Page 87 of Cash

Six months ago, I had a very small taste of that, and I’d handled it like a total twat.

I had to give her something beyond the voicemail apologies I’d left for her.

“Penny quit the NSA,” I told her.

Her head twitched. She recovered quickly, but there was a hint of confusion when she muttered, “Okay.”

“She works at Z Corps now. Mostly remote, corporate cases that don’t require Garrett or Kira’s skill.”

This time there was no twitch, but the confusion was deeper when she repeated, “Okay.”

“We still haven’t talked about it. The past. Our mother. None of it. I can’t go there and she respects my decision even though I know it hurts her. She feels guilt and wants to explain. The problem is, I don’t want to hear it. Part of me might be a little curious but the rest of me is too afraid of what will happen if I hear her out.”

“Cash, you don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do.”

“But, I should, for Penny. I should want to stop her pain. She’s my sister.”

Stella’s cheeks hollowed out and I knew she was clenching her back teeth when she gritted out, “No one should force you to do anything you don’t want to do.”

Stella might never admit it, but I knew her dislike for my sister stemmed from her wanting to protect me.

“But you see, the problem is I feel nothing with the woman who I share blood with. No, that’s a lie, I feel guilt. Shame. I feel like I should feel some sort of connection. Don’t get me wrong—I like her, she’s funny as hell, and she respects the walls I’ve put up and that makes me feel like more of dick. But the truth is, every time I see Penny, she’s a reminder that my mother picked her. She kept Penny but tossed me out like trash.”

“Cash.” There was more meaning in that one whispered word than I’d ever heard come from Stella.

Not pity but understanding.

I couldn’t stop myself from reaching up and catching her around the back of the neck, pulling her closer as I leaned forward to rest my forehead on hers.

“My whole life I’ve felt like trash,” I confided. “Until the sweetest pair of blue eyes looked at me like I was worth something. And when she clung to me and gave me her trust I felt like I could do anything. Then this morning she called me liar and that cut so deep I fucked up and forgot.”

“What’d you forget?”

“That I promised myself that once I found you, I wasn’t letting you or Cara go.”

Stella jerked.

I smiled, lifted my forehead off hers, and before she could protest, brushed my lips over her cheek.

That was enough soul bearing for now.

“C’mon, let’s get your back cleaned up.”

“Do you see her often?” Stella asked from beside me.

I didn’t dare take my eyes off the ceiling. I’d already made the mistake of watching her crawl into the bed beside me and settle on her stomach. Last night I hadn’t given it a whole lot of thought—what it meant having Stella next to me in bed with nothing more than a t-shirt. But tonight, after I’d cleaned her back and helped her into one of my shirts before I left her in my bathroom to brush her teeth, some sort of strange thrill licked up my spine. The fuck of it was the excitement wasn’t sexual.

Make no mistake—I wanted to fuck the woman silly and would’ve if she wasn’t injured and there wasn’t a child sleeping down the hall. But with those two barriers in place, something else had taken root, something more, something I’d never wanted to do in my life, and for some reason the need to simply hold her hand was harder to control then the desire to fuck her.

And that was a mindfuck.

“Penny?” I asked.

“Yeah.”

I swallowed the lump in my throat that tasted a lot like vulnerability.

“She comes into the office once a week, sometimes it’ll stretch to two weeks. And we have dinner occasionally.” Then I gave her more. “She’s never been in my house.”