Drained (Edgars Family #6) - Suzanne Ferrell Page 0,48
the boys too much.
“You know it’s silly to cry when the boys tease you,” she’d said in her snootiest voice. “It only makes them tease you more.”
The frightened mouse turned her big green-and-gold-flecked eyes on Brianna. There was no malice in them, only an honest stare. “At least they aren’t nice to my face and talk mean behind my back.”
“Abby was the first person who called me on my behavior.”
“Your behavior?” Aaron sounded surprised. “Don’t tell me you were a trouble-maker?”
“Not in the way you might think,” she said, her cheeks heating with embarrassment, but she decided it was time she told him about her childhood. “My mother was what you might call a professional girlfriend. Not a prostitute, but she’d have a boyfriend for a while, then she’d move on to another, the newest one always richer than the last. I don’t know exactly when I realized that she used her looks to manipulate men—flirting, teasing, enticing them to provide her with things like money and homes. Using her as an example, I was pretty adept at it by the age of eight.
“Then one weekend, I was staying with a babysitter while she was out on a business trip with her latest boyfriend and there was a car accident. The next day I was at the Sisters of the Sacred Heart Orphanage.”
“What about your dad or grandparents? Wasn’t there any other family to take you in?”
She shook her head. “Mom never told me who my father was. As I got older, I figured she might not have known. And she said her parents died when I was little. They lived in New York and I don’t remember visiting them.”
“I’m so sorry,” Aaron said, laying his hand over hers. Instead of pulling away, she decided she really liked the warmth of it on hers.
“Don’t be,” she said, shaking her head a little. “Like I said, that’s where I met Abby and she changed my life.”
“How?”
“I believe her exact words to me were, Cut the horseshit, Brianna. You’re smarter in math than everyone including Sister Josephina.” She leaned in a little closer, “Sister Josephina had been a math professor at MIT before quitting to become a nun. She was the coolest of all the sisters, and that’s why Abby and I both went to MIT.”
Aaron blinked. “You went to MIT? Really?” Waving his hands and his cheeks flushed with embarrassment, he sat back in his chair. “Wait, that was rude of me. I didn’t mean you couldn’t get into MIT. You are very smart, I’ve known it since the moment I met you and you could get into any school you wanted.” He paused and looked at her a little sheepishly. “Can you help me pull my foot out of my mouth?”
Brianna chuckled, relaxing into her seat. “Why? It looks so charming there.”
“Shoe leather isn’t my favorite snack,” he said with a chuckle.
She decided not to tease him further. “So, yes, Abby and I both went to MIT and we roomed together. Abby spent most of her years studying, while I flitted by. I managed to get a Bachelor’s in Finance, but I was an honor student in social parties and dates. It drove Abby nuts, that I wouldn’t study, and still get good grades.” She gave a little shrug and paused to take a long drink of the water she’d ordered after the one beer. Since she’d come out of the ordeal and hospital three years ago, she’d made the decision to never have more than one alcoholic drink in a day. She needed to be in control of her life no matter what. “After college we went our separate ways but stayed close. Weekly, if not daily phone calls, emails, social media. I’d lecture her about never going out and taking her government work so seriously. She’d worry and lecture me about dating too many men and putting myself in danger.”
She paused to look around the restaurant, fighting back the tears that threatened to spill over her cheeks. “Turns out she was right.”
“That wasn’t your fault,” he said, once again laying his hand on hers and squeezing it. “Besides, because of you, hundreds of young women were saved from the sex slave market and the ring of rich bastards behind it were all prosecuted.”
She squeezed his hand back and gave him a whisper of a smile—all she could manage past the tears threatening once more. They stayed that way a few moments, holding hands across the table. Then the