Fighting For Irish (A Fighting for Love Novel) (Entangled Brazen) (16 page)

Reaching past her, he grabbed his all-in-one shower gel and filled one of his hands with the electric-blue soap. As he made quick work of scrubbing some of it through his midnight hair and the rest over his body in quick, efficient movements, he asked, “Why not? Don’t you get along?”

“No, that’s not it. Nessie and I are very close.” Kat crossed her arms over her chest and moved so he could rinse himself from head to toe. “Especially when we were growing up. She always protected me, always took care of me.”

The clean scent of some scientist’s idea of what the ocean breeze smelled like curled around her. She closed her eyes for a few seconds and drew it deep into her lungs. His sheets and pillowcase smelled like that and she was sure it calmed her better than any expensive aromatherapy ever could. She came back to herself when Irish maneuvered her to stand in front of him, her back to his chest.

“So what happened to make you drift apart?”

Irish moved the heavy mass of her hair over the front of her left shoulder. Gathering it in her hands, she braided it to keep it out of the way as he began soaping her back. “She graduated and went to college in Nevada. She tried calling me, but I didn’t take her calls very often.”

His hands slid up and down her back, kneading her sore muscles and lulling her into an almost dreamlike state. She let her head drop forward and closed her eyes.

“Why was that?” he asked, his voice a low rasp by her right ear.

“Before she left, our asshole of a stepfather went to jail, so Vanessa thought I’d be okay for the next three years. But then Mom got a new boyfriend who made the stepdad look like Santa Claus.” Kat felt his grip tense briefly as he stroked down the length of her arms, but she forgot his reaction when his hands moved to lather her stomach in lazy circles. Leaning her head back on his chest, she continued. “So I rarely spoke to her because I wanted her to focus on the new chance she’d gotten at having a decent life. She didn’t need to be stressed out about any of my shit back home.”

“You were pretty selfless for being so young. Strong, too.”

A stunted, humorless laugh echoed in the small room. “I wasn’t either of those things. But I owed it to Nessie to let her go. She’d had to act like my mother almost my whole life because ours constantly chose her addictions over us.”

Flashes of memories from deep in her past crept out from the darkness to close in on her. Her throat was thick with old fear and forgotten ghosts. She took some deep breaths through her nose and forced herself to concentrate on Irish’s strong hands now spreading the shower gel over her breasts and up her neck.

Placing a soft kiss at her temple, he traced the scar in the center of her chest and asked, “Will you tell me how you got this?”

Kat opened her eyes and stared at the ceiling. She shook her head back and forth a few times on his pec. “I know you have some idea of my shitty life, Irish, but trust me, you don’t want to know the fucked-up details.”

His strong arms wrapped around her waist and he turned them to the side so the shower spray hit them both. With him leaning back against the wall, she let her weight sink into him. Between the water running down her front and his body behind her, she felt wrapped in a cocoon of warmth, and yet her insides were starting to convulse as though she stood naked in a snowstorm.

“I want to know everything about you, Katherine Terese MacGregor. Even the bad stuff.” When she started to shake her head again, he stopped her by tucking his face down by hers. “Hey,” he said gruffly. “I will fight
anything
—past, present, or future—that tries to hurt you. But I can’t fight your demons unless you show them to me.”

“There’s no point. You can’t fight things from the past.”

“Sure we can. Look at how we fought your problem of slipping away when we make love. We found a way around it and beat it. So maybe there’re other things we can do to help heal the parts you feel are kind of broken, you know?”

His point was valid. Sort of. He’d been right about keeping her eyes open during sex. As long as she could see that it was him, her brain didn’t slip into survival mode without her consent. She’d even gotten to the point where she could close her eyes for a few seconds at a time and still be okay. That probably was due to the fact that Irish could win awards for Best Sweet Talker Ever. It wasn’t constant during sex, but she suspected he did it as a way to keep her in the moment with him. Whatever the reason, she loved it and hoped he never stopped.

So, yes, he had fixed one problem she’d had as a result of her past. But even still, she didn’t see how telling him the sordid details of what happened to her for the two years between Nessie moving out and leaving with Lenny would help her. Her life was what it was. She’d learned to bury it and do her best to never let it see the light of day.

“Please, kitten,” he whispered. “Trust me enough to let me in.”

Sighing, she rested her arms over his. If it meant that much to him, it was the least she could do. He’d already done so much for her without asking for anything in return and honestly, she cared for him in ways she couldn’t explain. She’d do anything for him. All he needed to do was ask. Even if it meant slicing open ancient wounds.

“My mom was an alcoholic and a druggie for as long as I can remember. Nessie said there was a time when we were really young that she was amazing, but I never knew that mother. Nessie was the one who made sure I had food, clean clothes, got to school, everything. And when my mom had men over, my sister kept me away from the house or distracted me as best she could.”

“Like watching
The Odd Couple
?”

Kat smiled wanly. “Yeah, like that.”

“What about your stepdad? What was his deal?”

The smile fell from her face. “He was super controlling and sometimes abusive. Most of the time he targeted my mom, but whenever he swung his attention our way, Nessie antagonized him so she would get the brunt, if not all, of what he dished out. He almost never laid a hand on me thanks to her.”

“Sounds like you have an amazing sister,” he said with a slight squeeze of his arms.

“Yeah, I do,” she said thickly. “That’s why I didn’t want her to know how bad things were after she left. I didn’t want her screwing up her new life to come back and try to save me.” A lump formed in her throat and hot tears pricked the backs of her eyes. “It wasn’t worth it; after the first time, there was nothing left to save.”

…

“Tell me.”

Aiden kissed her cheek in encouragement then rested his forehead against her temple. At this rate they’d both be prunes by the time they got out of the shower, but she didn’t seem to be in a hurry to leave the steamy sanctuary, so neither was he.

“My mom’s new boyfriend moved in after only a week of them knowing each other. He gave me the creeps the first time I laid eyes on him. He constantly looked at me like I was a fucking steak or something. After a while the looks were accompanied by touching. A bump here, a graze there. He always feigned innocence, and I was too chicken to call him out on it.”

Goddamn it.
He knew where this was heading. If Vanessa was anything like him—and he expected she was—she definitely would have come back from college to bury that fucker.

The muscles in his jaw flexed as he tried to contain his anger. “You weren’t chicken, sweetheart. You were a kid up against a full-grown man with no one to help protect you.”

“Maybe,” she said hoarsely. “But maybe if I’d pitched a fit, or threatened to cut his balls off, it wouldn’t have gone any further than that.”

Aiden took a deep breath and asked the question he needed answered and yet never wanted to know. “How far did it go?”

Tears streamed down her cheeks, but her voice had become monotone. It was eerie, like an automated, unfeeling account of horrifying events. “He’d been drinking and I’m pretty sure he was high, too, although on what I didn’t know. My mom was already passed out and I’d gone into the kitchen to make myself a sandwich. I heard him come into the room, but I ignored him, hoping he’d grab a beer or whatever and go away.” She shook her head slowly, shaking loose more tears that got lost in the water cascading down her body. “But he didn’t go away.”

Kat started trembling in his arms. Reaching over, he shut off the water and grabbed one of the large bath towels from the rack. He wrapped it around her shoulders before fastening a second around his waist, then stepped out of the tub. With little effort, he picked her up and cradled her in his lap as he sat on the floor with his back against the wall. She drew her knees to her chest and pulled the towel around her so all that peeked out was her head and her toes.

With acid churning in his gut and the thirst for vengeance tickling his throat, Aiden held her in his arms while the details of that horrifying night spilled from her quivering lips.

She told him how her mom’s boyfriend had stepped between her and the kitchen island where she’d been slicing tomatoes. That he’d pulled her in hard and didn’t waste any time groping and fondling her through her nightshirt and pajama pants. She’d actually tried fighting him that first time, striking out to try and do as much damage as she could. But that’s when he grabbed the chef’s knife from the counter, effectively halting all her struggles.

Aiden heard the self-contempt in her voice as she recounted how she’d obeyed his every order after that. How she laid on the dirty kitchen floor and let him cut the clothes from her. How she stayed as still as a mannequin for the rest of the time, even when he forced himself inside her virgin body and the pain was almost too much to bear.

“He held the knife on me the whole time. He didn’t even stop when he accidentally cut me. The blood ran up over my neck and shoulders and dripped into my hair. I remember thinking it smelled like wet pennies.” Aiden watched in agony as more tears streamed from her blue-green eyes, falling silently from the edge of her jaw to the towel below. “I couldn’t get a full breath because of his weight crushing me. The little air I did get was thick with his sweat, stale cigarettes, Jim Beam, and blood. I thought for sure I’d suffocate. Sometimes I wish I would have.”

“Jesus Christ, baby, no. Look at me,” he urged with his fingers under her chin. He nearly broke down from the overwhelming despair staring up at him through her watery gaze. “Don’t you ever wish that again, you hear me?
Not ever.
”

Her chin trembled as the emotions started bubbling to the surface finally. “Y-you have no idea what it w-was like,” she rasped. “After that he always took me at night, in my bed. I never knew when. Sometimes it was several times a week. There were weeks I never saw him. But every time it happened, I turned my head and focused on the moon through my window. Seeing it brought a certain calm over me.

“I learned everything I could about it so that even when I couldn’t see it, I’d close my eyes and think about where it was and why, and it helped me slip away from my ugly reality. Ever since then the moon has held a very spiritual meaning for me. Almost like she was my guardian, helping me through the darkness to find her light.”

“Did you tell anyone? Vanessa?”

“My first thought was to tell Nessie. I knew she’d make him sorry for ever laying a hand on me. He must have known that because he made sure to tell me that if Vanessa found out, she’d drop out of college and end up in the same dead-end life as our mother.”

“Bullshit,” he spit with contempt. “He was trying to scare you so you wouldn’t say anything.”

“I know that now, but at fourteen the last thing I wanted to do was ruin my sister’s life.”

“How long did it go on?”

“Oh, he got bored with me after a year.”

“A
year
?”

“Yeah,” she said flatly. “I think he became impotent, but I never knew for sure. But then he decided just because
he
wasn’t enjoying me didn’t mean others couldn’t. So for a price, he allowed his friends to visit me instead.”

Holy fuck.
Horror washed over him, twisting his gut in knots for the young girl in his arms who’d been abused so viciously. How she could bear
any
man’s touch was a miracle. Aiden pulled her in tighter, though whether it was more for her comfort or his he couldn’t say. “Christ, baby, I’m so sorry.” His voice was barely a rasp due to the golf ball of grief now stuck in his throat.

“There’s no reason for you to be sorry; you didn’t do it.”

Her behavior since they’d gotten out of the shower had grown more detached. Like she was tucking herself away and leaving a robotic shell behind to continue the conversation. He didn’t like it. As much as he hated seeing her cry or get upset, he’d welcome that as opposed to this disturbing…
nothing
.

“Besides,” she added, “it’s over, so no big deal.”

“Kat, none of that has anything to do with who you are.”

“Yes, it
does
.” She sprang up from his lap, adjusting the towel under her arms and glaring at him as though he’d just insulted her. “I didn’t fight them! I
let
them have sex with me. Like a goddamn
whore
!”

Aiden grabbed the towel rack over his head and pulled himself to a standing position. Her hysteria was escalating as she revealed more of the self-deprecation she must have lived with most of her life. To think she’d been so violently mistreated made him absolutely murderous. He tried to go to her, to offer her what little comfort he could, but Kat slapped his hands away.

“Don’t you get it?” she cried. “Vanessa never would have allowed anything like that to happen to her. She would have slept with a knife, a gun, done
something
! If I’d been more like Nessie, none of that would’ve ever happened. But I was too weak and scared. I deserved what I got.”

“Fuck that,” he growled, grabbing her by the shoulders and giving her a quick shake. She’d gone too far. Aiden would sooner chew off his arms than listen to that bullshit. “You never deserved any of it. Not one
second
of what they did to you. You were just a kid, for chrissakes! I don’t care if you were walking around that house naked and shaking your ass. He had no right to touch you.
None
of them did. You understand me?”