Indecent Danger (Danger Incorporated #3)(12)
It was her turn to smile even at a shit moment like this. “I’ve never killed or cheated anyone.”
“Then this can’t be that bad, kitten. Trust me a little and tell me.”
She did trust him. More than she had anyone in her life. Travis Anderson was a good man, one of the best, but she was asking too much of him to not care that the woman in his life had been around the block dozens of times.
Slut. Whore. Easy. Tramp.
That’s what she’d been called by the other girls in school. Those catty ones who looked down at her and made sure she didn’t get invited to certain parties. They’d made her school years hell and even now all this time later those eager twins – guilt and shame – couldn’t leave her in peace. She hadn’t known it as a naive teenager but she knew it now…
A person has to live every day with the decisions they make. Good or bad.
“You know I was in foster care and then I was adopted,” she began, figuring she should start at the beginning. “My family was good to me but I had a lot of baggage. Things I had a hard time dealing with.”
Travis ran a finger across her jaw, tender and slow. “Did Bruce hurt you back then, sweetheart?”
Her throat swelled with emotion and she shook her head, forcing the words out. “No. It was the truth when I said I barely knew him. But I’ll get to him in a minute, okay?”
She took his silence as agreement and pushed forward, afraid that if she paused she’d lose what little courage she’d managed to scrape together.
“As I said, I had a lot of baggage. Most of it was about my mother and wondering how a parent couldn’t love and care for their children. It made me feel unworthy of anyone loving me. Let’s face it, if a parent can’t love you, then what’s the chances of anyone else loving you?”
“That’s not true–” he protested but she pressed her fingers to his lips.
“I know that now but I didn’t feel that then. Please let me tell this before I lose my nerve.”
He nodded but both his hands came up to wrap around her own, warm and caring and so needed. She would miss his touch when she left tonight. She couldn’t stay around to see the distaste on his face when she was done telling her story.
“I hungered for affection. My adoptive parents were sweet but not demonstrative. I’d never been held or cuddled as a child and by the time I became a teenager I wanted it so badly. That’s when things sort of went south.”
Aubrey had to steady her voice, her entire body shaking with emotion. Reliving the past was her least favorite thing to do and here she was doing it. Shame choked her and she had to swallow hard to be able to continue.
“I realized I could get attention from boys. They liked the way I looked and I began to flirt with them. It made me feel better about myself that they’d call me or ask me out. But like a junkie, that soon wasn’t enough. When I was fifteen I lost my virginity in the backseat of a Ford Taurus near the lake to a football player.” She closed her eyes in misery, tears welling up despite her desperate attempt to keep them at bay. “The next weekend I had sex with one of his teammates. And the next weekend another. Before too long I had plenty of guys paying attention to me. As long as I gave them what they wanted they gave me what my twisted-up brain had convinced me was love and affection. I used sex to numb the pain of my mother rejecting me. I lost track of the number of guys I slept with.”
Travis was silent although his grip had tightened. Aubrey didn’t dare look up to see the expression of disgust on his face. She didn’t think she could bear it.
“I was the school slut. Basically, I’d sleep with any guy that said I was pretty. I did that until senior year when one of the few girlfriends I had got pregnant. It sort of snapped me back to reality and I straightened out. But it was too late, really. I was shunned by most kids in my school even though I lived like a nun the rest of that school year. I was a whore and no one was ever going to let me forget it.”
She moved her legs restlessly, her body filled with a pain so acute it almost took her breath away.
“And tonight Bruce reminded me of what I really am. I’d almost forgotten. I’ve spent the last ten years trying to run from it but I realize that’s never going to happen. I wanted to be perfect for you so badly, Travis. I wanted to be the kind of woman you could care about, but the fact is I’m still that trashy lay from Chicago. I’m so f*cking sorry that I didn’t tell you in the beginning. I really am. I could have saved both of us all of this.”
Travis had levered up from the loveseat and begun to pace the room, back and forth, as if he was pondering the secrets of the universe. Aubrey said nothing, too exhausted from her confessions to say much more. In reality all she wanted to do was crawl away and curl up in the fetal position for the next several days. A dreamless sleep was the only thing that would stop the hurt from her shattered heart.
He finally stopped, standing in front of her, but she tried to keep her gaze on his shoes. Tugging at his bow tie, he tossed it onto the arm of a chair with a heavy sigh, along with his jacket.
“Aubrey, look at me.”
Deep and commanding, she found herself obeying his voice even though it was difficult to see him through her tears. She’d never wanted it to come to this.
“I am so f*cking angry right now and I’m trying to keep myself under control.”