Loving Hart (19 page)

The look he gave me was one of shock.  “Dude, come on! That’s crazy. I don’t hate you.  I think you’re plenty good enough for her. If anything, you’re the only person I’d trust with
her.  Always knew she loved you more than anything else.  She said it
so often that
I knew she wasn’t fuckin
g
around.  I’m sorry that she’s with someone else.  I didn’t see that one coming.”

That he said he didn’t hate me was like a weight off my shoulders, but the fact that he thought I was good enough for his sister got me all choked up.  I didn’t realize until right that moment how much his approval meant to me. 
It’s a damn shame that
it doesn't matter now
.

***

Talking about Damien and Brooke is an easy way to avoid talking to Delilah about anything rea
lly meaningful.  These last few
weeks, knowing that she’s with someone else… it’s been like hell on earth.  I can’t talk to her about it, and every time she brings it up, I cut her off. I just can’t hear about him.  I’m losing my mind
as it is.  I know it’s frustrating her, but I just can’t.  Not yet, and maybe not ever.  I’m already thinking in terms of transferring to another one of the Hart branches, possibly the one in Greece.  I can’t stay and watch her love someone else.

Right now, my issues with Delilah are secondary to my concern about Dominique. 
I’m frustrated
with myself, I’m upset
that Damien is struggling, but at least I know what’s up with him.  With Dominique, I have no idea.  Even worse, Delilah has no real idea either.  She
say
s she has a thought, but she doesn’t want to share it unless Dominique confirms it one way or the other.

Dominique is
totally closed off, which is bizarre.  She and Delilah haven’t lived together since their time in the dorms in freshman year.  During their second year
,
Delilah had pledged one fraternity and Dominique had pledged another, and the two of them separated. Delilah now has her own apartment
,
and Domin
ique
has her own as well
.
  I know that it hurts Delilah that Dominique is around less, but until Dominique feels like explaining, nothing’s going to change.

I was sitting at my desk thinking about Dominique and what was going on when my desk phone rang.

“Spencer Cross.”

From the sound of the breathing, I knew it was my mother before she even spoke.  My stomach plummeted four hundred stories in five seconds flat.

“I’m delighted that you’ve kept the name Cross.  I thought
those people
would have forced you to change your name to Hart by now.”

Gritting my teeth, I took as deep of a breath as I could.  “Those people are my family
,
mother.  Don’t insult them.  And unlike my own family, they’ve never forced me to do anything I didn’t want to do.  Why are you calling?”

It was a good question, and I dreaded the answer.  I had
n’t heard from my mother in almost
two years, and I was just fine with that.  She doesn’t have one motherly bone in her body.  Hell, she doesn’t have one
caring
bone in her body.  If it weren’t for the fact that I’ve seen photos of her pregnant, I’d swear she
was a reptile and that she stole
me from someone else.  My mother is a dish best served cold, or not at all.

“I’m calling because I don’t feel well.  You can’t think I’ll live forever, right?  I know I’ve not been mother of the year, but I’m the only one you’ve got.  I’d like to look at my son before I leave this
Earth
, to tell you how sorry I am.”

My mother doesn’t do contrite, so her assertion that she wanted to apologize had me pulling the phone away from my ear to stare at it in confusion.

“What do you mean you don’t feel well?  Have you been to the doctor?”

She made an inelegant noise, indicating that she hadn’t.  “
You know how your father is about illness, and he’s only gotten worse. He doesn’t allow for doctor visits.”

As much as I dislike her, that got to me.  I remember what it felt li
ke to be trapped
under his control.  Terrified to move or breathe out of place, trying to stay silent and still.  To this day
,
I wake up in a cold sweat remembering his hands on me, his mouth
,
and his miserable excuse for a dick rubbing against me.  “If you don’t let me touch you, Big Mike’s already told me I can touch Dante or Damien.  Whichever one strikes my fancy
.  Don’t think I won’t do it boy.  And with them, I could do more..
.”

Later, when that started not working, he threatened to touch the girls.  I’ll never forget the sight of him and their father leering at the two of them like they were meat.
I started working out the next day, and I’ve never looked back.

Snapping back into the present, I asked her, “If you don’t feel well, why not shove past him and go to the doctor?  I’ve never known him to restrain you before.”

“Things have changed
,
my darling.  He’s letting me have a party though, this weekend.  I’d like you to come.  I won’t make you stay, I promise.  But I’d like to talk to you while I still can.”

I’m not sure what the fuck I was thinking.  Shit, maybe I wasn’t.  Somehow, she’d worked her head games on me, and the next thing I knew, I’d agreed to go.

I thought I’d go crazy for the entire first year after the thirty days of Spencer loving were up.  I missed him, the feel of him, the ability to hold and love him, and the feelings that our being together evoked.  I dreamed of being with him damn near every night, and it made me nuts. 
There were a lot of bad days that first year. 

I knew the first time he had sex with someone else, because the following night at family dinner, he could barely look at me.  I hated that he hadn’t been able to wait, and I hated that I
felt that way
.  I knew firsthand how high Spencer’s sex drive was
, and I knew he wouldn’t last two
years.  I wondered if he enjoyed the sex, wondered if he held her afterwards.
I wondered if he screamed her name when he came.
I wondered if she loved his scent, whether she knew that he loved
to be kissed and held afterwards
.

For the entire month after that, I cried myself to sleep every
night.  I lost ten pounds and
walked around like a ghost.  It was at that point that Dominique got pissed off and told me that I was being a dumbass.  “You can’t wait for him Delilah.  It isn’t fair, and it’s dumb to try.  I’ve been your biggest supporter until now, but fuck this.  You’re fucking miserable and I’m watching you disappear before my very eyes.  You didn’t even have one
pound to lose, much less ten."

Spencer put his foot down too.  "Angel, I'm with you all the way.
I'm fucking miserable without you baby, but I'm more miserable seeing you like this.
If you want me to tell Dante and Damien now, if that will make you happy, I'm all in.  I ca
n't stand seeing you like this. You're the most important person in the world to me.  If they're mad, then so be it."

I knew that wasn’t the answer.  It would just start shit, and that wasn't my intention.  I also didn't want Spencer to have to worry about me all the time.

After that, I realized that I needed to start acting like a functioning member of society.  I also realized that I needed to stop pining over Spencer when Dominique was around
, because it was pissing her off
.  To her, he was a brother figure, and I didn’t want her to hate him because I couldn’t handle
being away from him

I floundered once,
th
at Christmas.  I needed to be with him.  It was beautiful and amazing, but when it was finished, I told him we needed to go cold turkey until I graduated.  I couldn't chance getting depressed again.

Over time,
I managed to regain my equilibrium
.
I just kept telling myself that every day got me one day closer to goal, and one day it finally took. 

***

I’m not sure that it ever got easier, but it did get more bearable.
Dominique pulled away from me a bit, and it made me sad.  It wasn't extreme, but for the first time, there was a divide.
Sometimes I thought she seemed anxious to have privacy
,
and I wondered about that.  I suspected that she was trying to hide something from me about her sexuality, but for the life of me I couldn't understand why.  She understood that I wasn't oblivious to what was going on with her, but she still refused to talk.  I realized that we were adults now
,
and that I needed to let her have privacy
even though it hurt me
.  When she's ready, she'll tell me.

We both had a new frie
nd though, someone that we all love
to pieces.  My brother Dante had gotten a new executive assistant named Sabrina, and her sister Brooke is our new permanent sidekick.  The Tyler sisters are part of our family, and we all love having them around.  Brooke and my brother Damien definitely have huge feelings for each other, but neither of them is saying
a word.  The good thing is
,
with how invested Damien is in Brooke, he's taken to coming out with Dominique, Brooke and I several nights a week when we go to clubs
,
which means that Spencer's with us too
. 

At the beginning of
my se
nior year, I met Eric.  He was
cute
, nice, and he liked me a lot
. 
He kept asking me out, and I kept saying no.  I was finally within striking distance of graduation and the ability to be with Spencer, and I couldn't have cared less about dating anyone else. 

All that changed one night when I went to a bar in the valley that I normally wouldn't have gone to with a few of my sorority sisters and some of their friends.  One of my sorority sisters had a friend named Carrie that was tagging along with us.  She was really pretty, but ridiculously shallow and annoying. She was going on and on about some hot guy that hung out at the bar we were going to, telling us all what a great lay he was.  "Fucking huge," she crowed.  "He and the guy h
e always has with him are like
celebrities in the bar.  I’ve heard that they used t
o
be around a lot more, but they only stop in every so often now.  E
veryone wants a ride on one of
them.  They're pretty selective.
I had my guy once almost a year
ago, and I'm not stopping
‘
til I've fucked him again.  He fucked me almost unconscious
,
and I need more of that. You guys should see this dude
’
s prick.  It's mammoth."

I found her crude and disgusting, but I didn't really care about her since I had my real friends there for fun.  Most of us stayed in the front of the bar drinking
,
while Carrie dragged a few of the "looser" girls into the
back where the pool tables were.  "I'm in search of Mr. Big Cock," she shrieked.  Most of us hung our heads in embarrassment at that. 

About an hour into the night
,
one of my sorority sisters went to the bathroom, which happened to be located near the pool table.  When she came back, she came right over to me.  "I don't know who Mr. Big Cock is, but the other guy he's with is your brother
, the one that used to bring the Kr
ispy Kremes for the entire sorority
on Fridays
."

I felt the bottom drop out of my world
,
just like that.
She was talking about Damien, and
I knew exac
tly who 'Mr. Big Cock' was. 
I was sick to my stomach.  It was one thing to know he was fucking other people.  It's
another thing to know that he was
fucking trash like Carrie.

I knew that I needed to go look, but I also knew that I needed to get the fuck out of here.  Pulling my cell from my purse, I walked outside and called Brooke and asked her to come get me.  After giving her the address, I went back into the bar. 

Swallowing the lump in my throat, I made my way through the bar and back into the pool table area.  I wasn't sure what I would find, but when I got a good look at what was going on, I almost lost it.  Carrie was all but on top of my brother while Spencer had some little slut sitting on his lap with her arms around his neck.  I noted that neither my brother or Spencer looked particularly engaged, but it crushed me just the same to see someone else touching Spencer. 

Luckily for me, neither one of them noticed that I had been standing there.  I hauled ass out of the bar and stood waiting for Brooke to arrive. 
When I got home, I scrubbed myself raw in the shower while I cried.  Here I'd been
,
foolish enough to wait for him, all while ignoring what he was do
ing.  Having it in my face made
me feel like a foolish little baby.  If he cared about me, I don’t think he would be fucking people like Carrie.