“She was tired,” Natalie said on a breath of sorrow, dropping her hand onto his waist, not quite accepting his embrace, but he thought it might be more about fighting her own emotions. Her voice wasn’t steady. “She fought for Gareth every day. Urged him to keep fighting, and took on the system that didn’t expect him to make it past two or three years old. If there was a treatment or surgery we hadn’t tried, she made it happen. Then he was gone and I was married, and I think she thought she could rest. She didn’t have to worry about either of us. I went away with Heath just after Zoey was born, up to his mother’s farm, and Mom got the flu.”
Natalie drew away, brushing fingertips under her eyes where her makeup was threatening to run. “She’d had enough of hospitals.” She closed Gareth’s book and set it aside, as though she was trying to set aside her grief. “She wouldn’t even go to the doctor. I came home and got her admitted, but she had pneumonia by then and it killed her.”
And Natalie’s husband hadn’t come to the funeral.
“I’m so sorry, Natalie.”
She gave a muted shrug. “She’s with Gareth now. We should go, shouldn’t we?”
Her defenseless expression bordered on persecuted. She needed time to regroup the way he had after talking about Nic.
He didn’t want to leave. He wanted to hold her again. Touching her had felt good. Right.
They were both raw from delving into things that he was still shocked he’d revealed, though. And getting physical right now would be less about the kind of escape he longed for and could take the intimacy of their conversation to an unforgettably deep level. Something he couldn’t come back from.
“Probably a good idea,” he agreed, following her to the front door and watching her zip into shiny black spiked-heel boots that hugged her calves and cocked her curves into a sassy posture when she straightened. That backside of hers never quit. Shame to cover it, but he held her coat and drank in the scent of creamy vanilla in her hair, so familiar he forgot for a moment where he was. Things in him that had been wound tight relaxed. A smile touched his lips as he thought about brushing aside her blond tresses and setting his lips on her nape.
She went still, and he glanced up to see they faced a mirror. He stood behind her and to the right, not unlike the photo of her grandparents. Whether she’d seen his expression of desire, or saw the similarity to the longtime couple’s pose, he didn’t know, but he found himself taking a mental snapshot of the two of them looking at each other so nakedly, his hands on her shoulders, her expression still shadowed by emotion, his own filled with tender affection.
It struck him that you didn’t get to fifty years by staying detached. You shared the things next to your soul. In his previous life, he wouldn’t have encouraged her to give him the details of her most terrible heartaches. But it hurt him to see her suffer. He wanted to hear what pained her so he could carry some of the burden for her.
Disturbed, he looked away, feeling her pull away from his light touch at the same time.
Natalie was changing him. He didn’t understand why or how, but he’d felt it after their breakup, sitting in New York unable to stop thinking about her.
In the car, he studied what he could see of her profile in the dark silence, trying to work it out, wondering if there was a Freudian element to it.
“Did you have to look after your brother a lot?” he asked her.
“Yes,” she said simply, adding, “when Mom went to work, which was three nights a week and every weekend. Someone had to make sure he took his meds or monitor his temperature and pulse if he was recovering from surgery. Mom was spread so thin, I did a lot of the housekeeping and cooking, too. Then I had Heath and Zoey to look after. I still have to remind Heath to pay his rent,” she said with a little tsk. “I’ve never not felt responsible for someone. That’s why, well, it’s what I was taking a vacation from,” she admitted in a small voice. “In France.”
He could help her carry some of that load.
“How old were you when it started? When you had to be a little mom to your brother?” he asked.
“I don’t know. After Dad left, I guess. Seven? Gareth would have been three.”
He rubbed his thigh, confiding family secrets before he lost his nerve. “Adara was younger than that when she started looking after me. Five or six.”
Natalie turned her head, voice colored with surprise when she said, “Really? Where was your mom? Working?”
“Passed out.” He could still see the unresponsive shape in her bed. When Theo had called him to tell him she was gone, he’d had to catch back a tasteless, “Are we sure this time?” because he’d thought her dead so many times as a child.
“She liked to wash down her pills with vodka. Dad liked to drink, too,” he stated flatly. Then he closed his eyes and walked through the door he’d only peeked through that day by the pool with Theo. “He got violent when he’d had enough of it. If Adara didn’t keep me quiet, she got smacked. If Theo failed, he caught Dad’s belt.”
“Oh, my God.” Natalie caught her gasp with her cupped hand, understandably speechless. Her eyes glowed white at the edges, not that he was able to meet her gaze for long.
Why had he been so cavalier that day with Theo? It had been cruel, and he didn’t blame his brother for not returning the one call he’d placed to try to make amends. The truth was he didn’t understand why his brother hadn’t rejected him the moment it had happened.
Demitri never looked back on his childhood. Ever. But he made himself remember that incident now. Made himself feel the guilt. He’d left his room, even though Theo had tried to stop him, but Demitri had been determined to find Adara. Not their mother. His sister. Because Adara had been the one he relied on. She’d been the closest thing to a mother he’d had while theirs had been a slurring mess who’d rarely left her bedroom.
And Theo had taken the punishment for Demitri’s transgression.
Who did that to a little kid? Why hadn’t someone called child services?
Why hadn’t he been the one to catch hell?
Fierce, angry tears came into his eyes so hard and fast he had to avert his face to the window and remind himself he’d been three years younger than Theo’s eight. He hadn’t really known what he’d been doing. He had barely understood what had been happening when Theo had screamed in their father’s den. It was only later, when Adara had pleaded with him, “You have to be good, Demitri,” that he’d begun to comprehend that Theo’s injuries, the stripes on his back that were visible to this day, had been his fault.
And despite Adara’s pleading, he’d never been good. He didn’t think he ever would be.
CHAPTER EIGHT
“AND YOU?” NATALIE ASKED with trepidation, lowering her hand, needing to know, to understand him, but certain she wouldn’t be able to withstand whatever she heard.
Demitri shook his head, expression impossible to read.
“He loved me.” He made a quick noise of negation, clarifying in a bitter tone, “I mean, he loved to throw me at Adara and Theo in ugly little ways. ‘Demitri got a trophy today, Theo. What did you get?’ ‘Have you fed your brother today, Adara? Why are you eating if he hasn’t?’”
Natalie couldn’t move. A cry of denial that anyone could put children through such mental and physical torture locked her throat.
“That’s really horrible,” she managed.
“It’s sick,” he hissed, revealing a pressure of anger she suspected had been bottled tight for years. “I tried to make him hit me. I dented his car and drank his booze, skipped school and broke the front window. He was the only one home that day, half a bottle in him. It wasn’t even lunch. Winter. Snow was blowing in. You know what he said? ‘Call Theo. Tell him to come home and fix it.’ That’s crazy, right? Like, legitimately not sane?”
Finally he looked at her, and while his brow was an anguished line, his eyes were glazed with wrath. The devil-may-care veneer was cracked wide-open, revealing that the man inside did care about things. He cared a lot.
“Demitri, I’m so sorry,” she could only say, while the back of her throat stung.
The car stopped.
He seemed to shake himself out of his past. “I shouldn’t have told you that.”
She reached out to cover his hand, folding her fingers over his stiff ones. “It’s okay.” She got the feeling he’d never told anyone. “Did no one ever report him?”
He shook his head, turning his face forward, but his hand shifted in hers so he could pinch her fingers in a tight grip. It was as though he was holding on to a lifeline so he wouldn’t be sucked under and drowned.
“We had money. The privilege of the rich extends to not having your actions questioned. I’ve learned that. Even when you’re leaving marks on your kids, you can get away with it. I remember waiting for Adara at school one day. Her teacher told her she could stay in class as long as she wanted, but Adara told her it was better if she got me home on time. The teachers knew. They didn’t do anything.”