Page 17 of Wreck Me

“What are you hiding?” I whispered to the darkness as I brought my hand to his face and gently brushed a piece of fallen hair away from his eyes. Slowly, my fingers brushed against his cheek, down to his sharp jawline, making my insides turn to mush. Caleb was truly a beautiful man despite his efforts to be in the background.

After a few moments, he stirred and pulled me closer, rolling me into him. “Hey, Starlight,” he muttered sleepily, cracking an eye open and smiling.

“Hey, yourself.” My hand found his beneath the blanket and our fingers laced together. “Have a good nap?”

My heart rate accelerated, and a rush of nerves came over me, making me feel awkward. I drove myself insane internally, questioning if the man next to me was telling me the whole truth about himself.

If he noticed, he didn’t act bothered as he answered my question and released my hand to stretch his arms up over his head. “The best. I don’t think I’ve slept that well in years.”

“It wasn’t even a full night's sleep!”

“Doesn’t matter. I never rest easy. Those few hours were great.”

I offered no response, staring up at the ceiling as I tried to quiet my mind and convince myself I was wrong about the situation, and he was simply ashamed of his upbringing. I could relate to that myself, couldn’t I? There were so many things about my past I was ashamed of or wished I could go back and do differently. I tried to not let regrets rule my life, but I had a list of them. Maybe Caleb was the same–maybe he feared if I knew too much, I’d be the one changing my mind come morning.

“What’s wrong, Isla?”

Looking at him, I could see his brows furrowed in confusion even through the darkness. He brought his hand back beneath the blankets and found my thigh, resting it on top while he brushed his thumb over my skin and waited for me to explain.

Honesty, right?

“I can’t shake the feeling there’s something more you’re not telling me.”

“More about what, Isla?”

“About your past. About why you’ve been so hesitant. Something doesn’t add up… It feels like you’re hiding something.”

Caleb twisted toward me, his hands surrounding my face. “I’ve told you. My dad’s a drunk, we’re piss poor, and my mom bolted when I was a kid. There’s not much more to know than that.”

Kissing me, he coaxed my lips apart before sliding his tongue to meet mine. Gliding one hand from my cheek, he brought it around to cup the back of my head, weaving his fingers into my hair as he deepened our kiss. I felt the way his chest released a sigh as he gave into the magnetism between us, and I knew our connection was undeniable. Caleb was meant to be in my life, as tumultuous as our beginning may have been.

So while his words should have reassured me, and his kiss should have sealed the deal, I still had a small patch of lingering uncertainty buried within me. I knew I needed to explore it further if I wanted to ever fully trust him.

* * *

“Tellme about the life you left behind.” Caleb's voice was soft as he drew lazy circles between my shoulder blades while I laid on my stomach. The sheet draped low on my body, exposing my torso as my arms were folded beneath my head.

I groaned into my arm, the aftermath of my last orgasm still lightly pulsing through my body. “You were just buried inside me and now you want to talk about my family?”

“Yep,” he chuckled. “Tell me everything, Starlight.”

The irony wasn’t lost on me that he wanted to know everything about me yet wouldn’t tell me everything about him. But I pushed those thoughts aside. Maybe if I opened up more, he would too.

“My father owns Skyline Tech,” I said on a sigh, looking up at him for his reaction. Usually once I told people what my father does, dollar signs reflected in their eyes as they mentally calculated how rich I was. I felt my brows scrunch together when Caleb's reaction didn’t change with the knowledge. “He founded the company when he was twenty-four years old and soared to the top of the industry. He married my mother shortly after making his first million, and she’s been riding his coattails ever since.”

I stopped myself, realizing how bitter it sounded. “They love each other, of course. They just aren’t in love. I’m not sure they ever were,” I added.

Caleb nodded his head in a silent response, urging me to keep going.

“My father wanted an heir. Someone to take over the company. A boy. They struggled to conceive, trying everything they could and coming up short. The doctors told my mother she had an inhospitable womb and would never be able to carry a child, so they turned to surrogacy. And that’s how I came into the world.

“But it wasn’t good enough for my father. Somehow in his twisted mind, me not being a male and the fact I wasn’t born from my mother made me lesser than. My whole life I heard them argue behind closed doors that if I had been a boy, or if she could have carried more children, then he’d have the heir to his legacy. After many years of the same fight, mother convinced him his daughter would be fit to run the company. She’d have the board standing behind her, after all.” The words felt filthy against my tongue, sour and vile as I recalled all the times I lay in my four-poster bed, hiding under the duvet as I tried to drown out the sound of their arguments.

A fucking eight bedroom mansion and yet they still chose to make my bedroom right beside theirs.

“The older I became, the more my father warmed up to the idea of me taking over his company someday and he eased up on treating me like a nuisance, but then I also became an asset. I went from relatively ignored to constantly swarmed by an entire team of people. Nanny… Bodyguard whenever I left the house. It’s incredible how quickly one person’s entire demeanor can shift when selfish intentions shine through.”

Silence hung between us as I finished my sentence, the venom bursting through my words as I relived the bitter memories of my past.

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