He lifted the plate and pressed a kiss on the top of her head. “Thank you for sharing, sweetheart. Would you like anything more?”
“No, thank you.”
“So polite,” he teased.
“One of my foster moms was big into manners.”
Darian stomach twisted and he turned from the sink. She had told him before about the foster homes, but he hadn’t been able to come to grips with it. “One of your foster mothers?”
“Yes. She was probably the best one we had. Brylee and I lived there together. I miss living with Brylee.”
“Where is she?”
“She lives with other girls across town. She got a job at a strip joint.”
“She’s a stripper?” he flung the question out.
Larkin giggled. “Oh, heavens no. She has absolutely no coordination. She’s just a waitress, but she makes good money.”
“Why don’t you live together?”
“Because our jobs are on opposite sides of the city. We tried to find ones closer together, but it never worked out. We also decided to live apart and hope that would help us to grow up.”
“We talked about this a little that first night,” he told her.
“We did?”
“You said you needed to grow up, and that’s why you were out in the bar.”
“Brylee and I thought we depended on each other too much, and so we thought living apart would help us to mature.”
“Is it working?” he asked.
Larkin looked down and shook her head. “No. We’re always going to be retarded.”
Darian grasped her chin and turned her head. “Don’t ever say that. You are perfectly normal.”
He saw her shiver and tried to pull back the hard, cold, anger in his tone.
“It’s just what we’ve been called most of our lives. That’s why neither of us got adopted.”
His heart broke for her. “What makes you different?”
“We don’t want to do what grown-ups do, and people don’t understand it. Heck, we don’t understand it.”
“What would you say if I told you I’ve been looking for someone like you for years?”
“A child in a woman’s body?”
“You’re not a child, sweetheart. You just like having someone else in control and making decisions for you.”
“What about the fact we don’t want to do the things grown-ups do? That we’d rather color in books or read?”
“If everyone were the same, it would be a very boring world, don’t you think?”
He watched the wheel turning in her head and then nod.
“You’re right. Brylee and I used to feel sorry for ourselves until we decided we weren’t bad people, and we had each other.”