Chapter 10
Vaughn
Her confession rocks me to my core. “You what?”
“I betrayed him because I fell in love with you.” Her chin quivers, but she still tries to smile.
Nobody has ever spoken those words to me. I normally have a reason for everything I feel. Every action has an explainable reaction but not this. In all the time I’ve been fighting for her, I didn’t prepare myself for her to actually love me. No woman has ever loved me. “Rainey . . . I—”
“You don’t have to say anything back. I know I haven’t given you any reason to feel the same, and I’ve been a horrible person, but I’m so confused.” She tugs her pants up a bit and sits in the bed, twirling the turquoise tassels on a pillow. “I’m so confused, Vaughn, because I’ve been fighting this for a while, but at the same time, it seems so fast. And I know I don’t deserve a second chance, but I’m hoping you’ll give me one.”
“A second chance for what?”
“Everything.”
My neck cracks when I look down, and when I stand, I fight back the emptiness I already feel without her being close. I take off my jacket and toss it on the chair of her vanity then reach down and untie my boots, kicking them off.
Her eyes follow me as I round her bed and sit next to her. I wrap my arm around her shoulder, and I pull her close. I might not be willing to accept that I’m worthy of her love, but I’m definitely crazy in love with her. Just as I have been since I first saw her. “I never gave up on you a first time, so you don’t need a second chance.” I knew she was worth waiting for.
An immediate sob tears through her as she releases what I assume are pent-up tears. I hold her tight and wait for her to have her moment. I can’t deny the pull between us, and now that she’s finally told me about Bryan, everything makes sense. This is all I wanted. I needed a reason.
“I’m so sorry,” she says against my shirt, her voice muffled through the tightness in her throat.
“It’s okay.” I shush her. “It’s going to be okay.”
She doesn’t reply, but as the minutes go by, she becomes more lax in my arms until she’s fallen asleep. I adjust our position, so we’re lying down, and when she snuggles further into my chest, I finally release the breath I didn’t realize I’d been holding since the moment I first laid eyes on her.
* * *
“What in the hell?”
I’m woken by a male voice, and I sit up with a hand on Rayne, ready to pull her behind me.
“Who are you?” an older man questions me. “And why the hell are you in my daughter’s bed? And when the hell did you get a tattoo, Rayne Marie?”
Rayne bolts upright as her father’s voice rises. “What are you doing in here?” she shrieks. “Get out!”
“Not until you tell me—”
“Ron, give the girl a minute.” A lady who looks like an older version of Rayne comes in and grabs his hand, tugging it. “She wasn’t expecting us.”
He backs out, and the mom reaches past him to close the door. As soon as it latches into place, Rayne groans. “Oh, my God.”
“Your parents?” I raise a brow, and she nods.
“Yes. This is awful.”
“What’s awful?”
“They just caught us in bed together!” She frantically stands up. “And I didn’t tell him I was getting a tattoo.”
I get up and wrap my arms around her from behind. “Okay, listen. First, nobody caught us doing anything. We’re both grown-ups, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to worry about what your parents just saw. And second, you don’t need permission from them to get a tattoo.”
I kiss the top of her head before backing up. I see the strength in her build, her shoulders squaring, and she pauses. “You’re right. It’s just . . . this is all kind of new, I guess.”
“That’s an understatement.” I laugh.
“Rayne!” her dad bellows from the other room.
“Shit.” She hurriedly grabs my hands and pulls. “Come on.”
I follow her out of her room, completely unaffected that her parents are out there. I couldn’t care less what they think. I’m more concerned that Rayne told me she loves me, and I didn’t say it back. My fear is more that I’m allowing myself to be in a position where another man was first, and I can easily be tossed away. These foreign yet familiar emotions are pissing me off.
“An introduction would be nice,” her dad snaps, and out of respect for Rayne, I keep my mouth shut. This once.
She pulls me down onto her couch and clutches my hand. “This is Vaughn. He owns the tattoo shop next to The Lunch Box. This is my mom, Margaret, and my dad, Ron.”
I lean over the coffee table and shake both of their hands. “Nice to meet you,” I say to them while trying to avoid eye contact. I’m only doing these unnecessary introductions because I know Rayne is close to her parents.
Her mom says the same, but her dad doesn’t reciprocate. He shoots daggers at me, and for a second, he squints his brows, like he recognizes me, then looks at Rayne. “What is going on with you? You don’t show up for work, and now you have a tattoo?”
“I’m sorry. I, um, I had a bad night, and Vaughn—”
“I don’t care how bad your night was; unless you’re dead, you pick up the phone and call me. Not only do we rely on you for work, but you’re my daughter, and I worry about you.”
She looks down and squeezes my hand harder. “I’m sorry, Dad.”
He clears his throat, and I’m about ten seconds from punching him there for being so accusatory toward her. But because I just officially met the guy, I’ll refrain.
“Oh, honey. I’m just glad you’re okay. Kenny called us and said you were sick. What happened?” Her mom finally chimes in. At least, she seems to care; that’s much more than I can say for her dad since he’s just staring at me like he wants to choke me.
“Well, I decided that getting the tattoo was my first step in moving on.”
“From what?”
“From the guilt. The fear. Bryan,” she whispers, finally looking up at her father.
His face reddens. “Are you sure that’s what you want?”
What the fuck?
“Yes. I need to move on, Dad. I need to live a life with a real future and not the unrealistic one I’ve been holding onto for years.”
Her mom smiles, but the dad stands and looks at me. My leather bracelet, my ripped jeans, my arm sleeve. “Because of him?”
Rayne stifles a cry and looks away from him. If he thinks his statement offends me or that his obvious distaste for me is a deterrent, he’s underestimated me. A fuck of a lot.
“Ron!” Margaret chastises.
“I don’t know what our daughter is thinking—”
He doesn’t get to say another word because I interrupt him. “Let’s start these introductions over.” I stand and meet him face to face, not afraid he’ll really see who I am this time. He’s just as tall as I am, so our eyes align perfectly. “I’m Vaughn, the man who won’t allow anybody to talk to my woman like that.”
“Your woman?”
“My woman.” I say it with confidence that I hope isn’t fabricated. We haven’t had a discussion about where we are in our relationship right now, but if she says she loves me, then I’m taking it at face value. She’s going to have a hell of a time pushing me away now.
“She’s my daughter.” He narrows his eyes and lowers his voice. “You’d better watch yourself, young man.”
“And you’d better watch yourself. She may be your daughter, but she’s m—”
“Stop it!” Rayne yells and stands between us, pushing us apart. “I’m not anybody’s, okay? I don’t belong to either of you, so both of you stop it. Dad”—she turns to face him—“I know how much of a shock this is, but I can’t continue living as I have been.”
His frame stiffens, but he doesn’t acknowledge what she just said.
“And Vaughn is the one who helped me to see that.” She steps next to me and wraps her arm, the non-tattooed side, around my waist. “He’s been nothing but patient, and he deserves—I deserve it for myself—to try to have a relationship with someone who truly cares about me. Because he does.” She looks up at me, and I’m compelled to kiss her. So I do. Soft but firm. She smiles against my lips and pulls back.
“We’ll talk later.” He turns to his wife, but Rayne grabs his arm. “No, we won’t. Not about this. Vaughn isn’t going anywhere, and I’m finally doing what I should have done a long time ago.” She drops her arm and wipes a tear from her eye. “I love you, Dad, but you have to accept it.”
He relaxes his shoulders and nods. “Will you be at work tomorrow?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll see you then.”
He walks out, and Margaret hugs Rayne then follows him out. When the door clicks shut, she walks to the kitchen and grabs a couple of bottles of water. Coming back to the living room, she sits next to me on the couch.
I take a bottle she holds out for me. “You all right?”
“Please don’t take offense to my dad. He really loved Bryan, and since I’m his only daughter, he tends to be overbearing sometimes.”
“I’m not offended in the least.” I shrug. My relationship with people of authority, especially parents, is nonexistent.
She lets out a stream of air and falls back on the couch. “It’s just, I hate that you guys met under these circumstances. He’s normally really nice.”
“I need to know something.” I take a sip of my water and then pick at the label on the bottle.
“What?”
“Where are we?”
“In my living room on the couch,” she teases.
I laugh at her and set the bottle down. “I get it, Rayne. I can respect the fact you’ve been through something very difficult. But I need to know you’re with me. That what’s between us really means something to you. Because it does to me.”
“I can’t promise a magical thing just happened to make me forget everything and have no emotion about—”
“I’m not asking for you to be emotionless about . . . him.” It guts me to think she thinks about someone else. That I’m second. But I have to give her a chance to prove to me she’s willing to try. Because, on the flip side, I need to overcome my instincts to remain detached.
She scoots over to me, and I open my arms for her as she cuddles in close. We watch TV for a while before she dozes off. When she falls asleep, I carefully slide my arm out from beneath her and cover her with a blanket before locking the door behind me and leaving.
There’s a still in the night air very consistent with an impending snowfall. My truck warms up quickly as I drive down into the valley. The ghetto. The trashy part of town. The other side of the tracks. Whatever you want to call it—as long as it’s derogatory, it’s true. This part of town is a cesspool of crime and drugs; sometimes, I wonder how I even survived. I circle the block of my childhood home before I stop and park across the street from it.
At the corner are some young kids—too young to be out this late. Kind of like me at that age. On the opposite corner is a house that burned down when their meth lab exploded when I was twelve. Nobody ever fixed it up, and it’s remained vacant for over a decade. Sometimes, I would hide there when I was little; even though the smell was wretched, it was safer than being home.
I direct my attention back to the place that was supposed to be my home. Half of the bricks are falling out, and the front of the house that used to be grass is nothing but overgrown weeds. Only one room has a light on, and a sheet with holes in it covers its window.
Her shadow passes across the window, and I sit up straighter. I haven’t seen my mother in years. Upon my release from juvie at eighteen, she locked me out of the house with nothing. Literally nothing more than the clothes on my back. I had no money, no shelter, no food.
I ended up going south with Brad—he was literally a life saver—and working construction for his uncle before I branched out and started tattooing. If I was going to live my life, if I was fortunate enough to survive what I went through, then I certainly wasn’t going to do it with a hammer and nails. I was going to do it pursuing my only passion.
So after being gone for over a decade, I showed up on her porch step when I first came back to Pleasant Valley. The little boy in me wanted my mom to love me. I wanted her to forgive me. But when she looked through the window and saw me, her eyes were the same empty and soulless ones I grew up with. I wasn’t surprised when she just turned around and walked away.
My entire life has been fucked up because of her and her choices. I’ve held the hurt and embarrassment that my own mother hates me as a standard for myself. That she just allowed some fucking druggie off the street into our home and gave him her attention while I starved, both literally and figuratively, for a crumb from her. The good news is I haven’t given anyone a chance to screw me over again. But the bad is I’ve pigeonholed myself into being so fucking lonely that sometimes, my chest actually hurts.
Fuck it. I’m done. I don’t need her. She doesn’t want me, and I’m sick of wasting my life chasing something that will never fucking happen with the woman who gave birth to me. As of this moment, she’s dead to me, just like I’ve been dead to her since the minute I came into the world.
I know what I want, and I want Rayne. With her, it’s not a matter of playing chase anymore. It’s a matter of my damn heart.