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"It's not like they were all engaged to her, Edison."
"How many of these men did you live with growing up?" My silence at that was all the answer he needed. "Exactly. If he opened his house up to you, but didn't start treating you like you mattered just as much as your mom did, Lenny, he's part of the problem."
"You can't blame the men for my mother dragging me around like luggage."
"No, but that is something different. We're talking about the men that you lived with for weeks? Months? Years? And they never even attempted to try to gain your trust? Sorry, love, but that is not a good man. Does your sister have trust issues too?"
Ugh.
Knife, gut.
But he didn't know how much that hurt.
"Letha, unlike me, had a father that loved and fought like hell to be in her life. Even when my mother made it illegal, he and I made it work so he could be there for her."
"For her."
"Yeah."
"How old is your sister?"
"Twenty-four."
"And you're, what? Thirty?"
"Two."
"How old were you when you stopped living with him?"
Okay.
He was making a good point.
"Twelve."
"You spent four years of your childhood with this man. And yet you say she had a man to lean on, she had someone who fought to stay in her life. What the fuck about you, Lenny?"
"I wasn't his."
"You lived with him for four fucking years, Lenny. You might as well have been his."
"Jake was a good man, Edison. As a whole. He hated my mother. He saw me as an extension of her. But he treated Letha like she was the reason the sun rose in the morning. And he will always have my respect for that. She deserved that."
Edison's arm gave me another, tighter, squeeze. "You deserved it too, Lenny."
"Not every girl gets to be that lucky, Edison. That's not how the world works."
"No, it's not," He agreed. "And every man like the ones you have known who drops the ball with these little girls makes a generation of women who aren't able to tell another one of them from the ones who are happy to pick up the ball. So you don't even bother trying to tell us apart. "
"It's easier to never get romantic ideas in your head like that, Edison. If there's one thing I have seen over and over in my life, it's that you should never put your trust in someone else. They'll drop it. They drop it every single time."
His free hand moved, reaching for mine, sliding his palm against mine. It was so much bigger, his fingers inches longer, his palm another half a hand bigger than mine. The skin was calloused in spots too, the pads under his fingers and down on the lower right side.
And as I was marveling at these little things, his fingers shifted, moving between mine, then curling, holding on tight. Almost too tight.
"I've got a good grip, Lenny."
Those were the last words he spoke before slowly drifting off to sleep, still holding my hand.
And they were words that kept me awake for at least another hour, rolling over and over, until letters I had known since I was four suddenly looked like hieroglyphics, until the sounds I had rolled off my tongue countless times sounded a lot like a foreign language.
I rolled them around until they became something else entirely.
Because the words kept at face value, with the vehemence in which he said them, well, I almost could let myself believe he meant it.—I woke up to something tickling my nose.
And it took me an unfathomably long time to realize that that was unusual.
I was a heavy sleeper and hard-waker so even as I swatted at the thing doing the tickling, and something attached to the thing made a low, rumbling chuckle noise at my sleepy growl, it didn't quite click that someone was tickling my nose, and that no one should have been tickling my nose because no one was ever in my place.
In fact, I didn't actually start to genuinely be awake until the fingers drifted from my nose to trace my lips, and that very sweet, very chaste contact sent a surge of desire between my legs.
Then I became acutely aware of the fact that I was somehow naked, though I never slept that way, the sheets bunched up around my waist, my bare breasts exposed to the cool air, nipples hard.
"What..." I hissed, completely awake in a blink, shooting up in the bed on an inward gasp.
"Easy," Edison's voice called, soothing, but also amused. When my head whipped in his direction, he was sitting at the very edge of the mattress, showered, judging by his damp hair, and redressed in his usual all black. "Been trying to wake you up for five minutes," he informed me, clearly amused by that fact. "Figure you're not used to waking up in a strange place, so I'll let it slide this once. But the next time, I am waking you up in a fuckuva more fun way."
