Chapter Thirteen
“I’m not listening to it another minute. That place is a shit hole and I refuse to let you live there.”
Kayla sighed and leaned forward on the table, wrapping her fingers around the warm cup of tea. Trent had been blustering over this all morning and she was getting sick of hearing it. But she wasn’t about to back down. She didn’t deserve anyplace nicer, and besides, she was sort of used to the smells, noises, and general crappy ambience of the halfway house. Taylor rolled her expressive eyes and sipped sweet hot chocolate while her father stamped around, making alpha male noises.
“Is he always like this?” she asked, watching him, amused but at the same time anxious over making him unhappy.
“Yep,” the girl said as she tapped away on her phone and twirled one lock of dark-brown hair around her finger.
“Tell you what, baby brother. How about a compromise?”
Trent ceased his march around the room and glared at them both. “Daddy, you look ridiculous right now. Chillax, already.”
He sighed and looked down, then back up, a smile fixed to his face. “That better?”
“Not really. I gotta go. Study date with Brad.” She hopped down off the high bar chair and headed toward her room.
“Study date,” her father growled as she passed by him. “Right.”
“Love you, Daddy,” she said, patting his cheek.
“I’m sure,” he said, before turning his attention to Kayla. She sipped and stayed silent, watching this tiny drama unfold. “So, what’s your compromise proposal?”
“I’ll let you pay for the therapist you keep harping about, but I’m staying at the halfway house. It’s actually a requirement of my government-funded rehab program, you know.”
He grunted and sat, before finishing off Taylor’s hot chocolate. “Does the damn government know what kind of place that is?”
“Oh, it’s not that bad. It’s all we deserve, really.”
She flinched when his palm smacked the table between them. “I am kind of over that shit, K.”
She leaned on one hand, studying him. He’d been a tall little boy, lanky and gangly when she’d finally escaped. He was still tall but strong-looking and super handsome, rocking the bald-head hot guy thing better than anybody she’d ever seen. He frowned at her. “What?”
“You turned out all right, didn’t you, T?”
He groused a bit more and slumped in his seat, arms crossed, looking like the recalcitrant toddler she remembered. “Yeah. I mean, I am now.” He glanced over his shoulder when Taylor reappeared, face made up, hair pulled back, lugging her backpack. “Be home by dinner,” he warned.
“Sure thing, Daddy-o.” She rubbed his scalp and pecked his cheek, then gave Kayla a one-armed hug. “Glad you’re all right, Aunt Kayla,” she said.
Kayla overcame her innate queasiness at the contact and squeezed back. “Thanks, honey. Be smart, you know, on the study date.” She felt her face flush. Who was she to give advice to a normal teenager?
Her phone beeped. Taylor smiled and waved at them, sliding the heavy metal door to the loft shut behind her. Kayla checked the screen of the new phone Trent had more or less shoved down her throat, with his and Melody’s numbers pre-programmed in.
“Brock will be here in ten. We have a meeting.”
Trent frowned deeper at her. “Why do you do it to yourself, K?”
Her pulse quickened and she collected their cups, ignoring his question as she rinsed them and put them into the dishwasher. She sensed him standing behind her, looming and protective. She turned and pushed him away, dropping her hands once he’d moved. “I need space, T, okay? I’m not going to all of a sudden be normal—I’ll probably never be normal. You’ll have to deal with me as I am, or not at all.” Her heart slammed against her ribs at her impertinence. She lowered her face and flinched so hard when he touched her cheek that her elbow hit the tea kettle and sent it into the sink with a loud rattle and crash.
“I’m not going to hurt you, K,” he said, his voice rough, his face a mask of agony. “You’re safe now.”
She shook her head, refusing to look at him. She’d been told that so many times—you’re safe. I won’t hurt you—as long as you do what I want you to do. Her logical mind knew Trent wouldn’t hurt her. That he’d jump in front of a moving train to save her. But the deeper, darker part of her, the part that had taken years of training to produce, wouldn’t allow her to take him at face value—not yet.
She watched as the hand he’d tried to touch her face with curled into a fist and slammed down on the stainless-steel counter next to the sink. “So help me God I wish I could revive that son of a bitch so I could kill him all the hell over again.”
She sidestepped him, dry-mouthed at his anger. Another reflex reaction, she knew, but one she’d never shake.
“You can’t fix me, Trent,” she whispered, backing away from him. “I know you want to but you can’t.”
He turned to face her, his eyes dark with worry. “I could, if you’d let me try.” He reached for her, but she recoiled, rubbing her arms and hating herself for making him so miserable. “Sorry.”
“It’s fine. I’ll be fine. It takes time, though. And all your money plus a lot more isn’t going to make it happen any faster.” She pulled on her jacket, wincing when the fabric scraped against her still sore left upper arm. She’d been lucky, the doctor had insisted, as a nasty infection had settled into her wounds once they’d had her stabilized from the blood loss.
Lucky.
She smiled to herself.
No. She’d never be lucky. She just had to move forward, not worry about the past and focus on the future. Or some such similar happy horseshit.
Her phone beeped again, indicating that Brock had arrived and was waiting to take her to their thrice-weekly meeting. They’d changed venues, since the thought of being in that space where the woman had more or less died in front of her kid gave her the creeps. It meant a longer ride, but it was worth it.
“Don’t worry about me. You have enough to occupy your mind, I think.” She raised an eyebrow and pointed at the stack of invitations she and Taylor had just that morning finished addressing. “Papa…”
He groaned and fell onto the couch, his arm over his eyes. “Yeah. That.”
“You’re lucky, Trent. Melody is an incredible woman and will be an amazing mother.”
“I didn’t even want one kid…” He sighed. “But look at me now.”
“Yes, just look at you.” She shouldered her bag. “Get those into the mail today, please. Melody’s orders.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said, giving her a weak salute. “I hope…well, I hope that I can live up to what she expects of me. Sometimes I wonder about that.”
“You already have. Now go and make some more money or something and leave the rest to karma, or the universe.”
“Will do. But…”
“Nope. No buts. We’re good here. I have someplace to be.”
“I’m just worried about Brock,” he blurted out, surprising her. She turned from the industrial sliding door to his loft. “Sorry, it’s the brother in me, worrying about your…friend.”
She set her shoulders. “That’s all he is, Trent, and all he’ll ever be, okay? We’re good for each other that way.”
“Brock Fitzgerald is a—”
She held up a hand. “Don’t go there, please. No labels. He’s no more fucked than I am. Lay off him.”
Trent shook his head and waved her gone. But his words echoed in her mind as she rode the elevator down to the lobby of the much nicer converted warehouse. She smiled at Brock when she climbed into the passenger’s side of the expensive sedan, and studied his profile as he drove them all the way across town to a Presbyterian church in a wealthy neighborhood where they were joined for an hour and a half with people as desperate to be normal as they were.
He reached for her hand during the final prayer. She let him take it, recalling how he’d held on to her in the ambulance. He was the one person she didn’t mind touching her, at least that much, and she felt comfort knowing she was providing him with the same.