Dirty Sexy Saint (Dirty Sexy #1)(52)
“I’m not,” she replied quietly, understanding the reason he was apologizing before he could even explain. “It was what you needed, and I’m grateful that I was here for you.” Her warm breath drifted across his chest as she spoke.
He was grateful, too, more than she’d ever know. God, she knew him so well. Had known what he’d needed even before he had. “Then I guess what I should say is thank you.”
Before she could respond to that, he quickly pushed out the next words so he couldn’t change his mind. “You asked about the scars on my back and what happened back when I was a kid.”
“Yes. Will you tell me?” She was quiet and hopeful but not demanding.
He realized she was giving him a choice, and for the first time in his life, he found himself wanting to share the most personal, private side of himself with someone. With Samantha. And so he did, starting from the beginning.
“My mother was a crack whore and a prostitute,” he said, bracing himself for some kind of negative reaction from Samantha—flinching, shuddering, something to indicate her disgust. But the only thing she did was rest her hand on his chest, right over his beating heart, as if she needed that emotional connection to him as much as he needed her.
He swallowed the thick knot in his throat and continued. “Mason, Levi, and I, we all have different fathers. Each time our mother got pregnant, it was with a different john, so we don’t even know who our fathers were. We never had a man’s influence in our lives. But there were many jerk-offs who lived with us in our one-bedroom apartment, and they were all drug addicts like our mother,” he said, unable to withhold the disgust he harbored. “And since she was never aware or conscious enough to take care of us kids, I took on the role at a very early age.”
“That must’ve been hard,” she murmured, her hand still lingering over his heart.
He didn’t acknowledge just how difficult it had been. “I was six when Levi was born, and even then, I was the one who made sure he had his bottle, and I changed his diapers the best I could. I made cereal and sandwiches for me and Mason—at least when we had food in the house, but a lot of times we went to bed hungry.”
She lifted her head and met his gaze, her blue eyes filled with compassion and a flicker of anger, too. “Why didn’t social services step in?”
He wasn’t surprised someone as pure and untouched as Samantha still believed in the system. “We lived in the projects, and nobody cared about what happened with their neighbors. Nobody noticed, so my mother was never reported. And in her lucid moments, when I complained, my mother instilled the fear of God in me, warning me that if I told anyone that she was rarely home or that we had no food, social services would come by—to take us away and split the three of us up forever.”
“That’s awful,” she said, her voice an aching whisper.
He shrugged. “That was my life.” Exhaling a deep breath, he gently pressed a hand to the back of her head and brought her cheek back to rest on his chest, and continued to stroke her hair. It was much easier to talk to her about his past without looking into her sad, somber eyes.
“So at the age of six, you became the caretaker for your brothers.”
“Mmm-hmm. And I went to school because I had to or someone would notice and they’d split us up. And I was a good kid because I was always so afraid that if I did anything bad, I’d lose my brothers forever.”
“They were lucky to have you,” she murmured.
He shrugged. “I did what I had to do. I raised Mason and Levi the best I could and tried to keep them out of trouble. Then, when I was fifteen, my mother got involved with Wyatt. He moved in and kept her even more doped up on drugs, pimping her out for cash while running his own seedy side businesses. And while she was out at night prostituting herself, Wyatt would terrorize us.”
A full-body shudder racked his frame at the memory, but he’d started this, and he intended to finish. “He was an abusive, sadistic prick who preyed on the weak, and because my brothers were still so young and couldn’t defend themselves, I’d deflect as much of the abuse as I could, turning it my way. And one of the things that Wyatt liked to do the most to assert his authority was to pin me down on the floor and press the burning end of his cigarette against my back, until it literally burned a hole in my flesh.”
Bile rose in his throat at the hellish memory, while beside him, Samantha stiffened and a soft choking sound escaped her throat. But Clay wasn’t done. “The sick bastard would get off on my screaming. The more I squirmed or cried, the more he’d laugh and press the cigarette harder and longer against my skin.” He closed his eyes, seeking to escape the memories he lived with every single day. “But at least he didn’t do it to my brothers,” he said, repeating the words that had gotten him through the pain and allowed him to take the abuse. “And though there were times when Mason and Levi watched helplessly, I’d warned them not to get involved.”
Samantha made another small sound of distress. She wrapped an arm around his midsection and cuddled closer to his side, holding him tight and silently comforting him. Her warmth and silent understanding soothed his frayed emotions, enabling him to go on. He felt like the story would never end, just as he’d felt while living the horror.
“This went on for months, until one day our mother was arrested for drug possession and solicitation. Since it was her fifth offense on various charges, she was sent to state prison for eighteen months.” He absently rubbed his hand along the arm still secured across his abdomen. “I don’t know the legalities, but somehow that stupid bitch was able to appoint Wyatt as our guardian until she was released, and during that time, the abuse only got worse.”