“No, it’s not.”
“The outcome is the same,” she tightens her arms around my forearm and continues, “me, here with you.”
And fuck, she knows how to disarm the hell out of me. She knocks down my walls like she is barely blowing on a toppling domino.
“My father and I…we…I—” My voice dries as I tense. This sharing thing really isn’t as easy as people make it seem.
“You hate him.”
I’m not sure whether she is stating or asking, but the way she says it is so angry that it sounds more like she’s saying we hate him. And although she doesn’t know it yet, she’ll hate him and me.
With her lip curled between her teeth and her eyes narrowed in a scowl, it’s as if she already knows the piece of shit my father is.
Nodding in answer to her question, I hitch her leg a little higher and her foot guides mine between hers.
“Why?”
She has no fucking idea the Pandora’s box she’s prying open. I hate him because he hurt my mother. I hate him because he hurt my brother, I even hate him some more because he hurt me. But the reason he’s a dead man, is that he tried to hurt her.
“Why does anyone hate?”
Tilting her head back, her bright brown eyes look into my green ones like she can see into every corner of my soul. It’s a really terrifying and torturous place to find yourself in. Vulnerable.
“He hurt you,” she hisses, turning so she can stroke my jaw.
Cassie’s fingers trail down my neck, over the small scar he left during one of his tantrums. Angling her arm around me, she traces down, between my shoulder blades.
I can’t stop myself from saying what I do next.
“When Kit and I were young, my mum used to have this oil radiator she used to keep in the hallway, right outside my dad’s office. My mum is always cold, she has the heating on in the summer sometimes.”
Her hand flattens on my back and she looks up at me, her little nose scrunching and twitching the way it does when she’s upset but is trying to hide it.
“My father never touched us as children, he would raise his voice and honestly, that was enough to make us rethink whatever we were doing. But I was always pushier than Kit, I liked to test boundaries and see how far I could go…I just didn’t know how far Lucian Fairfax could go too. He never once laid a finger on me.”
He didn’t need to. He had other ways of inflicting his damage.
“But…”
“It was the end of summer, we had just come back from Sicily and my mum was behind on her work. She was helping restore a painting at the gallery, the team were running behind, and she had to leave us with our father. I think he was stressed too, and I was a little shit because I was a bored eight-year-old boy with nothing to do except play quietly.”
“Your mum restores paintings?” Wide-eyed, her excitement at the minimal information I’ve given her is palpable. Guilt squeezes my chest with a vice like bruising force that makes it hard to breathe. I should tell her who my mother is, but I know that it’ll be another thing that might push her away from me. She’ll think of everyone else and what they think before herself and what she wants. “Why didn’t you tell me that when we talked about my dissertation? That’s so amazing. Who does she work with?”
“She’s part of the team at the National Gallery.”
Her teeth sink into her plump lip and her eyes glisten with so much awe that it might burst from her in bright rays. “That’s my dream job.”
“It is.”
“Yeah,” she admits. “My professor heads up their team, and she has the most amazing stories…”
“She does.”
“I want to be her when I grow up.” Her smile beams up at me and for a moment I consider telling her about all the amazing ways her Professor is the best mother I could’ve ever dreamed of.
“You don’t want to be anyone but you, Cass. Ever.” Kissing the top of her head I tighten my hold of her.
“It’s such a small world…” Smaller than you think, my little flower.