Page 33 of Gamers' Omega
Ian squeezed my hand. “Your papa didn’t put a stop to it?”
I shook my head. “Money was tight after I was sick, and Papa had to take extra shifts. Danny was a bit young, but old enough that he took the risk of her babysitting.”
“Even after all the times she’d been awful to you?” Tony asked.
“There wasn’t much choice,” I answered. “We didn’t live near any relatives, and a babysitter would have cost almost as much as he’d have made. Papa did warn Danny that she’d be in troubleif she didn’t feed me, and there were other things that I’ve forgotten. But really, he just had to hope.”
“Did she feed you?” Freddie asked.
I chuckled. “Kind of. She always gave herself way more and would throw it out when she couldn’t finish rather than let me have her leftovers. I was never full on the nights she babysat. But I did technically get dinner.”
Beck growled low in his throat, and I patted his chest a couple of times to soothe him.
“Danny was a teen, and going through sex ed classes—the ones they give before presentation. It gave her no end of ammo. She’d take anything even potentially scary for an eight-year-old and blow it up. How dangerous pregnancy is, the pain of childbirth, the intensity of heats… But it was that sometimes it hurts that she latched onto. After being poked and prodded in the hospital, I was scared of anything that would hurt, and she knew it.”
I squeezed my eyes shut. “Then she went in for the kill. The walls were pretty thin in our apartment, and though Papa tried to be discreet, we sometimes heard. She told me that he was in pain every time he was with an alpha. That he’d had to suffer for me.”
I clenched Beck’s shirt. “Papa didn’t bring men home often, but every time I heard him moaning I thought he was hurting. It’s stupid. I know better now, but every time I think about sex, all those fears come back. The voice of the scared little boy I was asks if I’m sure.”
Freddie shifted so that he could rub my arm. “It’s not stupid. Things that happen in childhood can affect us for the rest of our lives.”
“You’re not mad?” I whispered.
“Why would we be mad?” Tony asked.
“Everybody else I’ve told got mad that I was letting something from my childhood keep me from sex as an adult.”
“WellnowI’m mad,” Ian growled. “But not at you. I’m mad at your sister, and whatever assholes told you that.”
I let out a relieved sigh.
Beck shifted and kissed the top of my head. “I’m not trying to push, but is this something a therapist might help with?”
“I had a therapist at one point. She helped me a lot and is one of the reasons I’m able to pinpoint what Danny used to tell me as a cause. For the longest time, I was afraid, and scared that it would hurt, but didn’t know why.”
“Why did you stop seeing her?”
“I moved,” I replied. “I’ve moved a lot since leaving home. Every year or so.”
“Why so often?” Ian asked.
“At first I just wanted to get away from Danny. She’d stayed living at home after high school. She tried community college for a few semesters but dropped out pretty quickly. Papa would never kick either of us out though, and I would never make him choose. So when I graduated I had a choice: stay with somebody who hated me, or move. I decided to move.
“Since I was getting my own place, I decided to find somewhere pretty to live. I had no plans for college, and it’s easy to get server jobs. I didn’t have a bunch of stuff to worry about. So I saved up for a few months, kissed Papa goodbye, got in my previous beater car, and left to find my new home.
“My first place was in a beach town on the east coast. I’d never been to the beach before, and I loved it. I’d thought I’d found my home…”
“But?” Tony asked.
“I started dating,” I replied. “This was before I saw a therapist, so I didn’t know why I was scared of sex, only that I was. The alpha promised we’d take things slow, but, to him, that meant a month. Then he started pushing. He’d swear that it wouldn’t hurt; that I’d enjoy it once I’d taken a knot. The more I refused, the angrier he got about it. It all blew up when we realized my heat was approaching. He’d decided that he’d spend it with me and was livid when I told him I’d be spending it alone. He broke up with me the day after my heat ended, but only after several hours of demanding to know who I’d spent my heat with. He refused to believe I’d go it alone.”
“Asshole,” Ian growled.
“It hurt, but I told myself that he wasn’t the man for me. I threw myself a pity party and moved on. About six months later I was dating a new man when we ran into the first outside the local movie theater.”
“Trouble?” Tony asked.
“Yeah,” I confirmed. “I’d just started dating the new guy and hadn’t figured out how to tell him. Well… old guy storms over outside the theater, clearly drunk, and demanded to know if I was letting the new guy fuck me. When I told him ‘no’ he turned to the new guy and accused me of being a selfish prude just pretending to be scared of sex. He even claimed that I’d spent my heat with another alpha instead of him.”
