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“Do you want to see the Taylor Swift posters in my room, Gray? I also have a signed shirt that cugino Enzo got me for my birthday,” she rambles excitedly.
“A signed T-shirt, huh? That’s pretty cool,” Graham states, looking at me for help.
I laugh before deciding to save him. “Don’t you have homework, sweetie?”
“Yeah,” Maria answers.
“Well, then go on. Graham can see your posters later.”
Her brother comes over to take her hand and after saying good bye to Graham, the two of them leave. Enzo and Rosa are next.
“It was really nice to meet you, Graham,” Rosa says gently.
“Yeah, nice,” Enzo adds. “We should hang out, though, you and me alone, sometime?”
Graham shrugs. “Yeah, that’d be great.”
He’s not the least bit intimidated by him and I can tell it’s pissing Enzo off a little.
“I’ll let you know when I’m free,” Enzo states before sweeping his wife away.
I grin as I watch them go. As soon as they leave, Graham pulls me closer.
“Now do I get to see your bedroom?” he questions, eyes gleaming dangerously.
A shiver rolls through me at the promises in his expression. “Yeah, sure. let’s go.”
I lead him up the steps to my bedroom and open the door, letting us in to my most personal space. I watch Graham’s face as he takes it all in. I grew up in this room, most of my childhood memories made within it’s four walls. It’s actually pretty simple, understated. Just a large four-poster bed standing in the middle of a room painted a light blue.
Graham walks to my bed and takes a seat. His gaze is immediately drawn to the pictures on display on my nightstand. He picks one up of the twins and me when I was younger. It was only a year after my father died. I was in my second year of college. The twins were pretty little then.
He picks up another picture of me and Enzo. I shift closer to look at it. He’s probably around fourteen in the picture. I’m eight years old. There’s an innocent happy smile on my face. It’s right before the time my father began to focus more on me. Before the hell I had to endure started. Enzo doesn’t smile at all in the picture. His expression is hard, his eyes haunted—a little boy who went through a tremendous amount of torment.
As kids, we were all each other had, each of us trying to help the other with our demons. And then he left. I was so angry with him when he did. Now I’m just glad he was able to find a way to break the shackles of the people who caused him so much torment—my father being one of them.
“There aren’t any pictures of your parents,” Graham notes, a question in his eyes as he looks up at me.
Fuck.
“You never talk about your mom,” he presses, and I know he’s not going to let this go.
It takes a long moment before I finally answer.
“She died giving birth to me. There were some complications,” I tell him, ignoring the slice of pain in my chest.
I’ve spent so many nights wondering how different my life would have been had she survived. I never knew her but a part of me knew that she would have tried her best to protect me from my father had she lived.
“I’m so sorry, baby,” Graham breathes. “And your father?”
“He passed away a few years ago.”
“Are you ever going to tell me why you hate him so much?”
I suck in a small breath. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to tell him. What am I supposed to say? That my father was a monster who thought of me as useless except when it came to pronouncing sentences on people he murdered?
He’ll surely look at me differently when he realizes what I used to do. The rational part of me knows that thoughts like that are ridiculous and Graham will understand that I was a child who had no choice. But I know he’s not okay with things like that. I remember him calling people in the outfit murderers and thieves. I might have never killed anybody, but at the end of the day, my hands aren’t clean.
I’m so scared of his judgment. I’m scared he’ll stop looking at me the way he does if he finds out the truth.
