Having Her: Lies We Tell, Book 2 (27 page)

That, he hadn’t expected. When she’d mentioned it before, in his office, the idea had appealed to him in a purely legal sense. It tied up loose ends. Made sure that if anything happened to him, his child and its mother would be looked after. No, he’d never intended to get married. Never intended to do the wife and kid thing. But since the kid part of the equation had happened anyway, the logical, protective part of him insisted that making her his wife made sense.

“Marriage, huh?” He met her gaze. “I thought you hated the idea.”

“So? I’m allowed to change my mind.”

“What changed it?”

She shifted on her feet, but didn’t look away from him. “I want a family, Vin. A normal freaking family. And this is my chance to have it.”

“You sure about this? I’m going to be a hard-ass about the moving-in part but you don’t have to marry me.”

“I’m sure.” And there was no doubt at all in her face. “What about you?”

“Yeah. It makes sense from a legal standpoint. And it would give the kid a proper family.”

“Exactly.”

Yes. It was a good plan. A good idea. So why did he feel like there was something missing? That something more needed to be said?

“This hasn’t got anything to do with love,” Kara said suddenly. “Just so you know.”

He stared at her, taken aback. Love? He hadn’t said anything about love. Because what did love have to do with marriage? Nothing. His parents were supposed to have been in love and look what happened to them? Not much damn love in that relationship as far as he could see.

And yet there was something in her eyes, almost like a challenge. As if she was daring him to disagree. Which was weird because why would he? This didn’t have anything to do with love on his part either.

“I didn’t think it did,” he said. “I didn’t offer to marry you because I love you, Kara.”

Her lashes fell abruptly, hiding her gaze. “No, I know you didn’t.” There was no change in her voice or her posture but somehow he got the feeling that he’d disappointed her. Failed her in some way.

A tight sensation settled in his chest. “Kara—” he began.

“I think we can discuss the details at my place,” she interrupted, already turning away. “How about you take me home?”

Fuck.

They were halfway back to her apartment when Vin’s phone went off. He glanced down at the screen then cursed viciously. “Sorry, but I’m going to have to answer it.”

He pulled over to the side of the road and picked up his phone. “Fox. Oh…I see…”

Kara glanced at him. His face had settled into that impenetrable mask again. “What? No. No, I haven’t. No, I understand.” He turned his head, looking out the window, his expression hidden. He raised a hand, shoved his fingers through his hair. “Yeah, I’ll do that now. Okay. I’ll call you back.”

“What’s wrong?” Kara asked quietly.

“Nothing,” he said curtly. “Just something else I have to handle.”

“Bullshit, it’s nothing. You look like you could chew through metal.”

He put the phone down in the holder between the dash and the handbrake. Adjusted the aviator shades he wore, the ones that hid his eyes so she couldn’t see them. “I have to go see someone. I want you to stay in the car.” His words were flat and cold and suggested that arguing would be a mistake.

“Who?”

“My mother.” He hauled on the wheel, pulling the Corvette back out into the traffic.

“Why? What’s wrong with her?” She didn’t know the details, but she was aware that Ellie and Vin’s mother suffered from some kind of mental illness. Ellie didn’t talk about it much. Another thing Kara hadn’t wanted to probe too deeply into. Mothers were just uncomfortable subjects all round.

Vin didn’t answer. Just drove. The car filled with a thick, tense silence that Kara wanted to break but didn’t know how. Clearly questions weren’t welcome, and she had a feeling that pushing wasn’t going to help either.

Eventually they drove down a street full of run-down state houses, frayed washing hanging on lines, rubbish piled up in gardens, weeds hanging over fences. Cars in driveways standing on blocks. A collection of kids played in one driveway, staring as Vin parked the Corvette.

“Stay here,” he said shortly.

“Why?”

“Because I fucking said so, all right?” He said the words so savagely that all she could do was stare at him.

He didn’t say anything more, getting out of the car and slamming the door behind him.

She watched out of the window, her heart suddenly beating fast as he walked up to a big, two-storied building with green painted weatherboards. The place had clearly been divided up into apartments—she could see the balconies of several.

Foreboding gripped her.

She didn’t know what was wrong with his mother but whatever it was, it couldn’t be good.

Vin had always seemed so self-contained. So strong. He gave the impression he could handle anything. But she remembered the look in his eyes when the technician had pointed out their baby on the screen. The shock in them. And her own fear reflected back at her.

She’d felt terrified. Terrified of loving that tiny blob on the screen and she knew he felt the same.

He was human, just as vulnerable and just as freaked-out as she was. A human being who needed someone. But he didn’t have anyone, did he? Not now Ellie and Hunter weren’t here.

The only person he had was her. And even if he didn’t feel about her the way she felt about him—and clearly he didn’t after the comments about marriage and love she hadn’t been able to help herself from asking him outside the clinic—that didn’t mean she was going to let him do this alone.

She got out of the car and walked up the path to the apartment block. Inside, she caught sight of Vin heading up the stairs to the second story. She followed him up, then down a long hallway, seeing him knock on one of the doors. She waited, keeping an eye on him. Not wanting to risk him yelling at her quite yet. Not when all she wanted to do was to make sure he was okay. That whatever he was facing, he didn’t have to do it by himself.

After a moment, when the door didn’t open, he pulled some keys out of his pocket and unlocked the door, disappearing inside.

Kara followed him, stepping into the tiny apartment. The place smelled of cigarette smoke and something sour, like old cooking oil left to stand too long. She went down the narrow hallway and came out into a small lounge area. The place was full of dirty plates and unwashed cups. Ashtrays full to overflowing. A couple of empty wine bottles beside a ragged sofa.

Then from one end of the apartment came a blood-curdling scream.

Kara’s heart leapt into her mouth. What the hell was that? She rushed through the lounge to find a second even tinier hallway which led to a bedroom and a bathroom. The bathroom door was open. Inside a gray-haired woman in a dirty nightdress was crouched on the floor screaming. One hand was tied to a towel rail. Vin was crouched beside her, not touching her, the low rumble of his voice only barely audible beneath the screams of the woman. She was hurling abuse at him, telling him he was a fucking liar. That someone needed to die. That the demon wanted someone dead and she was powerless to stop him.

His mother. This broken, screaming woman was his mother.

For a moment Kara couldn’t do anything, rooted to the spot with horror. Then she noticed that his mother’s wrist was raw from the plastic tie she’d used to bind herself to the towel rail, blood beginning to seep down her arm. Jesus. She needed to be cut free.

Kara went back into the lounge and the small kitchen at one end of it, began pulling out drawers to find something to cut off the tie around the woman’s wrist. But there was nothing. No scissors. There weren’t even any kitchen knives. There was only plastic cutlery.

“I thought I told you to stay in the car.”

Kara whirled to find Vin standing behind her, holding his phone. He didn’t look so much angry now as tired. No, not just tired, exhausted. He glanced away, beginning to punch some numbers into the phone.

“I know but…I thought you might need help.”

“I don’t need help, Kara. What I need is for you to do as you’re told. I’ve got enough to worry about up here without worrying about you as well.” He turned away as someone on the other end of the phone answered.

Kara took a ragged breath, watching him. He sounded so cool and calm, as if his mother wasn’t just screaming her lungs out not a meter away, as if he did this kind of thing every day.

She swallowed, her mouth dry. God, he probably did. This was what he’d had to deal with for years and years. Ellie had told her a couple of times that her mother sometimes had “episodes”. Kara had got the impression that Ellie didn’t see her, that her mother was often “too sick” for visits from her daughter.

Well, she could certainly see why that was.

Vin finished his call. He put his phone back in his pocket, ran another distracted hand through his hair. Hair that was already standing up on end. “Go get in the car.”

“But what about…your mum?”

“I’ve called the crisis team. They’ll be here soon. And the police.”

“The police? Surely you don’t…” But she stopped, the words halted by the look on his face. Bone-deep weariness.

“She’s violent when she’s like this,” Vin said. “The police are for everyone’s safety.”

Her throat tightened, her heart aching for him. “What happened?”

Vin lifted a shoulder. “Who knows? She’s not supposed to drink but she does. She’s not supposed to smoke but she does. She’s supposed to take her meds but sometimes she doesn’t. A collision of all three from the looks of things.”

“This…” She gestured toward the bathroom. “She’s like that a lot?”

Vin just looked at her. And in his stormy blue eyes, in the exhaustion she saw there, she read the answer. Yeah. It was a lot.

“Please, baby,” he said softly. “Please get in the car.”

His demands wouldn’t move her. But she couldn’t resist him when he said please.

Wordlessly, Kara did what she was told.

It took a couple of hours to finish up with the police and the crisis team. Getting Vin’s mother into a van so they could take her to hospital. Vin dropped Kara back to her apartment then left for the hospital himself.

For the next couple of hours she tried to busy herself with drawing, with TV, with anything really, but she couldn’t stop thinking about it. Couldn’t stop thinking about him.

The ache in her heart was like a splinter of glass digging in. Sharing the pain for what it must have been like for him, having to deal with his mother when she was like that, when he was only a teenager for God’s sake. She remembered the times her own mother had got drunk sometimes after a hard day’s work. The fear that gripped her. Because that drunk woman wasn’t her mother. Was someone else. A stranger.

Did Vin feel that way? Had he been scared as a teenager? He must have been. Shit, she’d been terrified herself just today. And he’d had no one to help him, no one to turn to. He’d had to bear it all himself. It exhausted her just thinking about it.

She was at the point of going to bed when she heard the knock on her door. It could be no one else. And it wasn’t.

When she opened the door, Vin stood on the other side of it. He didn’t say anything, just looked at her, his eyes so dark and empty they looked black.

She said nothing either, pushing the door wide so he could come in. And he did. Silently going into her lounge and sitting down on the sofa, his head in his hands.

Kara stood there not knowing quite what to do but wanting to do something for him. Anything. When Ellie had been like this over Hunter, she’d brought out the vodka. Perhaps it wasn’t what he wanted but hey, someone had to drink the damn stuff since she couldn’t now.

Getting a glass and the bottle, she poured him a shot. Put it on the table in front of him.

For a second he didn’t move. Then slowly he lifted his head. Reached for the shot glass. Downed it. And she didn’t need to be asked, she knew he wanted another.

So she poured him another. And another.

And a fourth.

Then he pushed the glass away and leaned back on the couch, his arm flung over his face.

Kara put the bottle down, came and stood in front of him. She so wanted to help him but she didn’t know how.

Bullshit, you don’t.

Once when she’d been broken apart, exposed and vulnerable, he’d held her. He hadn’t said a word, just held her in his arms and it had been exactly what she’d needed.

Of course she knew how.

Kara dropped to her knees in front of him and wrapped her arms around his waist, and put her head in his lap and rested there. Giving him what he’d given her—the warmth of her body. The reassurance of her touch.

He didn’t move. After a moment he put a hand on her head and Kara closed her eyes.

It was enough.

Vin felt heavy and slow, the vodka he’d consumed providing a nice buffer between him and reality. He didn’t want to move. Didn’t want to think. He’d had enough of today. It had been shitty. Too many feelings he didn’t want. Too many reminders of what he couldn’t have.