Tank (Moonshine Task Force Book 2)(46)
“Please,” I grasp her chin, pulling her to me for a forceful kiss, one of ownership, but also one of a desperate man trying to hold onto the most important thing in his life. “Let me in.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Blaze
“You asked me once why I do what I do and I told you it was because I just like to help people. I haven’t been totally honest with you, and I feel like I need to be. If we’re going to go headlong into this ‘new’ relationship of ours, then it needs to be with the truth being shared between the two of us.”
I have his attention now. “Nothing’s going to change how I feel about you. I understand why you love your profession and I support you totally in it. This isn’t going to be a problem between us again, Blaze. I swear.”
I take his hand in mine, relishing the energy and comfort I take from the simple touch. “No, I know, but I still want to be completely honest and more than anything I feel like it’s time. I’ve never told another person this story,” I admit. I do my best not to think about this part of my life.
“Now you’re starting to scare me,” he lets go of my hand and palms the back of my neck, bringing my gaze level with his. “But if I’m the person you’ve decided to trust with this secret of yours, I’m honored. We’ve come too far to let things come between us, Blaze. So you go ahead and tell me what you need to. I can say with one hundred percent certainty, it’s not going to change the way I feel about you.”
I want to cry as soon as I hear those words come out of his mouth. I’ve never opened myself up about this to anyone, and it’s almost as if proof and memories were wiped away. It fucking hurts to remember. I swallow harshly against the swelling in my throat as I open this wound.
“I didn’t necessarily become a paramedic because I wanted to help people. It’s way more personal than that.” I’m already crying, I can feel the wetness of the tears streaking their way down my face. This may be the hardest thing I’ve ever done. For minutes I struggle with what to say next. Countless times I open and close my lips, but no sound comes from between them.
“Babe, you do what you need to in order to tell me this. Obviously it’s painful for you.”
Grabbing my phone, I do the one thing I can do. Going into my pictures, I pull up the most coveted I have there. It’s a fifteen-year-old me, laughing with the person she looked up to most in the world. I trace her face for a second with my fingertip before I turn the screen so Trevor can look at the image.
“She looks like you, who is she?”
I bite my bottom lip and quirk my eyebrow as I push the words past my tight throat. “My sister.”
The shock is apparent on his face. “I never knew you had a sister.”
I laugh, but it’s harsh and filled with so much hurt that even I can hear it. “My parents would love it if no one remembered her,” I stop and take a fortifying breath. “But I do, every day I remember her.”
He leans in, kissing my lips softly, taking some of the salty tears that have flowed past those speed bumps while the rest of them roll down my chin and neck, gathering in the spot where my clavicles meet. “Tell me about her, baby. Let it all out.”
“Annabelle was sixteen years older than me. Mom and Dad had a teenage pregnancy that they tried to pass off as a honeymoon baby. They tell everyone they got married when they were seventeen, but the truth is they got married when they were twenty – money can change any fact and hide so many secrets,” I give him a mirthful smile. “It’s exactly why I don’t care to ever have the type of money I grew up with.”
I take a minute, trying to figure out how I want to go into this story, how I want to portray my sister. Over the years I’ve come to learn some hard truths, but I don’t want to taint her memory in any way and I don’t want Trevor to get the wrong idea about her.
“Annabelle was different. She marched to the beat of her own drummer, danced to songs only she heard, and tried to live her life the best way she knew how,” I finally decide that’s the very best way to explain her. “She tried to be everything my parents wanted her to be and she was my hero. When the pressure got to be too much, I could always go to her little apartment, crawl in bed with her, and she’d tell me a funny story. Somewhere around her twenty-fifth birthday, things started to change a little. At first I think I’m the only one who noticed it.”
Immediately I get a flashback of her overexcited behavior about a pair of shoes being on sale, which had been so unlike her months before.
“She would get really excited about an idea, over-the-top excited, and she’d put everything she had in her toward it, but then it would crash. She’d not get out of bed for days at a time, she’d cry, talk about how much of a failure she was, and how she couldn’t do anything right. It was this never-ending cycle.”
I get up to pace, because I can’t take Trevor’s eyes on me anymore, can’t stand the way he’s looking at me with pity.
“Around that time, my parents decided she was too old to be single. For the next three years, they pushed men at her, told her bullshit about men not wanting to be around her because she liked to color her hair. She hated being a blonde, I mean absolutely hated it. Red was her favorite color,” I admit, a soft smile on my face.