Shrinking Violet (Colors #2) (20 page)

“I need to get back to the house.”

“Nuh-uh.” Leaning down, I nuzzled her jaw before trailing a path up to her ear, pulling her lobe between my teeth and biting down just enough to make her moan and writhe underneath me. “You’re not leaving.”

Her voice was breathy as she spoke, “If I don’t leave, I’m not going to get any sleep tonight.”

“That’s the plan,” I growled.

“Carson, wait.” Cassidy’s hands came up and pressed against my chest, pushing me up so she could see my face. “I can’t function on no sleep. Not with a three-year-old running me ragged from sunup to sundown. If you promise I’ll get some rest, I’ll stay. If not, I really do need to go.”

With an indignant huff—mainly just for show—I let her go just long enough to rearrange her so she was lying on my chest once again. “Fine, Violet, you can get some sleep.”

“Thank you.” She giggled against my skin, and I felt my chest grow tight as I pulled her to me and pressed my lips to the crown of her head. Silence enveloped us as the seconds ticked by, but I could tell by her breathing that she wasn’t asleep.

“What are you thinking about so hard?” I asked quietly.

“Huh? Oh, nothing.” She stumbled through her words, obviously having been lost in deep thought.

“Tell me,” I insisted.

A slow exhale passed her lips, blowing across my skin. “I just…want to know you. I want to know everything I can, everything you’re willing to share with me. I want to know about your childhood. I want to know what it was like for you growing up in the foster system,” she said in a rush. “But I don’t want you to feel forced into talking about things you don’t want to talk about. I just wanted you to know that I’m here to listen…whenever you want to talk about it. No pressure.”

My chest rose as I inhaled deeply, holding it for several seconds before releasing it. It wasn’t a topic I liked to talk about. To be honest, rehashing my past made me pretty damn uncomfortable. But I knew it was only a matter of time before I would have to open up to Cassidy and tell her about my life growing up.

I had to clear my throat in order to get the words out. “I don’t have any clue who my parents are,” I started, feeling Cassidy’s form stiffen in my arms. “I was only a couple weeks old when someone found me outside of a hospital in Houston. Whoever my mom was, she just tucked me into a little carrier and stuffed a note down next to me saying she wasn’t ready to be a mother. She just…didn’t want me.”

The firm pressure of Cassidy’s lips against my chest pulled me back into the present. “I bounced from one foster home to another for most of my childhood. If I was lucky, I’d get to spend a year or two in one house before being shipped off to another. Some of the places weren’t so bad, but others…”

“Carson,” Cassidy whispered. “You don’t have to tell me, baby. It’s okay. I understand.”

But I had to finish. There was no going back once I’d opened the lid on all those locked-away emotions. I’d sealed that jar long before and stored it away on the highest shelf in the very back of my mind. I knew the only way to not be swallowed up by the memories was to get to the end.

“I never really understood those people who foster parentless children when they hate kids altogether. I mean, there had to have been easier ways to make a buck than to take in a bunch of strays, right? Those people…the ones only in it for the money? They were the worst. After a while, I learned to tell the difference between the bad and the…well, not so bad, pretty damn quick. For the first ten years, there wasn’t really anything I could do, you know? I was just a little kid. I’d take the beatings, go without food or a shower for a while, basically just bide my time until I moved on to the next house. I got really good at becoming invisible those ten years. It was the only way to keep from getting my ass kicked on a regular basis.”

“Oh, Carson.” I felt the drop of Cassidy’s tears on my flesh and she squeezed me tighter.

“It wasn’t always the adults who made life a living Hell. Sometimes, it was the other kids. If you didn’t learn to defend yourself fast, you were shit outta luck. It was all about survival of the fittest in some of those houses. You had to do what you had to do in order to make it to the next place, all along praying it was better than the Hell-hole before.”

“Y-you were never adopted?” She sniffled.

The memory sliced through me like a white-hot blade as I choked on the words. “Almost…once.”

The mattress shifted as Cassidy slid further up my body. Her beautiful eyes were shining with unshed tears as she reached up and began running her fingers through my hair. “What happened?”

“I guess—” My voice caught and I had to clear it again. I focused on the ceiling fan above me, whirling in slow, lazy circles as I got lost in my past. “I guess the family decided they wanted a little boy without so many issues. They backed out of my adoption and ended up with a kid who didn’t suffer from social anxiety abandonment issues.”

“They were fucking idiots.” The adamancy in her voice caught me off-guard and I blinked back into focus, finding her hovering over me. I hadn’t realized she’d moved again until she spoke. Her hands came up and cupped my cheeks as she focused intently on my eyes. “They were fucking idiots,” she repeated. “They didn’t know what they were missing out on.”

I tried for a smile, but it fell short. “I was kind of a mess back then, Violet.

“I don’t give a shit. They were morons for giving you up. They lost out on having someone as wonderful as you in their lives. That’s
their
loss.”

I couldn’t
not
kiss her after that. She was so impassioned, so sincere in what she said that my heart flipped over in my chest. Pulling her to me, I feasted on her mouth, pouring every ounce of what I was feeling for her into that kiss. Once it finally broke minutes later, both of us were breathing heavily. She scooted back down on the bed and took up her place, lying across my chest like it was the most natural thing in the world to be wrapped around me like a security blanket.

I loved it.

“I can’t imagine what you went through, Carson. It must have been so terrifying. But at least you got one good thing out of it.”

“Yeah, and what’s that, baby?”

“Navie,” she whispered into the darkness. “You got Navie. I can’t imagine getting a more special gift than having that girl in your life.”

“I couldn’t agree more,” I said with a sincere smile that time.

“You protected her. You saved her from having to deal with what you went through, didn’t you?”

“I tried. I really did. Before I met her, I’d learned how to fight; it was necessary in my life. If I moved into a home where the man was an abusive asshole, one or two good punches always ensured I’d be removed and placed somewhere else. But once Navie came along, I couldn’t do that.”

“Because you couldn’t risk leaving her,” Cassidy finished for me, saying the words that hurt to speak, let alone think.

“I wouldn’t do that to her. She was so small, so defenseless. I couldn’t leave her with that bastard. I took the beatings that were originally meant for her. I never once hit back. I hated standing there and taking shit from that prick. He was a fucking bully. To this day, there isn’t anyone I hate more than a bully. They’re the worst kinds of cowards.”

Instantly, Cassidy’s body grew completely rigid. I had no idea what prompted the change in her demeanor, but when I asked, she simply moved up to kiss me.

“You saved her,” she spoke reverently.

“You’re giving me too much credit. I tried my best to shield her from what I could, but there was only so much I could do. She still saw things no little kid should ever have to see.”

I remembered back to the night Navie snuck into my bedroom, tears streaming down her little cheeks as her body shook uncontrollably. That prick had gotten drunk again and had been downstairs beating his wife senseless. It was bad, one of the worst beatings he’d ever doled out, but there was nothing I could do. My hands were tied. I could have stopped him without a problem, but he’d have kicked me out of the house, for sure. She’d picked the wrong time to get up for a drink of water and witnessed the worst of the fight from the top of the stairs.

If there was one thing I could have gone back and changed, it would have been that. I never would have let her see that.

Cassidy sat up and swung her leg over my waist so she was straddling me. “Thank you for telling me,” she spoke softly as she leaned in, pressing her soft lips against mine. Without my coaxing, the kiss grew deeper and deeper until I was hard as stone and she was writhing on top of me.

“Baby,” I stopped her, pulling away just slightly. “I thought you said you needed your rest.”

“Well, right now, I need to make love to my man more than I need sleep,” she answered, leaning over and grabbing a condom from my bedside table.

I slid my hands up her waist until my thumbs gently brushed the swell of her perfect breasts. “Is that right?” I asked, my cock begging to be touched as she moved back, giving herself just enough room to roll the condom down my length.

“That’s right, baby. Now, lie back and let me make you feel good.”

As Cassidy slid herself down, squeezing and clenching as she enveloped me, I groaned at the feel of her wet heat surrounding me and could only think one thing.

I was in love with this girl.

The click-clack of high- heels against the tile of the foyer alerted me that it was one of the very rare times my mother was actually home. Jumping up from my bed, I rushed over to the vanity in the corner of my room, trying to quickly repair the damage done from an entire afternoon of crying.

Seeing Parker with that girl at school every day was nearly unbearable. Reason told me Freya Linden hadn’t done anything to me directly to earn so much of my hatred, but seeing her with Parker every day, the boy I thought I loved, made jealousy flow through my blood, poisoning all rationality.

What was so special about her?

Why had he chosen her over me?

What did she have that I didn’t?

Those were the questions that whirled around inside my head all day long, making me feel even lower than I already did.

“Cassidy,” my mother’s voice called from the stairs, growing closer. I didn’t want her to see me like this. Neither of my parents had a tolerance for crying. My father loved to tell me when I was little that crying was a waste of time; strong people didn’t waste their energy on tears.

Yeah, try explaining that to a seven-year-old who had accidentally ripped the eye off her favorite teddy bear. The only thing I ever learned from those lectures was to never, ever let my parents see me cry.

“Cassidy, are you home? Oh, there you are.”

I gave my cheeks one more swipe, hoping and praying I’d gotten rid of all the tears before spinning around to find my mother standing in the doorway.

“What’s going on? Have you been crying?” Her upper lip curled up like just the feel of that word on her tongue was despicable. “What in the world has you acting so melodramatic?”

That was exactly the reaction I had expected. I thought I’d been safe coming home from school and sobbing into my pillow. Father was at a conference in Seattle and Mother was supposed to have been on another one of her spa vacations in Scottsdale.

“No, I’m not crying,” I lied poorly, sniffling and trying to staunch the flow of the tears threatening to break free. “I just have really bad allergies.”

With a putout sigh and a roll of her eyes, she stepped further into my room, taking a seat on the edge of my bed. “Tell me what happened.”

That sentence from anyone else might have come across as concern. But I knew my mother better than that. She felt it would make her look like a bad mother to all her socialite friends if she wasn’t aware of what was going on in her daughter’s life.

“It’s nothing, really. Just…Parker’s seeing someone else.”

“Honestly, Cassidy,” she huffed, throwing her arms out in frustration. “That’s what has you up here sniveling like a child? A boy? Do you have any pride at all? No woman with an ounce of self-worth would be caught dead crying over a failed relationship.”