Page 35 of Hide Little Traitor

What the fuck just happened?

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHLOE

NOW

When Kingston steps out of the bathroom, freshly showered and wrapped in nothing but a towel, I’m still sitting in the middle of his bed.

I should have gone back to my room, if for no other reason than because he’s blackmailing me into marrying him with orgasms, but I’m frozen in place.

I’m afraid that if I leave this room, he’ll disappear for another three days and the loneliness will creep back in.

“I thought you’d have gone,” he admits, running his hand through damp hair.

“Why do you want me to marry you?”

His brow quirks up, but he doesn’t reply immediately. Instead, he steps into his closet and returns a moment later with sweatpants and a black Henley in tow.

Dropping the clothes on the end of the bed, he tugs the towel from around his waist, discarding it in the hamper by the closet, but I’m far too distracted by his very hard cock.

Kingston takes his time tugging on his sweatpants, not bothering with underwear, before pulling the Henley over his head.

This man has no right looking like that.

Once he’s dressed with a satisfied smirk, he perches on the edge of the bed and pats the place beside him.

Hesitantly I crawl across the mattress, but as soon as I’m within reach, he tugs me into his lap.

His arms band around me, making it impossible to escape. Not that I would even if I could.

I need answers too badly, and the only way I’m getting them is straight from the source.

“You know me and Caroline grew up in foster care?” he asks, and I nod in answer. After the accident, I was the only person she could speak to about her best friend because the mere mention of Kingston sent anyone close to the Lombardis into a tailspin. “I was given up by my parents when I was seven. I was too much, too boisterous for two people in their later years, and one day they decided to drop me off at a firehouse and never look back. The police looked for them, but they were long gone by the time they got a patrol to our house.”

My heart aches for him. For a little boy who didn’t understand why the people who should have loved him most would abandon him.

But isn’t that the same thing he did to me? Leaving me in the middle of the night grieving and broken?

“I bounced around foster care for a while. Some homes were good, others weren’t so good. But I never allowed myself to get attached. Why would I when they were bound to leave me the same way my parents did?”

Kingston shakes his head, his arms holding me a little tighter, as if my weight across his lap is all that keeps him in this moment with me.

“It wasn’t until I was ten that I found my way to the group home. In some ways it was better than the foster homes because there was far more scrutiny on them. But they were cold and lonely, and I found myself missing my parents more and more.

“Until Caroline came. She was a few years older than me, but from the moment she sat down next to me at dinner one night, we were inseparable. Kindred spirits, as they say. She was like a sister to me, and she protected me just like an older sibling would, but eventually she aged out of the system.

“She met Salvatore not long after she turned eighteen, and she fell head over heels for him. He’s a lot of things, but he was always a good husband to her. It’s just about his only redeeming feature, seeing as he was never a very good father to those boys.

“By the time I aged out, Caroline was pregnant with Damon, and Salvatore took me under his wing, showing me the ropes of a business I wanted no part in. But I wanted to be close to Caroline, to the only family I really had.

“It was never my dream to be a part of a Mafia family, and I wrestled with that for years. It’s why I wasn’t around a lot at the compound. I chose to take the jobs no one else wanted to do outside the walls of the Lombardi mansion. The stakeouts, the recon, that kind of thing.”

“I don’t know what any of this has to do with why you want to marry me,” I say quietly. Thinking of Kingston alone all those years is making my chest ache for him, and if I allow my walls to drop, I might give in to his ludicrous demands.

He smirks, pressing a gentle kiss to my temple. “I’m getting there, Mama. I spent my whole life alone. Sometimes by choice, and others not…until you called me the night you escaped. Those weeks we spent together were the first time since Caroline that I felt that pull to another human. But it was so different. Where she was like a sister to me, you were…everything. The second I lifted you into my arms in that gas station, you were my world. I fought it at first. You were so young, so vulnerable. You didn’t need me taking advantage of you, and you needed time to heal.”

“You left me,” I whisper, not trusting my voice not to break under the pressure of the words.