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“Look at me, little star.” I tilted her chin up, searching her beautiful blue eyes. “What’s going on?”
She pushed her jet-black hair behind her ear, biting down on her bottom lip. God, she was so fucking beautiful. Every day that I woke up next to her was the best day of my damn life. The fact that she was suggesting I was keeping a secret from her only meant one thing.
She knew.
Or she knew enough.
Fuck. I hadn’t wanted it to come to this. But I should know better than anyone that some secrets couldn’t stay buried forever.
“I saw Kaviathin Voledetti today, and he gave us an engagement present.” Her gaze drifted to the open box on the table, then back to me. “He told me you were hiding things from me. So, I’m asking you, are you keeping secrets from me?” Her eyes glistened, and the ache in my chest grew.
That scumbag. He was a dead man. One way or another, I was going to get that son of a bitch out of my life. I clenched my jaw as I eyed the two daggers on the table. What a demented fuck he was. Always playing games, toying with people’s lives. I should have known he would pull something like this after he had given Nova a knife on Goodacre’s island.
I inhaled deeply, trying to choose my next words carefully. “Thereissomething I should have told you. I was trying to protect you, Nova, keep you safe.”
She sucked in a deep breath, her bottom lip quivering. “Oh, my God, he was telling the truth?”
“Let me explain, OK? Just please, hear me out before you get upset.” I gripped her shoulders, searching her eyes. I would explain everything, tell her anything she wanted to know.
I ran my fingers through my hair, tension rolling off my body. “There’s something from my past that I’ve kept hidden. Not just from you, but from everyone. Nobody—well, almost nobody—knows what I’m about to tell you.”
She nodded, encouraging me to continue.
“Come with me. I need to show you something.” I held my hand out and sighed with relief when she slipped her palm into mine. We walked down to the master bedroom, and I went into the closet. I reached up for the envelope, the one that contained my dirty little secret. My hands trembled as I held the weight of it in my hand. I didn’t know why I had kept it. I should have tossed it out years ago. But a part of me couldn’t let it go. There was a small box hidden even further back, and I dragged it down and walked back to the bed where she was sitting.
I reached into the envelope and pulled out a few photos, handing them to her. Her cheeks flushed as she looked through the pictures, the ones I couldn’t bring myself to look at anymore. I sat down on the bed, my shoulders slumping as I cradled my head in my hands.
“My mother used to be so full of life. She was so beautiful and happy. I remember when I was younger, she used to take me to the zoo on the weekends. I loved watching the giraffes. They looked so wild, and there was a part of me that always felt bad that they were locked up like prisoners. Mom and I would joke that we were going to sneak in one night and set them free.”
The carpet blurred in front of my eyes, and I cleared my throat. “She met my father at the accounting firm they both worked at, but when I was born, she quit so she could take care of me. It was a lot for him to handle, and slowly over the years, his drinking became worse and worse. Then one day, it just all went to shit.”
My pulse quickened as the image of his angry face popped into my head. God, I hated him so fucking much. Not just for what he had done to me, but what he had done to my mother and my foster siblings. I hoped he was rotting in hell at that very moment.
“It wasn’t too far after my tenth birthday when he started getting more and more violent. First with her, then with me. I remember the first time he punched me in the stomach all the air left my body, and I thought I was going to die.” I grimaced, unable to keep the bitterness out of my voice.
“Oh, Cian.” Nova sniffled and wrapped her arm around my shoulders. “I wish I could take your pain away.”
“You have, little star. You’ve taken it all away.” I pressed my lips to hers, her body trembling as we sat in silence for a moment.
“He lost his job at the accounting firm, and then things just got worse from there. He ended up working the night shift at the meat processing plant, then would come home and get shitfaced drunk and start beating on anyone he could find. My mother started taking antidepressants and a slew of other medications, none of which were prescribed. She became addicted and just became a shell of her former self. When I was twelve, they started fostering Eros, Orin, and Thora.” I chuckled, recalling how happy I had been to finally have siblings. We’d called ourselves the Four Musketeers and done everything together. They’d become my light in the darkness back then.
“But nobody was safe around my father, and soon they all started getting the same punishments as I did, punished just for existing. Just for breathing the same air as him. He hated me, Nova. I didn’t know why, but he despised me so much. You could see it all over his face when he looked at me. Complete disgust. And soon, my mother had the same look on her face when she looked at me.”
I straightened my back and let out a deep breath. Damn, I hated talking about this shit. All it did was bring up so many fucking emotions I’d thought I had buried deep down.
“But why? What could do that to a family?” Nova rubbed up and down my back, and I let the sensation calm me. I reached behind me and grabbed the black box, pulling off the lid. There was a stack of letters inside, and I handed them to her. Her face twisted in confusion as she gripped the papers.
She opened the first letter and pulled it out, her eyes widening as she read through it. I already knew what it said. The desperate ramblings of my mother, begging and pleading for help. I had read them so many times in the past, trying to find answers. Oh, I’d gotten them; they just weren’t the ones I had been expecting.
“I found those letters when I was seventeen. My parents went out one day and didn’t come back for four whole days. They just left us there with no money, no food. I searched through the entire house looking for money so that I could feed Eros, Orin and Thora. But what I found instead were those.” I had been desperate. For all I knew, my parents weren’t coming back, and we had been eating canned beans and mac ’n’ cheese for days. There had been nobody to help us. We were just alone.
“These were written when you were just a baby.” Nova pulled out another letter, a photo falling to the ground.
I couldn’t look at it. What it had represented back then. That photo was going to be my way out, our way out of my father’s torturous hands. But it hadn’t been. It had just been a pipe dream.
She picked the picture up from the ground, her brows furrowing as she glanced at it, and then back at the letter. “Oh, my God, she had an affair?”
I nodded, watching the blood drain from her face as it hit her.
