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Sally fought the urge to drop her face into her chest and hide because hiding was a lie. It didn’t save her. It hadn’t saved anyone—especially her mother, who’d been a master at hiding the bruises but was shit at hiding her heartbreak. Diving headfirst into booze and pills wasn’t hiding, it was fading…until there was nothing left.
Tell him. Tell Sly. Stop hiding! Stop fading! You’re stronger than the pain, the memories!Yeah, and once Sly heard it all, he’d realize she was a fucking mess and drop her like a cold chicken nugget.
“I told you how my parents met, but what I didn’t tell you was that my father was a cold-hearted bastard.” She snorted at her own words since they were a gross understatement. “My darling father had this picture-perfect life—the big house, the big bank account, the fine clothes, the dashing smile, the charming words and manners, but underneath all that was a misogynistic snake who absolutely delighted in making his wife and kids miserable. When he wasn’t beating the shit out of my mom, he was parading his whores through the house, fucking them on the goddamn dining room table while my mom was forced to sit there, nibbling on Nicoise salad and guzzling back Jack like it was water.”
Beside her, Sly was tense, his face turning red, his eyes turning black, every muscle in his cheeks and jaw twitching. The hands covering hers were strangling her fingers, but she welcomed the numbness that came with the loss of blood to her fingertips.
Keep going.
Her stomach roiling, her heart pounding, she continued, “And when dear ol’ daddy wasn’t cheating or beating on my mother, he was making sure that I was properly punished for everything I said or did, every expression I showed, every thought I had. My loving daddy really liked hitting me with whatever was closest.”
“Fuck!” Sly barked, jumping from the couch like his ass was on fire. Her heart dropping into her heels, she bit back the sob rising into her throat. This was it. This was when he left her. But she refused to stop—not now that the words were finally flowing, the truth finally coming out, the pain leaching from her blood. Fuck the consequences. He could run, but she’d give him all the dirty, ugly details first.
“He liked using extension cords, broom handles…anything that would leave long, bloody welts on my skin. I learned quickly how to clean and bandage my own wounds, and, thankfully, daddy was really good about only hitting me where I could hide it with my clothes. The clothes he picked out just to make sure I wasn’t dressing like my ‘whore of a mother.’ When I first sprouted boobs, I’d become a shameful boil on my dad’s ass. Daily fat-shaming, beatings, humiliating meals where he sat and ate steak while I silently cried over my plate of spinach and sunflower seeds.
“And my mother….” Another sob rose up to bang against her chest, but she pushed it down. Refusing to let the tears fall. “My mother bore the brunt of it all…the shaming, the beatings…. AJ was the son, so my dad didn’t hate him as much, only crushing him beneath impossible expectations, but hiding the abuse of his mom and sister from him until he left at eighteen.”
“Shit, is that what he meant when he said about you hiding stuff from him because you were worried? He left the house, and you stayed behind, living in hell with your mom and dad?”
She nodded, forcing a broken laugh. “Yup. Apparently, though, I was shit at hiding it because he’s known all this time.”
Sly jolted to a stop at the end of the couch, his blazing eyes pinned to her, his jaw muscles rolling as he ground his teeth together. “Why didn’t you ask him for help? He could have—”
“He was a kid, Sly. Just barely an adult, and he was gone living his life, working an honest job, and building a future for himself that he deserved. I didn’t want to drag him back home, and I certainly didn’t want him to know the extent of what was happening because—if you know AJ—you know he would have shot my dad in the face and not even blinked. I didn’t want my brother to be serving a life sentence in prison when all I had to do was survive another two years, and I was gone.”
His shoulder drooping at her words, Sly came and sat beside her again, his large, trembling hands cupping her face. Instantly, she melted into his touch. Her flesh and bone yearning for more of his warmth and all of his strength. Just one more minute, and she’d pull away. Just one more moment to memorize the feeling of his skin against hers, and then she’d pull back, steeling her spine, and re-erecting her walls to prepare for the inevitability of his departure. Because he would leave. That’s what he did when shit got hard.
“And…your mom? You said she committed suicide.”
A strangled sound broke from her throat, and she tensed to turn away, but Sly was there, his hands holding her face, the scent of him filling her nostrils, the heat of his large, muscular body pouring into her—Lord, she wanted to climb into his arms, into his soul, and never leave. She wanted to give it all to him, but she knew she couldn’t because he didn’t want it.
That’s not what he said in the car. He begged for your baggage!Yeah, but he wasn’t expecting a metric ton of it.
“My mom had been wined and romanced and married in less than six months, and she was barely grown. She had no idea what she was getting herself into by marrying the worldly wolf in sheep’s clothing that was Henri Dupree. My grandfather, unbeknownst to my mother, had made a deal with Henri. Henri would marry my mother, move her to the US, and he would get 52% ownership in my grandfather’s businesses. Apparently, my father wasn’t happy enough to be the sole heir to his family’s businesses. He wanted to put his fingers in other pies. And other women. See…my dad hated the fact that he’d been forced into marrying my mother, so he took it out on her and eventually us. He loved to flaunt his affairs in my mother’s face, knowing all along that my mom had fallen hard for him, hook, line, and sinker. He fucking got off on torturing her, fucking other women in front of her, shoving his affairs in her face…and forcing her to do things….” This time, when the sob erupted, she let it free. Immediately, Sly was there, wrapping his strong arms around her, crushing her to his chest. His steady heartbeat was like an alpha purr, coaxing her, calming her. His lips against her temple, then her forehead, then the top of her head told her that he was there, he was listening, and he cared.
He cares…he really cares.
“He hated my mom so much that he refused to let her speak Spanish in the house, to teach her own kids about their heritage. Yes, she made her mom’s recipes, but only when my dad was traveling. Do you know how awkward it is to be a first-generation Mexican-American and not know how to hold a simple conversation with your own people?” she shrilled, fisting her hands in anger. “He forced us to learn French and reject anything having to do with our mother and her people. Our family.”
“You don’t have to finish, baby. Let me get a bath started, and you can relax—”
She shook her head violently. “No. I have to get this out. I’ve been holding on to this for too long. I need you to hear this, to know the weight of the baggage you are so willing to carry with me. I need to give you the option to walk away—no hard feelings.”
He growled, the force of the vibrations shaking her to her core. She was both turned on and wiped out.
“Fuck that, baby. I’m not going anywhere. What do I have to do or say to prove to you that I. Am. In this. Especially now that I know how strong and amazing you are. After all you’ve survived, all you’ve endured, you are a goddamn goddess to me, baby.”
“I’m not strong,” she cried. “I left my mom to die in that house. She died alone, in agony—and I could have stopped her. I could have been there to help her, but I wasn’t! I was so fucking selfish, only thinking about making my own escape like AJ had.”
“How did she die?” Sly asked, his voice a soft, velvety demand, one she really wanted wrapped around her.
“My dad left for vacation with his flavor of the week, and my mom finally snapped. She was alone, no one there to pull her from the ledge…. I had been gone for a couple of months by then, but I’d been checking in with her, calling her, texting her, and every time she told me she was fine, that nothing had changed, that she missed me and AJ.” Another sob escaped as the memories of what happened next flooded her. Sly squeezed her, his arms flexing around her, his heartbeat steady, his heat and scent enveloping her. “I was sleeping before my first class of the day at FSU, and I got a call from Lisana, the housekeeper, and my self-appointed grandmother. She…she-she told me that she’d gone in to clean the master bedroom and found my mom in the bathroom. She was on the floor, cold. A bottle of oxy on the counter with a bottle of JW next to it—both empty.”
He hummed gently. “Could it have been an accident?”
“That was the first thing the police asked, but the truth was that after all the broken bones she’d suffered and the pain pills she’d been prescribed, my mom knew how much to take. She purposefully took too many pills and swallowed them down with a Scotch chaser.”
He kissed her head and began rocking her. “God, baby…. I am so sorry.”
