All of You (42 page)

When Danny shot back, “Fuck yeah, I do!” Kat’s smile morphed into a full shit-eating grin.

She tilted her head back to meet his eyes. “Well, just so you know, I love hearing you beg for it, too.”

Danny barked out a throaty laugh. “Yeah, I’ll just bet you do, you little monster…I’ll just bet you do.”

‡

T
hey lay in
the still darkness for a while, touching, hugging, and kissing each other wherever their lips happened to land.

Danny found her hand and threaded their fingers together. “I’m so sorry about earlier,” he said quietly. “You know I didn’t mean any of that shit, right?”

“Yeah, I know and I’m sorry, too. I’m shouldn’t have said that…about you saying that to all those other women.” Kat paused, tightening her fingers around his. “I know that’s not true; I was just trying to hurt you.”

“It only hurt me because I thought you believed it.”

Kat must have heard the emotion in his voice, because she lifted their clasped hands to her lips and kissed the back of his. “I didn’t. Not for a second, Danny.”

He pulled her into an embrace and Kat’s head tucked beneath his chin, resting on his bicep.

“And I think I understand why you wouldn’t want to come for Christmas,” Kat said. “We can always celebrate together after Gigi’s. Or before. Or we don’t have to acknowledge it at all, if you don’t want to. Whatever you’re comfortable with is fine by me.” Kat paused. “I just want to be with you, that’s all.”

Danny’s chest ached at her sweet words. He cleared his throat. “Of course I’ll come. For you.”

“But I don’t want to make you uncomfortable.”

Danny’s arms tightened around her. “If we’re going to be a…
family
…I’m going to have to learn to deal with shit. And there’s no time like the present.”

A few minutes of silence elapsed before Kat quietly said, “Danny?”

“
Hmmm…
” he replied, nuzzling her hair.

“I would have a much clearer understanding of your feelings and would be able to better gauge my expectations if I knew more about…well, about your past.”

Danny froze momentarily before saying, “I think you’ve already got a pretty good idea of how things went down. The state took me from my biological parents; I bounced around a bunch of foster homes and eventually ended up at the juvenile facility. I stayed there until my social worker convinced the Rosses to take me in until I turned eighteen. I went to Bowling Green, to the academy, and joined the CPD. The rest you pretty much know.”

“Tell me about your biological parents.” Kat’s fingertips began gently caressing the skin on the back of his neck and the tops of his shoulders. “What were they like?”

Danny scoffed. “Degenerate junkies, if the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services paperwork can be believed.” Kat’s fingers paused for a second before resuming their caresses. “The woman who had me didn’t know who my father was, but she was pretty sure it was one of the guys she lived at the drug house with.” Danny shrugged. “The state took custody of me when I was about six.”

“Did you ever try to find her? Your mom?”

“I looked her name up in the system once a few years ago…not surprisingly, she died of an overdose a few years after I was born.” Danny forced out a short laugh. “Good riddance, huh?”

“I don’t know. I think she sounds like a woman who probably had a rough life and made a lot of very bad decisions.”

Danny scoffed again. “Yeah, well, if she’d kept her legs closed during those ‘bad decisions,’ she could have spared me a whole lot of my own rough times.”

Kat’s hand pressed into his back, pulling them in even tighter. “I, for one, am very glad she didn’t do that…because then you wouldn’t have been born and we wouldn’t be together right now.”

Danny suddenly realized that, for once in his life, he wholeheartedly agreed with that sentiment.

“What happened after the state took you? I’m surprised you weren’t adopted as an infant.”

“The woman who gave birth to me, her family tried to get guardianship of me for a few years after I was born. Every judge they went before found them unfit, ‘cause they were just as fucked up as she was. Plus, it was obvious they only wanted me for the state checks they’d receive. By the time they finally gave up, I was five years old, wild, and not at the top of anyone’s most-wanted list.”

Danny allowed his mind to drift back to his very first memories. “From birth until I was five, I stayed with one particular family. They weren’t looking to adopt me, because, again, I’m sure pretty sure they were in it for the cash. They were nice enough, I guess, but there was zero supervision or guidance and I was taught a lot of hard, painful lessons by their older foster kids. I don’t remember much about those years, but those other kids’ faces are burned into my fucking brain.”

Yeah, it was kind of hard to forget people who had spent years physically and emotionally torturing you.

“By the time that family passed me along, I was a total wreck. The case file says I bit, scratched, and hit anyone who got close. I pissed and shit myself on a daily basis, stole things – mostly food – and ran away every chance I could. By that point I had become, for all intents and purposes, totally unadoptable.”

“For God’s sake, why didn’t they get you some help, Danny?” Kat asked, her voice hoarse with emotion. “Some therapy or medication or…I don’t know…
something
?”

“State-funded headshrinkers have more cases they can handle and they’re not equipped to deal with such severe behavioral issues. They did shove a lot of meds down my throat, which turned me into a more manageable zombie for a while, but those medications cost a lot of money – funds the state eventually decided wasn’t money well-spent when I continued to act like a little asshole even while taking them.”

“None of the foster families you lived with wanted to adopt you?”

“Uh,
no
. Each family held onto me for a while, for temporary income, but none of them were looking to deal with me for the long haul. And, believe it or not, that was a blessing.” Danny fought back a shudder. “Trust me, if any of them
had
adopted me, I would have killed myself, for sure,” he said more to himself, than her. “Death would have seemed like a picnic compared to living with any of them for a second longer than I had to.”

Kat sat up, propping herself up on her elbow and stared at his profile. “
Danny…”
Brows low and her eyes searching his in the moonlight, Kat whispered, “
What happened to you?
”

He thought about forcing a smile and saying, “Nothing.” He considered bluffing, diverting her attention, and flat-out lying to her face about everything. Because it was stuff he wasn’t looking to relive and, even more importantly, stuff he wasn’t looking to lay on her.

But they were alone. Safe in the dark.

He loved her.

Kat loved him.

And Danny had been holding so much shit in for so many years that sometimes he felt like he might explode.

If they were going to do this…if they were going to be together and share their lives…Kat deserved to know the truth.

If only to give her the opportunity to decide it wasn’t stuff she wanted to take on, after all.

Danny dropped onto his back and stared up at the ceiling. He tried swallowing down the knot in his throat with very little success. “A lot of really bad stuff, Kat.”

“Can you…” Kat paused, and he felt her eyes on his face. “Will you tell me about it?” She wrapped her arm around his bicep and held on tight. “You don’t have to, if you don’t want to, obviously. But I would like to know.”

“And I want to tell you.” Danny shook his head, eyes still glued to the ceiling. “But I don’t know why, exactly.” He turned his head and met her eyes. “I don’t know if it’s because I want to get it off my chest or if it’s because I’m trying to scare you away, Kat. I know I don’t want to do that…not really, but that’s what it feels like inside. I feel like I want to tell you everything so you can reject me right now and get it over with. I know that sounds so goddamned fucked up…”

She searched his eyes, head shaking. “No, that makes perfect sense, Danny. If you’re holding on to something that’s hurting you…something you’re ashamed of…of course you’d think someone finding out about it would earn you their rejection. You don’t want to be rejected, but you feel like it’s going to happen anyway, so why not get it over with now. I get that.”

He’d be damned if she hadn’t just, logically and compassionately, hit the nail right on the fucking head.

When Danny nodded, Kat’s lips pulled into a tiny smile as her eyes still searched his. “But that isn’t going to happen, Danny. I promise you that, whatever you tell me, I will not judge you or reject you.”

“How can you say that without knowing what it is?”

“Because…” Her lips curled more. “Unless you tortured animals, killed someone for shits and giggles, or took part in some terroristic plot, I’m pretty sure I can handle whatever it is.”

Every muscle in Danny’s body tensed up at the knowledge he might stupidly, actually do this. That after decades of holding it in, he was actually considering saying it out loud.

He held onto her eyes tight. “You might not feel that way after, Kat. And I want you to know I’ll understand if you want to jump ship…”

Kat scoffed. “Again, unless this involves you performing child sacrifices, detonating car bombs, and/or admitting you like
Keeping Up with the Kardashians
, I’m confident I will not be jumping any ships.” She gave him a little smile. “And I might even be able to forgive the Kardashian thing. Fi watches that shit and I still love
her
.”

When Danny didn’t laugh or smile back, hers faded. Kat grabbed his hand and squeezed. “You can trust me, Danny. I love you and I want to prove to you that nothing you say will change that. But I also don’t want to pressure you. If you aren’t ready to talk about stuff, that’s okay. Just know that I’m here when you are ready.”

Danny turned back to face the ceiling, threading his hands behind his head. A few minutes of silence elapsed, during which he waivered between baring himself completely to Kat in a way he’d never done with anyone before and holding on to this last scrap of dignity.

Because once this shit hit the fan, there would be no going back. Danny would never be able to shove it back into its dark hiding spot again and Kat would never be able to un-know it. It could ruin everything – changing the way Kat felt about him, the way he behaved around her, and everything in between.

With a deep breath in and an even deeper one out, Danny – for the first time in his entire life – let go completely. Because he loved Kat enough to give her total honesty, even if he meant he’d lose her forever.

“Most of the
stuff that went on in the foster homes was pretty standard,” Danny began quietly. “And most of it was between the kids. You know, regular stuff like beating up on the younger and smaller ones, getting each other in trouble, and stealing from each other – not that any of us had much to take. Usually things stayed pretty well hidden. No one wanted the adults to find out what was going on, because then it meant trouble for everyone.” He shrugged. “Of course, there were those adults who were in on it, encouraged it, or just plain didn’t give a fuck, too. And those houses were the worst, because pretty much anything went. Those were the houses where the really bad stuff happened.”

Kat was trying very, very hard not to cry, because she wanted him to be able to get through this without having to stop and tend to her emotional reaction and because she wanted to be strong for him. But this insider view of what Danny’s life had been like as a foster kid was tearing her to shreds…and Kat instinctively knew he hadn’t even scratched the surface yet.

Danny glanced over at her. “Remember I told you how small I was?” Kat nodded, not trusting her voice to speak, and he turned back to face the ceiling. “That meant I got targeted a lot. Mostly by the older boys. Usually, they just picked on me, beat on me, and put the blame on me when they got caught doing shit…”

Danny paused again and Kat watched, breath held, as his Adam’s apple worked his throat a few times. The way his expression blanked out scared her to death, as did his eyelids suddenly squeezing shut.

A few very long seconds later, Danny finally whispered, “But sometimes other stuff happened, too.”

The massive surge of adrenaline suddenly coursing through her body activated a whole lot of fight-or-flight physiological responses all at once.

Not because Kat wanted to flee
from
him, but because she wanted to fight
for
him.

In fact,
fight
didn’t come close. Kat felt downright murderous right now. Murderous and heartbroken and physically sick.

“Do you understand what I’m saying, Kat?” he asked – voice tight and eyes still closed.

Kat nodded once, even though he couldn’t see her. “Yes.”

“Are you uncomfortable? Do you want me to stop?”

Kat wanted to throw her arms around him for being so considerate of her feelings while his had obviously been killing him slowly for a long, long time.