“Go, Sunny. I’ll call you later.” Knox packed as much confidence into his words as he could.
He risked a glance over his father’s shoulder, but he shouldn’t have. The fear in her eyes that day stayed with him forever.
“Mr. McGraw—”
“I said go the fuck home!” He whipped around.
Knox grabbed at him but not before the back of his father’s hand connected with Sunny’s face.
“No!” Knox yelled, watching arms, legs, and a mess of red hair tumble down the stairs.
“You fucker!” Pain shot in bolts of lightning from his knuckles, clear to his elbow, as he busted his dad’s nose.
His father stumbled back, blood running down his face. Knox moved toward the stairs, his heart refusing to beat again until he got to Sunny.
“You’re dead, boy.”
In the corner of his eye, Knox caught the wrath of the drunken beast coming toward him. He made a fist and rammed his elbow sideways in his father’s already broken nose. In less than three seconds the course of Knox’s entire future changed forever. His father fell backward, crashing through the railing and plummeting to the first floor, smacking the weathered wood floor six feet from Sunny’s limp body.
“Sunny?” Knox skidded down the stairs and dropped to his knees. “Sunny?” He cradled her body in his arms and rocked back and forth. Tears stung his eyes and fear gripped his heart.
*
Knight
The story Knox told Jillian felt like another world, a parallel universe. With each word she felt her mother die all over again. She hated and needed each word, each one unbearable yet necessary.
“That scar by her right temple. She said she fell down the stairs and spent three days in the hospital with a concussion and a broken arm.”
Knox nodded. “It wasn’t a lie.”
“It was. She told me she slipped on the top stair.”
“Can you blame her?”
Yes. She could blame her mom, and she did. Knox didn’t need to know that. Jillian wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of seeing her anger, her pain, her vulnerability. Instead, she sat idle, enduring a new kind of hell, the kind that came from having such sacred memories tainted and completely shattered.
Her father had secrets. It was part of his job. Keeping secrets kept people alive. Her mother raised her and Jude. She folded laundry, scrubbed the floor, made Halloween costumes, and cooked three meals a day. Every Sunday she took them to church. Jessica heard the story of her mother’s childhood a million times … all of it except Knox McGraw.
“She said she was too busy studying, cheerleading, and practicing her violin to keep a boyfriend very long.”
Jillian liked the pain in Knox’s expression. He deserved it. They shared a mutual disappointment in Sunny for not telling the truth about her past, but for different reasons.
“That day … when I thought she was dead, I hated myself for ever loving her, for ever putting her at the top of those stairs on that day … with that man.”
“Your dad?” Jillian coughed. She tasted blood, her throat painfully raw. “What happened to him?”
“He was taken out in a body bag.”
The words “I’m sorry” sat on her tongue, but she couldn’t say them, not to the man she still hated.
“My mother grieved his death for years. I have no idea why. She should have thanked me. Instead, she turned her back on me, blaming his death on my anger management issues even after Sunny backed up my account of the events to both her and the police. Rumors were everywhere and one by one, I lost my scholarship offers. By the time I graduated, I had no means to go to college … no direction. A few of my buddies decided to get their education via the armed forces, so I did too.”
“But my mom didn’t end up going to college.”
He shook his head, regret heavy in his sober expression. “Her dad, your grandfather, had a heart attack the summer after we graduated. He died on the operating table. Sunny refused to leave her mom and her sister so soon after his death, so she got a job working at the front desk of a hotel.”
“She eventually moved to a bartending position in the hotel’s restaurant.”
Knox looked up. “Yes.”
“She told me that’s how she met my father.”
His expression hardened as he nodded slowly. A few seconds later he closed his eyes, letting his head fall back against the wall. “Yeah, but that’s a complicated story.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Jones
“I’m not as excited about Portland. I’ve been there.” Lake stared at the ceiling from the hotel bed, twirling her long dark hair around her finger while Luke typed away on his computer.
“Sorry to disrupt your travel plans. Oh, wait … you’re disrupting mine. Did I mention I’m willing and even eager to send you back to San Francisco? I bet we can still get you a flight out tonight.”