look at me, like you could devour me, it turns me on so much.”
“I could devour you. I can’t get enough of you. Thanks for coming over tonight. This was exactly what I needed.”
“A thirty-minute fuck session, when I let you do me like a porn star with my ass hanging off the bed?”
I may have blushed at that. “Well, that didn’t hurt, but I was more talking about your company. Having you here is good.”
“I’m glad I came, but.” She sat up and put her feet on the floor. “I need to go to the bathroom.” I rolled my eyes at the goofy face she made. “But when I come back, will you tell me what happened?”
“Yeah,” I said to her naked back as she walked to the bathroom.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Rocco
When people talked about contentment, true absolute bliss, I always envisioned a billionaire somewhere in some exotic location. Lounging without a care in the world.
No. This was bliss. Julia del Mar Ortiz, naked and still warm from making love, draped over my chest while I ran my fingers over her back.
This was what being whole felt like.
She’d come back from the bathroom and brought us water. We’d kissed and touched for what felt like hours and now in the darkness of the room, our silence felt sacred.
She turned around, running her leg over mine, and looked up. Her face was barely visible in the darkness of the room, but I knew the question was coming. “What happened?”
Usually I didn’t want to discuss my family, or at least not my parents. The scars still felt so raw at times like this. I never went over this stuff with Sofia, because hers were pretty raw too. So other than Coach and my therapist, I never talked about my family. But right now with Julia here, for the first time in a very long time I felt like I was safe to open up.
I sighed as I pulled her up and tightened my arms around her.
“Honestly, the same shit as always. You’d think I’d learn to not let my dad get to me like that. But he knows how to push my buttons, and I end up acting as bad as he does.”
I could feel the tension in her body as she quietly listened. She’d told me before she tried not to “therapize” her friends, but I also knew how hard it was for her to not help.
She kissed my shoulder before she spoke, and when she did her voice was so gentle. “It’s not easy going back into a place that has never felt safe for you. People talk about resilience and how kids just get over bad stuff that happens in childhood, and in many ways they do. You can heal, you can develop ways to cope, but your body and your brain hasn’t forgotten how scary and unsafe you felt as a kid around your dad, in your home.”
I exhaled, not sure how deeply I wanted to go into this shit. “The thing is, I’d gotten past this, or at least tried to find ways to manage the fight-or-flight instinct that takes over my brain when I’m around them, and for the most part it works. Except with my dad. He just takes me right back to square one.” I sighed, feeling the tension in my shoulders as I remembered how ugly he’d been today. “I almost punched him in front of the baby.”
She ran a hand over my chest and in a very low voice whispered, “Oh, babe.”
The way that endearment slipped out, like it was the most natural thing in the world. It was hard not to want to take every risk if it meant there’d be some kind of future where this was my life.
“He was about to say hateful, nasty shit and I just lost it. I knew he did it on purpose too. Because he knows I can take anything he wants to spew about me, but I won’t stand for him talking about Sofia.”
She shook her head. “Abusive people are masters at manipulation. He knows you’d protect your sister.”
“He told me I was just like him and even though I know it’s not true, I can’t deny that the first thing I did was lunge at him. I reacted exactly like he would. He’s never going to change and Sofia can’t stop herself from going over there. I don’t know if she feels guilty or what the fuck it is, but it’s not a