Love by the Rules (Harbor Point Book 3)

by Heather Young-Nichols

  “You don’t love—”

  “Don’t you dare try to tell me how I feel,” he yelled, causing me to take a step back.

  That anger I saw moments ago was no longer under control.

  But he didn’t scare me.

  There had been people who, when angry, scared the living shit out of me. Like my mother. That wasn’t the case with Cash.

  “Well, stop loving me then,” I snapped back, but he dug in.

  He steeled himself. I could see it in his muscles, in his face, in the way he was holding himself. His spine went rigid, he stood taller. He was pushing me. Pushing me toward all the things I didn’t want him to know about me. But telling him would be the best way to get him to understand why he needed to leave me in the rearview as he drove away.

  “I’ve never had sex just because I wanted to.” I slapped my hands over my mouth. I couldn’t believe those words had fallen out of my mouth. I’d opened a can of worms and I knew Cash wasn’t going to let it go.

  I’d fucked myself even more.

  “What the hell does that mean?” His eyes softened along with his tone. It was pretty clear what he was thinking. Even though I’d already denied it before, it had still been there lingering in his mind. “If you haven’t had sex because you wanted to, then who wanted you to?”

  “My parents.”

  Now his face contorted with confusion.

  Shit, shit, shit.

  His mouth opened and closed like a fish, like he was trying to figure out what to say, but what was there to say?

  And since I’d backed myself into a corner, I knew I had to tell him everything. Waving my hand toward the chair across from my couch, Cash took the offer and fell into it. He looked like he needed to take a load off, but I couldn’t sit down. There was too much energy running through me.

  “My parents owned The Trinity Corporation,” I said, as if it explained everything when in reality it explained nothing.

  He nodded because of course he already knew that.

  “But Gio, Sal, and I—”

  Cash’s eyes snapped up to mine, effectively cutting me off. I didn’t like the anger I saw there. Or maybe I did because I was pretty sure it wasn’t directed at me.

  “They made you three… ”

  Oh, man, gross. That thought made me queasy.

  “No. Not that. Although if they had the idea it’d make them money, maybe they would have.”

  He didn’t find that funny, even if, with my darker sense of humor, I sort of did.

  “Starting when Sal was fifteen, they had us working for them. But not the way you’d think.” I took a deep breath. “When they found a place they wanted to buy and the owner didn’t want to sell, they’d send one of us in, whoever was appropriate for the situation.” I wet my lips. This was easier than I expect but probably only because I thought telling him would chase him away, which was what I needed to happen. “To… um… ingrain ourselves into their lives to gain inside information and use whatever influence we had to get them to accept an offer. It was so shady. But now they’re in prison.”

  “Ingrain yourself how?”

  Damn it, I had been hoping he’d let that go. Cash sat all the way back in the seat, but before I could answer, he slid to the edge, dropping his elbows to his knees and letting his hands go limp in front of him. He was feeling cagey. I knew that feeling well; I could easily see it in others.

  “Basically be whatever they wanted. Most of the time… ” Another deep breath to steel my nerves. “We had to seduce them.”

  He’d known the answer before I’d said it. Trying to be discreet, I wiped tears off my cheeks. This was exactly what I didn’t want. I didn’t want him to look at me the way he was.

  Like I was damaged. Like I’d never be normal.

  All that concern and pity was disheartening. I didn’t need anyone’s pity. I wanted him to leave, but not after seeing me for what my mother had created.

  “Hey,” Gio said suddenly in my living room. I hadn’t even heard the door open.

  And he wasn’t alone. It was like the four of them moved as a pack. One unit.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked, hoping the wetness on my cheeks had either dried or wasn’t noticeable.

  “We got home and heard some yelling. Everything all right?” Gio eyed me cautiously, then did the same thing to Cash.

  “Fucking fantastic,” Cash replied.

  It was like I heard the truth click in each of their heads.

  “Trying to convince your sister not to break up with me.”

  “You don’t really want to do that, do you?” Bailey asked.

  I knew it then. I knew they were trying to help, but the pressure was building in my chest and I felt like I was about to explode.

  I needed them all gone.

  I needed to finish this with Cash and bury myself under the blankets lying on my bed. I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and spit out the one thing I thought would get them all out of my face.

  “I lost my virginity when I was eighteen because my parents made me. It was for a job.” Swallowing hard, I watched Cash’s face go through so many different emotions, the biggest being confusion. “He was thirty and the year before had inherited a business my parents wanted. He liked… younger girls, so my parents sent me in to pretend to be sixteen. I cried the entire time. He thought it was from pain. But I wanted to die. I’d never be able to actually kill myself, but if I would’ve been taken right then… ” I swallowed hard and tried to shake it off. “I would have thanked him for it.”

  It wasn’t the ugliest truth I had, but it was one of the most painful ones.

  I’d been so focused on Cash that I’d forgotten the others were still in the room until I glanced over my right shoulder in time to see Gio punch the wall near the front door, cracking the wood, then exiting, Bianca right on his heels.

  At the same time Sal disappeared, leaving Bailey watching us with raised eyebrows.

  Until there was a deafening crash in the kitchen that made us both jump and snapped us out of this weird limbo we’d been in.

  Bailey jolted, then turned on her heel and ran into the kitchen to find Sal.

  It was only seconds later that I heard my back door slam.

  If I was good at one thing, it was clearing a room.

  One more person to go.

  “Gemma, I’m so confused right now.” He looked it too as he dropped his weight back into the chair.

  I shouldn’t have blurted it out. What else should I have expected to happen?

  “Stop looking at me like that.” I rubbed up and down my arms as I paced. Cash Waterford seeing me differently was exactly what I’d wanted, but seeing the change made me itchy. “This is why I didn’t want to tell you!”

  “Your parents made you… ” Cash mulled it all over in his head.

  “Well, it sure as hell wasn’t my idea. And it was only the first in a pretty significant line of shitty things I had to do, Cash.”

  “Did you get anything out of it at all? Like any… pleasure?” He was probably asking if I’d enjoyed it, if I’d had an orgasm with the guys I’d been with.

  Probably normal curiosity as his brain tried to make sense of all of this.

  “No. Aren’t you listening to me? Like at all? I was basically a prostitute that wasn’t paid. Or I guess I did get paid because my parents supported me.” I was crying freely again, the wetness running down my cheeks quickly. “The guys got what they wanted and our parents got what they wanted.”

  “And you never got what you wanted?” He stood up from the chair.

  “Cash. It wasn’t about me.”

  He was focusing on the wrong thing here. And how he could be showing concern for me after what I’d told him was beyond me. He stood there far too calmly for the firestorm of crap that was burning me up on the inside.

  Why wasn’t he recoiling? Or leaving? Or something.

  “So these assholes took what they wanted.” It wasn’t a question. It was sort of
like he was trying to reconcile everything I’d already said to him. “I’m trying to figure out what that means.”

  “It means what it sounds like!” I yelled. I wasn’t yelling at him—I was yelling at the world.

  And it felt wonderful. I always kept everything inside. Letting it out for once took a weight off my shoulders. I hadn’t told anyone this stuff.

  “It means if they wanted sex, they got sex. Even if the guy was old enough to be my father. If they wanted to get freaky, they got it, and one guy really loved that. If they wanted anal, they got that, too. Cash I’m telling you, I’m all used up. You don’t want me.”

  My breathing became erratic. My chest heaved up and down as I tried to regulate the oxygen entering my body.

  But his eyes were gentle, looking at me with compassion, if not understanding—not exactly the way I thought he’d see me after knowing the truth.

  “You’re not, Gemma.” He pulled my hands into his again. Even when I tried to yank them away, he held firm. “Gemma, you’re not.” He took another step closer, invading my personal bubble. “I love you and I’m not going anywhere. That shit…” He took a deep breath and held it for several seconds. A vein popped from his forehead and his face was turning red. “That shit you had to endure does not mean that you’re anything other than the beautiful girl who’s so funny when she lets herself be.”

  My bottom lip trembled. I had to force my mind off the idea that he was saying these things because he wanted something from me. Something I didn’t think anyone ever would. He wanted me, no matter what happened in the past. I’d give Cash pretty much anything. The fact that he wanted to be with me out of love and not what he could get me to do pushed me closer to allowing my tears to fall.

  No one had wanted that before.

  Cash gently pulled me with him to the couch, forcing both of us to sit. But he pulled me close so he could wrap both of his arms around me tightly. I felt safe. I felt comfortable. I laid my head against his chest and I cried.

  Like a baby with huge, ugly, crocodile tears.

  It had to be unattractive, but still, he held me and kissed the top of my head a couple of times while telling me that everything was going to be OK. He’d also rub up and down my arm when I cried the hardest.

  I hadn’t let go like that ever over anything. Even when I’d had to do the disgusting things I didn’t want him to know about. I’d numbed myself to what men did to my body and I couldn’t do it anymore. Right then I needed it. I needed to let the years of bullshit go.

  Once I could calm myself down again, I sat up straighter. I’d let my emotions run wild for too long with him on that couch.

  “You OK?” he asked quietly.

  The room was almost dark. I’d only turned a couple of lights on when he’d come over.

  I shrugged. “Probably not.”

  Would I be all right? The jury was still out.

  “Have you thought about talking to someone about all this?” he asked.

  I turned toward him, then cringed at the idea of him seeing me this way. Right away I moved away, but he grabbed my chin between his thumb and finger, forcing me to keep still. Suggesting I see a therapist was probably in my best interest.

  “I’ve never thought about telling anyone any of this, including you,” I said.

  “I want you to talk to me about everything, understand? I don’t mean I’m going to force you to. I mean that you can talk to me about anything. But you might want to think about seeing someone who can help you, Gemma. I just want you to be OK with you.” Cash took a deep breath, then blew it out slowly. “I also want to go on a murderous rampage across the United States right now, killing every motherfucker who took advantage of you. So if I feel like that, I can only imagine how you feel.”

  I didn’t think I had any more tears and yet… a few more started to eke their way down my face. I hadn’t cried this much about being used for sex in a long time. Not since my second job.

  By then I’d resigned myself to my lot in life. Being used like a whore while pretending to be a good girl. Actually, I’d lost my virginity three times as far as the guys had been concerned.

  “Sal and Gio found their way through all the crap using Bailey and Bianca’s magical vaginas,” I said.

  He snorted, but I was still crying—mostly because the tears wouldn’t stop.

  “But I don’t like vaginas.” I wish that would have come out like the joke the way I’d intended it to be. Instead, the words sounded serious and whiny.

  “That’s good because I don’t have one.” His eyes dropped from mine to my lips, then came back. “I want to kiss you, Gemma. Would that be all right? Because I won’t do it if you say no.”

  Even with my snotty nose, red eyes, and dry, cracked lips, Cash still wanted to kiss me. Even knowing I’d been a different kind of girl in my previous life, he still wanted to touch me. Who was I to keep him from doing that? So I nodded.

  He kissed me exactly the same as he had before. It was as if nothing I’d said to him had changed how he felt about me. It couldn’t be true, of course. How could someone still love a person who’d done the things I had?

  “Oh, man.” I pulled back to his surprised face and still-puckered lips. “You said you love me.”

  “I did.” He smiled back at me. A confident, cocky little grin that said he remembered every word he’d said.

  “I… I… ”

  “No. Stop. You don’t need to say it back, Gemma. I know how you feel about me and even if you might not love me yet, I think you will. And I want to be around for that.” He locked his lips and swallowed hard. “Can I please be around for that?”

  He was asking if I was still breaking up with him. Was I? I didn’t want to chase him away. It was more that I thought he would want run away as fast as he could once he knew the real me. Who was I to tell him he had to go if he desperately wanted to stay?

  I smiled and nodded, which made him pull me tightly to him and I let him hold me a while longer because being selfish was my worst quality. With Cash I was an incredibly selfish person.

  Things weren’t all right even if we pretended that they were. I’d dropped a shit ton of information on him; he had to have questions, but I wasn’t sure I was ready to answer them. I needed more time.

  “This is going to sound super lame,” I said about a half an hour later. I needed to be strong. “But I’m going to need some time. I think I’ve got some things to work out.”

  “Time?” he asked. I nodded. “I can do that. But, Gemma, I’m not going anywhere.”

  Chapter Ten

  And boy, did Cash give me what I needed. By the end of that week, the only contact I’d had with Cash was the nightly text he sent saying goodnight. At least I spent those day alone wisely.

  I worked with Sal some, as was originally my entire plan for the summer. But I also made some phone calls. Something Cash had said to me had hit home. I didn’t even tell my brother or Sal about it—or the girls.

  I’d been bitching to myself about how I wanted to have a normal life, a normal relationship, and now I needed to make it happen. After several calls, I had an appointment Thursday afternoon with a therapist in the city. She’d been so nice on the phone and I hadn’t gotten into why I wanted to go see her.

  But the appointment was made and I was going.

  I went into work that Thursday morning knowing I’d have to take off early to get to her office in time. And I’d have to tell Sal why, so I sent Gio a text asking him to meet me there before he went into Romano’s. I only wanted to explain this once.

  He was already at Sal’s when I arrived.

  “So, what’s up?” Sal didn’t waste a minute.

  “I thought we should talk about what I said the other night and I have something to tell you guys.”

  Gio immediately looked away from me and I wanted to know why both the guys were being so evasive with me since the night I’d told them more than they’d ever wanted to know about me. I cursed my parents for ma
king things so awkward between the three of us.

  In no world should talking about a boy be weird for me, even with my brothers. And in no world should those guys have to hear about how I’d lost my virginity.

  ’Course, that experience itself should’ve been different as well.

  “I’m sorry I put that information out there between the three of us. Everything was happening at once and I wanted everyone to go away.”

  “You don’t apologize for that,” Gio said, finally finding my eyes again. “It wasn’t that you said it that pissed me off. It’s the fact that you went through it. I should’ve found a way to stop it sooner, Gemma. I’m sorry.” His jaw tensed. “And I’m so fucking pissed off that I let all of it happen in the first place. You’re my little sister. I should’ve been able to protect you better.”

  If I didn’t know Gio so well, I’d say there were tears forming in his eyes. I never imagined that they felt guilt over me. It had been every man for himself back then.

  “We both should have done something the minute we found out that you weren’t safe from them. It was one thing when it was us. I don’t know why we didn’t.” Sal held his head in his hands. That guy had been so riddled with guilt that I didn’t want to be the source of more.

  “We’re all at fault for going along with what they wanted, but we were conditioned since birth to do as we were told, so what were you going to do? I don’t care about that. We’ve all had to do terrible things or let terrible things be done to us. We’re all the same.”

  “Things can be good, ya know?” Gio sucked his bottom lip into his mouth for a second. “Sex can be good, Gemma. With the right person. I want you to have that. Is Cash the right person?”

  “I think he might be. But I’m too fucked up on the inside right now to drag him down with me. Which brings me to what I wanted to tell you. I’ve made an appointment for this afternoon. I need to talk to someone. Cash suggested it and I think he’s right.”

  Gio stood and came over to me, then pulled me to his chest. His arms were strong, protective, around me. “You do whatever you need to. And we’ll do whatever we need to do for you. You’re not alone in this. I’m sorry you’ve felt like you were.”