Risk (Gentry Boys #2)(13)

Even though I felt supremely foolish, I set my plate down and picked up the shirt, bringing it to my face. I inhaled the essence of smoke, soap, and a basic male musk that caused all my female parts to shriek with longing.

Goddamn he was good.

I shook my head and tossed the shirt on the couch. Dolly immediately jumped on top of it and began kneading the fabric into a bed.

“You too, huh?” I grumbled as she settled comfortably in the middle of the bed she had created.

I picked up my plate full of eggs but I wasn’t really hungry anymore. After getting free of the Paul situation I had come to a long overdue epiphany; I’d keep blowing around the country like a damn tumbleweed unless I stopped clinging to men in search of something I would never have. Before Paul there’d been the minor league baseball player who I could never run fast enough to keep up with. That phase was a long string of cheap motels and drunken sex that never managed to get me satisfied.

For a while I’d also taken up space on the tour bus of an obscure band. It was a time that followed a particular low point in my life. But strangely, that rowdy environment full of colorful souls had helped heal me a little when I desperately needed some healing. I was still trying to escape the consequences of the first and most damaging chapter of my sad history with men. It was the disaster that had torn the Lee girls apart; something that destitution, despair and the constant selfishness of an irresponsible parent had failed to do. It was my mother calling me a thousand foul things. It was my screaming answers, exposing too many terrible truths. It couldn’t be taken back. On the night I left, the man who had caused all the agony was nowhere to be found.

If Laura Lee ever thought of her eldest daughter she never made it known. My sisters were beautiful in their grief the last time I hugged them goodbye. Mia. Aggie. Carrie. I missed them.

We had been the Lee girls, all taking the last name of our only known parent. Over a span of four years my mother had been a baby factory accepting donations of diverse sperm. She chose our first names based on whatever area of the South happened to be nearby when we came screaming out of her womb. I, Tallulah Rae Lee, was born when she was nineteen. Fourteen months later came Meridian, who resembled our mother the most. She had the same pale frailty and seemed even more destined to be wounded by the world. The following year brought Augusta whose dark complexion guaranteed that heartless people would be forever asking if she was really one of us. Finally my youngest sister, Carolina, came rolling out armed with willful demands that never subsided.

My mother dragged us throughout the darkest corners of the deep South and it was a wonder we even learned to read. We lived off charity until it was exhausted in a particular place and then we moved on. There was never money for anything and our clothes were always some other child’s cast offs. I’d learned to sew early on so that what little we had could be adjusted to make us into something presentable.

Strangely, I didn’t remember my childhood as being terrible. Sometimes I was hungry and sometimes I was cold, but there was always the warmth of family. My sister Augusta, nicknamed Aggie, two years younger, was like my other half. We were a determined team overseeing the survival of the Lee women.

I saw the disbelief in Aggie’s eyes that terrible night when I packed a garbage bag full of everything I owned. Mia and Carrie were trying to hold my mother back to keep her from hitting me again. It was the first time she had ever done so. That only made it more awful.

“Tru,” Aggie had reached for me, her voice choked. But I could only clutch her briefly before leaving that chaos behind.

Except for Carrie, who was in her last year of high school and had managed a scholarship to a highbrow boarding school, my sisters were grown now, scattered. We were rarely in contact. It was always Aggie’s tragic face that haunted me most when I thought of those final moments all of us were together. I knew she didn’t understand then. And it was too late to explain it now.

My hand went, reflexively, to the place where I knew a faint scar hid beneath the fabric of my robe. It was the most important thing there was to know about me. It was the thing I hadn’t spoken of to anyone.

I’m sorry, Aggie. I left you alone with it all. But I had to.

With a deep sigh I turned on the television. After flipping the channels for a few moments I came across a talk show featuring a bunch of expensive-looking women sitting around a table. They sipped wine and talked about buying purses that cost more than the amount of my weekly paycheck. I stared at them, wondering where in the hell people like that came from. Had everything always been pretty for them? Or were their bright smiles and costly accessories masking some hidden ugliness?

I turned the television off, trying to throw off my sense of gloom. It wasn’t my natural frame of mind. There were voices outside. Most of the local residents were students. Weekday mornings involved a parade of bicycles headed for the university. I’d finally taken the high school equivalency test over a year ago when I was staying in Texas. At least once a week I took that piece of paper out and stared at it even though I knew it was nothing special. Hell, almost everyone managed to graduate from high school somehow. Maybe that’s why it meant so much to me. It was a symbol of a normal life. Someday I would love to be among the crowd rushing to class.

All the attempts to distract myself were no good. In the middle of my thoughts I shifted position on the couch and felt a faint soreness between my legs. That was all it took to knock the wind out of me as I recalled all the vivid reasons why I was sore. Although Creed had been ruthless in his quest for pleasure he gave back everything he got. I’d never been with a man who was so intent on getting me to the peak and got even more aroused every time I came. Maybe I should have accepted his offer to take me out to breakfast.