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“Which is probably why you continue footing the bill for your deadbeat dad and your grandmother, even though it’s draining you dry.”
Boom. Boom. Boom.More mines in the emotional minefield blowing sky-high.
I swallow hard. “You said yourself that family is important. After the way we grew up, I know you can understand that.”
“I can understand wanting people around you that you can trust. In my life, that’s the difference between life and death,” he says. “But wanting the same family… that’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.”
“Being loyal is stupid now?”
“Being loyal to people who will never return it is stupid,” he says. “Once someone has betrayed you, you cut the cord. No second chances. No mercy.”
I raise both brows. “That’s harsh.”
“That’s how you get to the top. But with people clinging to you and weighing you down, you’ll never rise beyond where you are now. So long as you have people like Ashley in your life, you’ll remain stuck in the mud.”
“There have been points in my life where Ashley was the only person I could count on.”
“I doubt that,” he snorts.
I turn to him. “Oh yeah? Remember that tattoo on my hip you asked about earlier? I got that because of her.”
He leans forward, eyes dragging down my body to my hip. I’m wearing a dress, but I could be convinced that he can see straight through the material to my skin beneath. “Are the two of you fucking or something?”
I barely manage to swallow my next drink of wine without spraying it across his room. “What the—No! Of course not! Why would you even say that?”
“Friends get matching tattoos on their forearms or on their shoulder blades. You don’t let a friend brand you with a hip tat. That’s… sensual.”
My skin burns. I can feel the tattoo, hot and tingly at the very edge of where my hip transitions to groin.
“You’re right,” I say. “Ashley didn’t brand me there. Someone else did.”
Timofey goes eerily still.
I laugh at my own nerves. “I shouldn’t have brought this up. You already think I’m stupid. This will cement it.”
“What happened?” he asks in a low voice.
“I think I’ve bared enough of myself tonight.” I wave him away. “It was nothing. Forget it.”
Timofey snatches my hand out of the air. His fingers are firm around my wrist, but his touch is gentle, too. He brushes his thumb over the webbing of blue veins under my skin. “Tell me what happened to you, Piper. Tell me who touched you. Tell me who hurt you.”
I’m trembling in his hold and there is no way to hide it.
It’s not as if his opinion of me can stoop any lower, so I take a deep breath and let it rip. “There’s a reason why abused people tend to end up in abusive relationships again. There’s a vulnerability we carry. Or, at least, thatIcarry.” I correct myself because I can’t imagine anything about Timofey being vulnerable. “Abusers can sense it. When I met my ex, I didn’t stand a chance. He knew exactly how to draw me in.”
“Tell me.” Timofey is staring at my hip like his eyes are the laser that might be able to remove the ink embedded in my skin.
“He gave me everything I wanted.” I laugh at Past Piper’s naivete. I thought Josh was perfect. I really, truly did. “He treated me like a princess. Always said the right thing. He told me how beautiful and talented I was. He lifted me up and made me feel like the luckiest girl in the world.”
“And then?” Timofey asks. I’m not surprised he sees where this is going.
“And then… he pulled it all away.” I fold my hands around my nearly empty wine glass, trying to stop the shaking in my fingers. “He withdrew and got cold. I thought it was my fault, so I tried hard to connect with him and get back to the warm, loving place we were in before. But nothing I did was good enough. That didn’t stop him from enjoying my efforts, though.”
I heard once that sex isn’t a simple activity; it’s a destination. It’s a journey.
When things got bad with me and Josh, there was no escaping the oppressive walls he’d built around us. The sex was lifeless. I could never get out of my own head long enough to enjoy it. I was so worried he wasn’t having a good time even while he grunted and thrusted. Then, the moment he finished, he’d tell me how his ex did it better.
Timofey plants a fist in the mattress. The comforter twists under the pressure from his knuckles.
