CHAPTER 11 #3
“ARRAN?!” Rafe’s voice boomed through the house, and Cara jolted badly in my arms. She clung even tighter to me and started to lift herself from the ground until she was actually sitting on my thigh, both of her hands now frantically grasping handfuls of my shirt, her trembling ratcheting back up again.
“Steady lass. It’s just Rafe,” I tried to soothe her, but it was like she wasn’t listening, or didn’t want to. She pressed her face into my chest and I could feel every panicked gasp for air as all of her anxiety took a grip again.
“Arran? Where the fuck a….” Rafe stopped ranting as he marched into Cara’s room and glanced into the open doorway to where we sat. “What the fuck?” he ground out.
“Rafe,” I said keeping my tone calm and low. “Ye need to calm down. Ye just scared the shit outta her. I had her calm before.” I was pissed with him for upsetting her again, but I kept it back for Cara, only showing him with my eyes as I glared at him.
“What happened?” he asked after taking a deep breath to calm himself.
“A nightmare. Cara feels safer in here. She doesnae like the big space out there right now,” I explained gently.
“Cara?” Rafe dropped to the floor beside me and pushed some of her hair back in an attempt to see her face. Of course he couldn’t, because she was hiding against me.
“She was talking before, but her anxiety took a hold all o’er again when you started yer shoutin,’”
“Hand her to me,” Rafe demanded, and Cara instantly squeaked in fear or protest, I wasn’t sure which. She clung even tighter to me, curling her legs up against her and into my side.
“She asked me to stay wi’ her. I promised I wouldnae go anywhere until she was ready,” I told him flatly.
Rafe was a brother to me, and I loved him, but right now Cara really needed me to keep my word to her, and I wouldn’t break it for anyone, even if he threatened to kill me, which looked like a distinct possibility with the rage on his face.
“Cara, can you talk to me, Sweetheart?” Rafe asked, bypassing the anger he was obviously feeling.
I reminded myself again what a shitty idea it had been to try and flirt with his sister the second I met her earlier.
That was why Rafe was treating me like I was going to eat Cara alive.
He thought I wanted to treat her like every other woman who came into my life – a quick fuck.
“Talk to Rafe, wee one. Tell him what ye need right now. He’s worried about ye,” I encouraged.
“I’m okay,” she uttered shakily. “I just…I need to stay here.”
“You can’t be comfortable there, Gioia Mia. At least come back to your bed,” Rafe suggested and Cara instantly started to shake her head violently.
“I can’t…not now…not yet.” I knew her panic was on the rise again as the hands she had in my shirt bunched the fabric even tighter, then she was gasping for air again and I hated it. I wanted nothing more than to throw Rafe out and go back to the silence that had calmed her before.
“She needs this small space right now Rafe, and calm, so she can feel safe. She’s having a really bad anxiety attack,” I explained, since he didn’t seem to get it yet.
“I’m alright,” she panted.
“I know, lass. Just slow down that breathin’ for us now, though, if ye can,” I coached. “Shall we let Rafe sit here with ye? Would that help?”
“I can’t move!” she panicked. “If I l-let go…I…don’t know….I can’t!”
“Alright, sweetheart. It’s alright. You’re fine right there with Arran. I’m going to stay close too though, okay?”
“Yes please,” she whimpered as she turned her face against my chest like a little child and looked at her brother. “I’m s-sorry,” she sniffled.
“You have nothing to be sorry for. Don’t even say it, Cara,” Rafe assured her as she moved close enough to us that he could lean in and wipe a tear from her cheek.
“She’s just there…w-when I close my eyes….she keeps looking at me, Raffy. She blames me.”
“For what?” Rafe asked.
“I sh-should have believed her. I didn’t. I…she was crazy, wasn’t she? I th-thought she was anyway. I drugged her. I…I didn’t know what else to do. She had these episodes and she broke things and made so much noise. She hurt herself and sh-she…she’d get so angry…”
“Did she hurt you, Cara?” Rafe asked.
“Sometimes,” she shrugged. “I was scared we…we’d get thrown out.
I needed that place Rafe! I couldn’t do the streets again.
I couldn’t, and she….I didn’t know what to do.
I got her alcohol and pills…illegal pills.
I needed her to be quiet and to… to sleep.
I dr-drugged her and those men….they killed her and she blames me!
It was m-my fault!” she gasped breathlessly.
“Jesus fuck!” I hissed as I held her more securely.
She’d lived on the streets? For how long?
The thought made me feel physically ill.
Not only was she a tiny little thing, but with her wide eyes and innocent, young face, she would have been every predator’s wet dream come true.
I could feel my right hand desperate to reach for the knife I kept at my ankle at just the thought of anyone putting hands on her.
“The pills, in your pocket? They were for our mother?” Rafe questioned.
“You found them?”
“Yeah. I was worried you’d been taking them,” he sighed with some relief.
“No. I don’t….I wouldn’t use drugs…couldn’t have afforded to if I wanted to anyway,” she laughed dryly.
“None of what happened to our mother was your fault, Cara. I have no doubt after what you’ve told me, and from seeing the place the two of you lived, that our mother had mental health issues.
You did the best you could in those circumstances, and what happened to her was not on you.
Even our cold hearted, bitch of an egg donor wouldn’t blame you for her death, Tesorino.
You kept her alive for a lot longer than she would have kept herself going.
She owed you everything,” Rafe told her firmly.
“I miss my apartment,” she whispered.
“You did an amazing job of getting that place and making it a home, Cara, but you’re home now. You deserve so much more than you had in Chicago.”
“I belonged there. It was safe and it was mine. I’m n-not safe here!”
“Of course you are. I will never allow anyone to hurt you again now that you’re home,” Rafe assured her.
“You c-can’t promise that, and if you believe you can, then you’re an idiot, You know I’m not safe here.
I wasn’t safe in Chicago either, not completely, but I felt safer there than I do here,” she argued, and I admired the way she threw that reality check at her brother.
It was the truth. Rafe knew it as well as she did.
I did too. We could go to every possible length to ensure the safety of our home and the people within it, but we could never completely promise they wouldn’t be harmed.
Life didn’t work like that and Cara knew it only too well.
“Tell me what you need to feel safer here, and I’ll see it’s done, Cara,” Rafe offered, and I groaned. That was one of Rafe’s flaws – his belief that money could solve everything. While it could solve many things, some issues went so much deeper than anything a purchase on could cure.
“Dario told me ye know some self-defence moves. Did ye take a class or something?” I asked quickly, before she even had to answer Rafe’s question.
“I knew this guy…Hilton…a bouncer at the club I worked in. A few months after I started there this creep tried to follow me home. I managed to get away, but when Hilt found out he told me I needed to learn to defend myself if I was gonna work in a place like that. He took me to his gym, which it turned out his brother, Dev, owned. They both taught me to defend myself over a few months. It made me feel better…safer. If I’d have known before…
.well, things would have been a little easier. ”
“How old were you when you did that training?” Rafe asked.
“Almost sixteen.”
“Cara, please don’t tell me you were working at that strip club at fifteen?” Rafe despaired.
“What?” I couldn’t hold in my shock.
“As a server! I never…I didn’t strip. It was a g-good job. They p-paid me in cash, and I…the bouncers looked out for me most of the time,” Cara defended herself.
“What about school?” Rafe asked.
“I went when we first moved there, but I was too behind. I missed too much, and I….I’m not smart.
I dropped out a couple of years ago and never went back.
I needed to work full time anyway,” she shrugged, but I saw how she lowered her eyes with shame, and it annoyed the fuck out of me.
She did what she had to, to survive. She should never be ashamed of that.
“What happened to your friends, Hilton and Dev?” I asked.
“They went to jail. They were mixed up in some robberies, at least that’s what the cops said. I didn’t believe them, but, apparently, a bank teller got killed and Dev and Hilt went to jail for it. I never saw them again. The gym closed down after that.”
“Christ, Cara,” Rafe gasped, like he couldn’t breathe, and she lifted her head and looked to him with confusion. When she turned to me I tried to force a smile for her.
“He’s alright. Maybe just give him a wee second though,” I suggested.
“They never would have hurt me, Rafe, if that’s what you’re worried about. They helped me.”
“Armed bank robbers helped you?” Rafe ground out.
“I didn’t know they did that,” she argued vehemently.
“Let’s get back to the point. What I was gonna suggest, was that Dario and I could train ye, teach you more self-defence. Maybe then you’d feel safer?”
“You’d do that?” Cara asked as she looked up at me.
“Absolutely. What do ya think, Rafe?” I asked as I looked over to where my boss had gone notably quiet.
“I don’t want Cara getting hurt,” he argued.
“She won’t. We’ll go easy,” I agreed.
“Is this what you want, sweetheart?” Rafe asked as he looked to Cara.
“It would help me feel safer,” she shrugged. She looked down to her lap, avoiding eye contact with either of us as she seemed to brace herself for a refusal.
“Fine,” Rafe nodded. “Talk to Dar and set it up, but if Cara gets hurt in anyway, it will be on the two of you ,” Rafe threatened, and I nodded.
I’d basically just signed myself and Dario up for a thrashing from the boss, because there was no way we could train Cara properly without her getting a few bruises here and there, and I knew we’d be getting those bruises back ten-fold from her overprotective brother.
It would be worth it though if it helped Cara to feel more secure there with us. I would do anything to give her that.