Page 55 of Unbreakable Love

Penny pushed her lips out to the side, gazing into her glass of water. I went to ask if she needed something stronger. She looked like she needed it, but the night I walked her home, she told me she didn’t drink. I’d taken that to mean excessively, or rarely, but in case she simply didn’t, I refrained.

“She got pregnant with me when she was sixteen.” She lifted her gaze, blue eyes sparkling beneath her thick and long lashes.

“I can’t exactly judge her for that,” I drawled. “She lasted a whole year longer than me.”

Penny chuckled, and a cute pink appeared on her slender throat. “Well, her family wasn’t nearly as supportive as yours was. They kicked her out. Let her pack a suitcase of clothes and that was it. From what she told me, she was on the streets two hours after she found out she was pregnant.”

“Damn… I’m sorry to hear that. Monica’s parents weren’t great, but even they weren’t that bad.” My family, on the other hand, after the initial shock, went straight into planning mode. There was a wrench in their plans for me, and we all figured out how to adapt.

I’d known then I was lucky, especially since Monica’s mom said, “Well, you can stay, but I ain’t babysitting anyone.” I hadn’t ever truly considered how horrific some teen parents were treated.

“What about the father?”

“He was some boy she later told me she’d climbed into the back of a Honda with because all her friends were getting rid of their virginity, and she felt like she had to. He claimed he never touched her, and his parents believed him. Gave her a few hundred bucks to go away. She took it, got a room in Kansas City at some place that probably rented rooms by the hour, and found a job… working at a nearby strip club.”

Oh… so that was why she didn’t want to tell the story. It wasn’t that her mom was sixteen, it was what she did after to provide.

“She took care of me,” Penny said, defensiveness building in her tone. “I was fed. She used to dance with me at home. I can remember going to her club and sitting in the changing room, and all the girls were nice, but it wasn’t the safest either. Or the most…sober… place to grow up.”

“And then she had your sister.”

“And then she had Maize, yes, and shortly after, I think, she realized she was twenty, had two kids, but she wanted a man. Someone to come in and take care of us so she didn’t have to keep doing what she was doing. I remember her saying that when I was little. It was after she brought a guy home with her from the club. He saw us and took off. Said he wanted a night with a whore not a shitty mom with kids. She’d looked at me that night, smiled, wiped mascara away from beneath her eyes, and told me she’d find someone else for us. Someone better.”

“Let me guess… she didn’t?”

Penny shook her head, a sad, soft smile on her face. “No. And when I tell you that I was raising Maize my whole life, I meant it. By the time I was Josie’s age, I was a full-time mom, getting Maize taken care of in the morning because Mom was too tired from the night before, or whatever she’d done after. By the time I got us home from school, she was barely awake and already getting ready to leave. She’d leave me piles of her tips, and I’d take Maize to the grocery store at the corner, buy us what we needed, and cook her dinner.”

“You were eight.”

Fury pulsed and boiled my blood in my veins. I couldn’t imagine. Couldn’t ever imagine treating someone like that, much less Josie. It was easy to recognize I’d had a completely different start to parenting, but that didn’t explain neglecting your kids.

And the fact Penny said her mom was a good mom?

I wasn’t touching that, but it was amazing she could sit here and tell me all of that without shame.

“Anyway, the reason I mentioned my mom was because as we grew, there were men. A lot of them. Not all of them were nice to her.” She went back to gazing at her water cup, but she didn’t see it. She wasn’t there, in my house. She was somewhere far away, back in Kansas City. “Some hurt her,” she whispered. “If she didn’t do what they wanted, or they didn’t want to leave.”

She blinked up at me. “I was thirteen, the first time I understood what was happening to her, how they were hurting her, I think.”

“And you?” I gritted out. I could barely breathe, barely see through the red streaking my vision.

“I wasn’t ever…” She shook her head. “No, Mom made sure we were safe. We never saw anything, barely ever saw the men. She protected us as much as she could. I mean that. And now I know she was a hurting, lonely woman who was searching for something, but she kept us safe from that, Gavin.”

She leaned forward this time, set down her glass, and grabbed one of my hands in both of hers. Her touch was soft and warm, and as she squeezed my hand, I exhaled.

My chest was tight. My skin burning.

“Gavin,” she whispered and shook my hand to get my attention. “Look at me.”

I listened. Stared right into her gorgeous blues. “I wasn’t hurt. Ever. And I made sure Maize wasn’t either. I told you that because I understand, at least from a distance what Ava is going through, and what you all are. I know what it’s like to have someone you love be hurt in that way, in whatever kind of way Ava was attacked. It’s painful to be powerless, to not be able to stop it, and have no way to fix it after the fact. That’s all. I wanted you to know I understand.”

“You shouldn’t have to.”

Her lips curled up at the corner, and she chuckled. “We don’t always get what we want.”

Her hand was rubbing mine now, her full, pouty lips still curved.

I leaned forward. It’d been years since I’d kissed a woman. Years since I’d felt that tentative, soft brush of warm lips against mine, the gentle brush of a tongue against mine.

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