Worth It

by Linda Kage

  “Zero,” I said. “The number is zero.”

  Her eyes flew open wide. “Oh my God. You’re a—”

  My cheeks flushed hot as I slapped a hand over her mouth. This was so damn embarrassing.

  City peeled my fingers off her mouth. “You cannot be a virgin. How is that even possible?”

  “Hey, you’re one too,” I hissed, reminding her she had no more experience than I did and no right to bash me, even though, okay...I was the guy. I was eighteen. I should’ve scored by now.

  “Yeah, but I’m...”

  When she didn’t elaborate, I lifted an eyebrow, waiting for her to explain why it was okay for her to be a virgin and not me.

  She cleared her throat and motioned at me. “You’re so...so gorgeous, and smart, and charming, and just...amazing. I would’ve thought girls were constantly begging to be with you.”

  “I’m also Bruce Parker’s son.” I shrugged. “It kind of makes me a pariah in these parts.”

  Her nose wrinkled as if she disagreed. “That doesn’t seem fair. A lot of girls are missing out on the awesome that is you.”

  “It’s no less fair than having to be the innocent preserved daughter of the great and mighty Abbott Bainbridge. I bet no one’s ever touched you before because they’re all scared shitless of your father.”

  I ran my fingertip down her soft porcelain cheek. She really was pure and untouched from the ugliness of life in a way I relished about her. Being in her blissfully happy presence always gave me hope in the world.

  “You’re touching me,” she rasped, clearly affected by the path of my fingers as I stroked the side of her throat.

  “That’s because I’m a trashy Parker who doesn’t know any better.” The soft place I’d been touching looked too delicious to resist, so I leaned in and kissed her there, right behind her ear.

  She closed her eyes, tipping her head to the side to let me kiss her more. “Stop calling yourself trashy,” she reprimanded with no heat in her voice because she was too busy sighing. “You’re really good at that. I was so sure you’d had more experience.”

  “I didn’t say I had no experience. I’ve just never had sex before.”

  She pulled away, hurt and surprise brightening her eyes. “So...how far have you ever gone?”

  I gulped, hoping I hadn’t just screwed myself and pissed her off, or worse, hurt her. “How far have you ever gone?” I countered.

  She snorted. “Come on, Knox. You know how far I’ve gone. The day I bumped into you in the woods was the closest I’d ever been to a boy. I’d never kissed one before you, never held one of their hands.” She let out a self-derisive answer. “Heck, I’ve never even danced with one.”

  My eyebrows shot up. “You’ve never danced with a boy before?”

  “No,” she growled from between clenched teeth. “I have not. So now it’s your turn. How far have you gone before?”

  I cleared my throat, suddenly leery. She was jealous, and I could already see the pain in her eyes. I was hurting her. But I couldn’t lie to her, so I glanced away and admitted, “Freshman year, junior girl, it was a night after a big basketball game win. There was a party, all these people were celebrating. I think she was drunk, but she came up to me and told me I was cute, so...” I shrugged. “We made out.”

  “And?” City pressed. “You made it to...first base? Second? Third?”

  My mind went blank, because I didn’t even know how to answer. “Well, I don’t technically know what happens at each base, so...”

  “First base is just kissing,” she started, more than willing to explain. “French included. Second is anything above the waist, and third is anything below without going all the way, and a home run is...well, you know.”

  When I turned to blink at her, she blushed. “I have two older brothers,” she rushed to defend herself. “And they talk openly with their friends.”

  “Okay.” I blew out a breath. “It was definitely second base, then.”

  Her mouth fell open. “You went up her shirt?”

  “Uh...well...she took the shirt off, so there was really no, you know...going up it.”

  “Did she take off her bra too?”

  Wow, did my shoes suddenly look interesting, and shit, they were scuffed all to hell. I really needed a new pair of sneakers.

  “Knox?” Her low voice made me clench the back of my teeth. Damn it, why did I feel this unavoidable need to confess everything to her?

  “Yeah,” I muttered, digging my toe through the hole at the end of my sneaker. Yep, I really needed to buy a new pair...someday. “She took her bra off too.”

  When she went stiff in my arms, I immediately looked at her, panicking. “City—”

  She held up a hand and started breathing funny. “I’m sorry, but I just don’t like it. I don’t like knowing you’ve touched some other girl’s boobs. Her nipples...and you’ve never even seen mine.”

  “I...” When her words finally unscrambled themselves in my brain, I blinked, completely baffled. “What?”

  Hugging herself, she moved away. “I’m sorry. I’m jealous. I know, it’s stupid, but I can’t help it. I just... I hate learning that you knew some other girl more than you know me.”

  With a sudden laugh, I shook my head and reached for her. “Trust me, City. I know a hell of a lot more about you than I ever knew about her. Hell, I didn’t even know her name until the next day at school when I heard one of her friends call to her...right after she walked right past me, completely ignoring me because she probably didn’t even remember me.”

  City gnawed on her lip, scowling thoughtfully as she stared into space. Then she focused on me. “I still don’t like it. I can’t handle you knowing the color of her nipples and not mine.”

  I grinned. “So does this mean you’re going to tell me the color of your nipples?” I liked where this conversation was headed.

  Her jaw hardened with a determined, almost angry bent. “No. I’m going to show you.”

  And she pulled off her shirt. Just like that. When she was left in nothing but a bra from the waist up, I gaped, my mouth falling open. “Uh... Jesus, City. Are you sure about this?”

  “Yes. Do you want to take the bra off?”

  “Hell, yes. But...I probably shouldn’t. We—”

  She set her warm, soft hands over mine, which for some reason made my tongue stall out.

  “Please help me get over this jealousy. Give me more than you ever gave her.”

  From that point on, I was a goner. The girl I loved was asking me to do this for her, so I would. And I’d love every fucking second of it.

  “Okay,” I whispered. When I set a hand on her hip, she beamed at me.

  Her flesh was warm and so freaking soft. I didn’t know skin could be this soft. And when I smoothed my palm up all that naked, soft skin it gave me goose bumps. She was just as smooth and warm all the way up. When I reached the back of her bra, I paused, but decided not to go there. I’d heard too many horror stories about guys fumbling too long with a bra clasp, so I skipped it entirely and moved to the thin, silky strap on her left shoulder.

  I met her gaze and hooked my finger under it. Then I smiled as I slowly dragged it down her arm. The top part of her bra cup sagged, revealing the uppermost swell of her breast.

  Breathing in through my mouth, I studied them in dazed wonder before I lifted my gaze to make sure she was doing okay.

  Grinning at me, she caught my cheek in her palm and said, “You look excited yet worried.”

  Bingo. “I don’t want to mess this up,” I admitted.

  Shaking her head, she assured me, “That’s not even possible.” Then she bit her lip. “Unless you don’t like what you see.”

  I snorted. “Now that isn’t possible.” I slid off the other strap, and the front of her bra slid down even more until I could almost see nipple.

  After one last glance at her face to make sure she was okay, I folded the front down entirely.

  “Oh.” I sucked in a bre
ath I hadn’t even realized I’d been holding. “Wow.” I glanced up at her face. Her cheeks were blazing pink, but she kept smiling, so I went back to her nipples. They were rosy pink and already beaded so tight into hard buds I couldn’t help but reach out and brush my thumbs over them.

  She gasped and grabbed my shoulders. “Oh!” It was her turn to gasp. “Wow.”

  We shared a smile, and then I cupped their weight in my hands before flicking my thumbs over the straining nipples again.

  “God, Knox.” She ground her lap down on mine. “You freaking tease.”

  I gave a husky laugh and then leaned down to close my mouth over one ripe peak.

  She grabbed my hair and pulled hard. “Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God.”

  Sucking her in deep, I spent the rest of the afternoon enjoying the hell out of second base.

  The hardest thing I ever did was sit outside the stairwell and listen to her cry.

  Bad shit had happened to me, things I relived in my darkest nightmares, but I’d always been able to fight back, rage against those attacks, react. Forcing myself to not react as Felicity wept because I had hurt her slaughtered me. Something inside me withered and then crumbled into dust.

  Probably my humanity.

  This was best for her, though; that’s what I kept telling myself. I could only hurt her if I reentered her life.

  So why the hell was she out there, bawling after I’d attempted to do the right goddamn thing? She needed to stop. She needed to stop weeping, or I was going to lose it.

  I pressed my back against the wall, rested my elbows on my bent knees and cradled my head in my hands as I gritted my teeth and listened to the worst sound in the world.

  And then she did stop. I’m not sure how long she’d gone on—it felt like fucking decades and I was half delirious by that point—but the hiccups gradually subsided, then she picked herself up off the floor, and she left.

  I remained, sitting just outside the stairwell, my hands shaking, my heart pounding and my vision graying at the edges.

  I had no idea she’d tried to visit me in prison...and on her birthday, no less. I remembered her birthday clearly. I’d been lying on my stomach in the medical ward, trying not to cry out from the pain as they stitched the tear in my rectum back together. Turning my head away from their tray full of supplies so I didn’t have to look at all the needles and shit they were going to use on me, I’d ended up facing a bare wall with nothing but a calendar hanging on it. When I’d realized it was her eighteenth birthday, I’d closed my eyes and sung happy birthday to her in my head to distract myself from what was happening.

  Recalling that day didn’t calm me any, though. Rage, the same sick need to destroy that I’d had the night before in Pick’s office, rallied inside me. I had a bad feeling as soon as I stood up, I’d take out the entire hall, rip every door off its hinge, dent in all the walls, heave the fire extinguisher out the window. So I sat there clenching and unclenching my hands and concentrating on breathing.

  I was focusing so hard on keeping myself together, I didn’t hear the footsteps on the stairs until Eva rounded the corner with a baby on her hip and her free arm loaded with bags.

  “Oh! Knox. Sorry, I didn’t see you there.” She had to dance around my feet to avoid tripping over them.

  As I pulled my legs in closer to my body and gaped up at her in horror, she grinned back, having no clue how close to detonating I was.

  “Thank God you decided to come back. I got you some clothes this morning. I guessed on sizes, so fingers crossed that something actually fits.”

  I stood because it seemed wrong to sit in front of her while she was standing there, loaded down with so much weight.

  “I can carry something.”

  I reached for the bags, but she handed me the kid. I froze, scared out of my mind, as soon as the little girl landed in my arms.

  Why the hell was she handing me her child while I was like this? I could lose my control at any second. But neither mother nor daughter seemed to care. As Eva strode ahead of me toward their apartment door, Skylar grinned at me, clutched a handful of my shirt and babbled out a greeting.

  My stomach clenched as I stared back. She could’ve been Bentley if her hair had been red. She could’ve been my sweet, innocent niece who’d died a tragic death, but she was a real live girl, here in my arms and gazing at me with absolute trust.

  A cold sweat dripped down my back. I hurried after Eva and halted just inside the doorway, hesitating when Pick and Julian entered the living room from the kitchen, the scent of coffee following him. He paused when he saw me, and I remembered what he’d said the night before. He trusted me with his children.

  Except all the responsibility his trust bore on me only made me panic more. What if I accidentally hurt one of his babies?

  “What do you think?” Eva asked, pulling something from the first shopping bag. “I went with dark colors because they seem to suit you.” She turned to me and held up a navy-colored shirt as she came forward to measure it against my shoulders and see how well it would do. “I got a couple hoodies too. All sized extra-large. But we can take them back if they don’t fit.”

  When she held one of those up next, I blinked in confusion. “You really bought me clothes?” I wasn’t even sure how to respond to that. “You didn’t have to do that.”

  She shrugged and turned away. “We wanted to.”

  I glanced at Pick. He shrugged too.

  Well, shit. I owed these people more than they could ever know, and how had I repaid them? By wrecking Pick’s office. By pushing him against a wall. By giving one of his favorite employees a black eye.

  Bile rose in my throat.

  “It was nearly impossible to find long pants,” Eva went on, tugging a pair of blue jeans from her shopping bag. “But I’m not a shopping queen for nothing. I just hope these will be comfortable enough.”

  She tried to come at me with them next, but Pick intercepted her. “Tink, maybe we could do this later. I need Knox to help me at the office with something for a while. Okay?”

  She squinted at him as if she knew he was lying. But she shrugged and smiled. “All right. You guys have fun. See you later, love.”

  After smacking him on the lips with a kiss, she took both kids from us and herded them toward the kitchen. “Let’s see what Daddy was making for breakfast, shall we?”

  As soon as they were out of sight, Pick sent me a hard glance. “Let’s go.”

  I followed him out the door, without a word. I had no idea what he had planned, but if he brought up Felicity, I wouldn’t be able to take it.

  My fists would fly.

  Once we were in his car and heading in the opposite direction from the club, I glanced over. “So where are we really going?”

  I expected him to tell me he was dropping me off at the first curb he found that was sufficiently far away from his family. But he said, “I came up with an idea for you, a place I think you could go when you’re like this.”

  My jaw clenched. “Like what?”

  Damn it, could he tell? Did he realize just how close to the surface my violence was getting, when the rest of his family had been utterly oblivious?

  “Don’t dick me around, Parker. I’m betting a hell of a lot on a gut feeling I have about you, and risking even more if I’m wrong. The least you can do is be honest with me. And you have the same look in your eyes as you did last night before you destroyed my office.”

  Humiliation sliced through me. Gripping my fingers around my knees, I watched how white my knuckles grew. “I wouldn’t have hurt your family,” I muttered, even though I wasn’t too sure of my own claim. I wouldn’t have wanted to hurt anyone, but I wasn’t sure if I could control myself enough to stop it.

  “Hell, I know that.” Pick sent me a dry look. “I know that better than you do. But it’s not healthy to bottle it in either. You need a venting system.”

  As he pulled into a parking lot, I focused on the building he’d brought me to. It
was a gym, boasting of boxing lessons in the window.

  “I’m getting you a membership here.”

  I glanced across the interior of the car. Had he lost his mind?

  “And you don’t think this will only evoke more violence in me?”

  “Fuck, no.” Pick laughed and slugged me in the shoulder. “Trust me, man. Seriously, what is with everyone not trusting me lately? I have fucking awesome instincts. I know what I’m talking about.”

  When he pushed out of the car, I did too, willing to try anything. My eyes about bugged out of my head when I realized how much he had to pay to sign me up to come here on a regular basis, though.

  And when I tried to resist, he only held up a finger.

  “Trust, my man.”

  I shut my mouth but shook my head, tallying in my head everything I already owed him and would continue to owe him.

  “Don’t even worry about it,” he finally said as if reading my mind. “Just pay it forward someday.”

  I sniffed, not sure how I could ever give to someone what he’d given to me.

  But I let it happen. I got a membership, and they set me up with a trainer, who wouldn’t be able to start working with me until Tuesday afternoon. But I was allowed to visit the weight room immediately. So I did.

  Pick left me there, and I got started. My muscles were stiff because it’d been a few days since I’d worked out in the prison yard, but after some time on the leg curl, power rack, elliptical and butterfly press, I was feeling loose, and actually a lot calmer.

  So maybe Pick might’ve been onto something. It made me want to hang out here all day. Except I hadn’t eaten since the night before, so I eventually returned to the Ryan apartment.

  Eva fed me a late lunch, and the kids played around me on the floor until they fell asleep on me. Pick left in the early evening to get some work done at the club, and I headed out for a while, still uneasy about being left alone with Eva and the kids.

  As I wandered through the city streets, breathing in my freedom and unable to believe I was really out of Statesburg for good, I thought of my woods. I missed the smell, the peace, Felicity. An ache grew in my chest.