“Get your fucking hands off me, you pervert!” I hissed, and to my surprise, he immediately let me go, holding both hands up as if to show me he meant no harm.
“Listen, I just want to talk. I need to explain?—”
“I don’t want you to explain! I want you to get the fuck out of my life!”
He winced as if I had struck him, and for some reason, his wide brown eyes stirred a strange feeling in my gut. How could someone so fucked up and dangerous look so vulnerable?
“Ryan… please? Can I just talk to you for a second?” His voice was softer than I had ever heard it. He wasn’t making jokes or being sarcastic. The way he said my name made it feel like heneededme to hear him out.
I stared at him for a long moment, and he nibbled on his lip ring, almost like he was…nervous?
I narrowed my eyes and crossed my arms over my chest.
“Fine. You have two minutes. Go.”
He winced again.
“Can we sit down?”
“No.”
“Okay, fine… well. First of all, I wanted to start off by saying that I’m sorry for…forcingmyself on you like that. No matter which way you swing, that wasn’t cool at all. I just… You called me that name, and I have a lot of fucked up trauma around it,” he muttered. He wasn’t looking at me anymore. He wasawkwardly rubbing the back of his neck beneath his hoodie and staring at his feet as if he were ashamed to tell me that he had any sort of weakness.
He looked so young all of a sudden, like a little lost boy who just needed someone to listen to his story, and I felt myself softening against my better judgment.
“Do you want to talk about it?” I asked, surprising myself with how gentle my tone was.
He glanced up at me, looking just as shocked as I was that I had bothered to ask.
“Umm… I won’t bore you with the details, but my mom used to call me that when I was a little kid. She wasn’t a very nice lady.”
So I was right. That phantom woman was his mother, and she had definitely been abusive when she was alive.
“She’s a big reason I do what I do.”
I narrowed my eyes. “And what exactly is it that you do?” I asked.
Cal sighed. “If I’m going to get into this, you should really sit down. It’s a long story, and you’ve had a rough day.”
“Yeah, no shit. I’ve had a rough couple of days, thanks to you,” I snapped, and he winced again.
“I know. Please sit down? I promise I’ll keep my hands to myself,” he said, gesturing to my massive California King.
I’m not sure what possessed me to humor him, but I did. I stalked to the end of my bed and sat down, watching him warily as he paced back and forth in front of me.
“So… where do I start…” He was muttering, and I had to admit, he was cutewhen he was like this. It was like I could almost see his thoughts scattered in a disorganized mess outside his brain, and he was fishing through the mess for the right thing to say to me.
“So my mother was an absolute piece of work. When my sisters and I were little kids, she used to keep us locked in the basement in cages.”
I choked.
Cages!?
I tried to speak but inhaled the wrong way and suddenly couldn’t stop coughing.
“Ginger snap? You okay?” Cal rushed forward and slapped my back aggressively as I tried to remember how to breathe.
I waved him off, still struggling to get the spit out of my lungs.
