Page 67 of Sinful Temptations

Roman’s expression morphed into a troubled frown, and I had the feeling he wanted to say something profound but couldn’t work out what.

I saved him by carrying on. “It was my fourteenth birthday.”

“Oh, I wasn’t expecting that.”

“Yeah, well, birthdays weren’t really celebrated in my home. Birthday gifts had been sporadic. Most of the time they forgot. And those times I did get a present, they were usually just practical stuff. School shoes. Textbooks. Things like that. I never got a push-bike or a cool pair of jeans. But by the look on my father’s face, I’d actually thought he’d bought me something special. Like a puppy or a horse.”

“It wasn’t though, was it?”

I shook my head. “No.”

Roman reached for my other hand, locking us together in a complete circle.

“Dad had patted my hand across the table, and it freaked me out. He never touched me. Not in a nice way like that, anyway.” I tried to smile, but I was sure it was lopsided. “I’d yanked my hand back and that ticked Dad off. His scowl returned and he yelled at Mother to shut the fuck up.”

A frown drilled across Roman’s forehead. “I can’t even imagine . . .”

“Yeah, well . . .” I shrugged.

“Did she shut up?”

Staring at my spoon, I searched my memory banks. “Yeah, actually, she did.”

“But she didn’t come out.”

“No. Of course not.”

“So, what happened?”

It had been fifteen years, yet I could still picture the tiny split on Dad’s bottom lip that he’d earned in a fight two nights before. I could still smell the dope wafting under Mother’s bedroom door. I could even picture the three little birds that were pecking at the ground outside the trailer.

“Dad said he had something very important to tell me, but right at that very moment, the noises from the bedroom grew louder. Mother’s groaning . . .” I shook my head. “Dad yelled at her. He was so furious spit landed on his chin.”

A stabbing pain shot through my belly like a warning shot. I winced and leaned forward, trying to get comfortable.

“Oh, hey, you okay?”

I rode out the pain with clenched teeth, and my eyes squeezed shut. Roman inched around and moved his hand to my back. He rubbed in a way that was as soothing as his kind words. The vise around my insides took forever to subside, and I eased away. Roman reached for our glasses and topped them up.

“Take your time, babe. We have all night.”

Babe. Oh, my god. I wanted to cry at how perfect that sounded. He was a tease. A perfect, handsome, sexy, gentlemanly tease. It was getting harder and harder to remember he was just a friend. Roman was everything I wanted in a man, except he was too young and he didn’t want me. We were just friends. Friends who were bonding over long-repressed secrets.

I sipped my drink and clutched my hand around the glass. “You know what was weird?”

He shook his head.

“When mother did stop, a creepy silence fell on the caravan, that wasn’t any better.”

I took another drink, gulping at it this time. Roman reached for my hands, taking the glass from me and weavinghis fingers into mine. He must’ve known this was the point of no return.

I squeezed my eyes shut, and the vision of my dad sitting across from me invaded my senses. It was so strong I could smell his stale sweaty clothes. I snapped my eyes open and stared at the big freckle on my thumb, the one that was different from all the rest.

“Dad was so calm when he spoke. It was like he’d been practicing the speech over and over, you know?”

I looked up at Roman and he nodded.

“He said that he and Mother had agreed to wait until I was grown up before they told me this.”

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