“Ah, sweetheart. Stop if it hurts you to talk about it.”
“You need to know, Damian. I—I need to tell you.”
He nodded. “I’m listening.”
“It was almost unbearable. Thank God I had—I had Kay.”
“Kay.” His mouth twisted.
“I was ten. She was fourteen. We’d never been close—the age difference, I guess—but when our parents died…” Ivy swallowed hard. “They put us into foster care. Together. And Kay was—she was—”
“Your lifeline?”
There it was. That same word Kay had used. Ivy nodded. “Yes.”
“And?”
“And—and we were in one place that was okay. In another that wasn’t. And—and I was accused of—of taking money—”
Damian tugged Ivy from the chaise into his lap. “You don’t have to tell me any of this,” he said, trying not to let her hear the anger in his voice, the anger of a man imagining a child dropped into a state system, alone, unwanted—
“I hadn’t stolen the money, Damian. I don’t know who did, but they—they put me back in the Placement center for a while.”
God, his heart was going to break. And he knew, without question, who had stolen the money and let Ivy take the blame.
“And then they placed me with—with a man and a woman. Not Kay. She’d turned eighteen. She left foster care.”
“Ivy. I love you. There’s no need to—”
“I have to tell you so you’ll understand why I—why I agreed to carry Kay’s baby.”
“And mine,” he said softly.
Ivy nodded. “Yes. You have to know, Damian.”
“I don’t,” he said gently, and meant it. “But I can see that you have to tell me.”
She nodded again, thankful that he understood.
“So,” he said, cupping her face, “tell me, and we can put the past behind us.”
Could they? When he knew everything? Ivy prayed he was right.
“They placed me with this couple. She didn’t pay any attention to me. Well, she did, but—but he—he was kind to me. He said he’d always wanted a daughter. A little girl of his own. He bought me things. A doll. I was old for dolls but nobody had given me anything since—since our parents’ deaths and—”
“And you were grateful,” Damian said, and wondered at the coldness stealing into his heart.
“Grateful. And happy, even though I didn’t see Kay anymore. I understood,” she said quickly, seeing the lift of Damian’s eyebrows. “I mean, she was busy. Working. She had friends. She was grown up and I…” Her voice trailed away and then she cleared her throat. “My foster father said he knew I was lonely. He began coming into my room to tuck me in. To kiss me good-night. I thought—I thought he was—he was—”
“What did the bastard do to you?”
She stared at Damian. She had seen him angry, even furious, but she had never seen him like this, his eyes black, his mouth thinned, his hands so tight on her shoulders that she knew his fingers must be leaving bruises on her skin.
“He…” Oh God. Oh God…“He raped me.”
Damian hit the little table where he’d put the tissue box so hard it almost shattered. His arms went around her; he held her tight against him.
“And—and it was all my fault.”