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“Right. And did I come to get you? Call for you? Give you any reason to think I was hurt?” She shook her head. “Will you look at me, please?”
She didn’t want to. She wanted to stay looking right where she was, but he’d said please, so she took a deep breath and shifted her gaze to his.
“There’s my pretty girl,” he murmured, gently stroking her hair from her forehead. “Now, answer me.”
“I don’t like corner time,” she whined.
“You’re not supposed to like it. It’s a punishment.”
“But I thought you forgot about me. I was there for hours.”
“You were there for less than four minutes.”
Her mouth opened as she shook her head. “There’s no way. It was definitely a few hours. Maybe even a day.” She could’ve sworn she saw his lips twitch before he went all stern again.
“I promise it was just a few minutes.” He rested his massive hand on her thigh, massaging gently. “I’m sorry I called you bad. I didn’t know that would hurt your feelings.”
“It’s okay.” Her eyes dropped again, but he touched her chin, and she lifted them back to his.
“Will you explain why it upset you so much?” His dark gaze searched hers, and she hesitated. She didn’t know what to say, where to start. There was twenty-one years of baggage in that question, and she didn’t know where to even begin unpacking it.
“My mom used to tell me I was bad,” she said, and he nodded.
“You said that. Why did she tell you that?” He spoke to her with so much gentleness it hurt her heart. He was such an incredible person.
Even if he was about to spank her, he was still so kind.
“I don’t really know.” She shrugged, forcing herself to look at him and not at his jeans she was still playing with. “Sometimes, she’d send me to my room without explaining why. I’d be in there for hours. Sometimes she’d forget about me and I wouldn’t eat dinner. If Chris was home, he’d usually at least bring me food and water. But she never did.”
His face shifted, and gone was her gentle giant. This man she barely recognized. His expression was angry, but there was something darker in it. Something more.
“That’s abuse,” he said in a dark voice, and she shook her head.
“No, it wasn’t. She never hit me or anything.”
“It doesn’t matter.” His arm tightened around her. “That’s still abuse. How old were you when she did that?”
“For as long as I can remember,” she whispered. “I remember being just a little kid. Maybe four or five when she’d lock me in the room. I used to cry and bang on the door, but over the years, I learned it just made me feel sick and I would get so tired, so I stopped doing it. I started drawing instead.”
“Where the fuck was your dad when she was doing this? Why didn’t he stop it?”
Abbie shrugged again. “We used to live in New York, so he was always so busy with his cases. We moved to Virginia so he could slow down, not that he has. He still works a lot and is barely ever home.” Jett searched her eyes, his hold on her tight.
“You said he’s a lawyer?” She nodded. “Then he should know what your mother was doing was illegal, but more than that it was just wrong. He should’ve protected you.”
“He was too busy to notice,” she said, defending him. “Mother always said to never bother him when he was home. He worked too hard to be stressed at home, too. So when I saw him, I was just happy he was around, you know? I didn’t want to upset anyone.”
He looked like he wanted to argue, to say something more. But he took a deep breath, seeming to calm himself.
“When did she stop locking you in your room?” he asked quietly.
This time, she couldn’t help it. Her eyes dropped.
She didn’t want to tell him. It was pathetic the amount of control her mother had over her.
“When I moved out last year.”
“When you…Jesus Christ, baby. She locked you up your entire life.” He hugged her tightly to him, resting his hand on the side of her head and holding her to his chest. He rocked her gently back and forth, and somehow, it soothed something in her. It made her feel safe and protected, like he genuinely cared. And when had she ever had that? “I’m so sorry.”
