Page 77 of Seduction
“Okay,” she finally said.
“Okay what?”
“I’ll let you help me.”
I went over to help her stand, and I learned why she had been sitting there in the first place. One of her legs was broken. She couldn’t walk. I had to muster all my strength to carry her to my bedroom, which had an attached bathroom. I washed her, dried her, and let her sleep in my bed. Since she had the broken leg, I had to confide in Jasper. All he said was that he would handle it. Gina was taken out of my room and put into one of the guest rooms. A doctor and a nurse came to put her leg in a cast. I visited her as much as I could.
Then one evening, I asked her to join us for dinner at the main table. My parents rarely ate with their children. But it just so happened that on that night, Randolph showed up. He asked who Gina was.
“She’s my friend.”
He frowned indifferently and went on having a conversation with Jasper about needing him in the city to sit in on a meeting when he got out of school that day. He said the helicopter would pick him up at four, then he got up and walked out of the dining room without a second glance at the rest of us.
Later, when I asked Gina why he hadn’t noticed her, she said that when my father was fucking and being an animal, a demon from within took over him. The man was buried somewhere inside, but the monster, the fiend, growled, gnashed his teeth, bit, punched, stomped, and didn’t care what hole he put his dick in.
That was how I’d become her savior. Then she became my family. We tried being lovers, but she was too fucked up. Earlier, when I’d asked Gina to leave, she didn’t comply because she knew if she stayed, I wouldn’t make her go until she was ready to. As far as I was concerned, she was another sister. I loved her just as much as I did Bryn.
“You’re not going to answer, are you?” she asked.
“What about you?” I asked, repeating her question.
She cleared her throat. “Yes.” Her voice cracked regardless.
I was still lost for words. I could never love Gina in that way. Neither could Spencer. Although she never wanted to see it. As a wife, she would’ve been a constant reminder of our family’s dark past. It wasn’t her fault, though—that was how life worked sometimes.
“Once, I caught my father in the tunnels with a girl—young, so damn young,” I said, filling the silence between us. “I asked him what he was doing. He said she’d come to claim her mother’s paycheck, and he was showing her out. Then he told me to get the fuck out of the tunnels, and they weren’t built for me to play in. But I kept playing in them because I knew I’d run into another girl, and I did. You.”
Gina tossed her head back and grunted bitterly. “Is that the memory I incite in you? I incite in all of you?” Her voice cracked. “I’m just a filthy little whore in the tunnels.”
My jaw slackened. I couldn’t believe she’d said that. “No.” My tone was emphatic. “After all the fucking years you’ve been in my life, how could you say that?”
“You left me, Ash!” she shouted at the top of her lungs.
“I had to leave everybody, all of it,” I yelled back. “Fuck. I had to take care of myself, Gina.”
The silence was a welcomed ally at the moment.
I hadn’t realized how heavily I was breathing until I said, “I cleaned you up. I let you sleep in my bed. I brought you food. We made you family. That’s the ultimate kind of love.”
Her chin trembled as the corners of her mouth pulled downward. “I know,” she whispered then sniffed and swiped the tears off her cheeks with the backs of her hands. “I’m just afraid…”
“What are you afraid of?” I asked as I got a cloth napkin out of the drawer and handed it to her.
She scrunched up her face and said, “I’m filthy and dirty and…”
I shot a hand up. “Could you stop saying that? You’re not filthy and dirty.”
Gina pressed her lips together and wiped her face.
“Have you sought therapy?” I asked.
“No,” she said and sniffed.
“Someone who has suffered the way you have has to. I know some very good ones.”
She snorted. “You sound like a doctor.”
I cracked a smile. “Iama doctor—a surgeon.”
