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“You,” she stated. “Your past. Your life. You’re always so secretive. I want to know more about you, Con.”
He shifted, uncomfortable with the conversation already and they hadn’t even gotten into the ugly details. “It’s not a pretty picture. And I’d just as soon forget I had a past.”
“You can’t forget it,” she murmured, “no matter how hard you try.”
“Maybe not, but I don’t need to dwell on it, either.”
“Please, let me inside,” Tory pleaded. “Just this once.”
Con sighed. He knew Tory. She wasn’t going to let it go. “Where do you want me to start?”
Her hand came back to his chest and Con relaxed a measure. “Your biological parents,” she stated. “Do you remember them?”
He tucked an arm behind his head and shrugged. “Not really. I was pretty young when social services yanked me.”
“Nothing at all?”
Her palm continued to massage and play. Was she soothing him? Knowing Tory, yes. And God help him, but he loved when she turned all gentle and caring.
“There is one.”
Her hand moved downward, over his abdomen. “A good memory or a bad one?”
“Good,” he gritted out, barely able to concentrate now that her fingers were so close to where he wanted her mouth to be. “I don’t remember my dad. My mother, I don’t know her name, but she was pretty. At least that’s the way I remember her. She had long, black hair, a pretty, oval-shaped face and a kind smile. And she used to sing. Silly kids tunes. I remember this one time when I joined in. We were sitting in the kitchen, I was eating…cereal, I think. And we were singing together.”
“She sounds like a good person. What happened to her?”
“I don’t know. No one ever bothers to tell the kids a damn thing. And by the time I was old enough to go looking for her myself, I didn’t much give a shit.”
Her finger dipped into his belly button and he had to bite back a curse. “And now? Don’t you want to know her?”
“They don’t take kids away from their parents for no reason, Tory. I’m not sure I want to know that reason.”
“Okay, so they put you in foster care. What was that like?”
“At first I just wanted to go home. I couldn’t understand why I was living with a bunch of strangers. The older I got, the angrier I became. I wasn’t an easy kid to raise. A few tried. Most just didn’t care. They just wanted the check.”
Her palm moved a few inches lower, then stopped. “What was the final straw?”
Con cleared his throat. “Huh?”
“I know you ended up living on the streets when you were only a teenager. I figure there must have been something to force you to do something so desperate.”
Immediately Con was thrust back in time. “Mr. Frank.”
“Mr. Frank?”
“He was the last one. Mr. Frank liked little boys. A lot.”
He felt her body go as stiff as a board. “Did he…?”
“No. I wasn’t little and helpless at that point. I’d been attending the city school and using their gym to gain some muscle mass.” He shrugged. “I was getting tired of being picked on, I guess. It helped that I’d hit a growth spurt that previous summer. Still, that didn’t keep Mr. Frank from playing with the other boy who lived with us. He was scrawny as hell and a year younger than me.”
“What happened?”
“I came home from school one day and found Mr. Frank in the bathroom with the kid. I went a little crazy. Anyway, they threw me in juvie right off the bat. To them I was just another punk kid causing trouble. No one expected that damn kid to speak up. He told the authorities everything.”
“Good for him. Did Mr. Frank go to prison then?”
