First Time: Ian's Story (First Time (Ian) Book 1) (28 page)

“
Oh. Sorry.” She didn’t
press further.

Maybe it was because she didn’t demand more
details that I felt I could share them with her. But I rarely told
anyone about what had happened to my family. Gena had known. It had
taken me three years to finally tell her, only after we’d gone to
Scotland to meet my family and she had asked questions about the
pictures on the walls. I’d been nervous when I’d told her, my palms
sweaty and my eyes wet with tears. At the time, I’d expected that
telling her would be some kind of emotional release, and that I
would be fine after I got it all off my chest.

It hadn’t worked like that. All of the
nightmares that had taken years to fade away, all of the baseless
paranoia and righteous anger had charged destructively back into my
life. None of it had helped, and every time I thought of Cathy, of
Robby, the grief was as fresh as ever.

Well. Not
ever
.

“
No, it’s fine. I don’t like
to tell people, but I should tell you.”
I
should tell you, so that I don’t feel like I’m hiding anything from
you, or lying to you.
“My brother, Robby,
and sister, Cathy, were uh. They were murdered.”

She sucked in a loud breath, which was
really the best reaction I’d ever gotten, from the relatively small
sample size.

“
Yeah.” There wasn’t a more
eloquent way to agree with Penny’s shock. The words came as a shock
to me, too. “It was… Cathy was going with this guy. A right
arsehole. We never trusted him, not a one of us. But Cathy was
Cathy, and she was going to do her own thing. So, she moved in with
him—broke my mother’s heart, that they were living in sin—and she
got pregnant. And he started beating her. I mean, really just… She
would come over with black eyes and bruises all up and down
her—”

I paused and closed my eyes,
to regain some of my emotional equilibrium. I felt Penny’s body
shift on the bed beside me, and though I would have loved the
physical comfort, I couldn’t stand to be touched. That was the
thing about grief; it made you isolate yourself, especially when
you didn’t want to be alone. “Anyway, he beat her so badly she lost
the baby. Kicked her in the stomach hard enough that he ruptured,
ah, I don’t know. Something you don’t want to rupture, I suppose. I
was nineteen at the time. I didn’t ask questions. The police were
fucking useless. If they had—” No, there was no sense in wandering
down that road. I’d already worn it down to gravel. “I’ve gone over
what
should
have
happened enough. When Cathy got out of the hospital, Mum said that
was it, she was coming home. If the police weren’t going to help,
well, there were plenty of us to keep him away from her. We thought
the prick was at work, so Robby went with her to collect her
things, but the guy was waiting and he…he shot them. Both of
them.”

“
Ian…”

“
Ah, I shouldn’t have
burdened you with that.” I tried to laugh, because it was too
fucking pathetic. Penny made me happy. With her beside me, I should
have been happy and thinking only of the future. Not dwelling on
the past and terrible things I couldn’t change.

I knew they couldn’t be changed. I’d tried
again and again in my head, imagining ways it could have been
different. If I’d gotten there in time, if they hadn’t gone alone.
If Robby and I had just had the nerve to kill the bastard, to go
through with the plan we’d made the night before.

That was something I
would
never
confess to anyone. Not even a priest.

“
It’s not a burden,” Penny
said gently. “You went through something terrible. I can’t even
imagine it.”

No, she couldn’t. No one could, and it was a
strange comfort to know that she understood it. “I was at
university at the time, but I’d come home when Cathy was in
hospital.” My chest tightened. “She was my twin, you see. And when
you’re a twin, you do, I know it sounds like an old wives’ tale,
but you do know.”

Every time I looked in the fucking mirror, I
saw Cathy’s eyes, Cathy’s nose. They’d looked better on her, that
was for sure. There were times when I spoke, and I heard the
inflection of her voice. And all of these things left me cold, like
waking up the morning after someone has died, and you remember
they’re gone before you realize you’d forgotten.

My eyes stung, and I couldn’t pretend it was
my contacts bothering me. I reached behind my glasses with one
finger to wipe at my eye. Crying in front of my girlfriend, this
was fantastic. I’d dated women for years and never cried in front
of them.

But I also hadn’t told them about the worst
part of my life. And to her credit, Penny didn’t appear to be
uncomfortable.

“
I knew the minute she
died.” The story kept pouring out of me, though I’d told Penny all
she really needed to know. But not enough for her to understand,
and I needed her to understand, more than I’d ever needed anyone
to. “I was in a pub, having lunch, and I just got this feeling. It
was like all the color in the world vanished. I got there before
the police did, but there was no chance of saving either of them.”
That didn’t mean I hadn’t tried. I could still remember the feeling
of Robby’s blood under my shoes and my hands. “He’d just…” My
stomach turned over. “Her head was…”

“
Don’t, you don’t have to
tell me.” Penny pulled me into her arms, like I was a child, not a
man thirty years older than her. I squeezed back, pressing my face
into her neck and shoulder, and let my tears fall, though I tried
not to come apart completely. She didn’t tell me not to cry, she
didn’t try to find a bright side. She just held me.

God, but she was going to be a fantastic
mother.

But she wasn’t
my
mother, and I was
embarrassing myself. I lifted my head and sniffed. “Well, now, you
know it. I’m sorry you do. And I’m sorry to ruin our
morning—”

“
Stop it. I asked,” she
scolded gently.

“
You’re the second person
I’ve told. Mostly it’s just family who knows. After it happened, I
went to Glasgow to be closer to home for my mum, went for a more
practical profession, and moved here as quick as I could.” It had
kept me from constructing elaborate revenge fantasies against the
murderer and his family, who’d unwaveringly supported him in
court.

I rolled to my back and looked up at the
ceiling, wiping my eyes. “Ah, here I am, blubbering like a fool
when I should be making you breakfast or going on about how
fantastic last night was.”

“
No, don’t…” She paused, her
brow creased with a slight frown. “Don’t feel like you have to be
happy all the time. Or that you have to protect me from who you
are. I want to know all the stuff about you, good and bad
and…fucking horrible.”

Obscenity from her sweet little mouth was
adorable. “All the stuff?”

“
All the stuff,” she
repeated.

I shifted to my side and took her face in my
hands. “And I want to know every fucking detail about you,
Doll.”

I wanted everything about her. Forever.

Chapter Fourteen

The thrill of
new love was one I hadn’t experienced in a very long time. Penny
and I spent more time together than we would have dared in the
“just dating” phase. We were, after all, in love, a very serious
state, despite all the silliness and giggling.

Of that, we had plenty. When
Penny got to know someone, she really let her guard down. Or maybe
it was just when she was around me. She could spin from one
conversational topic to another with dizzying speed, peppering her
speech with enough trivia I felt confident I could go on
Jeopardy!
and make a
fortune. She loved ridiculous comedies over serious films; it was a
nice change to be with someone with whom I didn’t feel I had to
pretend to like the latest dreary art-house drama. Although, she’d
seen far fewer action movies than an American should
have.

We could work on that.

I tried to keep our sleep over schedule
fair. On the rare occasion she slept at my place during the week,
it worked out well, due to the proximity to her office. She’d been
late once or twice, as we found we had very little self-control in
the mornings, so we tried to keep our weeknights to a minimum. On
the weekends, I would spend the night with her at her place on the
odd Friday, but she preferred my apartment, and I did, as well; I
wasn’t of an age where sagging mattresses and pokey springs
provided much rest, and there was an awkwardness now to having sex
with roommates about that hadn’t plagued me since my twenties.
Still, it seemed rude to not give her at least partial time in her
own space.

Saturdays, though, we always stayed at my
place, out of necessity, not just comfort. As much as I would have
liked to spend Sunday mornings lazily eating Penny instead of
breakfast, I couldn’t bring myself to miss mass. Annie would note
my absence, like a teacher taking attendance, and she would know
exactly why I wasn’t there. She was already quite put out by the
Sunday dinners I’d been skipping. Plus, it gave me a chance to
confess to all the premarital sex I’d been getting up to, though I
wasn’t really sorry for it.

So, while I would rush off to mass, Penny
would go for her run, and I would come back to find her freshly
showered and ready to grab lunch, or be grabbed, herself. But by
November, the arrangement had started to seem a bit sad. I loved
the easy pattern of near-domesticity we’d fallen into on the
weekends, and going to church alone was a reminder that while I was
the happiest I’d been in a very long time, I was still a single
man, and there were still parts of my life that I didn’t share with
Penny.

I broached the subject one
Friday night, as we lay in Penny’s bed watching reruns of
It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia,
a program Penny loved but which baffled me; her
sense of humor and mine didn’t always line up, but I loved her
laugh, so it was worth it. She lay beside me in a long flannel
sleep shirt and thick socks, snuggled under the comforter with her
head on my chest. Her apartment was freezing these days, because
the landlord didn’t turn the heat on until the Monday after
Thanksgiving. The plot of the episode provided me with a tidy way
to bring up church; three of the idiots who owned the bar attempted
to sit through mass, and Penny asked, laughing, “Oh my God, is
there really that much standing up and sitting down.”

“
More,” I admitted. Then
added, “You should come, sometime.”

She sat up to look me in the eye. “You’re
kidding, right?”

“
I…wasn’t.” I sat up a bit
more, from where I had been leaning on the pillows. “My faith is a
very important part of my life, and I’d like to share that with
you.”

“
I don’t know…” She looked
like I’d asked her to donate both of her kidneys to a dog. “Ian,
I’m not a…God person.”

“
I know.” It was foreign and
scary to people who hadn’t been raised in the Church, there was no
getting around that. “And I’m not asking you to be. I’m not under
any delusion that you’ll come to mass and suddenly feel so moved by
the Holy Spirit that you want to be baptized on the spot. But if
you wouldn’t mind coming along once, just to see that part of my
life, it would mean a lot to me.”

Her inner conflict showed in her expression.
“What if I do the wrong thing and embarrass you?”

“
Are you going to take your
top off?” I asked with a smile. “Start shouting
obscenities?”

“
Of course not.” She laughed
quietly and looked down. “I have to admit, there’s something…weird
about it. It’s really intimate, people praying around
you.”

“
And that’s why I want to
share it with you. I don’t expect you to understand or share in my
beliefs. But I want you to know me.” I shrugged. “Think about it.
I’m not going to pressure you. If somewhere along the line you
decide—”

“
Do you want me to come on
Sunday?” she interrupted, and when she met my eyes, I could see
she’d made up her mind. That was something unmistakable about
Penny. When she made up her mind, it showed in every part of her
expression.

“
If you’d like.” I would
have to prepare Annie. “You’re coming over tomorrow night, aren’t
you?”

“
Yeah. No. Should I do that,
though? I mean, spend all night having sex with you then go to your
church? It sounds…disrespectful.” She chewed her lip, her brow
crumpled in concern.

I took her hands and pulled them to my lips,
then dropped them to my lap. “I appreciate your concern. We can
stick to oral tomorrow night, then.”

She walloped me with her pillow.

On Sunday morning, I showered and dressed in
the downstairs bathroom, so Penny could spread her makeup and
toiletries all over the sink in the master. I needed to invite her
to leave some things there, so her toothbrush didn’t have to feel
like the child of divorced parents. I’d just finished combing my
hair when I heard her call, “Ian?” from the living room.

“
Yeah, Doll, on my way.” I
straightened my tie, took my jacket off the hanger, and headed out
the door.

Penny leaned against the back of the couch,
her black wool coat folded over her linked arms. She wore a navy
dress with gray polka dots, and a gray cardigan. She’d neatly
straightened her blond hair and curled the usually messy ends under
meticulously. She gestured to her outfit and asked, “Is this
conservative enough?”