“Tell me your name.”
“Never.”
Calysta gave it a moment’s thought and shook her head. “I refuse to call you Beast.”
“Why not?”
“Words hold power.”
“Then call me whatever you want.”
The statement surprised her, but a slow grin formed on her face upon recalling a distant memory of a troubled young man who had once acted towards her like a beast. “Are you sure?”
“Will you agree to stay if I let you?”
“I can name you whatever I want? You won’t protest?”
He narrowed his eyes at her before giving her a curt nod. “Fine.”
“I know what to call you.”
“Yeah? What?”
“Brendan.” She nodded. “I will call you Brendan.”
Pleasure danced in her eyes.
As if everything about her didn’t already make him so tense, Brendan had to hear his own name come out of her lips. Of all the names in the world, why had she chosen his actual name? The sound of it was a reminder of everything he had lost, of the man he had once been and could never be again.
“Get out.” He tried to keep his tone flat, but it still sounded like a demand.
“What?”
“You heard me.”
“Why?”
“Walk back with me. I deserve at least that after you kept giving me conditions to stay.”
She tilted her head to the side. “Fair, but ask me nicely, and I might oblige.”
He grunted. She was really testing his boundaries. “Fine. Please walk back to the villa with me, Calysta.”
Her stare lingered on him, as if she was trying to decipher whether to grant him his wish or not. How had it come to this? The humiliation was more than he could bear. How nice did she want him to be? If she thought he would ask again— He exhaled when she finally opened the car door.
“Calysta?” James shifted on the driver’s seat to check on her. “It’s a long walk.”
She glanced at Brendan before nodding James’s way. “I’ll be fine.”
James lingered until she shut the door. He drove back to the estate. Alone with her, Brendan slowed down. He expected her to keep in pace with him and breathed a sigh of relief when she did.
Questions reeled in his mind. Had she known his name all along? Had she been playing him the whole time? Had someone told her who he was? Would Emilia trust her enough to be so foolish as to reveal his true identity to her?
“We won’t walk in silence the entire time, will we?” Calysta asked.
He cringed. He didn’t trust himself enough to speak to her without sounding angry. The last thing he wanted was to drive her away. Not after he had just pleaded for her to stay. He cleared his throat, hoping it would help hide the edge in his voice. “Brendan.” A cacophony of emotions burst inside him upon hearing himself say his own name. “Why that name?”
“You don’t like it?”
“I don’t.”
She shrugged. “You said I could choose the name. Why don’t you like it?”
“Why did you choose it?”
A bitter smile formed on her face. “The name reminds me of someone from the past, someone who acted like a beast, even if he didn’t look like one.”
Brendan swallowed hard at the recollection of the first time he had seen her years ago. Was she referring to him? “So you named a beast after a beast?”
“No, not really. The name came to mind because your eyes remind me of his.” Her pretty face tensed for a moment. Her lips tightened. A huge smile suddenly lit up her countenance. “It was my favorite part of him. He had these beautiful, piercing green eyes. So do you, so that’s what I’ve decided to call you. From this day forward, you shall be Brendan. Deal with it.”
“Are you always this stubborn?”
“No, actually.” She chuckled. “I’m usually not like this. Maybe I’m just trying to ease my own tension. Or maybe it’s just you. You bring out the stubborn in me.”
“How on earth am I doing that?”
“I’m not sure. You just do.” She glanced at him before walking a few steps forward in silence. “What changed your mind?”
“About what?”
“About me staying. You were so furious. I’m honestly still shaken.”
Shouldn’t she be? “I don’t know why I changed my mind.”
“That can’t be true.”
“I wouldn’t know how to tell you even if I knew why, Calysta.”
“At least tell me why you were so angry. Tell me something, Brendan.”
He stopped walking. He couldn’t stand hearing her say his name. How could he tell her how much pain it caused him, how much it reminded him of everything Belle had taken from him?
“I wish you’d just call me what I am.” Not what he had been.
“I won’t call anyone that.”
“I’m a beast. That’s who I am now.”
“It’s not who you are meant to be.”
“…you were meant for greatness.” Belle’s words haunted him. At that time, he hadn’t had a question in his mind that she had been speaking truth, yet here he was now — the farthest thing from great. “You don’t know what I was meant to be.” Maybe he didn’t either.
He started walking again. She kept in stride with him.
A comfortable silence followed. He preferred it to her unending questions and demands. The farther they walked, the more at ease he was in her company, but all it took for his tension to return was her touch. To his surprise, Calysta hooked her arm over his elbow. Her hand grazed the part of his arm he had clawed through earlier. He tried to hold back the growl of pain, but it was too late.
Her hand had already brushed against the fresh wounds. Her face softened at the sight of the blood on her fingers.
“It’s nothing,” he said.
Her tender gaze revealed her hurt on his behalf, as she gently took his arm to inspect the wound. She breathed in a sob, as if trying to hold more of it back. He winced at the thought of seeing her tears and withdrew his arm from her. “It’s nothing,” he repeated.
“It’s not nothing.” There was not a hint of accusation in her gentle tone as she brushed her fingers against the hairs of his arm. “Brendan, you said you never hurt anyone since this happened to you, but did you do that to yourself?”
He didn’t have to say anything for her to discern the answer. “I don’t count.” His voice carried no irony. Just cold fact.
“Of course you do.” Calysta lifted her left arm and placed it right next to his.
At first, he couldn’t see what she was showing him, but her fingers trembled slightly as they hovered over her light skin, then began to trace a path. She stepped closer, so their shadows could reveal a part of her he never would’ve expected to see.
There it was.
The record of her pain, faint but present.
Calysta’s scars.
She’s braving the unknown. He’s what waits in the dark.
Even true love’s kiss cannot break his cursed heart.
Brendan Ashthorn was perfection — brilliance, beauty, power — until a stranger’s prayer shattered his soul. Cursed into a beast and exiled to a remote villa, he hides from the world and from himself. Only one can save him, and she’s someone he loathes.
Life punishes Calysta Daniels for choosing what’s right. When offered a desperate deal to save her father, she finds herself in a forgotten mansion, face to face with a man who wants nothing to do with her.
Will the rose that never withers die when she gives up on him? Or bloom at last when he realizes someone can love the man within?
The Beauty in their Scars is a fiercely human contemporary Christian retelling of Beauty and the Beast — a love story that dares to find glory in the deepest wounds and beauty in the bearer of scars.
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