Page 474 of Once Upon a Fable

“Oh, my God.” My hands flew to my mouth. Shock almost made my knees give out as I drank Kas in. “What...what are you doing?”

He didn’t look at me, glowering at himself in the mirror and hacking away at his long, ruffian hair. His hands operated the kitchen scissors as if they were a hack blade, chopping off sections of uneven strands and scattering them all over the bathroom floor.

I flinched at all the clumps already discarded on the floor by his bare feet. My stomach panged in worry as I inched into the bathroom and dared to reach up, stilling his hand with mine and trying to take the scissors from him, just in case he was sleepwalking.

“Kas?” I studied his dark eyes, trying to see if he was in a nightmare or awake. “Are you...okay?”

Slowly, the manic self-disgust faded from his stare, and his shoulders slouched. Tearing his eyes from the mirror, he ran both hands over his face and gave me a wobbly smile. “Sorry. I had meant to be done by the time you got back.”

“Done with what?” I looked at the scissors in my hand, a rush of sickness filling me. “You weren’t...going to hurt yourself, were you?”

“Christ no.” He shook his head and planted his hands on either side of the sink, staring at himself in the mirror.

“Then what were you doing?”

He sighed heavily, taking his time to reply. Finally, he murmured, “I looked up what a gala is online.”

“Okay...”

“I scanned images of richly decorated ballrooms, champagne towers, and crazy flower arrangements on overly stocked tables.”

“You lived in a mansion. That surely doesn’t scare you. You’re used to decadence. My little house is a downgrade in that area.”

He cleared his throat. “It’s not the setting that made me panic.”

“Is it the thought of so many people? Of being open about what you endured?” I leaned against the vanity and faced him. “If it is, I get it. I was wondering if it would be too much for you. As lovely as the offer is and the potential donations you could earn would undeniably cause positive change, it’s not worth it if it makes your past haunt you or your concussion to have a relapse.”

His hand came up as he cupped my cheek. His eyes swirled with emotions I couldn’t decipher as he bent and kissed me. “It’s not that, Gem.”

I kissed him back. Tasting his tongue with mine, wishing I could erase all the horror from his soul.

Slowly, he pulled away and took the scissors from me. I tried to hold on to them, but he just added pressure and showed me just how powerful he was, how strong he was beneath the kindness he showed.

“It’s me they’ll be afraid of.” He shook his head, his hand fisting around the scissors, waving them at his reflection. “Those pictures online showed women in sparkly gowns and men in black tuxedos. Each one was clean-shaven, groomed, and polished.”

My heart squeezed as I understood instantly. “Just because you don’t look that way doesn’t mean you have to change.”

“I know.” He scowled at his reflection, studying his beard and tangled long hair. The way it cascaded over his shoulders and hung in sheets around his face looked like armor. A shield that’d been hacked and damaged, a barrier that kept him removed from the world, kept him part animal, granting him the strength of the bears he used to live with and the predators who stalked his valley.

“No one expects you to look like a guy who works in a boring office all day, Kas.” I touched his arm. “They’re going to the gala knowing that you have a tale to tell. Your appearance only corroborates that tale.”

He sighed again, his eyes dancing over his face. “But what if I don’t want to be that tale anymore?”

“Then you do whatever it is that you want to do.” I wedged myself between him and the vanity, making his chin drop to look at me. Cupping his cheeks, I whispered, “Long hair, short hair, beard or no beard, I will love you. The question is...what will make you love yourself?”

His head tipped down, his lips pressing to mine.

He inhaled as his tongue licked the seam of my mouth, slipping into me, enticing me into a deep, sensual kiss.

I sighed and puddled against him, looping my arms around his neck, willing to go wherever he led. Pulling away a little, he murmured, “I think...a part of me let my hair get this long and never shaved—even though there were scissors and razors at Fables—because I wanted to be as repulsive as I could.”

My heart broke all over again. “So no one would find you sexually attractive?”

He nodded and pressed the lightest kiss to my lips. “As slaves, we were forced to shower after every guest, to shave everywhere, to wear perfume and aftershave and present ourselves in whatever outfit the guests requested. By the end, we all despised hygiene because it meant we were desirable. We often joked in the dorm that we’d find a way to smear ourselves in animal shit so the guests wouldn’t want to touch us.”

I snuggled into him, pressing my cheek against his chest. His heart pounded beneath my ear. There was nothing I could say, so I just held him while he shared another piece of himself.

“When I lost my memory for those five years, I still shaved and trimmed my hair. I’d smashed the mirrors by that point, but I did it byfeel, some part of me doing its best not to become completely wild. But when my memory came back...that was when a lot of my coping mechanisms came back to haunt me. I didn’t bathe for a full month. I was proud of my stench. Each month, as my hair grew longer and my cheeks itched with a thicker beard, I was fucking grateful because it was an armor against ever being used again.” He sucked in a breath and squeezed me tight. “Eventually, I returned to washing myself—mostly because I took to swimming in the river a lot. I found I wasn’t successful in hunting if I didn’t wash regularly. My prey could smell me coming.” He chuckled. “So, you’re lucky you found me with just long hair and not a body odor that could clear out the entire valley.”