Twenty-Eight

Damien

 

Taking her hand, I kissed her palm. Her other hand fell to my chest where she flattened it against my skin.

“Easier said than done. There were many things I could have done differently, but she hid it all so well. The biggest thing I felt guilty for was taking the blame for the pot and not being honest. Maybe that alone would have changed things.”

“Or maybe it wouldn’t.” Her soothing tone was like a balm to the ache in my chest—when she spoke, it didn’t sting quite as much.

Because she got it. She understood.

“If your parents really didn’t believe she was responsible for it, then they never would have. Isn’t that obvious from the way they reacted to her death? All you tried to do was protect her. That doesn’t make you responsible for the choices she made—or the way your parents treated you all.” She held my hand to her face, brushing her soft lips over my knuckles. “They drove the divide, Damien. Not you. They pressured her to be perfect while treating you and Perrie as though you weren’t worth it. And even then, you tried to protect them by burning her diary so they wouldn’t know they were at fault.”

I rolled my shoulders and sighed. “It doesn’t matter. Things happen, and my dad will never apologize for it. My mom couldn’t even if she wanted to.”

Realization flashed through her gaze.

“Three weeks after Penny’s death was ruled a suicide, she hung herself.” Back was the hollow tone. It was fact. It was simply the way it was. I couldn’t bring her back. “Our housekeeper at the time found her. She’d done it in the middle of the day when we were all at work. She left behind a note saying she didn’t want to live in a world without Penny. I guess it triggered her depression and she didn’t feel like she could carry on any longer.”

“I’m so sorry.” Dahlia wrapped her arms around my neck, holding me tight against her.

I snaked an arm around her body, pressing my face into her hair. At this point, it felt like she was more affected by this than I was. Like she hurt for me. I didn’t want her to feel that.

“What about Perrie?” she asked. “Is she…?”

“Alive?” I leaned back, blowing out a long breath. “The last I heard she was alive. She got pregnant not long after Mom died. I don’t think she could cope. Her biological father was an abusive piece of shit who had disowned her, her adoptive father didn’t care about her, and her mom was dead. She pretty much went off the rails the same way Penelope did, but without the drugs. She drank and had sex with a bunch of guys, but there was one guy she was seeing pretty regularly. He got her pregnant, but a couple weeks after she found out, he died in a car crash. He was drunk driving because he was an idiot.”

Her lips parted in shock.

All I could do was shrug. “Dad was of the mind that the best thing Perrie could do was have an abortion. She was only just nineteen, grieving the loss of her sister and mother, and in no state to be raising a child. Especially not alone.”

Dahlia was almost hesitant when she said, “And you?”

I looked away from her. It was the one time I’d ever let her down, but it’d been the biggest one. And for that, I took full responsibility. I owned that guilt.

“Damien?”

“I agreed with him,” I said quietly. “I didn’t think it was the right choice for her. I felt like she would be better off not going through with the pregnancy, mostly because of her emotional state. She disappeared a week later.”

“Oh,” she said in a small voice. “Where is she now?”

“She’s still here. In Vegas. I’ve seen her once since. A few weeks after she had the baby.” I swallowed, the emotion making my throat raw. “I spent five minutes with them, and then she told me she never wanted to see me again. That I didn’t care about her and the baby when she was pregnant, so I had no right to care now.”

“That’s really the last time you saw them?”

Slowly, I nodded. “I keep tabs on her. I tried sending her money, but she wouldn’t take it. She sent it right back. She’s broken all ties with us, and there’s nothing more I can do. I save money each month for her daughter in a bank account. Dad doesn’t care, but I do. It’s the only thing I can do to make up for what I said a few years ago. Hope that she doesn’t feel like the only way she can survive is by doing what Perrie does.”

“Which is?”

“She’s a prostitute.”

Dahlia froze. Her mouth opened and closed a few times, but the rest of her never moved. Except her eyelids—she blinked so many times, a smaller person would have started flying.

“I don’t understand.” She finally relaxed, frowning up at me. “Isn’t she a part of the business?”

“Yes. She owns ten percent, I believe, per my mother’s will. She shuns it because she believes we disowned her because of the pregnancy. Problem is, the will was ironclad. It’ll roll over to her daughter, whether she wants it to or not. My father attempted to have Perrie removed as a part-owner, but there’s no way in hell to do it. My parents owned the business sixty-forty, and the ten percent my mother passed on upon her death belonged to her. He’s powerless and it kills him.”

“Why would she do that when she has a rolling income? I don’t understand.”

“Neither do I, sweetheart. Like I said, I tried. She made it perfectly clear what she wanted. I do what I can with what I have. If I had my way, I’d have her and her daughter living here with me.”

She smiled sadly, touching my face once more. “Has anyone ever told you that you’re a really good guy?”

I raised an eyebrow. “No, actually. That’s generally the last thing people say.”

“Then, they’re idiots.”

I raised my other eyebrow.

“No, don’t look at me like that.” She tapped my chest. “I will admit that when we met, I thought you were a bit of an asshole.”

I snorted.

“All right, a lot of an asshole. A raging one with hemorrhoids, actually,” she paused, and I cracked the smallest of smiles. “But, you were just annoying. Infuriating. I plotted your murder a few times.” Another pause. “But you’re not a bad person, Damien. That’s evident by everything you’re doing for your sister even though she doesn’t want it.”

“It doesn’t make me a good person, either.”

“Maybe not. But isn’t it better to question whether or not you’re a good person than knowing that you’re a bad person?”

“Stop making sense,” I said quietly, cupping her chin and tilting her face upward. My eyes searched hers, looking for the knowledge that I was guilty, that the blame of some of what had happened lay with me.

I searched.

And searched.

And searched.

I didn’t find it.

It wasn’t there.

There was no hint of blame for the child I’d been. There was no hint of it for the teenager I’d been and the adult I was. There was nothing but understanding—pure, real understanding of the pain I’d been through and the guilt I’d carried inside me for so many years.

There was nothing but Dahlia—of the woman who’d proved herself to be worth a thousand of me.

Yet, as I stared into her eyes, maybe I was worthy of her, too.

Maybe I was worthy of her love.

Because there was no doubt about it. This woman held my heart in the palm of her hand. I didn’t know when it’d happened, when I’d fallen wholly in love with her, but I fucking had.

She had the power to create me or crush me.

Everything I was, belonged to her.

Mind.

Body.

Heart.

Soul.

There wasn’t an inch of me that she didn’t own.

Each one burned with the imprint of her existence. Of her heart and her soul—of the goodness that she embodied with every step, every smile, every blink of her goddamn beautiful eyes.

Fuck.

All the whole pieces of me, every last shattered fragment of me, loved her.

I loved her.

And there was no going back from this. Not now.

“You know,” I said, my voice low and gruff as I held onto her like my life depended on her, “six weeks ago, I didn’t know who the fuck you were. I didn’t care. Now, all I care about is that I don’t have to be in a position where I might forget you.”

She stared at me—then, she leaned in and kissed me.

She didn’t need to say anything.

Her kiss said she felt the fucking same.

 

***

 

The clock on the nightstand told me I hadn’t had nearly enough sleep to face the day, no matter how soundly I’d slept in the end. Apparently, talking about everything had been the therapy I needed to sleep like the dead.

Having Dahlia Lloyd curled against me wasn’t exactly hard.

Unless you asked my fucking cock. It was as hard as it could be. My hips were currently a few inches back from her since I had no desire to wake her up. She hadn’t shown up to my house until the small hours last night, and we’d talked until at least four in the morning. It wasn’t even nine yet.

She was exhausted.

The last thing she needed was my cock poking into her.

Unfortunately, that was the exact thing I wanted.

My cock inside her tight little pussy.

Goddamn it.

I rolled over onto my back and covered my eyes with my hand. She needed to sleep. She was tired. She had to sleep longer than four hours.

I would not wake her up. No way. I’d go and get coffee and leave her until she was ready to wake up.

Sneaking out of the bed with as much finesse as a rhino, I managed to get up without her stirring. She didn’t even twitch, her breathing didn’t change, so she was still asleep. The carpet prevented any wayward floorboards creaking beneath my feet as I headed for the doorway in my boxers.

One last check over my shoulder confirmed she was still asleep, and I couldn’t look away. So, I didn’t. I leaned against the doorframe and stared at her for the longest moment.

One of her long, tanned legs had escaped the confines of my white sheets, and her foot hung over the edge of the bed. Her other foot peeked out of the end of the bed, her scarlet painted toenails a stark contrast to the sterility of my room. Her hair spread across her pillow and the sheets like a dark sea, but it was her face that had me mesmerized.

The duvet was tucked beneath her chin, almost as though she were hugging it to her. Her face was devoid of makeup, yet her eyelashes were just as thick and dark as always as they fanned across her skin.

Other than the tiniest purse of her lips, the peace that radiated off her as she slept was palpable.

If my cock weren’t so fucking hard, I’d be climbing back in here and holding her to me in the hope she’d pass some of it off to me.

Because although I’d slept well and I felt lighter from our talk, the ache was still there.

But, it was different.

I pulled the door so it was almost closed and headed for the stairs.

The ache wasn’t so painful anymore. It was dull, an acceptance of what had happened. A realization that I needed to move forward.

That Dahlia was right.

No matter what I’d done, I wasn’t to blame. I was a child, a teenager, a young adult. Parenting wasn’t my job—keeping my family happy wasn’t my job all those years ago. I was simply along for the ride, and in the end, the only people responsible for what happened where my parents and my sister.

Nobody made Penny do what she did.

Nobody made my mom do what she did, either.

They both made those choices.

My parents made the choice to treat us the way they did.

Nothing would change that. Nothing could change that. And more than that, no longer could I blame Penny for our mother’s suicide.

She didn’t make her do it.

She didn’t make her tie that bathrobe belt around her neck and hang herself.

That was a choice made by one person.

Just like nobody forced Penny to take all those drugs.

One choice. It was remarkable how one choice, made in a split second, could destroy so many others for so long.

Downstairs was silent. There was still no movement from Dahlia, either, so I skipped the coffee for the utility room. My running stuff was hanging on the rack, so I pulled it off, along with my sneakers, and quickly changed into it.

I scribbled a rough note for Dahlia, just in case she woke up, and with my keys jingling in my hand, left the house. It was too far to walk to the cemetery right now, so I hopped into my car to drive the majority of the distance. There was a parking lot not far from there—I could jog lightly from the car to their graves in mere minutes.

I took the drive in silence.

Soul-crushing fucking silence.

It sucked the life out of me. I drove slower and slower until I rolled the car’s wheels into the parking lot at something that couldn’t even be described as a crawl. It took no effort at all to put the car into park and get out of it.

That was a fucking lie. Getting out of the car was achingly painful. Every part of me screamed at me as I forced myself from its confines and into the already-hot morning air.

Still, I fought it. I made one foot move in front of the other until I’d padded down the dusty road to the cemetery. It seemed quieter today. Almost as if the demons that usually surrounded me had given up for the day.

Had I finally made peace with what had happened? Was it really as simple as speaking about it and letting go of all the anger I’d kept cooped up for years?

Maybe it was.

It was working, after all.

The gate screeched through the silent, morning air as I pushed it open. The overgrown weeds that stretched up against the low, old brick walls were dry and gnarly. Familiar, too. I’d seen them so many times.

The damn things never died.

One crunched beneath my foot as I headed for where Mom and Penny’s graves were. For once, the silence of the air around me was welcome, because as I stopped in front of the two stones that marked their final resting places, the thought was able to hit me with perfect clarity.

I forgave them.

Both of them. I forgave them both for making the decisions they did.

With it all laid out, with my entire life condensed into an hour’s worth of conversation, the reasoning for why they could have reached the point they did make sense.

They simply couldn’t live the way they were anymore.

Was it selfish? Yes. They hurt the rest of us beyond belief. They’d escaped the pain, yet the rest of us were left to pick up the pieces and live with it.

I was hurt, but I was no longer angry.

I understood.

I kissed my fingers and pressed them against Penelope’s name. The stone was chilly beneath my touch, shaded from the already-harsh heat of the sun. It didn’t warm at all, staying just as cold when I pushed off the stone.

I’d lost my sisters. One was uncontrollable—but the other wasn’t.

I couldn’t bring Penelope back, but I hadn’t done enough for Perrie.

And that had to change.