Chapter Five

 

When I got ready for our night out with my family, I did it without help.

I was determined for this night to be as normal as possible. As much as I didn’t know how to actually be normal, I did in fact like Cash. He was fun. He didn’t push and I felt comfortable with him. The question I had was did he even like me? He said he did, but he still hadn’t acted on it.

My mother would say all that insecurity was unattractive. I was starting to agree with her. And agreeing with my mother was something I tried to never do.

Just a couple of minutes past seven, Cash knocked. I’d been ready for forty-five minutes, so I practically yanked the door open before he was done knocking. The suddenness of my actions took him by surprise and he took me by surprise. I knew I liked him because no guy had ever looked so good in regular jeans and a T-shirt. That was a big tip-off.

Gio and Bianca were already in a large booth in the corner when we got to Bill’s, one big enough to fit the six of us. The music was already playing, loud like in a bar but not thumping like a dance club. Sal and Bailey were nowhere to be found.

“Hey,” I said, sliding in and taking them both by surprise.

Right after everyone greeted each other, we had to do it all again when Bailey and Sal showed up looking a little… winded. I did not want to know.

“I’m incredibly hungry, so Bill is going to have to hurry Richard and Dana along.” Bailey grabbed the small menu from the center of the table.

I’d been around long enough to know that the people she mentioned were the ones usually in the kitchen at Bill’s. They didn’t have a ton of options, bar food exclusively, but I’d heard it was the best damn bar food you’d ever taste. I wouldn’t know. Nothing on that menu fell onto my former diet. Pizza barely did and I’d already eaten too much of that in my lifetime.

“Oh, we’re getting wings,” Bianca said. “But I’m curious what has you so hungry.” She bit her lips together and kept her attention on the paper in front of her.

However, I made the mistake of looking from Bianca in all of her blonde-headed glory over to her redheaded best friend. They were both small and looked even smaller next to the guys.

The mistake was clear when I noticed the smugness on Sal’s face. Gross. I knew exactly why Bailey was so hungry. Gio laughed as Bailey gave her friend a cocked eyebrow.

Even Cash was trying not to laugh, but I didn’t find anything funny about the situation.

First of all, I hated… hated that they were open about their sex lives because I didn’t want to hear about it, let alone know about it. Walking in on Sal and Bailey had scarred me for life. But secondly, it was the first time Cash had joined us for a meal and this was embarrassing.

“Are you eating?” Cash asked, diverting the attention away from Bailey’s face, which was happy and tired and fucking happy.

That was when I noticed our waitress standing next to the table. They were all waiting on me.

“Oh, they don’t have anything here I can eat.” That came out of my mouth before I could think about it. And it sounded incredibly bitchy. I absolutely did not mean to sound like that.

“The wings are good,” Gio said, leaning his arms on the table and giving me the look.

The one that said he wasn’t letting me off the hook. I’d seen it over the years, but he hadn’t been able to call me out on it or better yet, call my mom out on it.

Now he could.

“I didn’t say they weren’t.”

I tried to look away but caught Gio rolling his eyes and sighing.

“She’ll have the wings, and mozzarella sticks, and onion rings.” Gio sat back, continuing to glare at me.

The waitress took the rest of the orders while my brother and I continued our stare down. Once she walked away, I broke the tension.

“Who’s eating all of that?” I asked him.

“You are.”

“Pffff, am not.” Finally, I looked away from him.

Everyone watched us but were silent while they did.

Only Sal gave the slightest indication that he knew what was going on, which pleased me. At least the guys hadn’t spilled everything about me. Sal and Gio would know, but the girls didn’t need to and Cash certainly didn’t need to.

“You’re eating some of it,” Gio said roughly, jabbing his finger onto the table to accentuate that he was serious.

Sal sighed and softened his face.

“Come on, Gemma. Live a little,” Sal said, putting himself into our conversation. The other three looked confused. “It won’t hurt anything.”

I let it go. It wasn’t worth the argument, especially in front of the others. And when the food came, both Gio and Sal paid more attention to me than they did their girlfriends.

It was annoying.

Cash and I could barely say a word to one another without them knowing about it. While they all had ordered a beer, I had water. Something else for those two to hold against me, I supposed. In the end, we had a pretty good time. But I sucked at pool and Cash didn’t.

And to satisfy Gio and Sal, I ate more of the food that had been ordered for me than I normally would have. Damn, was it delicious.

“Ready to leave?” Cash asked me quietly as I sat at the small round table near where the others were playing. He’d made his shot, then come over to me like he did every single time.

“If you are. If you want to stay, that’s good too.” Ugh. I wanted to leave. Why was it so hard to say that? It wasn’t. The words should have been easy. “Actually, I would prefer to go.”

“Let’s go then.”

We said goodbye, then got the hell out of there.

After Cash drove me back to my place, he wasn’t ready to go home yet and honestly, I didn’t want him to. Being near him did something to me and I liked the feeling. Liked him.

It was good that he hadn’t stepped into that little disagreement between Gio and me earlier. The way he’d watched us, it’d been easy to tell that he was curious but still he’d held back and let me handle the situation. Or let Gio handle it since he was the one who’d gotten his way.

“The nights here are so nice,” I said after we took a seat on the front steps of my house. It was too beautiful to sit inside. “I mean it’s warm but not unbearable. There are nights in Chicago when you can’t even breathe.”

“Wait. It’ll get hotter. In July especially,” he said, looking sideways at me.

But then he looked down at his hands, which were resting on his knees. Cash took a deep breath and sat straight up. I’d come to know that was what he did when there was something he wanted to say but wasn’t sure he could say it to me.

“What?” I asked with a nervous smile.

“Do you have an eating disorder? Or used to have one?” His voice was low and high muscles tight, jaw set.

He wasn’t going to let me go without answering him.

“No. Why would you think that?”

His spine softened and he went back to looking out at the other houses on the street. His gaze would volley between me and the houses as he spoke.

“Just the way Gio and Sal were. It was like he was trying to force you to eat a water buffalo.”

A laugh burst up from my chest.

“And at the carnival you barely picked at everything.”

Shit. I hadn’t thought he’d noticed that.

“No. I promise. I eat fine. It’s just… ” I took a deep breath because for the very first time in my life I was going to confide something about my childhood and family to someone. Acid burned at the back of my throat when I thoughtof doing this and here I was actually doing it.

“Growing up, my mom was very particular with me,” I said. “I was regimented on what I could eat or what I had to do and sometimes it’s tough to break away from that.”

“Regimented? Like how?”

“Like I had a schedule. Hair trimmed every six weeks. Keeping calories down, don’t gain a pound or pay the price at weigh-in, certain amount of exercise. Stuff like that.” I tried to shrug it off. But since I still fell into her ways every once in a while, I knew I wasn’t shrugging anything off.

“Weigh-in? You look fantastic,” he said with what sounded like longing. “Why would she do that?”

“Because I’m a girl. Boys don’t like girls with extra weight,” I said in my best Mom impression. “I had expectations that Gio didn’t. If I would’ve come home with a tattoo like he did, it would’ve been unacceptable and I probably would have been in for laser removal the next day.” I sighed again and ran my hands down the front of my long shorts. “Can we not talk about them right now?”

Talking about them made me nervous and I’d already said more than I’d meant to.

Logically, I knew my parents were locked away and wouldn’t hear a word I said, but twenty years of brainwashing was extremely hard to undo. If they knew I’d told anyone about what we used to do, I wasn’t sure what the consequence would be. My parents knew no boundaries.

“Sure.” He nodded slowly but I wasn’t so sure he wanted to let it go. “So, I went out with your family. Now it’s your turn. I’m supposed to have dinner with my family next weekend. My brother is coming home from school, so we’re all supposed to be there. I’d like you to come with me.”

My eyes bulged to twice their size. “To meet your family?”

“Yup. Every last one of them, too. It can be daunting,” he teased. “But it’s kind of like ripping off a Band-Aid. Better to do it all at once.” He gave me a smile that I couldn’t say no to.

“Sounds fun.” I’d meant for that to come out chipper, but it was more of a sarcastic response.

“Oh, most likely it’ll be terrible, but with you there, I don’t care.”

A small smile spread across my face. Cash watched me a little longer, though he dropped from my eyes to my mouth, then back again like he might want to kiss me.

“Come here,” he said, standing to his full height while grabbing my hand to bring me along with him. It wasn’t until we were both on the flat sidewalk with him looking down at me that he said anything else. We were close, almost close enough for my breasts to be pressed up against his chest. He still held my hands in his. “I’m going to kiss you, yeah?”

I nodded slowly. I wanted him to do it.

I thought he’d dive right in. I’d given him permission, after all, but he didn’t. He stood there, his hands gripping mine, his eyes locked with mine. He licked his lips and the anticipation was starting to kill me. Ugh, I hadn’t had to deal with this sort of thing in any other “relationship” I’d had.

With those, I’d never said no and they hadn’t taken their time.

Finally, yet slowly, Cash leaned in, closing the distance between us inch by agonizing inch until mercifully the soft skin of his lips touched mine. We held there for a moment, then his lips parted slightly before closing in on mine again. He tasted like the wintergreen mints we’d both eaten after the bar food.

It was everything a first kiss should have been. The kind of kiss I should have had when I’d been sixteen and on my first date. The kind of thing a girl could remember forever. Something slow and tentative without even a hint of darkness or dread.

Cash’s hands ran up my arms until he could hold my face in them. He tilted my head back a little, and I thought he was going to take the kiss deeper—I wanted him to—but he didn’t. He held me there and kissed me. It was almost like a promise, one I wanted him to keep. One that said he wanted me, that I was something special and that was how he’d always treat me.

My head snapped back, taking him by surprise. His eyes narrowed on my face, dropping to my lips again before pinning me with one look. He didn’t let go, though. Cash was waiting for me to say something. Maybe tell him why I’d ended things so abruptly.

There was no way in hell I could give him the reason.

My eyes were burning, but I was trying not to cry. It was the idea that I might be something special to him and that he’d always see me that way. It gutted me on the spot because it wasn’t true.

Sure, right now he might have thought I was special, but if he knew… if he knew some of the things I’d done in my life. he sure as hell wouldn’t treat me the way he had with that kiss.

What surprised the most was how badly I wanted him to never know about my past. That wasn’t likely to be the case if we were going to be in a relationship, but I wanted it to be true. The thought of him looking at me any other way than how he had right before that kiss was enough to break my heart.

“Sorry,” I said softly.

“You all right?” His voice was as soft, like he didn’t want anyone else to hear him. But there was no one around.

I nodded and had to look away from the intensity of his stare because those tears were getting harder and harder to fight.

With Cash, I always had the feeling that he was searching for something deeper from me. Not a declaration of love or my eternal devotion, but he wanted to see all of me. Not just what I was willing to show.

It was horribly uncomfortable.

“All right.” He gave me a nod. Something about his demeanor told me he didn’t necessarily believe me, but he wasn’t going to push.

There was another very quick kiss before he said goodnight.

I was supposed to have dinner with the Waterford family on the weekend but also with him alone on Wednesday night. At least I wouldn’t have to go a full seven days without seeing him.

But I threw myself into learning from Sal and Gio to try to ignore the fact that I was sitting down with his entire family in mere days. Cash was busy anyway, but not seeing him sucked.

Having Cash in my life was something I’d grown very accustomed to very quickly.

Since we hadn’t spent much time together lately, I wanted to look extra nice. A beautiful green dress with strappy sandals, softly curled hair, and a smattering of makeup had me set as I headed to his place.

I hadn’t been there before, but he’d texted his address and it wasn’t too far from my house. Yet it kind of felt like I’d crossed some sort of imaginary boundary.

My house was pretty big, though not as much as Gio and Sal’s. All of them were too large for what any of us needed individually, but they were beautiful. Once I’d crossed that line, the houses got much smaller, half the size in some cases.

Nice and well-kept, but super close together.

I assumed he and his brother had chosen this area because it was cheaper. Then I wanted to smack myself because that was an elitist thought to have. They may not be people who put importance on the grandiose. Cash wasn’t one of those people like in my parents’ circle, so I didn’t know why I would even think that.

And honestly, I would’ve rather grown up in a cardboard box than the way I had anyway.

Their white house sat off the street with a garage behind it. The yard wasn’t very large—none of the yards in town were. You had to go outside the tourist area if you wanted a big lawn. Even mine was rather small compared to the size of the house.

When I knocked on the door, he called out for me to come in.

I stepped inside into a small living room/dining room combo area and could see into the kitchen. It was a totally open floor plan. On the side directly across from the front door was a small hallway. I assumed that would lead to bedrooms and a bathroom. But everything was nice. Colorful. There’d been no feminine touch, yet the house was warm and homey.

“Wow, you look great,” he said, setting a bowl of salad on the table.

“Thanks.” I shut the door behind me and set my purse on the table next to it. “You cooked?”

“I cooked.” He shrugged, then headed right for me.

I expected him to drop a kiss on me. He kissed me, but there was nothing quick about it.

He lingered. He tasted. He was not the one to pull back.

There was something seriously wrong with me. The minute a whirlpool of pleasure swirled low in my stomach, I pulled away. I needed to work on that. The feeling wasn’t bad—quite the opposite—but I was going to scare him off if I was constantly pulling away from him.

His lips moved into a thin line. I could clearly see he wasn’t overly happy, but then he smiled and led me to the table. Candles flickered on the table and around the living room.

The intimacy of it made me uncomfortable, but I couldn’t put my finger on why. He hadn’t done anything weird or threatening, because yeah, that had happened to me before, but maybe it was too intimate? I wasn’t sure.

“So, I know it can be dangerous to make Italian girls lasagna, but it’s my favorite, so I thought I’d take a chance.” He cut a piece out of the pasta dish and set it on my plate.

Then I took a nice helping of salad for myself. I started with the salad but took a bite of lasagna because I didn’t want him to think he’d done something wrong. And holy crap, it was delicious. Perfect even. I wanted to inhale the entire thing yet knew I wouldn’t.

“Mmm.” I closed my eyes as the taste of sauce and cheese took me over. “Where did you learn to cook?”

“Here and there. My mom, I guess. I can’t really cook, but there are a couple of things I make pretty well. And I can keep myself alive.”

“Handy.” I smiled as he offered me a breadstick that I declined.

He bit his lips together but didn’t comment.

As I tried to keep talking, I started to grow uncomfortable in my own skin. His words grew more complimentary and a sudden, irrational fear gripped my heart. Was this all a precursor for sex? I didn’t need all that. Actually, I was pretty sure I couldn’t do it with all this other stuff. I mean, technically, I could and had done more under worse circumstances, but I was trying for that girl to not be the real me.

When he said, again, how beautiful I looked, something inside of me snapped. I’d been there maybe twenty minutes and he’d said it twice. It couldn’t be genuine because guys only said those things to get you into bed, right?

“What are you doing?” I asked, letting my fork drop against the plate with a loud clank.

“What do you mean?” His brows scrunched together as he set his fork down before taking a quick drink of his milk.

He was drinking milk for god’s sake.

Milk.

Minutes before I’d thought it was adorable. Now it was annoying.

“What are you trying to do here? Is this about sex? You could just tell me you want to have sex.”

His face contorted, even more confused. And at a loss for words even. Cash recovered quickly.

“Gemma, I’m not sure what happened here. This isn’t about sex.”

I snorted. Because wasn’t it always about sex?

“It’s not.” He leaned forward so his elbows rested on the table and his hands folded in front of his chin. “I mean, yeah, I am attracted to you obviously and eventually I’d love to have you in my bed, but tonight was about spending time with you. I like you, even when you’re being kind of crazy.” His mouth tightened into a thin smile, and he shook his head and looked away from me. “I was trying to woo you. Apparently, I’m shitty at it.”

An elephant sat on my chest and a pack of Darth Vader’s Storm Troopers thumped their way through my stomach. I was going to vomit. It was only a matter of time. I was going to throw up all over his dinner table and the delicious lasagna he’d made. That would be an epic waste.

I had to get out of there.

“I can’t do this,” I said, hopping up from my chair.

I was already on the move for my purse by the door.

“Gemma, what’s going on?” He was up too, his voice full of concern. Hot on my trail, I thought, but looking back wasn’t an option. If I looked at him, it’d slow me down. “Gemma!”

That ball of acid was churning faster than that little coaster he’d taken me on the first time we’d gone out. Oh, man… I needed to get away from him. I could not puke right there in front of him.

“Gemma,” he called again.

My car roared to life, then jerked roughly because I’d hit the gas before it was all the way in drive and something squealed.

I didn’t care.

I was down the street and around the block when I realized I hadn’t been watching where I was going and easily could have crashed or hurt someone. Two deep, shaky breaths later, I had complete control over my car and my body.