Page 28 of Up in Smoke
“Erin, everything is okay. You’re here with me.Safe. Always safe.”
Don’t trust him. They lie.Her fingers hammered at buttons, attempting to lower the window or unlock the door, but it wouldn’t work. The car roared to life beneath her and she stamped a hand over her mouth.Caught. I’m caught.Cool wind hit her in the face as the window rolled down and she sucked it into her depleted lungs. She buried her face in her hands, peeking out at her escape through parted fingers, trying to focus on it.
“Look at me.”
She jerked her attention back to Connor and felt some of the riotous tension flee from her chest. The stark misery etched into his face is what did it. What brought her back. Oh God, she’d fucked it up. Again. She took the shirt he offered her gently and dragged it over her head, wishing it covered her belly. When she glanced back at Connor, he was no longer in the driver’s seat.Gone. He left. I don’t blame him.
After tugging her jeans back into place, she sank down further into the seat, wishing she could curl up and never move again. Before her pity party could turn into a full-blown barn burner, Connor appeared at the passenger door and opened it only after her nod. “Come on, sweetheart. Let’s take the bus home.”
Chapter Twelve
Connor had never been out of the Bronx for longer than a couple hours until he enlisted with the navy. At first, it had been because his family couldn’t afford vacations, or hell, even a trip to Ellis Island, on his father’s disability check. Connor couldn’t remember a time when his father hadn’t sat on their living room couch, bitter and disgusted with the world. Demanding meals, arguing with his insurance provider on the phone, drinking. Always, the drinking.
His father’s penchant for imbibing too much whiskey and turning violent had been the latter reason Connor hadn’t strayed too far from the Bronx. Maybe at one time he’d been too young to protect his mother, but around age thirteen, that had drastically changed. Over the course of a summer, he’d outgrown his father in every way possible. He’d started to meet the fists that had been flying at his mother since he could remember with blows of his own. He could still remember the first time he stopped his father’s fist in midair and felt bones creak in protest against his palm. Connor felt no shame admitting there had been ample satisfaction in seeing his father’s shock.
By age sixteen, Connor thought he’d had his father handled. There was an unspoken threat that if something happened to his mother ever again, Connor would make him sorry. His father had even cut back on the drinking, even attending the odd AA meeting. It had been a rare snippet of time in their household where it had felt almost peaceful. His mother, Joanna, had started to smile again. Started going back to church since she didn’t have to hide the black eyes anymore. He’d gotten comfortable, even dating a couple girls in his sophomore class.
The night his father died, Connor had walked into the house after one such date and stopped cold in the entryway. It wasn’t even late, but all the lights were off, except for in the kitchen. He could see it emanating from beneath the still-swinging door. Silent. So silent. He’d known before he even entered the kitchen that he’d find his mother. She sat with her back against the refrigerator door, knees pulled up to her chest, pressing a bag of frozen carrots to her eye.
“How was your date?” she’d asked him, words muffled because of a busted lip. Then she’d promptly burst into tears.
Connor could remember mentally checking out, almost as if there’d been an audibleclick. He’d left his mind in the kitchen and taken his rage-filled body elsewhere. Operating on pure testosterone, he’d stormed back through the house to find his father attempting to sneak down the stairs with his jacket. They had both frozen for a split second, long enough for Connor to communicate what he was going to do. But his father fell out the door first, fast on his feet despite his obvious inebriation. Connor had sprinted after him out onto the sidewalk.
What happened after that remained clear in his head. It might as well have happened last night. Or this morning. It was his greatest shame and yet only the beginning of what the following years would bring.
He turned his attention to Erin, who sat beside him silently, pressed up against the window of the bus. So petite, yet so bold. Some of the time. Her sadness was seeping into his bones with every passing moment, and he needed to fix it. There was a part of him that wanted to shout and put his fist through more glass, but it would only confirm to her that they’d failed. And he didn’t think they had. Not by a long shot. How could he when she’d shaken from pleasure on his lap? It was a sight he’d be replaying in his head for a long,longtime. What happened afterward didn’t have to take away from it.
“I want to take you somewhere.”
She met his gaze in the window. “Okay.”
Just like that. She trusted him not to take her somewhere she’d be uncomfortable. It made him even more determined to prove today had been amazing. Because, Jesus, he was still hard as fuck in his jeans just thinking about it. Suspected he would be for a good, long while. Sex wasn’t the answer right now, though, badly as he wanted it to be. Badly as heneededher. No, she’d been vulnerable in front of him this afternoon, and for people like them, that was a tough pill to swallow. So he’d make sure she didn’t have to do it alone. Even if the thought of exposing himself made his head pound.
“I was discharged from the SEALs for beating a civilian.”
Very slowly, Erin straightened. She blinked a few times, as if trying to figure out why he would reveal something like that. On a bus. Out of nowhere. “Why?”
Connor fought the urge to yank her onto his lap, bury his face in her hair while he told the story. “We were on a mission. I can’t tell you where.” He cleared his throat. “For days, we were in a safe house, waiting for our target. Just…waiting. Not moving or talking. We couldn’t.”
“I’d go crazy.” She frowned. “Crazier, I mean.”
He shook his head at her. “My vantage point overlooked a school. This teacher, she…reminded me of my mother. Always fussing with the kids’ hair or making sure they had enough to eat. I didn’t need to speak the language to know they all loved her.” The view from the window was still painted on his memory. “One day, she wasn’t smiling when she got there. She limped into the damn building. During recess, I saw that she had two black eyes. I just knew.” He met her gaze, but couldn’t hold it. “And it was like seeing my mother like that all over again. I couldn’t…separate it.”
As if she could sense he needed contact with her, Erin scooted closer and pressed the sides of their bodies together. “Your dad hit your mom,” she said, not asking a question.
“Yeah.” It felt hard to swallow. “He did. And then he couldn’t anymore.”
Erin seemed to process that, her face solemn. “What happened to the teacher?”
“We got orders to move that night. Just to the opposite side of the village. Our target had become paranoid and changed locations.” He closed his eyes and remembered that night how it happened. “We were on the move when I heard a man yelling. A woman crying. We all wanted to investigate, even if it countermanded orders, but I was the only one who couldn’t make a decision one way or another. I didn’t think. I just went. I saw him beating my m—the teacher, and I just reacted.”
She stroked a hand up the side of his face, into his hair. He leaned into her touch like a lifeline, comforted by the sound of her humming in her throat, her massaging fingers. “The fucker deserved to have the situation reversed, baby. You stood up for that woman when no one else would. I hope she holds on to that when things get rough. I hope she remembers her husband can be beaten just as easily.”
He felt weightless. Like he’d been carrying around sandbags on his shoulders for the last two years and she’d just slashed them open, allowing them to empty their contents onto the ground. Nothing could excuse what he’d done or how he’d gone about it, but knowing she didn’t judge him was a potent relief.
“What about your dad?”
For some reason, he felt no anxiety anymore in revealing this to her. Even though he’d never told a single soul in his life, save his mother who was there that night. At that moment, in the back of the dim, rumbling bus, they were the only two people in the world and no ugly memories could touch them. “When I was sixteen, I came home and found my mom. He’d hit her.” Connor shook his head. “He’d stopped for a while, straightened up, but…this time was bad. She needed stitches, a cast. It was like he’d decided to make up for lost time.” His hand fisted at the image of his mother bleeding on the kitchen floor. “I chased him out of the house and he got hit by a cab.”
