Swink (Landry Family 5)

“Can we skip to that part now?” I ask, twisting her nipple between two fingers.

“No,” she says, stifling a moan but not stopping me. “As I was saying, at first I think that was the extent of my reaction to you.”

“So you wanted my cock? That’s it.”

“At first,” she laughs. “Maybe. But then something happened. I got to know you.”

“It’s amazing you’re still here.”

“Dominic. Stop.” She struggles against me, fighting against my arm that’s holding her to me. Eventually, I let go and she sits up. She gives me a look that I’ve only seen a few times, but one I think she must’ve learned from her mother. “You know what’s amazing?”

Assuming that this is a rhetorical question, I don’t answer. Instead, I focus on not pulling her mouth to mine and kissing the hell out of her. This time, not even because of lust. This time, because of how she’s looking at me.

Moments like this scare the fuck out of me with Cam. I worry that maybe she’s getting in too deep with me, even though I do my best to keep her at semi-arm’s length. I try not to encourage her infatuation with me, to not let her entwine herself in my day-to-day as much as possible. When she looks at me like this, like I could be something to her, I falter.

There are things about me that she doesn’t know. I don’t want to tell her, afraid she’ll see me differently. Yet, it’s a burden I carry on my shoulders because sooner or later, if she doesn’t walk way for another reason, it’ll come up.

“The way you help your brother is amazing,” she says.

“Do you know how many times he’s helped me?” I lift a brow.

“You always say that, but I see you giving way more than him.”

I bite back my next words. My throat squeezes closed, my annoyance at her perceived understanding of my relationship with Nate making it hard to breathe. As I watch her face shadow with the realization that there might be more between my brother and I than she comprehends, I war with whether to bring up the past.

If I don’t, I’ll continue to have this worry in the pit of my stomach. If I do, it could be the end of all this like the flip of a switch. I don’t know what will happen when she sees all of me.

“I like your brother. I do. A lot, actually. But you shortchange yourself when it comes to him. If he asked you to give him this apartment, you would. And that’s awesome of you, Dom,” she says, placing a hand on my chest. “It’s one of the reasons I like you.”

Her palm flexes over my heart and she looks at me so earnestly, so tenderly, that I know I have to tell her. Now. Before I lose the courage. If she walks, at least she does it before she gets in any deeper.

Shifting under the blankets, I move so I’m sitting upright. “When I was sixteen,” I say, clearing my throat, “my father beat the shit out of my mother.”

She gasps, her hand flying to her mouth. “Why would he do that?”

“Because it was a Thursday,” I say, emotionless. “Because we had ham sandwiches for dinner. I don’t fucking know. But it happened a lot and this particular night in June, it was really bad.”

“Did he hurt her?”

“Most nights he did. Usually a few bruises, a few chunks of hair missing, things that became almost normal to us. Isn’t that sick?”

Her eyes fill with tears as she watches me recant my childhood.

“Then, one night, things were different.” Forcing a swallow, I take her wrist in my hand and hold it. She slips it down so our fingers interlock and lays them, together, on my stomach. “I was in bed, my room just below my parents and it began. It was almost predictable, which is crazy. It started with yelling, then crying, then he’d throw her around until he was done.”

“You had to hear that?”

Ignoring her question and the tears slipping down her cheeks, I stare at the glow of the television power switch across the room. “It got bad. And it didn’t end. And I heard her cries turn to screams . . .”

Camilla squeezes my hand so hard it almost hurts.

“I went up the stairs, seeing Nate behind me at the foot of the stairs when I got to the top. He came up as I opened the door to my parents’ room.”

“What happened?” she asks quietly.

“The sick fuck had her on her back, on the bed, a gun pressed against her temple,” I say as calmly as I can. “I, um, I was afraid to move. Afraid to speak. Afraid that something would cause him to pull the trigger and shoot her in the head. She looked at me, her hand sort of halfway reaching out in an attempt to keep me back.”

“Oh my God.”