Page 23 of Irresistibly Wicked

“You bought her a high chair so you could pet her? That’s pretty freaking cute.”

“I didn’t buy it. I made it. I couldn’t find one that was the right height when I sat beside her.” He gave Kitty one last pet and got up to feed her. “She keeps me company while I eat.” He filled Kitty’s bowls with fresh water and food and placed them on her mat on the floor.

“Shall we?” He pulled out a chair for Shauna.

As she sat down, he sat beside her, and she got quiet again. She pushed the food around on her plate with her fork, stealing glances at him. He knew from the awkward silence that she was waiting for him to ask about what happened, but he knew better than to push.

He wanted her to feel safe, and he’d wait as long as she needed him to, without any expectations or demands, so she’d never feel alone again.

WITHOUT THE DISTRACTION of the cat, awkwardness trickled in for Shauna as they ate. She knew Zander must have a million questions, and he deserved answers. She just didn’t know where to start, so she tried to break the tension. “This is delicious.”

“Thanks. I can’t take credit for more than the garlic bread. My mother keeps my freezer stocked with food. All I had to do was cook the spaghetti and heat up the sauce.”

God, was he one of those guys who expected women to do all the things he considered to be beneath him? “You’re thirty and your mother still cooks your meals?”

“I don’t ask her to.” He took a drink and said, “She does it for everyone. I think it’s a mom thing.”

“You’re lucky,” she said, and immediately regretted it. She didn’t want him to feel sorry for her.

“I am, for many more reasons than that.” He held her gaze, compassion brimming in his eyes. “I have great parents, and I’m really sorry you didn’t.”

“I don’t want your pity.”

“That’s not pity. It’s truth,” he said emphatically. “Pity implies that I feel superior, and I definitely don’t. We don’t have any say in who our parents are. It’s the luck of the draw. What I feel is sad that you weren’t loved the way every child deserves to be loved. That you didn’t get the gentleness you should have gotten from them before you were set free in a world that can be too damn rough.”

Unexpected emotions bubbled up inside her.

“I don’t know what the situation was with your parents, but it was bad enough for you to take off at seventeen, which tells me a lot.” He stabbed a piece of meatball with his fork. “You got the short end of the stick, and that fucking sucks.”

Something about his vehemence and understanding made it easier for her to talk about it. “It does suck. I used to think it was my fault that they were like that, but I’ve learned that their addictions, their fights, and my father’s abuse had nothing to do with me.”

His fork stopped halfway to his mouth, his eyes narrowing.

She realized how much she’d revealed and quickly added, “Sorry. I don’t mean to dump this on you. I don’t usually talk about it.”

“You’re not dumping,” he said evenly. “Did your father ever hurt you?”

She didn’t answer right away, pushing spaghetti around on her plate, but she wasn’t going to go backward and hide in shame over the shit her parents did.

“Only once physically,” she finally said. “And I’m not rationalizing for him, but it wasn’t like he hit me or anything. He and my mother fought a lot, and they’d get physical with each other, but they just yelled at me. That’s why I stayed out of the house as much as I could. Well, that and the fact that they were usually drunk or high. The one time I tried to get between them, they both pushed me out of the way. Until then, I think I’d hoped that my mother would clean up her act, but that’s when I knew I was really on my own.”

“How old were you?” He ate the meatball he’d speared.

“Seventeen. It was about two weeks before graduation, before we ran away. I know it looks like I went from an abusive family to being with an abusive guy, but it wasn’t always like this with Brian.”

“I don’t think you did that.” He tapped her leg with the side of his. “And just so you know, I’m the last guy you need to worry about judging you.”

The honesty in his eyes was underscored by his reassuring tone, allowing relief to whisper in. “Okay.”

“Tell me about Brian. You said you grew up together?”

“Yeah. I’ve known him forever. He lived around the corner from me, and we rode the bus to school together every year. Neither of us has any brothers or sisters, so we’d hang out together after school. When other kids were playing at the park, we were knocking around down by the creek or in the junkyard around the corner. We bonded over our horrible home lives and commiserated about how much we hated our parents and their fighting. We snuck out at night to get away from their yelling, and we’d bang on each other’s bedroom windows. I can’t tell you how many times I cried on his shoulder, cursing them. Every week I’d swear I was going to run away, but every time I said it, Brian said I had to wait until I graduated from high school or they’d put me in a foster home and arrest my parents.”

“A foster home might not have been too bad,” Zander said. “My brother Justin, who goes by the road name Maverick, was fostered by my parents before they adopted him. He came to us when he was eleven, and he’ll tell you it was the best thing that ever happened to him. Well, before he fell in love with his wife, Chloe, and they had their daughter, Marybelle. But there are plenty of people who haven’t had that kind of experience, so who knows what would’ve happened.”

“I didn’t know what being in the system even meant back then,” she admitted. “It was this undefinable thing that could happen to kids, and we thought it was bad.” She ate a forkful of spaghetti, remembering how the idea of a bad foster family had stopped her from leaving. “Was it hard for you to have another kid in the house?”

“No, there are a lot of us. I have three brothers and one sister. Blaine is the oldest, then there’s Maverick. The two of them had a rough start, but now they co-own Cape Stone, a stone masonry and distribution company. Then there’s Zeke. He works with me at our family’s renovation company, and my sister, Madigan. Mads is a jack-of-all-trades. She’s a puppeteer and a musical storyteller, and she makes greeting cards.”