Sweet as Honey (The Seven Sisters) - By Caitlyn Robertson Page 0,55
her. She gave an involuntary giggle at the look on his face.
“Honeysuckle Summers, I don’t believe it.”
“Don’t make me laugh. I’m not ready to laugh yet.”
“Why did you slap her? Other than the obvious—because she was there.”
“She provoked me.”
“I’m sure she did. Still, I find it difficult to believe she riled you up that much.” He frowned. He’d never seen Honey irritated, let alone angry. She was always so calm and unflappable, so patient and kind. Cathryn must have really upset her to drive her to semi-violence. “What the hell did she say?”
Honey met his gaze, then dropped hers to examine her hands. “She talked about your sex life.”
Fuck. “Like what?”
She looked up. The humour had faded from her eyes, and now they looked black in the moonlight. “You really want to know?”
“I want to know exactly what it was that upset you so much.”
“She told me how many different positions you had sex in. How you liked playing with sex toys. That she enjoyed going down on you.”
“Oh jeez.”
“And she told me to buy some lube, because—and I think her exact words were—‘He likes to fuck a girl hard every which way, including—” She blinked. “That’s where I slapped her, because I couldn’t bear to hear...” She looked down at her hands again.
Hatred welled inside him for the spiteful woman who’d tried to wound the gentle girl sitting next to him, just to punish him because he didn’t love her anymore.
Honey unscrewed the bottle again, took a mouthful, winced and passed it to him. She glanced up at him briefly, and for the first time tears glistened in her eyes.
He took a long swig of the whiskey, swallowed, coughed, wiped the top and passed it back to her. Then he thought carefully.
There was no point in saying anything more about what Cathryn had told her. Talking any further about his sex life with his ex couldn’t possibly be constructive. And Honey didn’t want platitudes or flowery declarations of love. She didn’t want him to lie and deny everything, nor sweet it under the carpet and pretend it hadn’t happened.
So what should he say? The only thing left was the truth.
He leaned his head back on the rock and looked up, through the leafy canopy to the glittering stars above their heads. “When I became a police office, I tried to put my miscreant youth behind me and move on, but—as you said—our past doesn’t disappear overnight. I always felt the old me lay beneath the surface. My father and brothers repeatedly told me that you can’t change who you are, and every time that I slipped up— saw my old mates, got drunk, smoked weed—I felt that was the real me, and I was just fooling myself. Cathryn was a part of that—a woman that I felt I…deserved, I suppose. She appealed to the young man who thought himself a degenerate. There was nothing loving or beautiful about our relationship. It was harsh and physical, because that’s all that young man knew.”
He sighed. “I don’t know how to describe my upbringing to you, Honey. At the time I didn’t know any different, but watching the relationship you girls have with Cam, and especially seeing how he and Koru interact, makes me realise how twisted and dark my relationship with my father and brothers was, and of course that spilled over into my social life. Issues were always solved physically, never by talking. It was very much survival of the fittest. Our home was dark, filthy and unhappy. I was often hungry, my clothes were never clean, I always had bruises, and I was frightened of my own shadow half the time, until I grew tall and strong enough to defend myself.”
He looked across at her. She sat quietly, listening, picking at the label on the bottle. Was he making things worse? Making it all about him? It didn’t matter—it was too late to go back now. “Your home is so beautiful. Everywhere you look there’s beauty—not just in you girls, but in everything around you. Beautiful clothes, colourful furnishings. Handmade cushions and throws, Lily’s paintings on the wall. Even the wonderful cooking you all do. Do you know that you always smell sweet? Just like your name?”
She smiled shyly and shook her head.
“Well, you do. I noticed that the first time we went out. Everyone I’d ever known in my youth smelled of alcohol, smoke, weed or B.O. But you girls all smell of flowers and perfume and cakes.