“She never kept a job for long,” I say, my words a little bit rushed. “She worked on and off at clothing stores but got fired for helping herself to the items. Or she’d work at a cheap diner and get fired for being a lot better at flirting with the customers than actually getting them their food.”
“How about you? How’d you get your food?”
“Let’s just say those Thanksgivings you dreaded? I’d have killed to have my mom even acknowledge it was Thanksgiving.”
Matt’s fingers squeeze on mine, this time a bit harder. “Damn it, Sabrina.”
“It wasn’t so bad,” I say. “When I got old enough, I figured out that some of the bigger grocery store chains did to-go boxes with turkey and potatoes, the whole thing. I’d save up every penny from my job at a Dunkin’ Donuts to buy enough for my brothers and my mom, too, if it was a good year.”
“And for yourself?”
I don’t answer, because what I need to tell him, what he needs to know, isn’t about whether or not I got cranberry sauce as a kid.
“I mentioned my mom liked her men.” My words are quiet now, even more rushed. “It was more than that. She used sex to get things she wanted from them.”
Matt makes a dismayed, angry noise.
“It took me a while to figure out what was going on. How soon after she’d bring home a guy, we’d have a new TV. Or she’d have new shoes. Or a little more spending money. I’d ask her about it, and she’d laugh and say it was a loan. Or an arrangement. It got worse as she got more and more dependent on ‘having nice things,’ as she put it. On bad weeks, there was a different man every night. A different arrangement.”
“Jesus,” he says in a stunned voice, setting aside his glass and dragging his hand over his face. “No wonder you don’t like to talk about it.”
“Yeah, mentioning that your mom dabbled in barely disguised prostitution doesn’t make for great conversation.”
He looks back at me, his eyes dark and glittering. “Did she ever ask it of you?”
I suck in a breath that he hit so quickly on the truth. Nobody knows that part of it. Not even Ian.
“Sabrina,” he says on a breath.
“Nothing happened,” I rush to reassure him, because he looks ready to punch something. “And she didn’t ask me, not exactly. But the older I got, the more her men suggested it. My mom said no, but I saw her face, and the reason she said no wasn’t due to outrage over a forty-something man touching her daughter. It was jealousy. Competition. She’d never been particularly affectionate, but after that, it felt like an all-out war between us.”
I take a sip of my wine.
“I graduated at eighteen, and after basically harassing my half brothers’ family to take full custody and give them a stable home, I took the first bus I could out of there.”
“You ever go back?”
“Never,” I say emphatically.
“You talk to her?”
I hesitate, a little ashamed of my answer. “No. But I send her a birthday gift every year. I don’t know why. It only opens the door to guilt trips and requests for money.”
He inhales long and hard through his nose, as though searching for the right words. Instead he pulls my wineglass out of my hand, sets it aside. Then he gathers me to him, my head against his chest, his heart steady and reassuring beneath my ear.
I feel his lips on my hair, and though I don’t think I’ve ever sought a hug for comfort in my entire life, at this moment, I get why people do. I let my arm slide around his waist, closing my eyes at how right it feels to be held by him.
Neither of us speaks for long minutes, lost in our own thoughts. Me, relief at finally having my ugly past out there. Him, likely trying to process it all.
“I’ve got two questions. Not sure you’ll like either one,” he says finally, breaking the silence.
I smile but don’t lift my head. “You sure know how to get a girl excited.”
“Your mom’s past. Is that why you were so destroyed by my callous words when we first met? When I said you were worth every penny?”
“Whoa, hey now,” I say, pushing up to a seated position. “I wasn’t destroyed. I was annoyed.”
He says nothing, just waits.
I wait, too.
He wins.
“Okay, fine, yes. You struck a nerve, although you obviously didn’t do it intentionally.”
“Well, even not knowing your past, I shouldn’t have said it,” he says, running a hand over my hair. “But knowing your past . . . I’d give anything for a time machine.”
“To change my childhood or to change that night?”
“Both,” he says with a smile.
I smile back. “What’s your second question?”
“Are your mom’s relationships with men the reason you’re anti-relationship?”
“Yes,” I say without hesitation. “But to be fair, where I’m from, there weren’t many happy relationships. Most of the kids in my class came from divorced homes, single-parent families, foster homes. My school wasn’t exactly a quaint little brick building off Main Street.”
He winces, and I laugh.
“Oh my gosh. You went to a brick school off Main Street, didn’t you?”
“Technically it was Main Drive.”
“Well . . .” I go back to fiddling with the string on the blanket. “If knowing you has taught me anything, it’s that a nice house in a neighborhood with clean streets doesn’t always mean a happy home.”
“Certainly not,” he says in agreement. “But my family issues . . . God, I can’t believe I even complained about them to you.”
“Don’t think that way,” I say, looking up and meeting his eyes. “Your pains are just as valid.”
We hold each other’s gaze for several seconds, and there’s nothing uncomfortable about it. Merely understanding.
“We’re kind of screwed up, huh?” he says with a sad smile.
“I prefer the word guarded.” I wink in an effort to lighten the mood. “We’re just smart enough to know that two people can enjoy each other’s company, maybe even be friends, without the whole messy, painful stuff.”
He pushes his hand farther into my hair, fingers tangling in the messy curls. “Friends, huh?”
“Hypothetically. You know, in theory. For people who actually like each other.”
“Not us, though,” Matt murmurs.
“Definitely not,” I say softly as he pulls me in for a kiss, and I smile when I feel his smile.
The kiss starts out light and playful, but with each brush of our lips, we linger a little longer, our breath growing a little faster.
“Sabrina,” he says. “This enjoying-each-other’s-company thing you speak of . . .”
“Yeah?”
“Care to enjoy each other’s company . . .” His mouth moves down my neck. “You care to enjoy each other in the bedroom?”
I manage a nod, and when Matt stands and scoops me into his arms, I have the breathtaking realization that despite my words, I’ve been wrong about not having avoided the “messy, painful stuff.”
I’m horribly, awfully aware that . . . I’m already in the middle of it.
I’m already all the way, painfully in love with a man who will never love me back.
27
MATT
Friday Night, October 6
I thought I knew every type of sex. Fast sex. Playful sex. Angry sex. Dirty sex. Public sex. Vanilla sex . . .
The moment I set Sabrina on the bed, I know tonight is different. I know that whatever’s about to happen between us will go beyond anything I’ve known before.
Because tonight matters. She matters.
And I intend to show her.
Sabrina’s hands reach for me the moment I lower over her, but I gently take both her hands in mine, pressing them down to the mattress as my mouth moves over hers.
She huffs in protest but kisses me back, her lips and tongue greedy, her hips tilting toward mine in invitation.
Lifting her hands above her head, I pin her wrists with my left hand and use my right to skim down her side, flattening my palm to her hip. Slow down. Let me savor you.
I feel the moment she capitulates, her breath coming out on a sigh against my lips. She tastes a little like wine and whiskey, but mostly she tastes like her. That elusive, captivating element that is simply Sabrina.
No woman has ever gotten to me like this one does. No one’s ever wiggled beneath my guard to make me long for things that aren’t even real.
Usually I push aside these realizations, determined to keep her at a distance, however I can.