by Lexi Ryan
“I’m going to ask you questions, and I need you to tell me the truth.”
“You’re going to be so mad at me,” she whispers. It’s dark in the living room, the morning sun just now starting to show her head outside our windows. I can barely make out the tear streaks that glow against her perfectly smooth skin.
“What’s done is done, Drew. I need to know some things.”
“Okay.”
I take a breath. It feels like the first I’ve taken in days. My chest is still tight with panic. Even with Drew next to me—safe—it’s still hard to breathe. “Are you hurt?”
“He slapped me. Shoved me a little. But I’m okay.”
My squeeze my eyes shut. Questions are screaming through my brain at a hundred miles an hour. Why did you go to a hotel room with him? Why did you lie to me? What were you thinking? I have to push them all aside. Triage. “Did he rape you?”
She spins to me. Her eyes are big and her red-painted mouth is slack, her cheeks smeared with mascara. She looks so young. Like a child caught playing in her mother’s makeup.
“I need to know, Drew.” But more, she needs to tell it. I can’t have a dark secret eating my sister from the inside, not when I know the kind of damage that can do.
Her teeth sink into her bottom lip and she tugs at her too-short skirt. I recognize the outfit as the one Brandon had me wear the first night he had sex with me. God help me, he was trying to recreate that night with Drew. “No. He didn’t touch me. He kissed me. Groped me over my clothes a little. But I cried and that pissed him off. He didn’t have a chance to do anything else.”
Thank you, dear God. Something loosens in my chest and I can breathe a little deeper. “That’s good. That’s so good.”
“I was so scared, Cally. I know that’s what he planned.” Her words are muffled by her sobs. “I thought that maybe I should do it, you know. He said he wanted to help us. To save me, to save our house. I just had to be—” She hiccups out a sob. “I just had to be his good girl. But I couldn’t….”
“Never!” I force myself to relax, force my voice to quiet. I could scream at her. Scold her. Tell her how stupid that was. And maybe I’ll do all of that. Another day. When my heart isn’t so completely pulverized. “You don’t ever sacrifice yourself like that. You are worth more than a pretty dress. More than a meal on the table. More than a house. You hear me? Never forget what you’re worth.” It hurts so much to have this conversation that I almost want to ask her to stop. Instead, I reach over, and grab her hand from where she’s fidgeting with her skirt. I lace our fingers together, and I squeeze. “There are some parts of yourself that, once you sell, you can never get back.”
“Are you in trouble? For shooting him?”
“Not much.” I’ll have to go before a judge, but my lawyer didn’t think I’d have to do much beyond some community service hours for the illegal handgun.
“I should have listened to you. You told me to stay away from him.”
“Shh.” I pull her against my chest and stroke her hair. “It’s over now. You’re safe.”
Cally’s leaving. I keep repeating the words to myself, as if maybe that will make them finally sink in.
She’s here now. I can hear her in the apartment upstairs. But she’s leaving.
I turn off the gallery lights and lock the door. When I went to Indianapolis last night, they were questioning her and wouldn’t let me see her. Then this morning when I went to her dad’s place, the trunk of her car was open and suitcases were piled inside. I tried not to panic, but Maggie heard her on the phone canceling her appointments for next week, and I can’t deny the truth anymore. She’s leaving.
I need to see her before she goes. Feel her. Taste her. I need to make sure I never forget her.
I catch her in the massage room.
“Are you okay?” My voice is rough, as battered as my heart and body.
“I’m fine.” She gives me a soft smile but it falls away when I push her against the wall. “Well, hello to you too.”
Pushing close, I spread her legs with my knee until she’s positioned against my thigh.
“I’m so sorry,” she whispers, sliding her hands into my hair. “For everything.”
I open my mouth against her neck and suck, not caring that it will leave a mark. I’m desperate to chase away the gnawing pain I’ve felt since Brandon called her his wife, to wash away the horror I felt at reading the file Carl put together. When I think about her selling her body to someone, when I think how bad things must have been to make her resort to that, I want to punch something. I want another shot at Brandon.
I grip the bottom of her shirt in both hands and pull it off over her head before shoving her pants from her hips.
“Yes,” she whispers. “Please. I need you.” But then I drop to my knees and press my open mouth against the cotton polka dots of her underwear, and she stops talking altogether.
I slide my tongue against her panties, saturating them with my tongue as my hands find their way up the back of her thighs and take an ass cheek in each hand.
“Oh my God.”
Repositioning my mouth right over her clit, I suck at her through the cotton. Her hands are in my hair, pulling as her hips rock instinctively toward my mouth.
I grab her wrists and position them at her sides, holding them there as I kiss my way up her body.
Her eyes are on me, dark and smoky with need, and I draw her hands from her sides to above her head, where I shackle them with one of mine.
She’s so fucking gorgeous in a lacy pink bra and polka dot panties, her chest rising and falling as she tries to catch her breath from my assault.
I can’t resist those perfect lips, so I press my mouth to hers, slide our tongues together until she’s rocking into my thigh again.
“I’m going to release your hands, but I want you to leave them above your head.”
Her dark eyes go smoky with approval as I pop open the front release on her bra. Her breasts fill my hands and I lower my head, drawing her nipple into my mouth, toying with it with my tongue, then teeth. She cries out and her fingers tug on my hair, forcing me to stop too soon.
“Hands above your head,” I order. Heat flashes in her eyes as she obeys, and I return to her neck, trailing my mouth over the sensitive bit of flesh under her ear and down to her collarbone. I flatten my palm against her stomach and fan my fingers over her hipbones, my thumb over the ring in her navel.
“Turn to face the wall,” I command.
She obeys without question and leaves her hands above her head as I explore the bare skin of her back with my hands and then my mouth. She obeys me completely with her stillness as I explore her. As I trail kisses down her spine, I slide off her panties. With one hand around her hip, I slide the other between her legs.
“Slide your legs apart for me.”
She leans into the wall and does as I ask, arching enough to expose her sweet sex to me.
“Jesus. You’re so damn beautiful.” I cup her with my hand, using my fingers to tease her as I scrape my teeth over one ass cheek then the other.
She whimpers, and I drive two fingers inside of her, curling them until her legs are unsteady and her muscles are flexing. When she’s close, I open my mouth to that sensitive spot just at the base of her spine and suck until she’s coming apart on my hand.
I’m clinging to the wall for dear life as I recover, but I’ve hardly caught my breath when William’s mouth is back at my ear. “Face me, sweetheart.”
I turn on wobbly legs and reach for the button on his jeans, desperate to get him nude, to feel his skin against mine. I unzip him and release him from his boxers. Before I can push them off his hips, he’s hoisting me up between his body and the wall, sliding into me fast, hard, and hungry.
I cry out in pleasure as he pushes deep.
“That’s right, baby,” he murmurs. “Let me hear you.”
He uses the strength in his arms to hold me up, and his muscles bunch under his shirt.
He’s manic, driven by something he isn’t sharing with me. He presses his face into the crook of my neck, and all I can do is hold on and pray he’s finding what he needs in me.
He’s swelling inside me, so close to the edge, and he groans into my neck and presses my weight into the wall so he can slip his hand between our bodies. He’s holding back, putting off on his own release.
“Come for me again, sweetheart. Let me feel you.” His fingers are relentless against me, his whispered demands hot in my ear. It doesn’t take long before I shatter. Only then does he let go, his hips jerking and his head falling back as he finally releases inside me.
After, he takes me to the shower in the apartment and washes me slowly and thoroughly, pressing gentle kisses to where his mouth was rough minutes before.
We don’t bother going back to his place or getting dressed. We lock the doors to the apartment and curl up on the couch, clinging to each other.
I keep thinking the words I need to say but they refuse to find their way to my tongue. But I don’t want to ruin the perfection of this moment by explaining my ugly past.
“Why’d you do it?” His question is so soft, I almost don’t realize he’s speaking.
“What?”
He swallows so hard I can hear it. “Is it true? You were a prostitute?”
My heart pounds, but I concentrate on the feel of his skin under my cheek, his arms wrapped tightly around my waist. “It’s true.”
“That’s why you broke up with me, isn’t it? Your mom was stoned out of her mind and you sold yourself for money for your sisters.” His voice is so calm, so rational—a complete contrast to the chaos of pain and hope warring in my chest. How can he know this and not hate me?
“I messed up,” I confess. “I took a loan from a man I knew I shouldn’t trust, and when I couldn’t pay it off, he threatened Gabby and Drew.”
“You became a call girl to pay off a loan?”
I shake my head against his chest, then push myself up so I can look at his face. His eyes are full of hurt, and I wish I could take that away for him. “This is what the man does. He finds women who are in trouble and he gives them loans to keep them afloat. Then he requires them to ‘work off’ their debt.”
“Jesus,” he breathes. He squeezes me tight and pulls my head down to his chest again.
“I can hardly think about it. I hate thinking that anyone else touched you, but to think men paid for it.” A shudder moves through him, and he sits me up and climbs off the couch to pace. “Dammit, Cally, you were a fucking virgin. Didn’t he know?”
I close my eyes. His agitation makes me feel both better and worse. Better because I’m not alone. Worse because now he’s suffering with me. “I was more valuable to him once he found out.” I swallow hard, not wanting to share this ugliness with him, but knowing I need to tell him more. “I gave blow jobs to a few of his special clients, and then he played them off each other and gave the highest bidder my virginity.” I want to spare him the pain I see on his face, but I make myself keep going. “Brandon won that honor.”
He stops pacing and runs a hand over his face.
I make myself keep going. “Knowing I’d been a virgin only fueled Brandon’s obsession with me.” An obsession that began the moment I ran out of his condo, too terrified to do what I’d been sent to do.
“But what you told me was true? You’ve been tested? You’re healthy?”
“Of course! I wouldn’t have risked giving you something.”
“I’m not worried about me, Cally!” He pulls me off the couch and crushes me to his chest. “You’re all I care about. Don’t you get that?”
“I was telling you the truth when I told you I haven’t been with anyone for four years. It’s true. Brandon bought my virginity, but the man who’d given me the loan expected me to keep working. He threatened my life, my sisters. Brandon said he’d pay the guy off, get him to leave me alone, if I’d marry him. He promised to take care of me and give me money for my family, so I told mom I was in love with him and made her consent.”
“Did the girls know any of this?”
I shake my head. “Not about the loan or the prostitution or even the marriage. Mom and I thought it would give them the wrong idea about when they should get married and agreed not to tell them. Brandon gave me just enough to keep them off the streets but never enough that I felt like I could run away. He controlled every aspect of my life from the moment he bought me until he was put in prison four years ago.”
He pulls me into his arms. “I wish you would have told me.”
“I hated the idea of you knowing what I’d done.”
He presses his lips to my hair. “I think I knew. I told you I would imagine the worst, and when I saw the look in your eyes when I brought up the past, I knew it was much worse than anything I’d imagined before.”
“I’m sorry I couldn’t tell you. I thought you’d hate me.”
“How could I hate you for something like this?”
I shrug. “I made a choice.”
He takes my shoulders and steps back until I’m looking him in the eyes. “A choice made out of fear is no choice at all.”
I snuggle back into his heat. Through the sliding glass doors that look out over the river, I can see the stars cradled in the dark night sky. I take my time, selecting a favorite for the first time in seven years, and then I muster the courage to dare one more wish. “I love you,” I confess. “I never stopped.”
“I love you too. Always.” He tangles his hand in my hair and holds me close. “Don’t leave me, Cally. You fill my hollow places. You make me whole. Please stay.”
I lean back and frown up at him. “Where do you think I’m going?”
“I saw you packing your car this morning. There were suitcases in your trunk, and you were canceling all your appointments.”
“Just five days. Asher Logan’s letting me use his beach house on Lake Michigan for a week with the girls. Drew needs some time before going back to school.”
He squeezes me tighter. “And after that? You’re staying?”
“There’s nowhere else I’d want to be.”
SEEING CALLY for the first time in a week is like a punch in the gut and an instant high all at once. Midweek, I caved and asked Maggie to tell me the address, but she refused, promising me the best thing I could give Cally right now is time.
So I made it five days and now she’s standing in front of me in long sleeve T-shirt, her hands tucked into the pockets of her jeans. The wind whips her dark hair around her face, and she looks so damn beautiful I can’t resist reaching out to tuck some of those wild wisps behind her ear.
“What are you doing here?” she asks softly.
“The bank is auctioning the house today,” I explain, as if she wasn’t already painfully aware of this fact.
Her shoulders tense. “I know you mean well, but sometimes people need to face the consequences of their decisions. For my dad, that will be losing this house.”
“You won’t let me buy it for you then?”
“I won’t,” she whispers.
“What about us?” Lizzy asks from behind me. She and Hanna were in the back of my car and apparently decided now was as good a time as any to make their presence known.
“What?” Cally asks. “You guys don’t have enough money to buy this house.”
“Not alone,” Lizzy says, “but maybe if we went in with some friends.”
“They say when you’re young is the best time to invest,” Hanna says sagely.
I nod, just as an oversized black pickup pulls in the drive.
“What’s Asher Logan doing here?”
“I guess maybe he’s looking at investment properties too,” I say. “And this is a prime piece of real estate, right by the river, not to mention the sentimental value it holds. He and I bonded over that roof, you know. Can’t put a price tag on male bonding.”
Max and Sam appear next, cutting through the grass up the trail from the paved path along
the river. “Count us in, too,” Max calls. “That dock back there has the best fishing all along the river.”
Cally’s eyes brim with tears. “You guys.”
“I’m in, too,” Gabby says behind her. Cally turns and Gabby places a bright pink Minnie Mouse bank in her hands. “You got this for me when you took us to Disney Land. You told me to save for something magical. I think this place will do just fine.”
Drew steps forward next, her jaw hard and her eyes moist. “I’m in, too,” she says, handing Cally a wad of cash. “That’s what I was saving for a new iPhone, but I don’t need it. My best friends are all here in New Hope.”
Cally looks at the Minnie Mouse bank and cash in her hands. “So you’re all going to go in together and buy my dad’s house?”
I lift my hands. “Not me.”
Her brow wrinkles. “Not you?”
I shake my head. “I can’t have you accusing me of trying to buy you when I ask you to be my girl. But the rest of them, yes.”
“As long as you’re in this town,” Hanna says, “you don’t have to face anything alone.”
“I—I don’t even know what to say.”
“You can tell them that won’t be necessary,” Arlen calls, the porch screen squeaking behind him as he comes down into the lawn to join everyone else. “I visited the bank this morning and got it taken care of.”
Cally’s jaw goes slack, but I’m sure mine does too.
Arlen shifts uncomfortably as everyone stares. “While you girls were gone last week, I auctioned off my books.”
“The autographed ones?” Cally’s eyes are wide. “You’ve been collecting those my whole life.”
He lifts a shoulder in an awkward shrug. “My daughters are more important than some autographed papers.”
“Daddy,” Cally whispers. Then in three long strides she’s wrapping her arms around him and leaning her head into his chest.
“Does this mean Asher Logan isn’t going to be part owner of a house with me?” Drew asks. “Because that is a total bummer.”