Wish I May (40 page)

I’m clinging to the wall for dear life as I recover, but I’ve hardly caught my breath when William’s mouth is back at my ear. “Face me, sweetheart.”

I turn on wobbly legs and reach for the button on his jeans, desperate to get him nude, to feel his skin against mine. I unzip him and release him from his boxers. Before I can push them off his hips, he’s hoisting me up between his body and the wall, sliding into me fast, hard, and hungry.

I cry out in pleasure as he pushes deep.

“That’s right, baby,” he murmurs. “Let me hear you.”

He uses the strength in his arms to hold me up, and his muscles bunch under his shirt. He’s manic, driven by something he isn’t sharing with me. He presses his face into the crook of my neck, and all I can do is hold on and pray he’s finding what he needs in me.

He’s swelling inside me, so close to the edge, and he groans into my neck and presses my weight into the wall so he can slip his hand between our bodies. He’s holding back, putting off on his own release.

“Come for me again, sweetheart. Let me feel you.” His fingers are relentless against me, his whispered demands hot in my ear. It doesn’t take long before I shatter. Only then does he let go, his hips jerking and his head falling back as he finally releases inside me.

After, he takes me to the shower in the apartment and washes me slowly and thoroughly, pressing gentle kisses to where his mouth was rough minutes before.

We don’t bother going back to his place or getting dressed. We lock the doors to the apartment and curl up on the couch, clinging to each other.

I keep thinking the words I need to say but they refuse to find their way to my tongue. But I don’t want to ruin the perfection of this moment by explaining my ugly past.

“Why’d you do it?” His question is so soft, I almost don’t realize he’s speaking.

“What?”

He swallows so hard I can hear it. “Is it true? You were a prostitute?”

My heart pounds, but I concentrate on the feel of his skin under my cheek, his arms wrapped tightly around my waist. “It’s true.”

“That’s why you broke up with me, isn’t it? Your mom was stoned out of her mind and you sold yourself for money for your sisters.” His voice is so calm, so rational—a complete contrast to the chaos of pain and hope warring in my chest. How can he know this and not hate me?

“I messed up,” I confess. “I took a loan from a man I knew I shouldn’t trust, and when I couldn’t pay it off, he threatened Gabby and Drew.”

“You became a call girl to pay off a loan?”

I shake my head against his chest, then push myself up so I can look at his face. His eyes are full of hurt, and I wish I could take that away for him. “This is what the man does. He finds women who are in trouble and he gives them loans to keep them afloat. Then he requires them to ‘work off’ their debt.”

“Jesus,” he breathes. He squeezes me tight and pulls my head down to his chest again.

“I can hardly think about it. I hate thinking that anyone else touched you, but to think men paid for it.” A shudder moves through him, and he sits me up and climbs off the couch to pace. “Dammit, Cally, you were a fucking virgin. Didn’t he know?”

I close my eyes. His agitation makes me feel both better and worse. Better because I’m not alone. Worse because now he’s suffering with me. “I was more valuable to him once he found out.” I swallow hard, not wanting to share this ugliness with him, but knowing I need to tell him more. “I gave blow jobs to a few of his special clients, and then he played them off each other and gave the highest bidder my virginity.” I want to spare him the pain I see on his face, but I make myself keep going. “Brandon won that honor.”

He stops pacing and runs a hand over his face.

I make myself keep going. “Knowing I’d been a virgin only fueled Brandon’s obsession with me.” An obsession that began the moment I ran out of his condo, too terrified to do what I’d been sent to do.

“But what you told me was true? You’ve been tested? You’re healthy?”

“Of course! I wouldn’t have risked giving you something.”

“I’m not worried about me, Cally!” He pulls me off the couch and crushes me to his chest. “You’re all I care about. Don’t you get that?”

“I was telling you the truth when I told you I haven’t been with anyone for four years. It’s true. Brandon bought my virginity, but the man who’d given me the loan expected me to keep working. He threatened my life, my sisters. Brandon said he’d pay the guy off, get him to leave me alone, if I’d marry him. He promised to take care of me and give me money for my family, so I told mom I was in love with him and made her consent.”

“Did the girls know any of this?”

I shake my head. “Not about the loan or the prostitution or even the marriage. Mom and I thought it would give them the wrong idea about when they should get married and agreed not to tell them. Brandon gave me just enough to keep them off the streets but never enough that I felt like I could run away. He controlled every aspect of my life from the moment he bought me until he was put in prison four years ago.”

He pulls me into his arms. “I wish you would have told me.”

“I hated the idea of you knowing what I’d done.”

He presses his lips to my hair. “I think I knew. I told you I would imagine the worst, and when I saw the look in your eyes when I brought up the past, I knew it was much worse than anything I’d imagined before.”

“I’m sorry I couldn’t tell you. I thought you’d hate me.”

“How could I hate you for something like this?”

I shrug. “I made a choice.”

He takes my shoulders and steps back until I’m looking him in the eyes. “A choice made out of fear is no choice at all.”

I snuggle back into his heat. Through the sliding glass doors that look out over the river, I can see the stars cradled in the dark night sky. I take my time, selecting a favorite for the first time in seven years, and then I muster the courage to dare one more wish. “I love you,” I confess. “I never stopped.”

“I love you too. Always.” He tangles his hand in my hair and holds me close. “Don’t leave me, Cally. You fill my hollow places. You make me whole. Please stay.”

I lean back and frown up at him. “Where do you think I’m going?”

“I saw you packing your car this morning. There were suitcases in your trunk, and you were canceling all your appointments.”

“Just five days. Asher Logan’s letting me use his beach house on Lake Michigan for a week with the girls. Drew needs some time before going back to school.”

He squeezes me tighter. “And after that? You’re staying?”

“There’s nowhere else I’d want to be.”

S
EEING
C
ALLY
for the first time in a week is like a punch in the gut and an instant high all at once. Midweek, I caved and asked Maggie to tell me the address, but she refused, promising me the best thing I could give Cally right now is time.

So I made it five days and now she’s standing in front of me in long sleeve T-shirt, her hands tucked into the pockets of her jeans. The wind whips her dark hair around her face, and she looks so damn beautiful I can’t resist reaching out to tuck some of those wild wisps behind her ear.

“What are you doing here?” she asks softly.

“The bank is auctioning the house today,” I explain, as if she wasn’t already painfully aware of this fact.

Her shoulders tense. “I know you mean well, but sometimes people need to face the consequences of their decisions. For my dad, that will be losing this house.”

“You won’t let me buy it for you then?”

“I won’t,” she whispers.

“What about us?” Lizzy asks from behind me. She and Hanna were in the back of my car and apparently decided now was as good a time as any to make their presence known.

“What?” Cally asks. “You guys don’t have enough money to buy this house.”

“Not alone,” Lizzy says, “but maybe if we went in with some friends.”

“They say when you’re young is the best time to invest,” Hanna says sagely.

I nod, just as an oversized black pickup pulls in the drive.

“What’s Asher Logan doing here?”

“I guess maybe he’s looking at investment properties too,” I say. “And this is a prime piece of real estate, right by the river, not to mention the sentimental value it holds. He and I bonded over that roof, you know. Can’t put a price tag on male bonding.”

Max and Sam appear next, cutting through the grass up the trail from the paved path along the river. “Count us in, too,” Max calls. “That dock back there has the best fishing all along the river.”

Cally’s eyes brim with tears. “You guys.”

“I’m in, too,” Gabby says behind her. Cally turns and Gabby places a bright pink Minnie Mouse bank in her hands. “You got this for me when you took us to Disney Land. You told me to save for something magical. I think this place will do just fine.”

Drew steps forward next, her jaw hard and her eyes moist. “I’m in, too,” she says, handing Cally a wad of cash. “That’s what I was saving for a new iPhone, but I don’t need it. My best friends are all here in New Hope.”

Cally looks at the Minnie Mouse bank and cash in her hands. “So you’re all going to go in together and buy my dad’s house?”

I lift my hands. “Not me.”

Her brow wrinkles. “Not you?”

I shake my head. “I can’t have you accusing me of trying to buy you when I ask you to be my girl. But the rest of them, yes.”