Loving Hart (8 page)

During Christmas break
,
my mother had sent a bunch of pictures to me.  These weren’t “aw, how cute” pictures.  They were
downright creepy,
and they gave me the chills.  All of the pictures were of me, Damien, Dante and the twins when we were younger, but every one of them showed how neglected we were.  Some of the photos showed us in the shed sleeping.  What kind of mother stands over children sleeping next to gardening tools for posterity?  Marceline Cross is who. 

Damien’s
brisk
nod told me that he understood
how I felt
. 
“Spence, we’re always going to be fucked up because of what our parents did.  But when shit like this comes up, we need to talk to e
ach other.  Don’t keep it in
.  You’re my brother, even if we don’t share blood.  I talk to you when shit about Mike and Connie bubble
s
to the surface for me.  My parents were just as fucked up.  You aren’t alone.”

He’s right
and he's wrong
. 
Mike and Connie Hart
were
fucked up, but as far as I know, neither of them ever
rubbed
their sons
in a completely disgusting way
.
Had Mr. Hart lived, he'd have gone for the girls, but luck was on their side when he overdosed.

The other
difference is that the Harts are now gone, and
Marceline and Hank Cross
are still
alive and as classless as ever
.
I never see them, but my mother likes to pop up from time to time to play the victim
or to take swipes at the Harts
. 
It makes me feel like a giant pussy that
I
secretly
wish she would tell me she was sorry
, that she would take my side and admit that my father is a fucking monster
.  What kind of a mother lets he
r son down the way Marceline did
,
over and over again
?
  Why did none of our parents care about us?

“I hate
bringing them up.  I feel like I’m a fucking reminder of all the shit you guys shouldn’t have to think about anymore
,
because my mother still likes to rub it the fuck in whenever she deigns to remember that I’m alive.”

Damien shook his head in frustration.  “Don’t you ever think that
,
Spence.  It isn’t you or Dante or the twins that re
mind me of my parents.
I've got triggers, believe me, and none of them are you or the others. 
We can’t push each other away.  You know that, right?  This
family
is all we’
re ever going to have.  
Don’t hold shit back.  Sometimes you’re too much like Dante.  You assholes make me nuts!”

That comment really kicked my ass. 
We’
ve struggled at times through the years to keep Dante from retreating inward.  He bore the brunt of the abuse and the bullshit, mostly because he has a few extra years of memories that Damien and I don’t
, and he really had to grow up fast.  He always feels like he has to be strong and shoulder the burden himself
,
and it makes us nuts
.  It hurts us all when Dante pulls away to try to “protect”
us, and
I don’
t want to do the same thing.

I need to remember that the Harts are my family, and push my feelings for Delilah way down.  I’d lose my two best friends for sure if I was ever dumb enough to try anything with her.  I need to thank my lucky stars that they don’t know anything about what happened, and move on from here.

***

I
thought
that I
was doing a
good
job of
pushing
my feelings
for Delilah
to the back burner
until summer break started. 
The second I walked back into the house and saw her cooking a welcome home dinner, it took everything I had not to grab her and kiss the hell out of her.
I knew that I'd behaved in a fairly gruff way with her
after that
, but I couldn't do anything differently.  If I did what I wanted to do, her brothers would lose their shit.  She's off limits for many years to come, and I need to act like it.

The
worst part of the whole thing was that she’d
gotten herself a boyfriend.  S
am seemed
like a nice enough gu
y
I g
uess,
but I hate his fucking guts regardl
ess.  Every single time he came
to the house to get her I want
ed
to beat him senseless.
He wa
s touching
my
f
ucking girl, even though he did
n't know it.  Shit,
she
did
n't know it.

Delilah acted
like
the kiss never happened, and it wa
s infuriating.  Sure, I wanted her to keep it quiet… but didn’t it mean anythin
g to her at all?  She was running around with that asshole
like h
e was the love of her life.  He was always around, he wa
s constantl
y trying to hold her hand (that was my fucking job!) and he hung on her every word.  It wa
s enough
to make me want to vomit.  I understood that she was
seventeen
,
and that she was bound to get a boyfriend, but
i
t was
just too fucking much.

It wa
s destroying me, making me question
how strong of a person I was.  I started
having nightmares
about my father practically every night
,
and I was
barely functioning. 
Delilah still came in to wake me up, but now we didn’t talk when she held
my hand until I calm
ed
down.  She tried to talk at first, but I was too pissed about Sam to let her.
I hate
d
that someone
else is touching her and I couldn’t deal with it.
 
I hated
it with an alarming ferocity
t
hat I did
n't know how to deal with
.

The one true positive that
emerged within the last
few
months came when I was contacted
by
my grandmother's lawyer
on my twenty-first birthday
.  Helen
had been my father's stepmother.
My father hated her and she didn't like him either,
but she loved me and I had loved her right back.  When her lawyer contacted me, I was shocked.  Helen had passed when I was very young, but it turned out that I was her beneficiary
,
and everything had been in a trust until I reached my twenty-first birthday
.
  I
inherited almost twen
ty million dollars, but I could
n’t
have cared less about every penny of it
,
except for the two hundred thousand dollar bank check it allowed me to send my father.  It was the exact amount of the check I had forced him to write Sandra on the day I moved out.  Once I put the cashier's check in the mail, I felt as though I had wiped clean any last bit of control that he thought he maintained over me.

***

It's getting harder to deal with my feelings for Delilah. They're always there, always at the forefront of my mind. She's always felt like my human compass, the person that kept me on track, but lately, it's getting harder to navigate
her
. 

When she looks at me now, I see something hot and wild in her eyes, along with promises of something I don't want to think too much about. I want her so fucking badly that it makes me weak
at
the knees, and thinking about what she wants makes me wild. 

This afternoon
,
while we were lying out by Dante's pool, I caught her looking at me, hotter than usual.  Before I could edit myself, I blurted out, "Dammit angel.  Why are you looking at me like that?"

Her knowing smile was intoxicating.  "We both know why I'm looking at you Spencer.  I'm waiting for the day I look and can tell that you're ready."

Oh.

Fuck.

ME.

I tried to shake my head to negate the truth in those words, only to realize that I was nodding in the affirmative as opposed to the negative.  "I'm no good
.  Y
ou deserve so much better and
…"

Putting her hand over my mouth, she gave me a
hard look.  "Don't you ever talk about yourself
like
t
hat to me
again
.
You hurt me when you hurt yourself Spencer.  Think about that the next time you go to say something so stupid.  We're done talking about this.  Let it go."

I'm not stupid though.  I know it's just a matter of time before she comes back at me, asks me
to take her
.
The need rolls off of her in waves.
I am
in
equal parts reluctant, scared shitless and desperate to do everything she wants, be everything she needs me to be. 

I
was so pissed off at Spencer when he came home from college the summer after we'd kissed
.  I
'd
emailed and called him numerous times once he went back to school, but other than seeing him at family dinner
s
, he wasn’t around.  I got the message, loud and clear.  He was uncomfortable with wha
t happened, and knowing him as well as I do, I knew it wa
s because I’m so young. 
I'm no fool, and I knew to choose my battles wisely. 
I’ve got years to wear Spencer down, and
I wasn't going to play myself out that
early on.  For me, it’s all about long-term with him, and I know he isn’t anywhere near that yet.

That being the case, I’
d
decided to put him out
of my mind and start dating.  I had
been with Sam for almost a month
when Spencer and Damien came home from school,
and I like
d
him
well enough
. 
Sam was
a
pretty
good
kisser,
he treated me like gold, he liked
having
my sister
around,
and he
had
a great sen
se of humor.  He wa
sn’t Spencer,
but then, that was why I'd chosen him.  I
knew that what Spencer and I had was lightening in a bottle, and I also knew that it couldn’t be replicated.

I was so excited
the day
that Spence and Damien were coming
home from college that I spent the
whole
day making a big dinner.  I made homemade pasta sauce, meatballs, stuffed shells, garlic bread and cheesecake.  After I had the meal
almost ready to be served
, I spent an hour getting ready.  I brushed my hair until it was shiny, put on a light pink
lip-gloss,
and dressed myself in a black cotton floor
-
length halter dress paired with black espadrilles.  I’d wanted to wear something
a little sexier, but since I’d
be doing the finishing touches on a meal th
at basically consisted
of all red food, it seemed like a dumb idea.

The boys made it home just in time, and the entire family gathered around Aunt Sandra’s table.  We
'd
all dug in, talking and laughing, and everyone seemed to be having a great time except for Spencer.  Oh, sure… he was putting on a show like he was having fun, but I’ve known him my entire life, and I could tell that he
was going out of his way to keep his distance from me
.  It really pissed me off.  What did
he think? That I would
jump on his lap and demand a repeat performance
in front of the entire family
? 
He looked at me like I'd become
a ticking
time bomb
,
and it pissed me off
.

The other p
art of me was really hurt. I got so pissed that when I'd excused
myself from the table to get more sauce, I quickly texted Sam and told him to come over. 
Spencer needed
to see that I was
with someone
else
.  I was sure that would
put him in his place and make him chill out.