Page 35 of Desire

Chapter 26

Instinctively knowingit was now or never, I flipped over and moved up on my knees, ignoring the twinge in my ass. I had a feeling this was my only chance to get through to Connor.

“I wish you would stop hiding from me. I’m here, and I’m not going anywhere, Connor.” I cupped his face and stared into his eyes, hoping my sincerity and the depth of my feelings shone through. An eternity passed where neither of us moved. I truly thought we had built more trust between us, but apparently, I guessed wrong. I sighed in defeat and removed my hands. I sat back on my heels in the now awkward silence. When I couldn’t take it anymore, I laid back down, my back to Connor. Tears burned behind my closed eyes.

I don’t know how much time passed when a gravelly cough sounded behind me. “My dad died when I was five. He hadn’t been feeling well for a few days so he laid down to take a nap while my mom and I went to the grocery store. He was dead when we got home. The doctors said he’d had a massive heart attack.”

I started to turn, but Connor stopped me. “Stay there. I need you to just lie there, please. Otherwise, I’ll never get through this.”

I heard the pain behind his words, and it broke my heart. This beautiful, strong man had been broken at one point, and I wanted to kill the person who hurt him, because it was obvious someone had. I couldn’t imagine the struggle it was for him to splay himself open to me. I knew he kept things bottled up, but I never would have imagined what he would tell me next.

“My mom remarried within a year. She had never been alone before, and I don’t think she knew how to cope with that. The guy she married was all right. I never called him my stepdad, because he was no kind of dad to me. He pretty much ignored me, until he was injured at work one day when I was eight. He got hooked on alcohol and pills to numb his pain. Unfortunately, for my mom and me, he was a mean drunk. Nothing either of us did was right. It started with a slap one time. Of course, he was penitent and begged my mom for forgiveness. But then it happened again. And again. Only each time, it escalated.

“I had recently turned thirteen when everything came to a head. I finally found the courage to fight back. But it was no use. I was too weak and small, and my mother’s husband was so far gone nothing could have stopped him. It was like he’d been possessed by the devil himself. In his rage, he dumped a pot of boiling water on me, giving me second and third degree burns over a quarter of my body, the majority of it focused on my back. I blacked out from the pain. When I came to, the paramedics and police were there and my mother was dead. He’d stabbed her to death with a kitchen knife. He was sent to prison, and I bounced around from foster home to foster home until I turned eighteen.”

I didn’t bother to stop the flow of tears cascading down my cheeks. I held my breath as I turned back toward him, hoping he wouldn’t stop me. I needed to comfort him, and perhaps myself, because I had a feeling he’d received very little comfort in his life. When I finally faced him, he sat stone-faced looking neither left nor right. There were tension lines around his mouth, and his fists were clenched at his sides.

Hesitantly, I reached out and clasped his hand in mind. I slowly sat up and enfolded him in my loving embrace. I didn’t say anything, not wanting him to run scared. I held him in my arms until he slowly began to relax. Finally, I couldn’t hold back any longer.

“I’m so sorry, Connor. You know none of that is your fault, right? I mean, you were just a child. There was no way you could have stopped him. And I’m so sorry you’ve been holding the pain in for so long. Thank you for trusting me. It means more to me than you know.”

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