“No, sweetheart, I’m sure that happens on a regular basis. You’re so fucking stubborn.”

She glares again and looks out the passenger window.

I’m so angry with her, I dare not touch her. I’m pissed on so many levels; I don’t even know where it starts and how to dig through to the root of it.

I just know that I haven’t been this angry since I was sixteen years old.

“Leo,” she begins, but I cut her off.

“Stop talking.”

Her startled gaze whips to mine, and I glare at her, seething.

“You’re really upset,” she whispers and sits quietly while I navigate through downtown Seattle to her building. I park, and take the car out of gear so her door unlocks and she can get out.

“I’ll talk to you later.”

“You’re not coming in?” She asks, surprised.

“No.”

“Leo, come inside and talk to me.” I glance over at her, and her eyes are scared, and a piece of me softens. She’s worried I won’t be back.

“Fine.” I turn off the ignition, round the hood of the car and pull her out of her seat, walk briskly into her building and press the elevator button. When the doors close, she tries to speak, but I cut her off.

“No, you want me to talk, fine, I’ll talk. When we get into your place.”

She frowns up at me, about to argue, but she shuts her lips and looks straight ahead. At her floor, I stomp ahead to her door and wait for her to unlock it and walk inside.

“Sit.”

“No, I’m not a fucking dog, Leo. If you’re pissed, talk. If you’re just going to be an asshole, go home. I’m sick of you bullying me.”

“Bullying you?” I round on her, the rage rising anew. “Bullying you. I fucking stuck up for you, Samantha.”

“No, my brothers did that.” She responds, her eyes on fire. “You betrayed me.”

I stumble backward, as if she’d physically struck me.

“You know, for a smart woman, you can be unbelievably stupid.” Her eyes flash but I glare at her, shutting her up. “You want to talk this out? Fine, I’ll talk, and you’re going to listen to every motherfucking word I say.”

~Samantha~

If he swears at me like that one more time, I swear to God I’m going to throw him out on his ass.

“Who the hell do you think you are to treat your family like that?” He plants his hands on his hips and pins me in a glare. “You have a family who adores you. Your brothers would do anything for you. Jesus, Sam, even the Montgomerys would kill for you.” He stomps away and begins pacing about my living room, his face tight with anger.

“Do you know what I would have given for just a moment of that when I was growing up?” He turns to face me and I feel all the blood drain from my head. “I would have crawled through fire to have such a big family that loved me. To have siblings to fight with and defend when someone else tried to fuck with them. But do you know what I got instead?”

Oh, God, I don’t know if I want to know this. He begins to pace again, his eyes distant, and I realize that it’s not really me that he’s angry with.

He’s just angry.

“My folks died when I was twelve, and they didn’t have siblings, so there was no one to take me. Instead I was thrown into foster care. The first place wasn’t too bad, but they couldn’t keep me for long, so I kept getting shuffled about, from home to home, until I was about sixteen. Most of the homes were okay. Some of the dads liked to hit, which I learned to deal with.” He shrugs and goes to look out my window to the busy street below.

“What happened when you were sixteen?” I whisper, my stomach roiling in anger and pain and sheer horror.

“I woke up one night.” His voice is so low I can barely hear it, so I quietly inch closer. “And the man I lived with was on top of me, trying to get my pants off.”

Holy fucking shit.

“I was always a tall kid, but by the time I was sixteen, I was strong too, and I fought the fat fucker off of me. Blackened his eye.” He braces his forehead against the glass, lost in the horrific memories running through his head. “I woke up like that, almost every night for a week. He just wouldn’t give up. It got to where I would fight sleep, doing everything in my power to stay awake and sleep during class in the day time, but I would inevitably fall asleep.”

He takes a deep breath and closes his eyes. “Then they brought in this other kid, a few years younger than me, named Tom. He was weaker than me. He had the bed next to mine.”

“Oh, God,” I whisper, my hand over my mouth.

“Yeah, he wasn’t as lucky,” he whispers. “But worse than that, Meg came along.”

“Don’t tell me…”

“No, the bastard preferred young boys, but I made it my mission in life to protect her and make sure that no one ever touched her like that.” He turns to me, his face carefully void of any emotion at all. His balled hands are at his sides, and every muscle in his body is clenched. “That’s what family does, Samantha. They protect each other. Instead of you giving your brothers, your parents, your friends the opportunity to help you, you shut them out.”

“I don’t need their charity,” I begin but his face hardens once again and I cringe. “That’s not what I mean. I don’t want them to feel obligated to help me.”

“They don’t feel obligated. They feel love, damn it!”