His words are piercing, because it’s true. I wanted to fucking feel something, anything.
I’ve felt nothing but sorrow since my mom died. Nothing but deep dark depression. The only time it’s lifted is when I swallow Adderall, which isn’t often because I have a limited supply and no fucking access to more. I can’t pull myself out of this fucking hell, so yes, I want to feel something. Maybe, secretly, I did come here for a reason. Maybe I did want to get caught.
“Did you get your high?” he asks. “When Declan was hovering over you did you feel like that was it, like you were going to die in a fucking Irish pub because you wanted to feel something that badly?” His voice slowly rises as the words leave his mouth. He’s angry with me, but he doesn’t have the right to be. He knows nothing about me, nothing about the pain I’ve suffered.
So what if I wanted to feel something? It shouldn’t matter to him.
“You don’t know me.” My arms cross my chest in a huff and I move my gaze to the window, away from Liam O’Connor.
He blows out a harsh breath of air. “That’s where you’re wrong, little girl, I do fucking know you.”
He swerves the car off the road, causing me to slam against the passenger door. “What the—” The gear shift is slammed into park and he grabs my wrists, turning them over and inspecting them.
“Do you fucking cut yourself too?” When he doesn’t find marks on my wrists he goes for my thighs.
“Fuck you!” I push him, but he’s much larger than me. He’s built tall and thick and even using all my force I can’t get him off of me. He flicks the light on in the truck and drags the black mini skirt up my thighs until he finds what he is looking for.
Three jagged lines across my inner thighs, they’re old and scarred over and generally missed by everyone, but not him.
He’s not happy when he finds them though. He slams his body back against the driver’s side and groans.
“You don’t fucking know me, Liam. How dare you act all high and mighty.”
Lightening fast he turns to face me and his hand whips up to grab my chin, forcing me to meet his gaze. “Are you still doing it?”
I try to close my gaze. To pull my face away from him. Anything to get out of the sight of those eyes.
“Gemma, look at me.”
Slowly, I lift my eyelids and look at him again. He looks worried, concerned even, which is rich for a man who just met me and tried to fuck me in his office.
“No, they’re old. I don’t do it anymore.”
“No,” he says low. “You get your thrills fucking men you shouldn’t be with now, don’t you?”
I don’t answer, and his gaze doesn’t move from mine.
“How many men have you fucked just to spite your family, Gemma?”
I close my eyes, I need to get away, far away from this crazy man.
He drops his grip. “That’s what I thought.” He shifts the car back into drive and pulls back onto the highway.
He drives me to the train station in silence and once I’m out of his truck his speeds away from me.
For some reason, I don’t think this is the last time I’ll see Liam O’Connor.
“Where the fuck have you been?” Gian’s face is red and angry when I walk through the front door. Gio is behind him at the kitchen counter nursing a glass of whiskey, his new favorite hobby but no one is on him about that. My father is at the table with a pile of documents.
Everyone else in this family is allowed to have their vice, but not me.
Gio can drink himself silly. Dad can work himself to death. Gian is doing God knows what trying to take over the goddamn mob. But me? I’m supposed to stay home and magically be happy.
Maybe that’s the problem with Italian wives and daughters, we’re expected to be perfect, pleasing. We’re to be seen and not heard. Pretty, social, shallow creatures. I’m nothing like that.
I’m too angry to deal with him, so I don’t. I ignore my big brother as I waltz past him for the staircase.
“Gemma,” he grabs my arm, yanking me back toward him.