Scales: Of Justice (Broken But ... Mending Book 3) (17 page)

A
ctually very nice,
but she didn’t want to make too big a deal over a kiss. Except…it was a big deal. She’d been kissed before. Even in ardor, but it hadn’t done anything for her. She’d participated to see if it was something she
could
do.

She could. Just why would she? Previously, she hadn’t felt anything. It had been wet and sweaty and awkward and hell no. It was not something she had wanted to repeat.

For her partner at the time, well, they’d been friends and that had been more of a
hey, we’ve gone out a time or two it’s past time for a goodbye kiss
. For her, it had just ended that whole sex thing.

After all, why do it if it didn’t feel good?

Now Weaver’s kiss – yeah, that had felt good. Dry and warm and caressing, his kiss had made her feel cosseted, safe, cared for. He’d been compassionate, yet there’d been heat under there. A banked heat that also said he was in control. And it left her wanting more…

Like she’d said, “Nice.”

And now what? Did she just lie here and wait? Wait for what?

“Glad you think so,” he said, humor lacing his voice. “I thought it was nice too.”

Lifting her head, she gazed at him suspiciously. His smile deepened.

“Are you laughing at me?” she accused him, pushing up to look up at his face.

His grin widened and he snatched her back into his arms. “Absolutely not.”

“Hmm.” Then he lowered his head, and damn if she didn’t reach up to meet him halfway.

So this was what you were supposed to feel? She wanted to analyze the sensations but his hands stroked across her back, her shoulders, distracting her. The gentleness of his touch, the soothing stroke so unlike anything she was used to. The warmth flowed between them, erasing all the hurt of the day, melting them together.

When he lifted his head the second time, she curled up against his chest, closed her eyes, and relaxed.

It had been a tough couple of days. There was a feeling that the seminar was over – almost over – a winding down in some regards. The workshops had been helpful. She’d seen a few of her problems. She just didn’t know how to deal with the big one in her face.

What was she supposed to do with that?

Usually she’d call Sean and talk it over but ever since he’d hooked up with Robin, she’d tried to give him more space. If he could be there for her, he would. She almost wanted him to swing by. Maybe stand by her side while she pondered the possibility of seeing Constable Delaney.

Delaney
. A coldness whispered through her. He’d become a blockage she couldn’t get around. He was an issue that she
had
to get past. So far she’d managed to avoid him, but she knew that wasn’t the answer.

If only she could figure out how to go about it.

Neither did she want to turn around to find him standing there. She needed to be prepared for the confrontation.

“Thoughts?”

The sound of his voice rumbled up his chest under her ear.

With a pained voice, she said, “I’m thinking about the cop I’m avoiding.”

“Hmmm.” Non-judgmental, listening, waiting. Nice.

“I know I should face him, but I don’t want to.”

“Sometimes we have to do what we don’t want to do,” he said. “And often what we think is a huge deal before and turns out to be nothing afterwards. We can see it had only been big in our minds. Is this man likely to hurt you today? No. It’s still the child in you that sees him as a big bogeyman.”

“I don’t know,” she said, her voice barely audible. “I might still be a child when I see him, in my mind at least, but the fear is real.” Her chest tightened. “The panic is there, the inability to breathe.”

“Right. To be expected. Even now at the thought of talking to him, your mind is recreating the same panic it had when you were a little girl. Although you realize he’s not going to hurt you, or haul you away, or any other number of ugly scenarios, your mind doesn’t want to let go. It’s too locked onto that belief.”

Abruptly, she pulled away from him. He held her back for a moment then reluctantly let her go.

“It’s just really hard.” There was a long pause as she stared at him, considering his words.

“Yes, it absolutely is.” He waited a moment then admitted, “But it’s so worth doing. This man is crippling you. He’s stopping you from being the person you want to be. From having the life you want to live. Is that what you want? Is that who you want to be?”

Shaking his head, he continued before she could protest. “I haven’t known you for very long, but I already know that’s not what you want for yourself. Not what you want to be able to tell your kids down the road when you’ve recovered even further and look back on this stage.”

“That doesn’t make it all doable though.” She settled sideways on his lap, hating that her breath was still hiccupping in her chest and her blood flowed too quickly in her veins.

“Everything is doable. Just in small doses.” He grinned. “Kinda like that worksheet.”

She frowned at him. “What worksheet?”

“The one from the first day…the one you tried to erase then ripped, balled up, and finally ended up swallowing.”

The memory of her chaotic panic had her scrunching up her face in disgust. Though she had come a long ways since then.

He laughed and pulled her close to him again.

“Oh,
that
worksheet,” she muttered.

“Are you ready to tell me what the answer was that you felt so strongly about?”

She shook her head violently. “No.”

*

Leaning back, it
was his turn to sigh as he tried to not let the disappointment choke him. He knew it was about trust. Another big issue for her.

Maybe one she could handle and maybe not. Maybe if he took the first step…shared something he kept private…

After all, he had his own issues. Lord did he have issues.

“My father was murdered,” he said suddenly.

She gasped and spun around to face him, “What?” she cried. “When? How?”

Hating his own instinctive physical withdrawal that happened anytime he remembered that incident in his life, he just stared at her. “I don’t normally tell anyone that.” In fact, he wasn’t sure when was the last time he brought it up. The sympathetic looks and sideways glances people gave made him uncomfortable, made the situation worse.

“Wait…I thought you’d been abused as a child?”

He could understand the confusion in her voice, her words. “After my father was killed, my mother fell to pieces. She took to the bottle. But along with the bottle came the rage, the sorrow, and the complete inability to deal with life ever after.”

“She’s the one who beat you.”

He nodded. “For being home late. For being home early. For not getting up on time. Because the dishes weren’t done. Because she didn’t have any money. Because she didn’t have a bottle in her hand.” Wondering at the ease with which he spoke, he shrugged. It was easy to talk to Paris, especially with her so close. “I think the alcohol let her release the rage about my father’s untimely death in a way she couldn’t do sober. She was always apologetic afterwards, but then she was never sober anymore so there were never any breaks when she was nice.”

“Is she still alive?”

He nodded. “She’s been in and out of rehab for a while now. It got really bad until I grew up enough to fight back. The trick is to fight back just enough but not do any damage or the cops look at you like you’ve done something wrong.”

Frozen in shock, she stared at him and finally managed to strangle out, “That’s very true.” Several times her mouth opened and always closed as if to add something, only she couldn’t get the words out.

Curious, he waited for her to speak.

Finally, she gave up. Then out of the blue she said, “I’m sorry for your mother and you.” She looked at him, “How did your father die?”

“It was stupid. It was a carjacking and my dad resisted. He was slammed to the ground and stomped on before the assailants took off in our car. My mom and I were standing on the side of the road while it happened. We’d done what we were told to do. He, on the other hand, had loved that car. He hadn’t wanted to give it up so easily.”

“And they killed him?” She gasped.

“Yes, he had internal bleeding in the brain. It was hours before he got medical attention and the doctors did their best, but he didn’t make it. I was six at the time and he was only thirty. My mom a couple of years younger.”

“Ouch, that’s tough.”

He shrugged. “Everyone’s got tough stories. Sometimes we can get past them and for others…it takes time.”

“And for some people, it’s never over. Instead, it becomes a living, breathing thing inside, ready to flare up. Ready to demolish your hard won calm and make you realize that, in fact, nothing has changed.”

“I know that feeling too,” he said. “After my mother spent months at a time drunk, it was tough to see any point in surviving. I had nowhere to go. At ten, I’d thought of running away, but where would I go? I had no other family. Didn’t have many friends, because living with a drunk keeps those numbers down. Hell, I couldn’t have friends over and hadn’t had a birthday celebration or party since losing my father. My life didn’t fit the same life other kids were living. Then again, I wasn’t living. I was surviving.

“The killers were never caught. Are not likely to ever be caught.” After all these years, he still felt an ache in his heart. “The police figure the man who actually did the damage was part of a gang. Chances are good he’s never going to pay for what he did.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“Like Jenna said, Justice is an issue for me. There’s a big part of me that wants to make that asshole pay. And another part of me that says I need to just move on. Move forward and let it go. But saying that and doing that are two different things.”

P
aris stared at
him. They were so different. For him, Justice was something he wanted, and she was afraid Justice wanted her.

She slipped off his lap and moved over to the chair on the side. It wasn’t that she wanted to put any distance between them…but she wanted to put distance between them. This was getting intense quickly.

“That must have been difficult growing up,” she said quietly.

For long seconds he was silent, then he opened up a little more. “For years, I hated my father. Hated him for dying. Hated that he’d been more concerned about his car than his family, but I’ve come to understand. I doubt he was thinking at all at the time. He likely just reacted and paid a high price for his resistance.”

“I’ll say,” she said with feeling, hating what he’d been through. “And your mother, did she blame him too?”

“Absolutely. That made it harder for me. As she was so angry, it was hard not to get angry at him as well. She was a good woman. One who, once she slid into the dark side of life, could never get back to the right side again.”

“That’s very sad,” Paris said. In his eyes, she saw the sadness of a little boy who had been through unthinkable tragedy.

“The trouble with any kind of dependency is it becomes a crutch. She could always find forgetfulness in a bottle. The anger came when there was no bottle and reality slapped her in the face.”

“I imagine those scenes would have been tough.”

Her father never drank. Said it made fools of men. And he was no fool. No one and nothing was going to have that type of control over him. Never. He was bigger and better than that and always would be. But inside, he was a raging ball of anger with extreme hated of his own father and he despised his mother. But his uncle, just mention that man’s name and her father went ballistic. Her father had been one scary dude.

It was years later when she heard him muttering about the kiddy pedophile uncle of his that she realized her father had likely been a victim, too.

This was the first time in a long time she had thought about these things. She’d forgotten a lot of family history lessons in life, probably on purpose. The ones she remembered hadn’t been pleasant. Of her mother’s family, she knew nothing. Maybe she never would. Now though she no longer hated her mother for leaving them. It was highly likely that she had been abused as well. Too bad she hadn’t taken her children with her when she finally escaped. Paris’s childhood would have been very different if she had.