Page 56

Hunter is listening intently, so I continue. “Before I was old enough to understand that, though, I naively thought that they were somehow just different people, incapable of human feelings, until I noticed how differently they treated me versus Rachel. They loved her.
“At first, I would blame myself. Maybe if I was a better daughter who cleaned her room or got A’s in school, they’d treat me better. But later, I realized that they’d abused me so much that they stopped seeing me as a human being.”
“What did they do to you?” he asks, his face distorted with wrath.
“I try not to think about the things they did to me because when I start thinking about them, I can’t sleep. There was a time in my life when I never slept.”
I notice Hunter’s left eye twitching. Our conversation is making him uncomfortable, and he probably wants to stop listening and just go hurt somebody, but this is my story to tell and I need him to hear it, so I keep going.
“You asked me why I don’t care about the kinds of things you do?” I meet his gaze, my own hard. “It’s because I’m pretty sure most of the people you hurt deserve it and also because I simply don’t care.”
“You don’t care about the things I’m capable of, Megan? That’s not normal.”
“Actually, it is because not caring about much is how I protect myself. Maybe it’s selfish of me, but I have no problem being selfish. Hell, I have a right to be selfish after dealing with my family.”
“You’re right.” He nods, lightly playing with a few of my stray curls. “You have every right.”
“I think that’s part of the reason why I’m still here. With you, I mean. You make me feel like I matter when I’ve never mattered to anyone before.”
Hunter is silent for a few moments and then asks, “Are you still involved with any of them?”
My face stiffens.
“No.”
“The man you were arguing with on the phone a while back? Was that your father?”
“I’m not sure what you heard–”
“I heard just fine.” He moves closer to me. “Why are you sending him money every month? And what pictures was he talking about?”
“I swear.” I glare at Hunter. “I give you an inch, and you just take a fucking mile, don’t you?”
“I can’t protect you if I don’t know everything.”
“I never asked you to protect me.” I try standing to my feet, suddenly feeling anxious about how intrusive he’s being, but he yanks me back into his lap.
“You don’t have to ask me for something so basic. It’s well within my right to want to keep you safe.”
“I hate to tell you this, Mr. Middleton, but you’re not doing the best job of keeping me out of harm's way,” I say sarcastically. “I’ve been shot at and damn near kidnapped since I met you.”
“That’s not funny, Megan.”
“You really need to learn how to take a joke.”
“There’s nothing funny about what almost happened to you in my apartment or this club, an issue I’m trying to remedy as we speak. But I need you to stop changing the subject. Right now, we’re talking about your baggage, not mine, and I can track your piece-of-shit father down and beat the story out of him, or you can just tell me everything now,” he glares down at me, and I glower at him.
“Is privacy a word in your dictionary?” I demand furiously.
“Not when it comes to you.”
I hate how calm he sounds while I’m having a mini breakdown inside.
“What good will come from you knowing everything?”
“You know my one advantage with the drama going on in my business right now? It’s that I know who my enemy is and if I do my best to think like him, I might just be able to beat him at his own game. So, while you can be angry with me all you want, I need to know more about your past, especially your father,because I don’t intend on that man taking any more advantage of you than he already has.”
My jaw tenses.