FROM THE LOOK on her face, these were not the words Penelope was expecting. Why would anyone expect such disgusting words? Such horror. The hate Bishop felt for himself every day boiled over.
He wished he hadn’t told her, but she needed to know. Deserved to know what was so wrong with him that he couldn’t be with her. He wasn’t worthy of the affection of any woman. Any touch. Any happiness. Not since he was seventeen-years-old and had participated in the torture of a girl not much older than Penelope.
“That’s not—” Pen said and stopped, snapping her mouth shut. She frowned and her warm eyes filled with emotion. “I don’t believe it.”
He looked away, too ashamed to meet her gaze when he destroyed her belief in him. “It’s true.” His words were the rasp of a man without hope.
“You wouldn’t do that,” she whispered.
He spat out a derisive sound. “How can you say that? Since I’ve known you, I’ve done only unkind and perverted things to you. I obviously am exactly who I seem to be.”
She took his chin in her fingers and made him face her again. He kept his eyes dropped anyway. “You’ve been more kind to me than my own father. More kind to me than I deserved.”
He tried to shake his head, but she held tight to his jaw.
“Bishop, I’ve been a serious pain in the ass.” She ducked her head until she caught his eyes and smiled.
He returned her smile weakly and squeezed his arms around her. “You’re only a pain in the ass because you’re so damned stubborn about getting anything you set your mind to.”
She shrugged one shoulder as if she didn’t disagree. “But seriously, Bishop. You let me come and live here when I needed to be home. You cared enough to set boundaries for me. You don’t know how big of a deal that was to me. You make me get therapy. You check on my studies. You ask me about what I’m reading. You bought me a freaking car!” She threw up a hand, as if that said it all.
He let his eyes fall again and she cupped his cheek until he lifted his gaze. “And those so-called perverted things? There haven’t been nearly enough of them for my taste, Professor.” Her smile turned wicked, and Bishop’s traitorous cock stirred in his lap.
“Okay,” he said, but his tone very much conveyed his true message, which was, “That’s it. Things just crossed the line again.” He slid her back onto the couch beside him and turned to put his feet on the ground. “I can’t have you so close when I tell you this story.”
She sighed and crossed her legs on the cushions, facing him. “Tell me what you think you did.”
He slumped forward, his head down and elbows on his knees. He hadn’t told anyone this story since he’d relayed it to the authorities nearly ten years ago. But it deserved to be told. He owed it to his victim to keep the wound fresh.
If he let the incident fade and smooth out over with time, his need to be punished might gradually lessen too, and that wouldn’t do. He had to keep picking off that scab. Keep feeling that pain so he would suffer for his act every day. It was the least he could do since the authorities had declined to punish him, despite his vehement insistence on it.
Penelope, being the bulldog that she was, wasn’t about to let him retreat. “Tell me,” she demanded.
He raised his head and looked over at her for an instant, feeling miserable, but the unjudging expression she showed him—the pure openness of her mocha eyes—made him, for a moment, consider if everything could be okay. But how could it ever be?
It had taken a long time, but he’d learned how to live after the events of his seventeenth year. As long as he stayed busy and focused, and had no personal relationships of his own, then he could function without dwelling on the incident. Without wondering what that horrible event said about him.
Now, after he’d done what he’d done to Penelope, now that he was responsible for her, now that they had a friendship of sorts and she was still living in his house, how could he live with himself once she knew? How could he ever look at her again?
“Bishop.” She touched his arm.
He took a deep breath. “I guess the story has to start with my father. I know you don’t think much of your dad, but my father was a truly evil man. Only I didn’t know this until I was seventeen.”
For the sake of the girl—his victim—he thought, tasting bile, he had to tell the story completely. Tell it raw. Not dress it up or minimize it. His victim deserved a true accounting of the incident, and Penelope deserved to hear every awful detail so she’d understand why he couldn’t be with her. So she’d stop caring about him in a way he didn’t deserve.
“Sounds like seventeen was a big year for both of us. I lost my dad and met you.”
He tilted his head in acknowledgement. “Right.” He just hoped the events she’d just named wouldn’t end up being as devastating to her life as the events of his seventeenth year were to his.
God, it felt like so long ago. His stomach knotted with the reminder of how much older he was than his young ward sitting next to him, the taste of her still on his tongue.
He clasped his hands in his lap and stared at his tangled fingers. “Until I escaped,” he began, “I hadn’t realized how fucked up my life really was.”
His voice sounded lifeless as he dragged the words from his hoarse throat, recounting how his world had been destroyed.