Lies That Sinners Tell (The Klutch Duet 1)

Jay stayed in his position for a moment longer before he broke free. He took the wooden spoon from my hands and pushed the mushrooms off the heat.

His hands went to my hips then he turned me to face him. “I’m going to need you to process out loud,” he murmured. His grip was painful, he was clutching me so tightly that my hips would definitely be bruised tomorrow. He was clutching me like he wanted to imprint his fingerprints onto my bones.

It clicked then. Jay was afraid. He was afraid this new piece of information—this new rule—was going to be a deal breaker. Jay was afraid to lose me.

I’d never seen him afraid before.

“It’s just ...” I trialed off. “It’s cliché and rather vapid.”

“I don’t care,” Jay clipped.

“I’d always imagined my father walking me down the aisle,” I admitted in a small voice. “Although he doesn’t seem like the kind of man who’d be ... excited to do such a thing, it’s something he’s always looked forward to. The custom of it all.” A smile tugged at my lips. “I guess I was always looking forward to the custom of it all. In a lot of ways, I’m not traditional, and I’m happy to forego all of the plans that patriarchal society has for a woman. I’ve become rather attached to the idea of a wedding. A marriage.” I searched Jay’s eyes. “But a marriage is not always something that starts off with a party and a white dress.” I paused. “Why don’t you want to get married?”

Asking questions was no longer technically against the rules since we were no longer technically in the arrangement. But there were still rules. He was still Jay. I still didn’t know about how he got his scars, what happened in his past. Who had hurt him in such a way he carried around pain in his lungs. I was still afraid of asking Jay questions. Afraid of what would happen if he didn’t answer me. Terrified of what would happen if he did.

“My father loved my mother,” he said. “She loved him back. They loved each other’s rotten souls, disfigured, ugly hearts. There was nothing else in the world that they loved. The only reason I was born was because it meant that my father got an extra fifty dollars a month in his disability check.”

His hands tightened even more at my hips, and I sank my teeth into the inside of my lip so I didn’t cry out. I didn’t want him to loosen his grip on me. He needed to hold me that tight. To keep him in the present. I needed him to hold me like this, hurt me.

“Their love was toxic,” he continued. “Everything they did, they did for each other. They liked to inflict pain. Liked to watch each other inflict pain.”

I blinked as Jay’s words sunk in. The meaning of them. His parents abused him. They’d liked to watch each other abuse him. They’d enjoyed that. Hurting their child.

The mere thought horrified me. Sickened me.

I knew what it was like to have a parent hurt you. Do things to you that a parent never should. But that had not been my mother. That had been her illness. Even as young as I was when it happened, I knew that it wasn’t her. Most importantly, I’d known she didn’t enjoy hurting me. She hadn’t wanted to hurt me. It haunted her, what she’d done under the clutches of her mental illness.

It was scarring enough to have a parent, someone you love and worship so much, someone that you trusted to keep you safe, hurt you. But to know that they’d liked it? That it had brought them joy? That was something else entirely. That was something that would permanently disfigure your insides. That would make it impossible to separate love from pain. From torture.

“I’ve done everything I can to separate myself from them in many ways. But my destiny was always to become some sort of monster. I just had to choose what kind of monster I became. That’s never going to change, Stella. I need you to know that.”

I couldn’t cry. Even though all I wanted to do was sob for Jay, for his childhood, for the adult he might’ve been had it not been for this. There was no way to change the past. Jay was who he was. And I loved him.

“I can’t get married,” Jay said, watching me process this information. “It was like a club that they joined in order to chain me in to their lives. I won’t do it.” His eyes were hard on mine. “Even for you.”

It hurt. I hated to admit that, in the midst of what Jay had just told me. The explanation for so many of his qualities. Even though it explained so much, it still didn’t make it hurt any less that his love for me would not change. Love did not conquer all.