“Aren’t you?” she asked snidely. She backed away from him—yanking the sheet from the floor to behind her feet, just in case he got any ideas about pulling her closer with it.
“No, I’m not!” he snapped back, his voice going up from his typical deep octave. “I want you. I
love
you. But I want you to want me and love me
back
, damn you. I want you to accept that loving each other doesn’t mean we’re going to bash each other’s head in. Or that we have to.”
“I’m not bashing your head in.”
Yet.
He was shrugging his once-crisp white shirt over his shoulders, frustration making every motion sharp. “I am
not
your father. You sure as hell aren’t Amanda. I’d no sooner hit you than I would break my own damn knees. Even if I was ever stupid enough to try it, you’d knock my teeth in. But you’ll never believe that. Because you don’t trust me.”
“I do, too,” she said hotly, startling them both.
His eyes widened, but he took in her own shock and discounted the remark for what it was: a lie. She brought oddly shaking hands to her lips before crossing to her tiny kitchenette table and dropping into the chair waiting next to it. Ten minutes ago, everything was fine. Now…now it was a damn mess and she didn’t know why.
Knocking over the sugar bowl, she pulled out the emergency cigarette pack and plastic lighter. She barely managed to tap it twice before fitting it to her lips and lighting it. Smooth smoke seared into her mouth and down her throat, but the soothing quality wasn’t there. She’d have to fake it until it came. She blew smoke through her nose while Lucas stood near the stairs, hands on his hips, glaring at her.
“That’s not going to help anything,” he said, obviously meaning the new appendage.
“It helps keep me from slapping the crap out of you,” she grumbled from one side of her mouth, the other side firmly clamping the cigarette for the next deep drag.
“I’m not doing this.” He dug around for his shoes. “You’re itching for a fight, but I’m not giving you one. So you just keep on sitting there and sulking. I’m leaving.”
“Leaving? Why? Are you
done
with me again?”
“Bye, Belle.” He started toward the door, determined to ignore her.
“If you go, you just keep on going.”
Oh God, had she really said that? How many times had she heard it, late at night, her mother’s final point in thousands of arguments.
Oh God…
Lucas stood still, his back to her, sighing. “Don’t do this.”
She needed to shut up. She needed to put a clamp on the fear that seemed to be talking instead of her. But the words kept coming in the bitter, angry voice she hated. The one that sounded too close to what she’d heard all her life and tried to tune out. The one that sounded like her father. “
I’m
not doing anything. You’re the one walking out.”
“Because I’m tired of you thinking love is a weapon. I’m not going to sit here like a trained pet while you trot out your psychosis.”
“I do not have a psychosis!” She had a black heart and a bastard father whose decrepit soul seemed to have taken her over, but she didn’t have a psychosis.
“Oh, you don’t?” He laughed harshly, finally turning around. She didn’t like the expression on his face, either. Not mocking, not angry. Something darkly in-between. “I know you, sweetheart, and the truth isn’t pretty.”
“Fine, go away. Leave. I don’t care.” She took a deep drag, but it did nothing for the terror inside. Why was she doing this to them? And why didn’t he just go away and forget her, like he should?
“You care. Because you’re the most insecure woman I’ve ever met. You think you’re tough, but you’re not. You have no faith in yourself. All you do is make a lot of noise and say a lot of things that don’t mean shit.
“The truth is, Belinda, you’re the worst kind of coward. When something comes up that you want, you’re too afraid to try for it. So you belittle it until you can pretend you don’t care about it anymore. But it’s still there, just out of your reach and you bite whoever is closest to you because of it.”
“What are you talking about? I’ve been working my ass off!” But part of her shrank back while her anger burst full throttle.
“I never said your work ethic wasn’t good. I said you’re a
coward
. You hide behind your attitude and your clothes. You hide behind Kyle and worst of all, you hide behind me.”
“I
don’t
hide.” Not once. She’d prided herself on very little as a child, but she’d never once backed down from a fight.
“Oh, no? What about prom night?” He crossed his arms, waiting for an answer. He got one.
“
I’m
not the one who had anything to be ashamed of that night.”
“I never said I was proud of how I acted,” he qualified, his face like stone, carved with disapproval. “But I was a kid.”
“So was I!”
“You still are!” he snapped. “What’s the first thing you did, Belle? Do you remember? Because I do.”
“What
I
did wasn’t important.
You
made me feel like a whore.” Accused her of having sex with him when she was thinking of someone else. What else should she have thought?
“I was stupid. I admit it. You wanted me as much as I wanted you, but I couldn’t see it. I was unsure. I’ve loved you all my life, but you made sure I knew at
every
point of our childhood who you really wanted. Making love to you changed me. It changed us both and I was scared. I said the wrong thing, but at least it was an accident. You
purposely
said the most hateful thing you could think of to make me go away because you were too afraid to admit something special was between us.”
She closed her eyes, too disconcerted to admit he was right. She hadn’t been ready to feel that much. To have accepted that much. She’d never known what love felt like, not a pure love, anyway. It thrilled and terrified her at the same time. So she rejected him.
“When you’d ripped me open you went one step further and said you’d get rid of it if you were pregnant. Just to make sure I’d leave.”
“What was I supposed to do?” she cried. All those feelings as she’d sat on the soft grass came rushing back, the warmth of him still inside her and the hopelessness of what was ahead all she could see. “You had a
future
! You had a life ahead of you. There was no room for me there. You were better off without me.”
“No, I wasn’t!” He held out his hands as if he’d like to take hold of her and shake her, but all he did was curl his fingers and put them at his sides. “I was lost without you, Belle. Destroyed. If Kyle hadn’t called me all the damn time, I never would have made it through the first year. Or the second. I nearly flunked out. I couldn’t eat. I barely slept. It took months to learn how to function, how to think straight, without you. All Kyle ever talked about was
you
. At first, I wanted to kill him for it. I wanted him to stop torturing me. Then I realized Kyle was the only way I’d get close to you again, so I stopped arguing with him. I started hanging on every goddamned word. You could have come to me at any time. I would have found a way for us to stay together, to get you out of that house. If you said even one word to make me think you cared, I wouldn’t have gone to MIT in the first place.”
“That was your dream,” she whispered. All his plans from back then were still crystal clear in her memory. Going off to school, making something important of himself. It was what he’d always talked about.
He shook his head. “
You
were my dream. I
settled
for MIT.”
She didn’t want to hear this. Couldn’t bear the guilt or the shame of what it all meant. “What happened on prom night doesn’t mean anything now. We can’t go back in time and change anything.”
“No, but we can sure as hell repeat ourselves, can’t we? We’re right back to you sleeping with me and throwing me out of your life again.”
“I didn’t throw you out, you left all by yourself.
Both
times.” She softened her voice, hating to see the hurt on his face. What she wouldn’t give to stop hurting him. “You were right to go,” she forced herself to say, her anger burned out. “You deserve better than me…and my psychosis,” she added with an eye roll.
“Did I deserve to spend twelve years wondering if you gave up our baby?” he asked solemnly, his voice so quiet after all the yelling.
No. No one deserved that. Her shoulders slumped, her cigarette drooping close to the surface of the table. She watched it burn for a few seconds. It seemed like her life. Constantly burning…and she was the one who lit it on fire, leaving everything she touched in ashes.
“Why is it that all of your sisters have gotten married? Why can they live normal lives and you can’t?”
She laughed, a choking snarl of a sound. “Normal? They act like none of it ever happened, that’s how. They come home for family dinners, hug my father and act like he’s Daddy of the Fucking Year because he finally quit drinking.” Corrine’s anger and words tried to echo in her mind, tried to draw her into reason, but she shoved them away ruthlessly, counting them as just one more aspect of her sisters’ lack of judgment. “They married men who lord over them, each and every one of them. They’re as deluded as my mother, pretending we can be some kind of fairytale family now. They lie to themselves. I’m the only one who knows the truth.”
“And you hold on to it with both hands, don’t you?” He crouched in front of her, laying a hand on her knee. “You think if you keep both eyes on the past, you aren’t going to relive it?”
Somehow, she nodded, though she’d never thought of it that way until he said so.
“Don’t you get it, Belle? You can’t relive what you haven’t finished living out in the first place.”
Her gaze jerked down to him against her will.
“You can’t do anything about your parents. You never could. You can’t change anything for your sisters, either. The only life you should worry about is yours, but you’re not living it. You’re living in the past, dredging up pain until it’s a fortress. A prison.”
“At least it’s
my
prison,” she whispered, looking away again.
“Is that what you want to do? Push me out, pretend you don’t love me and you don’t need me. All because you’re afraid.”
“I won’t become her.” She couldn’t stop herself from being
him
, though. And she couldn’t continue to hurt Lucas the way Adam had seemed to enjoy hurting his mate.
“I’m not asking you to.”
Why wouldn’t he go? Take his gentleness and leave. Didn’t he see she didn’t want to hurt him anymore?
“Not yet.” But it would come. Or worse, he wouldn’t have to. Then she’d be trapped into being both her parents.
Lucas shook his head and stood. “I can’t talk to you when you’re like this. Call me when you’re rational.”
“What’s it going to take to make you go away?” she demanded, wishing she had enough hair to clamp in her hands and rip out. “Why won’t you just leave me alone? Cut your losses, Lonnigan. I’m not worth your time.”
“I told you. Nothing you do is going to make this go away. We’re stuck together, Belle. Always.”
But there
was
something. Something that would make him hate her enough to go. Something that would cut him loose from the destructive love inside her. She sat there, trying to find a mask he might believe. Maybe she
was
hiding. It didn’t matter anymore. All that mattered was making him leave and making him take the truth with him.
“I wouldn’t be so sure,” she said finally, finding a firm voice from deep inside. “You still haven’t asked about the baby.”
She listened for the sound of his breath, but there was nothing to hear. Finally, picking up her head, she speared him with her angriest gaze. She had to be angry. She had to be cruel. It was the only way. Then he’d be free and she couldn’t hurt him anymore.
He stood there, dark blue eyes looking faded and cautious.
From somewhere within, she found the strength to stand. To hold her chin high and dare him to believe her.
He held out his hand to ward her off. “Don’t.”
“Don’t what?” She advanced on him for once.
Her heart broke a little at the look on his face. Pale. Afraid. Of her and her secrets. “Belle, don’t.”
“I did exactly what I said I would, Lucas. I didn’t lie. You were right never to ask.”
He shook his head rapidly. “No, you wouldn’t.”
“Yes, I would. Not everyone had your opportunities. Not everyone had your abilities. I was eighteen, with no future, no prospects and a father who’d thank his lucky stars if I fell off a bridge. I couldn’t be pregnant in that house. He would have killed it. Killed me. Probably have gotten around to killing you. I did what I had to do. If that makes me a coward in your eyes, so be it.”
He didn’t want to believe her, but pain was filling his eyes and drawing his mouth into a flat white line.
“I told you you deserved better than me, Lucas. Now you know why.”
He turned away from her, crossing to the door again, taking the knob in his hand and all but crushing it in his hold. It opened and shut twice before he looked at her again, the agony there something she knew would sear her ’til the day she died. A day she knew—if there was any justice in the world—would be very far from now.
“For the record, Belinda Lynn—” his voice gritted so roughly her own throat felt raw, “—I wouldn’t have thought you a coward for what you did. It might hurt, but I could understand it. The only thing that makes you a coward is the way you’re using what you did to push me away.” He looked her up and down with so much pity she felt it like a scourge. “By the way, you just lost the game.” Then he opened the door and walked out of her home. She looked down at the cigarette, realizing what he meant. She laid it on the sugar bowl and let it burn to ash. She never got around to crying.