Butterface (The Hartigans #1)(64)
“No.” There wasn’t any way in hell that she could let him into her bedroom again. “Uninvited guests stay downstairs.”
She got up to the third step before his voice stopped her.
“Gina, I’m sorry.” There was a raw edge to his tone that took it an octave lower, as if he was trying to keep something inside him from breaking out. “Kyle is a dickhead but he was right, I lied to get into your house. I was assigned to be here. It wasn’t by choice. I couldn’t let Gallo come watch over you, not after that night in the hotel.”
Her grip tightened on the banister, but she didn’t turn around. She couldn’t.
“I couldn’t stop thinking about you, and when the captain gave me the assignment, I took it. Even then I was afraid if I did that I’d break my biggest rule and get involved with someone that I couldn’t. You were an assignment and a Luca—and I didn’t trust myself to follow the rules when I was around you.”
This was his apology? His justification? The weak man defense?
“And after the assignment ended, it was even worse not being around you. That’s why I came back after I got suspended, because I couldn’t not see you again. I thought we could move forward without me ever having to admit what I’d done. I was wrong about that, but I wasn’t wrong about us.”
She was shaking. Maybe not on the outside, but inside it was the mother of all earthquakes going on because, against all odds, she wanted to believe him. She wanted to have that fairy tale. And that scared her more than anything else in this world ever could.
Not trusting what would come out of her mouth, she kept it shut tight and went up the stairs to get the box of Ford’s things that she’d gone to sleep staring at every night since she’d walked out of the Haringtons’ house like some sort of kicked puppy.
The box wasn’t heavy, just a little awkward because of the dimensions, so she was careful carrying it back down the stairs, making sure each foot was firm on one step before putting her weight on it. That made the trip down slower than the trip up—well, that and making sure her foot didn’t go through the wonky step he’d promised to fix but never had. She set the box down on the table near the front door and crossed over to the kitchen, opening her mouth to let him know she was back, but the words died on her tongue.
Ford stood by the counter next to the now-open box that her brothers had left her. The one Ford had been so curious about, but—at the time—she’d pushed away any concern about that. Why would the man practically living with her be interested in whatever surprise her brothers had left for her? He probably wouldn’t. But a Waterbury detective who’d been assigned to watch her sure would be interested. He’d be so interested that he’d even sweet-talk his way into her home once again to have a look at what was inside.
Despite the awfulness of the realization, Gina stood there frozen. She would have thought she would have screamed and hollered and cried and pitched the mother of all fits. Instead, she just stood there and watched him look through the box her brothers had left.
“Do you want to know what it was? That awful thing that I wouldn’t tell you about at the Wooden Barber?”
He froze, his hand still in the box. There was no missing the guilt on his face or the regret—for getting caught or for what he’d done—in his eyes.
“A million years ago, in high school, I thought I was in love with a boy. He was a year older, not super popular but well known. He’d always been nice to me, said hi in the halls and asked about my classes.” In half a second, she was back there at Roosevelt High, walking the halls with only a friend or two to make it bearable. She’d been the freak, the ugliest girl in class, the one people stared at but never talked to. “It’s sad to admit, but in those days having someone be kind was so much for a girl like me that I’d almost died from the hope of it all.” The sympathy on Ford’s face was like a knife to the heart, so she looked away, dropping her gaze to the now-opened box. “One day, we were in the library together and no one else was around. He kissed me. Then he kissed me again. And again. I was so caught up in the moment that when he took my shirt off in the back stacks, I just went with it. This boy, he liked me. I liked him. What could go wrong?”
Humiliation, hot and prickly, beat against her cheeks. She wanted to run, to hide, but she refused to give into the old feelings. Instead she’d pick at that scab and prove once and for all that it couldn’t hurt her anymore. That Ford couldn’t hurt her.
“Then I heard the giggles. They were quiet at first, barely tickling my consciousness. Then they got louder and louder until they pierced whatever schoolgirl dream haze had enveloped me.” She raised her gaze back up, needing to see Ford’s face as she told the worst part, the part that made bile rise in her throat. “Pulling back from the boy’s arms, I looked around. What felt like a hundred pairs of eyes stared back at me from other students who had been hiding in the next aisle over and had peeked over the top of the shelved books to watch.”
All of the old emotions, the hate and anger and betrayal, clogged her throat, forcing her to take a breath before she could go on to tell Ford about the final blow.
“‘See, guys, I told you,’ the boy who’d always been nice to me said. ‘She’s a butterface, but if you can ignore how she looks above the neck, she’s got a hot bod to enjoy.’ Then he’d laughed. When I burst into tears, he handed me the shirt I’d so naively taken off and asked me why I couldn’t take a joke.” Even today the memory stripped her bare and raw. “Up until today, that had been the worst moment of my life, burned so firmly into my mind that even the vaguest memory of it made me want to puke.” She inhaled a deep breath and forced herself to go on, to deliver the final fuck-you. “But this moment of finding you looking through the box my brothers had left, after you’d said all those pretty words? That’s worse. You want to know why?”