“You are not a dirty secret I need to keep,” she assures me. “I know you have some demons. With the family you come from, I would be frankly stunned if you didn’t. Like I said, we’re going to tackle them together. But we have to trust one another. I need you to know I am not here to harm you in any way, and I need to know the same thing from you. It’s okay if you get angry. It’s okay if you don’t know how to cope with it yet. How would you? Who would have taught you? You may have figured it out by some stroke of luck, but you weren’t given the tools to manage your emotions. I understand that. That can be learned. There’s nothing wrong with you. I just want us to do our very best for one another. We don’t have to be perfect. We’re allowed to make mistakes. At the end of the day, we’re all just works-in-progress.”
I sigh, pulling her down on the bed beside me and turning, pulling her into my arms. “I have questions, but I don’t even know if I want the answers.”
Her smile lacks even a shred of humor. “I have answers, but I don’t know if you’ll want to hear them.”
“We’re quite a pair, aren’t we?”
Carly nods. “Hit me with the most crucial.”
It’s the most crucial one I’m most afraid of. I hate even bringing this up again after last night, and I don’t know what we’re supposed to do if her answer if the wrong one. We’ve been inside an official relationship for a single day.
Life really goes to shit the minute you become official with me. I probably should have warned her about that.
“Have you ever slept with Mateo?” I ask her.
There’s no hesitation. She shakes her head, holding my gaze. “No, I have not.”
I breathe a sigh of relief. Everything else feels manageable. That was the one I didn’t know how to get past. Never figured it out with Mia, and I haven’t learned the secret in our years apart, apparently.
“Your internship—that’s real? And it was really your boss who texted you last night?”
This time, she nods her head wordlessly.
“Okay. How is it you can afford to live without a job? I didn’t get the impression your family had any money to speak of, and you don’t have a career yet, so…”
Sighing, Carly pulls away from me and rolls onto her back. “This is the one I’ve been dreading. I’m afraid you won’t want to be with me after I tell you this. I guess I would understand. It would make me really sad,” she adds, turning her head to look at me with sad eyes. “But I would get it.”
I don’t know if I’m ready to hear whatever she has to say.
I don’t know where it will leave us.
But I do know it’s time to find out.
“Tell me.”
Chapter Fifteen
Vince
Carly looks away from me, clasping her hands together and placing them on her abdomen as she stares up at the ceiling. “When I turned 18, I started college. I had a scholarship for academic excellence. I got a 90% free ride as long as I kept my GPA up and met the requirements. It shouldn’t have been a problem. I’ve always been good at school; I was interested in my field of study… It should have been a piece of cake. The problem was, my grandma died. Grandpa had died a year earlier and she’d been having health problems ever since. The bigger problem was that Laurel was still a minor and there were no relatives left to take her in. Only my mother was left, and she had left us both 11 years earlier. She was a complete stranger to Laurel and she made horrible life decisions. Laurel would have been better off in the system than with our mother.”
“That’s shitty. I’m sorry.”
Carly nods her head. “Thanks. So, I fought for custody of her myself. It wasn’t easy. I was too young, they said. I was single and in college. I didn’t have a support system. Long story short, I lost. My mother came back to take Laurel, but of course Laurel didn’t want to go. Her whole life was in Chicago. So, my mom agreed to leave her there with me and let me keep her on an unofficial basis. Laurel was a teenager, so it’s not like she needed actual child-rearing. I had already been essentially raising her from the time she was born; I just thought it was normal at the time, what having a little sister was like.” She shrugs.
I smile faintly. “That explains why you guys seem so close.”
“Super close. I’d do anything for Laurel.” She pauses, swallowing. “So, I kept Laurel, but I had to pay for everything. I had to pay our rent, I had to buy our groceries, clothes, pay for public transportation. I had all the expenses of a household with no income. I got one job, but it wasn’t enough so I got a second job. I ran myself ragged. I was never home. Laurel was responsible, so it wasn’t like she was in danger or anything, but I was just… worn out. Unfortunately, I couldn’t keep up with both jobs and a full-time college schedule. I lost my scholarship. I almost failed my classes, but I went to the teachers and begged them for extra credit just to get me a passing grade, just so I wouldn’t have to pay to retake the courses I couldn’t afford. They were mostly general education classes that semester anyway, so it wasn’t crucial to my degree. Anyway, I managed to pass all my classes by the skin of my teeth. I knew I wouldn’t be able to do it again the next semester. I was devastated. I couldn’t afford to pay the tuition, anyway. So, I enrolled the next semester half-time.”