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Jerk.
He brushed her hair behind her ear. “So pretty. Even in the morning, no make-up, hair all a mess, with smudges of mascara.”
“Oh my God!” She put her hands over her face. “I didn’t check to make sure that I looked all right before I came down here. Don’t look!”
He chuckled. “Sweetheart, I’ve already looked my fill, spanked your ass, and had my fingers in your pussy. I think you’re past hiding.”
Bloody hell.
He was right.
She peeked at him through her fingers. “You sure that you don’t have any magical memory erasing abilities? Ooh, maybe I should try eating some magic beans and see if that helps.”
“No jelly beans first thing in the morning,” he ordered.
Such a party pooper.
“And I’m sorry, I seem to be all out of magical memory erasing abilities this morning.”
“Drat. Typical.”
He lifted her onto the counter, which was both a good thing and a bad. Good, because it got her weight off her stinging feet. Bad, because now she had her weight on her stinging ass.
“I didn’t have the best childhood,” he told her.
Shoot. They were just getting straight into this? All right then.
“Okay.”
“I know a lot of people didn’t have great childhoods, but mine was pretty much bereft of any sort of nurturing. My parents cared about two things, getting wasted and beating each other up. Occasionally, they’d remember I was there and they’d hit me too.”
Oh God. Oh no.
She could imagine little Thomas. How cute he must have been. And how awful his parents were to treat him that way.
“Grady,” she said.
“I don’t like my first name, because back then I was Thomas. That’s the name they gave me. The name they used to scream at me. That’s who I was at school. To all the kids that didn’t want to be friends with me, to the parents who screwed up their nose when they saw me and wouldn’t allow their kids to invite me to their parties. I was the kid with ripped clothes that were too small for him. Bruises I had to hide. Far smaller than everyone else.”
That was hard to imagine now.
“Don’t cry for me, sweetheart.” He wiped his thumbs over her cheeks.
“I don’t think I have any control over my leaking,” she replied. “It has a mind of its own. I’m so sorry you had that childhood.”
“I withdrew into myself. If I didn’t have emotions, I couldn’t get hurt. I didn’t really think it all out, I was too young. But that’s what happened. I was touch-starved, emotionally-stunted, and physically, I was pure runt. And then my life changed.”
“How?”
“My father nearly beat me to death.”
“No,” she said horrified.
“He thought I’d stolen some money from his wallet. The thing is, I knew it was Ma. I saw her do it earlier that morning. But he was mad and I was close and I wasn’t going to tell him it was her. Usually, he’d stop after a few slaps, but he was in a really bad mood that day and I ended up in the hospital for three weeks, recovering.”
“Grady.” She wanted to reach for him, to hug him.
But he shook his head.
