relationship.”
    She scoffed. “At least you have a
relationship.”
    “Half the time I think Erin despises me. She
breaks up with me almost every month. She never compliments me, but
has plenty to say about how I come up short.”
    Then why are you with her? She didn’t
understand why people settled for less than what they deserved. So
many times she blamed her unyielding standards for her sentence of
singledom. It made no sense that a man like Finnegan McCullough
should suffer a dysfunctional love life.
    “Sometimes I think I’d be happier without a
girlfriend,” he quietly admitted.
    “Then why don’t you break up with her?”
    He shrugged, his gaze focused on the ground.
“I’m afraid to be alone. My whole family’s nuts. Being around them
is like being stuck in a biblical outbreak of locusts. They’re
everywhere. It’s overwhelming, but they all seem to know their
ranks. Colin’s the good boy. Kelly’s the rake. Sheilagh’s the wild
child. Kate’s the maternal one. Braydon’s the student. And Luke’s
the…” He shook his head. “Who am I? All I’ve ever done is log the
land under my dad’s shadow. That’s