“What happened?” Her voice is so soft, and I want to tell her.
I want to evict even this small piece of myself, purge it from my system and feel lighter with it gone. But bringing up the past could provoke Gage and I won’t risk her safety. I search the recesses of my mind, reach out with my feelings and sense nothing. No dark presence looming or fear for my well-being. Only contentment.
“Hey . . .” She squeezes my forearm. “You don’t have to talk about it.”
I don’t take my eyes off her long delicate fingers on my skin, something in the past that would send Gage to the surface, and I still sense nothing.
My heart rate is steady.
I’m not afraid.
I lick my lips and turn to her. “When we were kids—”
“We? As in . . . um”—she picks at the paper napkin in her hand and avoids my eyes—“you and Gage?”
Surprisingly, a tiny smile ticks my lips. “No, we as in me and my brothers and sister.” Just mentioning them makes my heart cramp violently.
She grins, as if the information brought her some satisfaction. Unease twists in my gut at the knowledge that what I’m about to tell her will wipe that smile clean off her face.
“My mother would punish us in unconventional ways.”
Her dark eyebrows pinch together. “What does that mean?”
“She’d withhold food.”
Her face twists with repulsion. “She would starve her kids? As punishment?”
I wince at the anger in her voice.
“I’m sorry. Go on.”
I blow out a heavy breath and check for fear but feel nothing but relief at unloading. “We’d be so hungry that when she’d finally decide we’d been punished enough, she’d feed us. The meat would taste so good. I mean, we were starving, so we’d eat anything.” Saliva floods my mouth as I recall the variety of things she’d have me eat. I keep the details to myself.
“Part of her punishment was our belief that the food was a reward, only to later find out it was all part of the punishment.” My gaze slides to the windshield, staring out at nothing but seeing memories in Technicolor. “She had to have left the food out for weeks. Even now, I have a hard time smelling cooked meat.” My gut tightens as I remember going from full to sick in a matter of hours.
I peek over at Shy, her eyes light with interest. “I know it’s safe now, but it happened so many times it’s like my stomach just can’t accept the fact that I’m not being tricked again.”
“How many times did your mother do this to you, Lucas?” Her voice shakes, but from anger or sadness I don’t know and by her expression it’s hard to gauge.
“Too many,” I whisper. “Too many times to count.”
“God, that’s awful. Is that when you, when Gage . . . um . . .”
“I don’t remember life without the blackouts.” I don’t explain that he rarely showed up for the food poisoning. That was minor compared to her other punishments and I’d only black out when things became too much for me to handle.
Gage hasn’t always been my curse. Most of the time, he’s been my savior.
She shakes her head before dropping it back to the seat. “I had no idea, the tacos, and now . . . I feel horrible.”
Why do I have the intense urge to comfort her?
To pull her to me and hope my touch can erase the images I put in her head.
She gazes at me with more compassion than I’ve seen from another human being, and the intensity of it threatens to unman me.
“Don’t. I’m okay now,” I whisper, wanting to reassure her, because for some unknown reason I’d rather go through the sickness and the pain a hundred times over rather than be the cause of her discomfort.
This is when I wish I were a stronger man. If I could lay my feelings out, be brave like the strong woman sitting next to me and just tell her I like her. That I think about her all the time and fantasize about a life with her in it. I wish she knew how much I want to be normal for her, how much she deserves and how desperately I’d try and ultimately fail to be the kind of man who could make her happy. I want her. More than I should and enough that she has the potential to destroy me completely.
I open my mouth to speak, but slam it shut when she jumps in her seat.
“Well, then . . .” She grabs the burger from my lap. “What about French fries? You cool with those?”
I blink at the sudden change in her demeanor. “Yeah, I think so.”
“You sure?”
That’s it? I spill the ugly of my past and she absorbs it, then shakes it off like she doesn’t see me as pathetic or damaged? “Yes.”
She hops out of the truck and I watch as she rounds the bed to the front porch of the house. I follow behind her and get there just as she tosses both burgers into the dog’s bowl. She wipes her hands and peers up at me. “No more meat, okay? I promise.”
“You didn’t have to—”