Chapter 27
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
I watched Stella round the corner into the living room. Eyes curious but tired. Features guarded, but not fully masked. She was teetering between the unemotional woman I’d first met and the soft, carefree woman she was when Cara was around.
Lore and Stella were still warring.
I got that more than most. I lived and breathed her struggle. Two versions of yourself occupying one body. A daily battle. It was fucking exhausting.
“Is Cara asleep?”
Stella nodded like her eyes weren’t the only thing holding exhaustion, but her vocal cords were, too.
“We need to clean your back and re-dress it,” I reminded her.
Her jaw clenched and I understood that, too. The need to be self-contained. Never having to lean on anyone meant never being let down. Not relying on anyone for help meant independence. Independence meant there was never anyone close enough to let you down—no one to leave you in your time of need.
Fuck, yeah, I got that.
I pushed off the couch and skirted the coffee table. The closer I got to Stella the stiffer her shoulders became. By the time she was within reaching distance she looked like she was ready to snap.
I took her in knowing two things—she was not physically afraid of me, and today was harder on her than the beating her brother had given her.
We’d pored over her personal files. Read private thoughts on cases. Dug into a past she wanted hidden.
Six months ago, I had a very small taste of that, and I’d handled it like a total twat.
I had to give her something beyond the voicemail apologies I’d left for her.
“Penny quit the NSA,” I told her.
Her head twitched. She recovered quickly, but there was a hint of confusion when she muttered, “Okay.”
“She works at Z Corps now. Mostly remote, corporate cases that don’t require Garrett or Kira’s skill.”
This time there was no twitch, but the confusion was deeper when she repeated, “Okay.”
“We still haven’t talked about it. The past. Our mother.
None of it. I can’t go there and she respects my decision even though I know it hurts her.
She feels guilt and wants to explain. The problem is, I don’t want to hear it.
Part of me might be a little curious but the rest of me is too afraid of what will happen if I hear her out. ”
“Cash, you don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do.”
“But, I should, for Penny. I should want to stop her pain. She’s my sister.”
Stella’s cheeks hollowed out and I knew she was clenching her back teeth when she gritted out, “No one should force you to do anything you don’t want to do.”
Stella might never admit it, but I knew her dislike for my sister stemmed from her wanting to protect me.
“But you see, the problem is I feel nothing with the woman who I share blood with. No, that’s a lie, I feel guilt.
Shame. I feel like I should feel some sort of connection.
Don’t get me wrong—I like her, she’s funny as hell, and she respects the walls I’ve put up and that makes me feel like more of dick.
But the truth is, every time I see Penny, she’s a reminder that my mother picked her.
She kept Penny but tossed me out like trash. ”
“Cash.” There was more meaning in that one whispered word than I’d ever heard come from Stella.
Not pity but understanding.
I couldn’t stop myself from reaching up and catching her around the back of the neck, pulling her closer as I leaned forward to rest my forehead on hers.
“My whole life I’ve felt like trash,” I confided. “Until the sweetest pair of blue eyes looked at me like I was worth something. And when she clung to me and gave me her trust I felt like I could do anything. Then this morning she called me liar and that cut so deep I fucked up and forgot.”
“What’d you forget?”
“That I promised myself that once I found you, I wasn’t letting you or Cara go.”
Stella jerked.
I smiled, lifted my forehead off hers, and before she could protest, brushed my lips over her cheek.
That was enough soul bearing for now.
“C’mon, let’s get your back cleaned up.”
“Do you see her often?” Stella asked from beside me.
I didn’t dare take my eyes off the ceiling.
I’d already made the mistake of watching her crawl into the bed beside me and settle on her stomach.
Last night I hadn’t given it a whole lot of thought—what it meant having Stella next to me in bed with nothing more than a t-shirt.
But tonight, after I’d cleaned her back and helped her into one of my shirts before I left her in my bathroom to brush her teeth, some sort of strange thrill licked up my spine.
The fuck of it was the excitement wasn’t sexual.
Make no mistake—I wanted to fuck the woman silly and would’ve if she wasn’t injured and there wasn’t a child sleeping down the hall.
But with those two barriers in place, something else had taken root, something more, something I’d never wanted to do in my life, and for some reason the need to simply hold her hand was harder to control then the desire to fuck her.
And that was a mindfuck.
“Penny?” I asked.
“Yeah.”
I swallowed the lump in my throat that tasted a lot like vulnerability.
“She comes into the office once a week, sometimes it’ll stretch to two weeks. And we have dinner occasionally.” Then I gave her more. “She’s never been in my house.”
“She’s never—”
“Actually, no woman has.”
When the silence stretched, I glanced over at Stella. Body cocked to the side, cheek to the pillow with her hand shoved under it. I couldn’t completely make out her features in the dark but I could feel her eyes studying me.
“I get that need for privacy. Before Cara, I never allowed anyone in my house. After she was born, I used to visit Michael and Donna and stay with them. Before that, always a hotel. I don’t sleep well knowing there’s someone else in the house.”
A ripple of unease coursed through me at what that might mean.
“Did something—”
“No. Never. But when you’re asleep, you’re defenseless.”
“And that takes trust,” I surmised.
She didn’t answer but I didn’t need her to. I knew I was right.
“I think it’s best if I leave—”
“No.” My denial came out harsher than I’d intended but there was no use in apologizing now when I was only going to piss her off as this conversation continued.
“What do you mean, no?”
“No, as in you’re not leaving.”
“I know what the word no means, Captain. I’m asking you if you do.”
Smartass.
“No means no.”
The growl that left her throat had me rethinking the not fucking her part while she was injured. I could drag her ass into the bathroom and use the shower to drown out her moans.
“Damion won’t be—”
“I’m not worried about that asshole. As soon as Kira gets me a location, he’ll never be a problem for anyone. Ever again.”
Stella moved. The bed moved. Hell, it felt like everything in the room moved as her mood shifted from mildly annoyed to red-hot pissed in a flash.
“You’re not taking this from me,” Stella hissed.
“I didn’t endure years of him taking his leather belt to me to have you swoop in and take him out.
He killed Michael and Donna. He changed the course of Cara’s life—took her mom and dad from her.
One day the trauma of that is going to wreck her. Vengeance is mine. Mine. Not yours.”
I barely heard anything beyond, ‘I didn’t endure years of him taking his leather belt to me.’
Years.
Not the hours that he’d had her.
“Years?” I growled as I rolled to my side.
Stella remained silent. The longer she held out the tighter my jaw clenched. Just when I thought I was going to snap she finally broke the silence and I immediately wished she wouldn’t have.
“The beatings started when I was ten. Before that, Damion was my…brother,” she started in an awful dead tone that was barely above a whisper.
“Growing up the way we did, parents absent, nannies, cooks, cleaners, it was just us.” Stella sucked in what sounded like a pain-filled breath.
The exhale sounded no less painful when she went on.
“I loved him. He was a good brother. Then he wasn’t.
In the beginning he used to apologize. After my father left the room, he’d cry and say he was sorry.
He’d tell me he wouldn’t do it again. He’d take the punishment.
But the next time would come, my dad would hand him the belt and Damion would follow orders.
I can’t remember when he stopped saying he was sorry.
But at some point, my father’s lessons took root and Damion no longer held me while I cried, he just followed our father out of the room to get his treat, leaving me to tend to my wounds the best I could.
By the time I was a teenager, my father no longer accompanied Damion; he’d simply nod and Damion would excitedly drag me to my room. ”
Another breath. Another excruciating exhale.
“There were times my father wasn’t even home, and Damion would grab me by the hair and tell me father had called in my punishment.
By the time he moved out he was an expert with the belt.
Yet every holiday he came home from college, he sharpened those skills.
The last time he took me into my room I was seventeen.
It wasn’t the worst beating he’d given me but with each slash of his belt I vowed it would be the last. He gave me twenty-seven lashings and when he was done, I promised myself one day he’d feel the bite of that leather strap, and it would be me who would dish out the pain he loved to inflict. ”