Beyond Broken (The Bay Boys #3) (50 page)

Her words hung heavy in the air.

Caleb was silent.

He still wasn’t looking at her.
 
His eyes were darting between watching the people, the families, walking down the sidewalk towards the museum, and the cars passing them by.

“Caleb,” she whispered, reaching out to touch his hand.
 
And he
flinched
.
 
Maddie withdrew her hand, biting her lip, tears blurring her vision.
 
He hadn’t done that in so, so long, not in months, that she’d forgotten the way it made her feel.

Caleb’s fingers twisted the key in the ignition but he still wouldn’t meet her eyes.
 
He murmured, “At least let me drive you to your car.
 
Did you park in Walnut Creek?”

Maddie paused.
 
It would be so much easier if she just got out of this car, if she didn’t sit next to him for the long drive back home.

Then she decided that it didn’t matter.
 
Not in the long haul.
 
Caleb was going to be a part of her life forever once the baby was born.
 
For their child’s sake, she preferred that they remained friends.
 
That would be the best case scenario in this situation.
 
It was such a simple act, him driving her so she wouldn’t have to take a bus to the BART station, and if it made him feel better, then so be it.

“Yes, I did,” she said quietly.

Caleb gave a sharp nod, waited for her to buckle her seatbelt, and then he was pulling away from the curb.

This was going to be the longest car ride of her life.

FORTY-FOUR

Maddie directed him to her car in the parking lot at Walnut Creek and Caleb slid into the space next to it.
 
He could feel her eyes on him, could feel how close she was, and he had the urge to just pull her across his lap and wrap his arms around her so she would never leave him again.

During the entire drive out of the city, her words had been burning tracks in his mind.
 
They hurt.
 
The defeat in her eyes, the sure steadiness of her voice as she spoke about how hopeless their future was together…he could see the cracks burrowing their way into her heart and it fucking
tore at him
.
 
He hated that he was the cause of her pain, of her resolve.

Maddie was finally giving up on him.
 
After everything that they’d been through, after all the fighting, after all the ugly words he’d thrown in her face, this was the final straw for her.
 
And he deserved nothing less.

Even if he did love her, even if he couldn’t stomach the thought of a future without her and couldn’t imagine waking up with anyone else, Caleb didn’t know if he could be everything that she wanted him to be.
 
He would always be broken in some way.
 
Maddie had begun the process of putting him back together, but there were pieces missing that could never be recovered.
 
He feared that he could never be whole for her.
 
And that was what she wanted.

The thought of letting her go was met with a dizzying and fierce resistance.
 
Maddie might believe that they were over, but he was a determined man.
 
A selfish one too.
 
She might have given up on him, but he would never give up on her.

Right at that moment, he could start.
 
He could try and explain why this was so difficult for him, to try and give her something that he knew she’d wanted for a long time—for him to open up.
 
He just wasn’t sure how far he was willing to go.

When she reached down to unbuckle her seatbelt, he reached across the console and caught her hand.

“I—,” he started, but the words stuck in throat.
 
And it was so damn frustrating.
 
He tried again, “I need you to…”

Shit, he was awful at this.

“Caleb?” she asked, brows furrowing.

He must’ve sat there for five whole minutes—and Maddie didn’t move, as if sensing that he needed time—until he could find the words.
 
When they tore from his throat, they were ugly and bitter, but he was glad to be rid of them.

“All the women who have ever fucked me over in my life have told me that they loved me.”

Maddie’s hand stiffened in his own.
 
He ignored that they were sitting in a parking lot, that people passed by his car every now and again, looking at them curiously before averting their gaze.

“My mother.
 
Charlotte.
 
Victoria.”
 
He paused, his hand tightening before he continued.
 
“Stella, my aunt.”

Maddie’s lips parted.
 
“She…she…”

“Does that disgust you?” he asked, his lips twisting.

“Caleb—”

“She told me on multiple occasions that she loved me.
 
I hated her fucking guts, yet I let her fuck me and I let her tell me she loved me.”

There it was.
 
The shame, the hatred, the ugliness.
 
It stabbed at him, chewed at his innards, consumed parts of him that could never be reclaimed.
 
So many years of that bleakness, that darkness, always wondering why it had happened to him.
 
Always wondering why he had allowed it, why he hadn’t spoken up for himself, defended himself.

He struggled with it still.
 
They were old memories and they only surfaced when he least expected them to.
 
They were memories that would always be under his skin until the day he died, but he’d learned to live with them, to coexist with them, so that they didn’t consume him.

Maddie was utterly silent.
 
Caleb wondered if she was even breathing.

“It didn’t happen all the time,” he told her, voice rumbling in his chest.
 
“Maybe once or twice a month.
 
She was conflicted about it, can you believe that?
 
She’d come into my room at night, when my uncle was asleep, and every time I heard that door creak open, I wanted to vomit.
 
And I hated when she touched me.
 
If I didn’t wake up when the door opened, she would wake me with her hands.
 
And it would be dark, but it made my skin crawl.
 
Afterwards, she’d tell me the same thing.
 
That she loved me.
 
That I couldn’t tell my uncle because he wouldn’t believe me.
 
She’d threaten me.
 
She’d panic, I remember that.
 
She would whisper to herself that it was wrong.
 
That she wouldn’t do it again.”

Maddie pressed her fingers to her mouth, tears pooling and catching in her lashes, and Caleb felt her hand tremble.
 
He wanted to look away, to hide away from her when the disgust would inevitably enter into her gaze.
 
He didn’t know if he could handle seeing it.

“She’d leave me alone for a couple weeks, maybe three, and then it would happen again.
 
And it went on for almost two years.
 
And then I found my out,” he murmured, pausing to take a breath.
 
“She’d left her email open one day.
 
She was an accountant at a law firm in the city and I found emails from someone she worked with that seemed odd to me.
 
I did some more digging and eventually found some documents she’d hidden in a folder at home and found out that she and this partner of hers had been
embezzling
money by manipulating the accounting records at the firm.
 
I found bank statements in foreign accounts with her name on them.
 
They’d stolen over $150,000 over a period of a year and a half and no one had caught on to what they’d been doing since they only took a little at a time.”

“Oh my God,” Maddie whispered.

“I had proof and I took all of it.
 
Shortly after that, I confronted her.
 
I was in my senior year.
 
She was furious.
 
And scared.
 
I told her that she would never touch me again or else she’d go to prison.
 
I’d make sure of it.
 
To this day, I regret not exposing her.
 
After that, she left.
 
She quit her job, left my uncle, and disappeared.
 
I don’t think she trusted that I wouldn’t say anything, not with prison time hanging over her head, or me speaking out about the abuse.
 
My uncle didn’t understand at first.
 
He was sad, angry.
 
The person he’d known was a lie and we never heard from her again.”

“Did you—,” her voice was hoarse when she spoke.
 
Clearing her throat, she asked, “Did you ever tell him?”

Caleb ran a hand through his hair and was surprised when he saw it was shaking.
 
“No.
 
I didn’t.
 
About either.”

“Why not?” she demanded, wiping at her cheeks.
 
A spark of fury lit her gaze, which made his brows furrow.
 
“After what she did to you, you should’ve torn her apart and not have looked back.
 
It’s despicable!
 
She deserved prison.
 
She deserved worse!”

Shock pierced him.
 
He had expected her disgust, her pity.
 
He’d even prepared himself for her revulsion.
 
What he hadn’t expected was for her to be
inflamed
, and on his behalf.
 
An unfamiliar emotion choked him.

“I just wanted her
gone
,” he admitted, voice ragged, like he hadn’t spoken for decades.
 
“I wanted her out of my life forever.”

“It doesn’t work that way, Caleb,” she whispered, eyes glassy with tears.
 
“She’s still in your life.
 
Even now.
 
I can see it.”

He closed his eyes.

“
I know
.”

Caleb remembered the helpless look on Maddie’s face when he’d woken up in the middle of the night, sweating, panicked.
 
He’d brought that wall between them.
 
She’d wanted to help him, had tried to talk about it, but he’d shut her down and pushed her away.

“I didn’t want you to look at me differently,” he murmured, turning his head away, frowning.
 
“I didn’t want…” he trailed off, not knowing how to explain it.

“I understand, Caleb,” was her quiet reply.

With her words came relief.
 
Unbelievable relief that staggered him.
 
He’d imagined telling her about his aunt hundreds of times.
 
It had always been hanging over his head and now that pressure was gone.

“You told me once that I was a victim,” he started.
 
“And that there was nothing wrong with that.
 
And you were right.”

“Caleb…”

“She was thirty years older than I was.
 
I was sixteen when the abuse started.
 
Sixteen
.
 
Younger than Peter is right now.
 
I was young and she was the most manipulative person I’ve ever met.
 
I’ve come to terms with a lot of what happened, but this will always be with me, Maddie.
 
I realized a long time ago that it will never be gone, no matter how much I want it to be.”

“What happened to her?” Maddie asked quietly.

“She’s dead,” he said, clenching his jaw.
 
“In November, I got a call from a lawyer, saying she left me money in her will.
 
I told him I wanted nothing to do with it.
 
He didn’t tell me how she died and I didn’t ask.”

“In November?”

Caleb nodded, leaning his head back against the head rest.
 
“It was that night,” he murmured.
 
“When you found me outside.
 
When we kissed.
 
I’d just received the voicemail.”

Her lips pressed together in realization but she didn’t say anything.
 
She just continued to hold his hand.
 
And he remembered her words to him so long ago, when she’d found out that his uncle died.

Sometimes all you need is someone to sit silently with you and not say anything at all.

He remembered that day in the courtyard when they were in high school.
 
Of course, he hadn’t realized that girl and Maddie were one in the same, but he remembered that brutal pain and loss in her brown eyes and remembered sitting with her.
 
He remembered feeling helpless, but not in the same way that his aunt had made him feel.
 
It was a good helplessness because he could at least offer comfort to someone who needed it.

Caleb realized that Maddie was the person who understood him best in the world.
 
Even over his friends, Brian, his uncle.
 
She’d seen all facets of him, but mostly the dark and the ugly, and she still loved him.
 
He didn’t deserve to be loved by someone like her.

“Maddie,” he said.

“Yes?”

“I lied that night.
 
In the garage.
 
I know we’re not just friends.”

Her breath hitched as she stared.
 
His gaze took in those big eyes that had gotten him into so much trouble in the first place, those light freckles that aroused him, that glorious hair he loved running his fingers through, and those soft lips he loved to kiss.

“And I know that I’ve given you no reason not to…but I need you to not give up on me,” he told her.
 
“Because I won’t ever give up on us.”