"You're gonna leave me," I said, my voice so low that I could barely hear what I'd said myself.
"I won't leave you if you tell me."
"You don't know that."
"I do, because I love you."
"My mother used to tell me that she loved me too…until she didn't."
"Please," Joey begged, her eyes starting to pool with unshed tears.
I hated that I'd made her sad. I hated that my fucked-up past worried her.
I gently removed her hand from my face, not wanting for her to touch me and then stop once she heard everything. I couldn't handle that.
"My mother, the woman that was supposed to love and protect me, left me on my father's doorstep when I was four. My dad was a successful senator but a mean drunk. He'd gotten drunk one night and banged a sixteen-year-old waitress in the back of his limo. He stayed around for a while, bringing her flowers and taking her for expensive meals, all things that would make a girl from bumfuck nowhere feel like she was something more than she was. Then as soon as my mom got pregnant, he just up and walked away, only sending monthly child support checks in exchange for my mother's silence. I didn't see that man one day in my life until that day. She didn't even wait for him to open the door. Just handed me an envelope and drove off."
"But didn't your dad raise you? I thought he was neighbors with Lip's parents."
"Raise is subjective. He left me in the hands of my stepmother, who wasn't all there herself. She would do things to me. She'd call it love, but it didn't feel like it."
Joey's tears now ran down her face, her hand on her mouth, trying to cover the sobs that were escaping her lips. I wanted to hold her in my arms, tell her that it didn't matter, that I'd escaped that shit. That Lip had saved me and then she gave me a soul, but she needed to hear it all. Everything.
"It's okay; her illness didn't last long. One day Lip saw what she was doing and ran home and told his mom. That day Lori banged on the door and dragged me out of there. She called my father and said that if he didn't do something about his wife, she would. My father dumped his wife, not 'cause he cared for me, but 'cause he didn't want to kill his political ambitions. It was a better story, a long-lost son that he was proud of and loved. A cute kid makes for better photo ops over a pretty sexual predator, and that is what Lip's mom would have told the newspapers if my father didn't put a stop to it all."
"Remind me to hug Lori the next time we see her."
"She's a good woman. Lip is lucky to have her as a mother. It's why he is so stable, why he's able to show you love the way you deserve. Sometimes I feel like I need to leave so that you and Lip can be happy without all the baggage, but I'm a selfish man, and I can't let you go. The two of you are the only things of value in my life. I can't be without you."
"I would never let you leave us; neither would Lip."
"I'm no good, Joey. My genes are garbage. My DNA, corrupted. When my dad kicked my stepmom to the curb, I thought that was the end of it. That no one could actually hurt me anymore, but then my older sister came home from college. She used to beat me nonstop. She liked watching me cry. I was like a personal punching bag, but I took it. I never said a word other than to Lip and made him promise not to tell anyone. She was nineteen and angry. I didn't really ever understand why she was like that. She had everything anyone could want, but as I got older, I realized it was our genes."
"She beat you? If I ever meet the fuckin' bitch, I'm gonna bash her head in."
I touched the angry bite mark on Joey's shoulder, the one I'd placed there. I could see the broken skin and my teeth marks embedded in her flesh. I turned away, not able to handle that I'd done that to her. It wasn't the first time, and I knew it wouldn't be the last. "Even when we fuck, my need, the biting, it's all some kind of messed-up shit from my genes. I fuckin' marked you. This has to hurt. Why do you let me do it?"
Joey shrugged; her fingers brushed mine as she glanced at the mark I'd left on her pale skin. "I like it. It's hot. You never do anything to hurt me outside of the bedroom. It's hot, knowing that I drive you so crazy that you can't hold back. It's primal." Joey turned her eyes on me, the brown so rich, so warm. "I trust you. That's why I let you do it."