Sneak Attack (7 page)

You do it every day with Mia. Why is it any different to do it for the woman who gave birth to you?

Cursing, I flung my apron in the direction of the space under the bar and strode to the pass-through, shoving it up before I walked out of the bar and just kept going. Mia shouted after me, but I didn’t stop. I wasn’t mad at her. Why would I be? It wasn’t her fault she’d seen the big ol’ jagged edge in my parents’ relationship.

More like a crater-sized hole.

“Tray, wait.” At the corner, she grabbed my arm and pulled me to a halt. “Hang on. I can come back with you, if it would help.”

“You’re on shift right now.” I didn’t even know why I was so angry or why I was letting it spill all over her. The violence between my parents wasn’t a new thing.

But Mia hadn’t seen it. My mother hadn’t brought it right to our doorstep before. Mine and Mia’s.

“So are you, and you’re out here,” Mia said pointedly. “If you can go, I can too.”

“What could you possibly do?”

Her hesitation made me shove a hand through my hair. “Fuck, baby, I’m sorry. I really am not in the best shape for—”

“It’s hard letting someone see, isn’t it?” she whispered, and I fell silent.

It was rare for the tables to be turned. Normally I was trying to tug out bits and pieces from Mia. She didn’t do the opposite. If I said I didn’t want to talk, she let me stew. She left me alone.

Maybe for fucking once, I didn’t want to be left.

“Yes,” I said finally, looking down at her hand on my arm. Her fingers curled tighter and she pulled me against her side until she could rest her head on my shoulder. “It’s goddamn hard.”

“Want to go to therapy with me?” At the horrified expression that must’ve crossed my face, she laughed so hard that she doubled over. Her long braids fell over her shoulders and it reminded me of the first time I’d really seen her laugh at the very beginning of our relationship.

I was capable of making Mia get the giggles, if nothing else. Too bad it was
at
me, not with me.

“Sorry. Bad timing. But my therapist has been bugging me to ask you to come.”

“Why?” I tried to keep the edge of panic out of my voice. Lost cause. “I don’t need therapy.”

Just like that, Mia stopped laughing.

Dammit
. I’d freaking sucker punched
her
, and I was the one who couldn’t breathe.

“I didn’t mean that,” I began, trying to connect the frayed wires in my brain to make some kind of usable spark. What I’d said wasn’t right, or fair. I was as fucked up as anyone. I just couldn’t bear to admit it right now.

“No, no, you’re right. You don’t need therapy. Just fucked up ol’ me.” She held up her hands as she backed up. “Look, I have to get back to work. I’ll cover with Carmine for you.”

“Mia.”

“Go be with your mother. One more thing you have that I don’t. Your sanity, and your parents.”

She melted into the foot traffic flowing up the street before I could apologize.

As if an apology could be enough to make up for what I’d said so thoughtlessly. It had been so difficult for her to start therapy, and to keep going when the first therapists weren’t a good fit. With a few careless words, I’d turned her courage into weakness.

I deserved to be shot.

Swallowing hard, I glanced back where she’d gone. I wanted so badly to go back and tell her how screwed up the situation with my parents made me, how what I’d said had to do with my own stupid machismo and nothing else. She was the bravest person I’d ever known. If therapy could give me a fraction of her strength, I’d go every day for the rest of my life.

But she was at work, and my mother was in her apartment. Right now even calling it ours in my head felt like a lie. That was as tenuous as everything else between us.

I’d make it up to Mia. The alternative wasn’t something I could tolerate thinking about.

Somehow I put one foot ahead of the other and moved through the bodies packing the sidewalk in the early evening. Within a few blocks, walking fast wasn’t enough. I needed to run. To forcibly get the corrosion out of my lungs. I took off, dodging the people in my path, my gaze on the peeks of sun-soaked horizon between the buildings. I’d run forever if I had to.

Eventually it wouldn’t hurt so damn much to stay still.

At Mia’s building, I slowed and fumbled out my key for the lobby. I hit the stairs at the same clip, finally stopping in front of Mia’s apartment. I wanted to knock, and what bullshit was that? This was my place, at least temporarily.

Before I could make myself go inside, I heard the music. And the laughter.

Tentatively, I turned the knob, prepared to see just about anything occurring in Mia’s apartment.

Including my mother, Carly and Mia’s friend Kizzy dancing around the kitchen table, hand-in-hand as they screamed-sang Meredith Brooks’ “Bitch”. I only recognized the song because Slater’s sister Jenna liked to whip it out to torment her pacifist older brother.

At the moment, I felt pretty tormented myself.

“Hello,” I ventured cautiously, unsurprised when the trio of women didn’t so much as look up from their booty-shaking antics. Carly was brandishing some kind of mixing utensil over her head like a tomahawk, and it was dripping batter all over the floor and all over her. Kizzy had a bowl under her arm and she continued to stir while she shook her generous bottom.

And my mother—

I shut my eyes and covered my face with my hand. This wasn’t happening. My mother wasn’t dancing in her underwear while shaking a container of nuts.

Alternate universe, please send down your spaceship. I want off this planet.

“Foxy!” Carly’s screech made me drop my hand and sag, defeated, against the door. It shut with a thud, or else that was the sound of my brain exploding.

Abruptly, my mother stopped dancing. Kizzy, however, only whooped louder and dropped it down low to grind against her bowl like she was three seconds away from a Kitchen Aid-induced orgasm.

These were things I would never, ever be able to scrub out of my mind.

“Hey there. Wasn’t expecting you so early.” With a pointed glance at my now shellshocked mother, Carly ripped off the work schedule I’d tacked on the fridge. “You have another hour of work. And class. And umm, this isn’t what it looks like, I swear.”

“No? What is it then?”

My capacity to be shocked by Carly and Kizzy’s antics was apparently boundless. They’d stunned me with bedazzled penis cakes and all manner of other shenanigans, and every time I went down like a green fighter from a one-two punch.

But my mother. My mother was a prim and proper attorney’s wife who wore pearls and pumps to her society luncheons. In fact, she still wore the pearls and the pumps right now. Unfortunately, they didn’t go so well with her black underwear set.

I turned away. Dear God, my eyes. My
eyes
.

Even in the midst of my confused, semi-nauseous state, I was grateful too. If these crazy girls had made my mom laugh and dance for a few minutes, they were damn near miracle workers. Cynthia Knox laughed about as much as Mia had earlier this year, before I’d come into her life. My mother definitely didn’t dance and sing in her underwear, unless I’d been spared that indignity in my childhood.

So I supposed I shouldn’t act like a dick. I’d done enough of that for one week.

Bracing myself, I faced the kitchen again. I was relieved to see Kizzy had stopped getting intimate with her piece of stainless steel and was now slouched against the counter with a muffin wedged halfway into her mouth. Carly was fiddling with the old school radio Mia had brought along from their last apartment. And my mom had abandoned her container of nuts in favor of rotating her wedding band around her finger, her gaze centered anywhere but on me.

“Mia told me you were here,” I said, stepping forward in spite of every instinct that shouted for me to leave. The girls had been handling this situation better than I ever could. “I’m taking the rest of the evening off,” I said into the sudden silence as Carly snapped off the radio.

“We’ll just be in the other room.” Carly grabbed Kizzy’s arm.

Kizzy didn’t move. “Why? I’m eating. What if I want more muffins?”

“Bring another one.”

“I’m really hungry. One more might not be enough.”

Carly grabbed the brown bread box and shoved it at Kizzy before tugging her down the hall. “If you need us…” She trailed off and shut the door on Kizzy’s squawking. Even a mouthful of muffin couldn’t shut that girl up.

Gotta say I kind of admired her for it, because I felt as if I’d gone mute.

My mother picked up the half empty wineglass on the counter and tipped it back. “I’m not drunk,” she said when she turned to meet my stare.

“Didn’t say you were.” Honestly, I didn’t know how she’d had time to get drunk, unless Mia had chosen to leave out a lot of the story. That was probably par for our course lately.

“I just had one glass. That’s all I needed.”

“Understandable.”

“You don’t understand, Tray. How could you, when I don’t?” She sat down at the battered kitchen table Mia had dragged with her from her last apartment and braced her elbows on the scarred wood. “They didn’t ask me if I wanted to sing or dance. The moment Mia left, they just turned on the music and pulled me into the circle as if I was one of their friends.”

Yeah, no one tended to break into song around Mia under normal circumstances. But I was still more than a little surprised that my mother had danced and sang without being under the influence of a hell of a lot more than a few sips of wine. “How’d you lose your clothes?”

Her weak smile turned into a weak laugh. “I guess I was just in the moment.” She gestured to the living room. “They’re on the couch.”

The neat pile of garments fit her personality, at least. She was well known for her military corners and knife pleats, even if a staff at home meant she rarely had to make beds or fold clothes. “Want me to get them?”

“I can do it. I shouldn’t be sitting around like this.”

“It’s no worse than a bathing suit.” Maybe I hadn’t turned into a 100% grade A dick after all. Hope still remained.

“My bathing suit covers up a lot more than this. Dr. Dixon would be aghast if he knew I was showing off my stretch marks in such garish lighting.” She shook her head, talking about her liposuctionist with the same kind of familiarity as one spoke of the family doctor. “Sit. You look tired.”

Tired didn’t begin to cover it. I slumped into a kitchen chair while my mother went to get dressed. A moment later, she returned in her trim pants and silky blouse. Not a single strand of hair was out of place.

“Trayherne,” she said softly, passing her hand over my head.

I don’t know what made me do it, but I turned and buried my face in her stomach like I once had when I was a little boy. So many years ago, but with one whiff of her powder and lavender fragrance, I was thrust back into the past.

Unlike Mia, I still had a living mother. And by God, I didn’t want to lose her. I wouldn’t ever stop fighting to keep her safe.

“Stay here with us,” I whispered, not thinking of the implications. This wasn’t even my place. I had no right to be extending invitations. But it didn’t feel like I was being kind to a guest. This was my mother, the only one I’d ever have. I’d figure out the rest later.

She stroked my hair, subtly but definitively moving back. That inch between us felt like six miles. “Your father just lost control.”

I squeezed my eyes shut. I’d heard that song and dance so much I could sing the chorus without accompaniment. “Yeah, how many times is that now?”

She eased back another inch. Soon, her hand would fall away from my hair. “You don’t understand what goes on in a marriage.”

“I guess not.” I curled my fist into the back of her blouse. Some stupid part of me refused to let go. No matter how often I told myself I was turning my back, I never really did.

“Don’t judge your father. He’s under so much pressure. A man like him, with so many responsibilities… Of course he’ll lose his grip on his temper now and then.” Without looking up, I could tell she was fumbling for her pearls. Always clutching them like a life preserver in turbulent waters that would never, ever calm as long as she stayed in them. “I pushed him too far. It’s my—”

“Don’t,” I grated, scraping the chair back. “Don’t ever say those words in my presence.” I stumbled to my feet, nearly blind with the rage and helplessness choking me. I lived with a version of it every day because of Mia, and having this one layered on top of the newer agony only made both sting more. “Someone I love is always wondering if only she’d made a different move, if things could be different. But she fought her way free. She
bled
.” I grabbed my mother’s shoulders and shook her, only realizing what I’d done when the blue eyes so like my own went wide and horrified.

My chest locked. My mouth went dry. I stared at her as if she were a stranger.

As if
I
was.

Finger by finger, I released the pressure on her upper arms. I hadn’t checked my strength, and I knew how easily I could bruise fragile flesh. I’d taken pride in it once. I’d gotten paid to make other people bleed.

I hurt Mia day after day. It was okay, because she wanted it. Because she said I could.

I wasn’t the same kind of sadistic bastard as my father, using my brute strength to harm those with less.

Don’t agree with me? I’ll force you. I’ll make you.

I wasn’t.
I wasn’t
.

“Tray,” my mother breathed, coming toward me as I backed up. The hand she extended looked like the bony arm of a skeleton, shriveled fingers trying to haul me back from the brink.

Too late.

A trapdoor slammed shut in my mind, walling off my thoughts. I wasn’t my father. I wasn’t Darren. I didn’t force women to do what I wanted, whether they acquiesced or not.

I would never allow myself to hurt those I loved. I’d walk away first.

Eyes blind, I fumbled my way out of the kitchen, out of the living room, tripping over my feet like a newborn colt who hadn’t grown into his legs yet. My keys were in my hand, grabbed from the table where I tossed them by habit.