Page 50 of Anger Bang
She pressed her cheek against his arm. “I know there’s history there but—”
“She left us,” he said as he broke free and strode the three steps to the other side of the shed. “She just walked out the door one day and never came back.” He whirled around and looked at Thea, the pain—still so fresh after all these years—shining in his eyes. “She didn’t call, didn’t email, didn’t text. Nothing. For years. Decades.” His voice broke on the last word, and he dropped his gaze, looking at the floor while he fisted and unfisted his hands.
After a few beats, he let out a harsh breath and looked back up. His face was carefully blank, and an air of don’t-fuck-with-me encircled him like a force field. “Then a few years ago she reached out. Dex picked up and talked to her. I hung up as soon as I heard her voice.”
“Oh, Kade,” she said, fighting to stay still because it was obvious that he did not want to think he needed the comfort. “I’m so sorry.”
“It is what it is,” he said with a shrug. “I’m over it.”
As if she could—or would—ever believe that. She too knew the seductive power of denial. How many times had she agreed to go along with some plan of her mother’s or dream of her sister’s or wrong-headed promotional decisions of her boss at work because it seemed easier than the confrontation she’d built up in her mind? Too many to count. Kade may not be fawning out of panic, but he was lying to himself about how much he still wanted a relationship with his mom and how much that scared him.
“How old were you?” she asked.
His jaw tightened. “Fourteen.”
Wrapping her hands around her middle, she held herself, since he was—and was staying—out of reach. God, her chest ached for him. “And she didn’t give any explanation?”
“She did, but not until today.” He paused, and then let out a facsimile of a laugh that would only sound happy to a serial killer. “She said she tried to talk to us but that my dad blocked her while she was in rehab—something I can see him doing—and afterward we refused to take her calls. It was too late. We were fine without her.” He looked at the shed’s lone dirt-encrusted window. “I don’t need people in my life that leave, but Dex says she deserves a second chance.”
“But you don’t think so?” Nothing like stating the obvious—or at least what she was damn sure hebelievedto be obvious. “No second chances for you?”
He jerked his head around, his focus like a laser beam aimed right at her. “Is this where you tell me I’m wrong? Because I’m not.”
“It’s not my place to say if you’re right or wrong or what you should do.” She let out a shaky breath as she tried to thread her thoughts into one coherent idea, her pulse wild with anxiety at actually pushing a point rather than just accepting. “Still, you have to admit that we all fuck up. Sometimes it’s a small thing, sometimes it’s a huge thing. I’m not saying to forgive her, but maybe giving her a second chance is worth thinking about. Just something to consider.”
Her lungs were tight, and she could barely breathe, but she held her ground under the severe heat of Kade’s glare. They stayed like that for one heartbeat, then another, and another as every nerve in her body seized up. Then, Kade let out a breath and some of the tension eased out of his rigid shoulders.
“I don’t think you’re right,” he said, his tone nearly back to normal, “but I appreciate the input.”
Oxygen whooshed back into Thea’s lungs on a wave of relief.
“Families are hard.” Wasn’t that the fucking truth. There were a million more things she wanted to say about Kade and his mom, but the man had the pinched face of someone on the edge, and she didn’t want to be the one to push him over. A change in subject seemed the kindest thing she could do. “We better get going before they send out a search party looking for us.”
“This wedding is the worst,” he grumbled, but with the beginning of a real grin as he crossed over to the door and opened it a crack, no doubt to make sure they weren’t going to be ambushed by a camera crew the instant they walked out.
“Yeah,” she said, the words coming out before she could stop them, “but at least I got to meet you.”
He glanced back at her and winked. “We’ll be doing moremeetinglater tonight, if I have anything to say about it.”
“That sounds like the one thing that will get me through whatever they have planned for the bachelorette party.” Sort of like how she looked forward to an oversize spoonful of the emergency Betty Crocker chocolate frosting at the end of a hard day.
“Great minds.” He opened the door the rest of the way and stepped out, then held out his hand for her. “Now, once more unto the breach.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
A few hours later, Kade was mic’d up again and had one camera focused only on him, even though it was Dex’s groomsmen who were failing at flirting with the bored bartender.
Dex’s bachelor party wasn’t like any other he’d ever been to or heard of. No strippers, no ax throwing, no Vegas, no intensive yoga retreat that included a drumming circle, no pub crawl through London. Instead, it was Dex and his buddies doing shots and holding an impromptu movie trivia contest. In between rounds of guessing the movie this line came from, the groomsmen were doing their best to impress the bartender—a woman who looked like she had been putting up with annoying tourist behavior for years and was beyond unimpressed with it all.
Watching these pretty boys flame out was almost enough to put a smile on Kade’s face—not like the kind he couldn’t seem to stop whenever he was around Thea, but close. He should be more worried about that than he was.
Sometime between agreeing to her anger bang plan and this afternoon in that lawn equipment shed, he’d started to pretend that there wasn’t a clock ticking on going home. Oh, he knew he was full of shit, but pretending to believe his own bullshit was better than acknowledging that in forty-eight hours he’d be on a plane home.
Alone.
Thatwas exactly what he didn’t want to be thinking about. So instead, he was leaning in against the bar in the big barn where the first reception party had been held. There were cameras everywhere, and the mic attached to the collar of his shirt kept itching his collarbone. Trying to distract himself, he twisted a bit so he could better eavesdrop on the bartender as she gave the Hollywood types the what for when it came to hockey (how in the hell was she an Ice Knights fan clear out here?) compared to the L.A. Inferno. That’s when Dex bellied up to the bar next to Kade and set down four shots hard enough that some of the brown liquid inside them sloshed over the sides.
His younger brother’s usually picture-perfect hair was going six ways to Sunday, and one eyelid drooped lower than the other. Unlike Kade, Dex did drink every once in a while, but he’d never seen him drunk before. He wasn’t ski-slope drunk, where he had to lean forward to keep his balance, but Dex was weaving just enough that Kade used his forearm to move the shot glasses out of the way in case his brother went timber.
