Once I’d rectified part of my problem by having surgery, I’d worked harder on helping Bonnie, getting her to talk to her parents to tell them how bad it was. We’d researched Atavism, and that’d helped her understand that she wasn’t different, she was unique—two things that are similar but vastly different at the same time. She’d made an appointment with my therapist just to help her lay some solid foundations after so much upheaval mentally and emotionally. Her parents and brother had always been her biggest source of stability. Still, therapists are experts on coping mechanisms, isolating and understanding things that affect us mentally and emotionally, and she’d eventually decided it wouldn’t hurt to try.
The Bonnie I’d grown up with had been timid and had zero confidence. The version of her we had today was still slightly shy, but she had confidence and gave no fucks whatsoever about the bullshit the handful of assholes that refused to quit lobbed her way.
“Your expression’s worrying me. What are you thinking about, Ari?” Parker asked, and I realized I’d been staring into space and hadn’t heard anything he’d said.
“I’m sorry, what were you saying?”
“I’m asking what you were thinking about that put that expression on your face.”
“Beau and Bonnie,” I told him honestly.
Seeing that I wasn’t going to elaborate—they weren’t my stories to share, ever—he changed the subject back to what he must have been asking while I was thinking about my friends.
“Something’s bugging me about all of this. I can understand wanting to change things that are affecting you and making you depressed, but when you mention your brothers, it’s almost like you’re inferior to them. Did that play a part in what was going on?”
Uncomfortable with how well he read the situation, I tried to figure out a way to answer around it, but I was never good at coming up with excuses or lies on the spot. I never told them because that wasn’t the person I wanted to be, and excuses just blew up in my face, so I tried to avoid them. This moment was no different.
Fuck my life.
“Yeah, it did. People think a lot of Noah, Archer, Tate, and Levi, but I was always referred to as their sister, never as Ariana Townsend, the person. No one’s perfect, and trust me they all have their faults, but at the same time, not many people saw or acknowledged those faults, whereas my appearance was only fuckable if it involved paper bagging and no light. I’m not saying it’s their fault, they’re amazing brothers, but I guess it just made it harder for me,” I mumbled, picking at that poor nail again. “Now I sound shallow and petty.”
“No, you don’t,” he disagreed firmly. “The way you’ve phrased it doesn’t sound at all petty and shallow. I’ll bet a lot of people could relate to that. You’re right—in high school and college, people have other people they either idolize or are willfully blind to their faults. In contrast, you got things pointed out in a vicious and vindictive way. But, Ari,” he leaned across and grabbed the hand that I was mauling the nail on, “your brothers aren’t perfect, no one is.”
Rolling my eyes, I disagreed with him. “That’s where you’re wrong. There isn’t one thing on their bodies they’d want to change. I’ll bet you there isn’t one thing about their entire person they’d want to change. And let’s look at my granddad—do you think he’d change anything?”
“He had Scrotox,” he pointed out, making me shudder.
Yes, he was that guy. It’d been a joke gift if I remembered correctly, and he’d been determined to cough a ‘fuck you’ at the person who’d given it to him. He’d even jokingly tried to show it to my cousins as payback, knowing they’d freak out and run away.
“Hurst’s also worked all his life on becoming the man he is today, so that goes to prove he doesn’t think he’s perfect. I bet he’d have a list if you asked him if he’d change anything at all about himself.”
I sincerely doubted that.
“Okay, well, Elijah thinks he’s perfect.”
“I think you need to look a little closer at your cousin, baby. I’m not just saying that because I think you’re wrong, but I think he’s got something going on that’s eating at him and needs his family. It might even be why he’s not spending that much time with his parents and brothers—because they can read him more than he wants to be read just now.”
This wasn’t something I hadn’t thought about since Elijah had come to visit at Christmas, but now that Parker had seen it, too, I’d be making moves to help him out in any way I could.
“I’ve seen that,” I whispered, nibbling on my lip. “I was going to speak to Gramps about it.”
“Linda,” he suggested. “Speak to your grandmother about him. He has the same bond with her that I do, and speaking from experience, he might find it easier to talk to her about it.”
“Is that what happened with you?”
The smile he gave me this time reached his eyes. “Absolutely.”
Needing some answers from him about his situation still, I blurted out, “Why did you say what you did that morning?”
Groaning, he dropped his head and stared at his hands.
“I need… I need control. I didn’t have it for so many years, and when I started having,” Parker paused and chose his next word carefully, “consensual sexual relationships, I realized that I couldn’t do it without it.”
“What do you mean by control?” I could understand why he needed it, but I couldn’t understand what he meant by it.
“You have to understand, Ari, she took a lot away from me. My childhood, my security, almost my ability to say no, my dad, and pretty much my life, too. If I hadn’t been able to take Dale to stay with your family or the Montgomerys, it could have been a lot worse. So once I got to the stage where I could stand for someone to touch me without me feeling dirty, I approached it all in a way where I was the one controlling what happened.” Half of his mouth tilted up in a dry smile at my expression. “Don’t look so worried, I’m not saying I’m a dom or anything near that. I’m just saying that I have to be in control of what’s happening around me and what I’m doing with a woman. I refuse to be a victim ever again.”
That made sense to me, and I completely respected it, but I still had questions.
“But nothing happened that night?”
“I didn’t know that, Ari. After I shook off the panic I was feeling, I figured that was the case, but we’d woken up naked in bed together. I’ve never been in that situation.”
“You’ve never woken up next to a naked woman?” I scoffed. “That I find hard to believe.”
“Not once,” he replied, looking completely serious. “But that wasn’t what the problem was. I never have sex when I’ve been drinking—it leaves me too vulnerable, and I can’t cope with feeling like that. I also don’t sleep next to a woman because I don’t know what they’re going to do to me while I’m out cold.”
Chewing on my lower lip, I mulled this over.
“This all makes sense, but I’m still confused why you said what you did.”
“I panicked and meant to say I’d made a mistake, not that what happened—if anything—was a mistake,” he explained, making the hurt I’d felt since that morning lifted slightly.
“I appreciate you explaining all of this to me, Parker. It’s been something that’s hurt me for a while now. It just hit one of my triggers because of what happened to me in my past.”
He looked baffled and perplexed by this. “What do you mean?”
“I thought you meant you were embarrassed that we might have had sex and because I look like…” I whispered, trailing off because I just couldn’t say the words.
“Christ, Ari, no. It wasn’t like that at all. I’ve spent so long regaining control over everything in my life, and waking up next to you—unable to remember what we’d done—knowing I’d not only been drunk but had slept beside someone else in my bed… That was almost all of my no go areas all at once.”
Gauging how sincere he was, I saw nothing but honesty—and pai
n now that he knew how it had come across—coming from him.
“I feel much better knowing that. Thank you for taking the time to explain it to me.”
And I did feel better knowing it, even though I hurt hugely for what he’d gone through for so many years and how it’d affected him.
“Why do you look like that’s not actually the case, Ari?” he asked, my expression giving me away yet again.
“I just wish you’d be able to enjoy every facet of a relationship with someone,” I explained, holding my hand up when he went to interrupt. “I don’t mean with me, I mean with someone who’d love you and enjoy merging their life with yours. You have a stressful job, full of long days and hard work, and you deserve to have someone who’ll hold you up and support you when you need it, while at the same time being able to feel secure while they’re asleep beside you.”
“I want that,” he admitted, reaching for my hand again.
This time, I met him halfway, accepting that having him as a friend in my life was better than not having him at all, even if it sucked big fat donkey balls.
“After you left, I rang Dale, and he put me in touch with a therapist who helped me in Piersville. Then when I transferred my residency to here, the therapist put me in touch with someone they’d gone to college with who they were confident was the best person for cases like mine. I met with them the day after I moved here, and I go and see him once a week.”
“That’s great, Parker!” My happiness for him was genuine because I knew well that the right therapist was key to recovery and growth.
“I’ve been discussing you with him, and six weeks ago we began working on me opening up to you and what I wanted as a result of it. Ari, I’m not going to say that I’m fixed, I’m too fucked up for that, but I am saying I want to start over with you.” When I just looked at him blankly, unwilling to react and have him tell me I’d misunderstood, he continued, “I want there to be an us, and I’ve wanted that for a long time. There may be moments when I retreat or struggle with a development, that’s why you need to know as much as I can tell you.”
“You want there to be an us?”
“Desperately,” he replied, not even taking a second to think it over.
“As in, an us us?”
“Yes.”
“A relationship between you and me?”
This time, his lips twitched at my question. “Absolutely.”
Sitting back heavily, I stared at the wall, trying to get my head around it.
Letting me take a moment, he pulled me into his side and rested his chin on top of my head. “What are you thinking, Ari?”
“I’m thinking I’ve fallen into an alternate universe,” I mumbled, still staring blindly at the white wall as his chest jostled me when he laughed.
Reaching down, he linked his fingers between mine on the hand closest to him.
“What do you think, baby? Do you want to be with me, too?”
This time it was me who didn’t need to think about my answer. “Absolutely.”
“Thank Christ,” he whispered, burying his nose into my hair and inhaling deeply. “I’ve missed that scent. I could smell you on my pillow for weeks. Going back to therapy after what’d happened was hard, but the scent kept me grounded.”
Smiling, I admitted, “I stole your t-shirt off the floor.”
This time when he laughed, it was loud and shook my head. “Was it the AC/DC one?”
Picturing the t-shirt under my pillow, I shrugged. “Maybe.”
Lies! I knew exactly what t-shirt it was.
Leaning away from him slightly so I could see his face, I asked what I figured to be the most important question. “Are you ready to take this step? I’ll understand if you need more time.”
I was waiting for him to tense up or show some sort of indication that he was pushing himself to do this before he was ready, but he remained calm and relaxed. “I wouldn’t even be mentioning that part of our conversation if I wasn’t. The first step was getting therapy to heal slightly, and then I focused on the goal of being able to be the man you deserve. I’ve set myself goals and targets from day one, baby, and after tonight, I’ll have new ones to achieve.”
“Parker, you’re already the man I deserve, but you have to be the man you deserve to be.”
“Which is what the overall goal is. If I set myself targets, then I can combine them into one big result. My therapist said that the point isn’t to pretend the trauma never happened, it doesn’t work that way. It’s to be able to conquer it so you can live your life with it as part of your past, without it conquering you.”
I think I liked his therapist.
So, taking a deep breath in and growing a pair of lady balls, I took the bull by the horns.
“Let’s do this.”
Leaning in until his lips were right next to my ear, he whispered, “Keep tomorrow night free. I’m taking you on a date.”
Six
Parker
When I’d told Ari I was taking her out tonight, I knew she’d be wondering if I’d show up or if I’d have a change of heart after last night. A relationship between two people who had such different issues might seem like a bad idea to some people, but not to me.
I didn’t want to break her, I wanted to become complete with her. I wasn’t scared at all that we’d have problems. She was pretty much the only woman in the world who could help me put my past behind me while I helped her put hers behind her, too. It was funny—it a non-funny way—regardless what I’d gone through, her well-being was more important than my own. I wanted to give her all of me, the complete and healed version I knew I could be. How was that for motivation?
I was determined not to fuck this up and to give her everything I could.
Which was why I’d text her at eight this morning and told her to be ready for seven PM. Then I’d texted her countdowns, although admittedly, I’d added in some teasing here and there. The Townsends didn’t work like most people. Those taunts and the teasing were like foreplay for them, and I was going to let my knowledge of the family work for me.
Pulling up in front of her house, I grinned when I saw the dogs scratching at one of the windows near the front door. Her Dachshunds were what I would imagine an overcharged dog would look like if we could charge them. It was something my brother had said when we were kids, and he’d seen a small dog shaking outside of the store. He’d told me someone had left it plugged in to a charger for too long, and since then, that’s all I could think of when I saw small dogs doing it.
As I reached the door, they left their spot at the window and started scratching at the door instead. I almost felt bad when I put my finger on the doorbell, knowing it would make them bark even more.
Almost. But I didn’t. In fact, I kept pressing it and counting Mississippi’s until she pulled it open.
Just to say, it took her twenty-six Mississippi’s to open the door to my laughing face. Instead of releasing the button, I kept my finger on it just for badness. See, the bell had been a gag gift from her brothers when the house was completed because she hated them. And this one wasn’t a regular doorbell. Nope, it was set with the sound of a train horn when someone pressed it. You couldn’t ignore it, and you couldn’t get away from it. It was perfectly Ariana.
What was also perfectly her—i.e., a stubborn pain in the ass—was the fact she had the Ring system wired into her front door just below it, but she didn’t use it. After a deranged asshole took Charlotte, they’d wired her front door with the Ring doorbell, too. Add that onto the security inside, she should have had eyes everywhere, but for some reason, she just refused to use the doorbell that had a camera on it.
Slapping my hand off the button, she glowered at me. “You’re early.”
Checking my watch, I noted I was, in fact, early… by three minutes.
“You’re right, a whole three minutes. Did you need it?”
Crossing her arms over her chest and drawing attention to the area as her tits pushed up with it, she
mumbled, “I wasn’t sure if you’d turn up after last night, or because of work or something.”
Yet, she’d still gotten ready for the date, and that meant a lot to me.
“I wouldn’t have missed this for the world. Why don’t you lock up, and we’ll get going.”
“I…” she started, and then blew out a breath and looked down at her feet. “Are you sure about this?”
The vulnerability her tone gave away there had me almost kicking myself because it was something she’d never show unless she had to.
Moving closer to her, I lifted her chin gently so that she was looking back up at me. “I know there’s a lot we need to work on—hopefully together—and I’m completely committed to doing it. I just need you to take a leap of faith right now and come with me so that I can start. Okay?”
“Ok,” she sighed, moving back into the house and yelling at Alexa to turn her lights off. It was as she locked her front door that the real Ari came back, though. “Just to say, if you fuck me around or start any bullshit, I’ll geld you with a wooden spork and feed your balls to Hanky and Panky.”
Wincing, I nodded and guided her over to the vehicle.
“I’ll take your word for it. Are they going to be okay on their own?”
“Lily has the dog groomer over at her place, so she’s going to come and collect them in ten minutes to get their ears and nails done. Either her or Tate will drop them back when they’re done. Jerry’s enjoying the peace up in my bedroom, but he has his own torture tomorrow.”
It took me a second to figure out what she was talking about, and then I remembered the cat.
Opening her door like the gentleman I was, I waited until she got in and shut it, then jogged around to my own.
“What’s happening to the cat tomorrow?” I asked as I pulled down the lane that would lead us out to the main road.
“He’s got an appointment with the vet. I’ve done everything I can to stop this being necessary, but it’s got to be done,” she told me, sounding like she was taking the creature to be euthanized.
Forbidden Gold (Providence Gold Book 5) Page 8