The Stone Brothers: A Complete Romance Series (3-Book Box Set) Page 11

  Skylar walks over to the doorway and peeks around it into the dining room and then comes back to rest against the wall next to me. “I can call the police and have him escorted out. We could say he was harassing you.”

  I shake my head. “I don’t want to cause a scene, Skylar.”

  She looks around the kitchen thoughtfully. “Okay, we’ll simply shut down the restaurant. Claim a kitchen fire or something—anything to get everyone out of here quickly.”

  I look over at her, amazed she would even consider such a thing. Closing the restaurant. Losing thousands of dollars in revenue just so I don’t have to face my father. And she didn’t even hesitate. She is more family to me than the man sitting at table eight with whom I share DNA.

  “No,” I tell her. “I won’t have you do that for me. Plus, he’ll only come back some other time.”

  “So what are you going to do? Do you want to slip out the back? Hide in the kitchen? Whatever you want to do is fine. I’ll cover your tables for the rest of your shift.”

  I stand up straight, wipe my sweaty palms on my apron, and gather all the strength I can muster. “I’m going out there. I won’t cause a scene, I promise. I’ll just hear him out and let him be on his way.”

  “Oh, Charlie, are you sure you want to do that?” She looks at me with the sympathetic eyes of a woman who never knew anything but a kind, loving father who would do anything to protect his daughter.

  “No, I’m not sure. But I think it might be the only way to make him disappear.”

  Before I can talk myself out of it, I walk out into the dining room with purpose. He notices me right away. Our eyes meet. His are full of emotion. Mine are full of rage. I don’t look away. I don’t want him to see me back down. I want him to know I don’t need him. I don’t need a father who put himself before his own child. Who pretended to love a daughter and then destroyed her with his selfishness. Who left me at the most vulnerable time in my life.

  Who I wish was dead and buried alongside my mother.

  I scoot into his booth, sitting on the bench across from him.

  He lets out a sigh, like he was holding his breath while waiting to see if I would come over. “Charlie,” he says.

  I have to keep my eyes from closing and remembering the voice of the protector he once was. From remembering how, when my mother would become mad at me, he would intervene and get her to walk away, thwarting what I feared would be another slap across the face. Or painful tug of my hair. Or deliberate push into a doorway.

  But then I remind myself of what happened after he left. That’s when the beatings really started. I don’t know if she blamed me for his leaving or if she felt like without him around, she could get away with more. Whatever the reason, it’s his fault. It’s always been his fault. None of it would have happened if it weren’t for him.

  I take in his appearance. He’s ten years older than when I last saw him. That would make him fifty. The sprinkling of gray hair along with the lines on his forehead and around his eyes speak to his age. But there is something else. Something behind his eyes that ages him even more. A tiredness that doesn’t come from age alone.

  I raise my brows at him, and without speaking, I question why he’s here. With my eyes, I let him know I’ve no intention of talking. Only listening. I fear if I open my mouth, two things might happen. One: I won’t be able to control my fury and I’ll scream and yell and lash out at him in every way possible, causing a scene that would only hurt the people who truly love me, the Mitchells. Or two: I’ll cry.

  “Okay, you don’t want to talk to me,” he says. “I get it. I get that you hate me. I hate me, too. And I’m not here to try and change that.” He rubs a hand over his jaw. “Well, maybe I am, but I know it may not be possible, certainly not after I stayed away so long. But I hope since you’ve come this far, you’ll stay for a few minutes and hear me out. You don’t have to say a word. Just listen. I know you don’t owe me anything. But please, just give me a few minutes to try and explain.”

  Skylar comes over and places two glasses of water on the table. We make eye contact long enough for her to make sure I’m okay. I nod at her, assuring her I am.

  I take a drink of water, wetting my bone-dry mouth. Then I look at my father, giving him permission to begin.

  “I want you to know that everything I tell you today is not meant to take away from the hell you went through after I left. What I’m about to tell you pales in comparison to what became your life. But I hope it will at least provide you with an explanation. It may not be a good one. I failed. I failed as a husband. I failed as a father. I failed to do the right thing. I failed because of fear. I was a coward. And nothing I can do or say now can change that. But I’m going to tell you anyway.”

  I wring my hands under the table. And despite the cold March weather, I feel beads of sweat emerging on my forehead. But I keep my face stoic. I refuse to show him any emotion. There is nothing he could say that would make him deserving of my pity. I’ll never feel anything but abhorrence for this man. I train my eyes on the table, refusing to even look at him while he talks.

  “I don’t expect you to believe me,” he says. “But I truly had no idea your mother was hurting you in any way. I didn’t know about any of it until recently. I just assumed you hated me because I left the two of you. And I let you hate me because I knew I deserved it. I knew I failed you as a father.”

  Anger climbs my backbone and I know I’m about to break my own rule about not speaking, but I can’t help it. And it takes every ounce of self-control not to yell at him. “Liar!” I spit at him in a loud whisper. “I know you knew what she was doing. I heard you fighting about it before you left. I heard you specifically talk about how the hitting had to stop.”

  He nods. “I don’t doubt what you heard, Charlie. We did argue a lot, but we argued about what she was doing to me, not you.”

  “What?” I ask disbelievingly.

  “I don’t know if you remember the day she cut off your hair when you were six,” he says, nervously running a finger up and down the side of his drink. “But that was the day my life changed forever.”

  Spiteful words spill from my mouth. “Your life? You weren’t even there that day.”

  He nods. “You’re right. I wasn’t there when she did it. But when I came home that night and saw what she’d done—that she’d cut off the hair I knew you loved to your very soul—we had a fight. I told her she had no right to do it. That she had to get over whatever she was feeling about getting older and not working. I had felt for some time that she blamed you for her lack of work. That somehow she thought it was your fault she was aging out of the roles she once coveted.”

  He sighs and looks around at the neighboring tables. Then with a weak voice, he looks directly at me and says, “I said those very words to her. I said them to her and then she hit me.”

  My eyes betray me as they look up to catch his.

  He nods, his gaze falling to the table, as if embarrassed by what he just revealed to me.

  “What?” I ask, again, not quite understanding what I think he is trying to tell me.

  I think back to when I was younger and it dawns on me. I’m sure every girl thinks their daddy is a big strong man. I was no different. I mean after all, he would pick me up and twirl me around. He would carry me to bed when I would fall asleep in the car. He would scream and shout at the television when his team wasn’t winning the game. To me, he was this larger-than-life alpha male. My protector. My dad.

  But in reality, he couldn’t have been more than a hundred and forty pounds soaking wet. He was tall, but impossibly thin.

  “I was thirty-four years old when your mother started abusing me, Charlie.” He clears his throat and takes a drink. “It started out as a slap here and a push there. But she was a woman and I wasn’t going to fight back. She was frustrated about her job. She was under a tremendous amount of pressure to be this perfect person to everybody outside of her family. And I was blinded by her beauty. Her
power. Her celebrity.

  “She controlled everything about our lives. Our finances. My career. You.” He shakes his head in shame. “I felt inferior to her in every way. And when the slaps turned into punches, that just made me feel even weaker. At first I wouldn’t fight back. But then it got to the point where I couldn’t fight back. I was ashamed. I was a man and should be able to stand up for myself. But I didn’t.”

  My heart is pounding into my chest wall. I try not to show any emotion. Despite what he went through, he should have never left me there. With her. How could he not know?

  “I had no idea, Charlie. No idea about any of it. I watched her closely with you. I never saw any aggression towards you. She was frustrated with you, yes, but what mother isn’t frustrated with a rambunctious child?”

  It’s hard for me to feel bad for this man. He doesn’t even know the half of it. I’m sure he thinks she just slapped me around a bit. Maybe I should enlighten him. “She hit me that day, too,” I say. “The day she cut my hair—she slapped me. She slapped me and told me she didn’t love me anymore and that you wouldn’t love me either if I wasn’t a good girl. After that, she didn’t touch me much. A few slaps here and there. Until you left, that is. I guess when you left she lost her punching bag, so I became it.”

  I roll up my sleeves and display my forearms across the table. Anyone who looks closely at my scars can clearly see they are burns. And he knows my mom smoked like a fucking chimney.

  “Oh, God,” he says.

  This is when it happens. This is when the tears start to fall. His—not mine.

  “I’m so sorry.” He reaches out to touch me, but I pull away before his hand can grab mine. “I’m so sorry,” he repeats. “There is no doubt in my mind that leaving was the right thing to do. But I should have taken you with me, Charlie. I should have fought for you. I was weak. I had no idea she would hurt you. I had no idea what she was truly capable of. How can I ask you to forgive me when I will never be able to forgive myself?”

  I take in a shaky breath. “No. You have no idea what I went through. You’ll never have any idea of how your leaving ruined me.”

  I contemplate telling him. I contemplate telling him I could have lived with the abuse. The slaps, the punches, the burns. I could have even lived with the blows to the head from her precious awards. But what I can’t live with is the fact that there are twelve names on the list I gave to Ethan. Twelve men who have seen me naked. Twelve men who have all done something to me against my will. Twelve men whose names, whose faces, whose vulgar touch will haunt me until the day I die.

  Instead, I slide out of the booth to leave, but he grabs my arm. “Wait,” he begs. He reaches into his pocket with his other hand and slides a business card across the table. “Take it. In case you ever . . .” He sighs. “Just take it.”

  I look at the card as if it could burn me. He knows I won’t take it. He picks it up and reaches across the table to tuck it in one of the pockets of my apron.

  “I’ve never been able to watch a football game without thinking of you,” he says. “Without missing you so badly my heart hurts. Without regretting every decision I’ve ever made.”

  Then he lets me go.

  And just like that, I walk away from the man who was once my whole world.

  Chapter Eighteen

  I feel like I just ran a marathon. But I only walked to the rear hallway near Skylar’s office. I slide down the wall until my butt hits the floor. Then I put my head between my knees and breathe.

  “Sweetie, are you okay?” Skylar asks, having followed me back.

  I nod even though I’m not.

  She touches my shoulder. “Use my office. Go home if you like. Do whatever you need to do. I’ve got you covered.”

  I look up at her and give her a sad smile. “Thanks. I just need a few minutes. I’m not going home. The last thing I need to do is sit on my ass and think about what just happened out there. If I could just chill in your office for a few minutes, that would be great.”

  “Minutes, hours, however long it takes, Charlie.” She hands me the key. “Let me know if you need anything.”

  She goes back out front to cover my tables.

  As I enter her office, I look at the walls that are lined with family pictures. It reminds me of the wall in Ethan’s reception area. It’s such a novel thing to me—family photos. Maybe because I’ve never had one. As far back as I can remember, I can’t think of one time we had a family photo taken when I was younger. Not. One. Time.

  Who does that? What kind of mother doesn’t hang pictures of her family on her walls? The only pictures I remember are pictures of her. Her winning awards. Her on a poster of movie promo. Her posing with other celebrities on the red carpet.

  There is a knock on the door and then Jarod walks through, carrying a shot glass. I wasn’t aware he’d started his shift yet. He puts the drink down in front of me. “Skylar said to give you this. She never condones drinking on the job, so you must really need it.” He walks into the hallway and then turns around. “This doesn’t have anything to do with my cousin, does it?”

  My eyes snap to his. “Why would you say that, Jarod?”

  “I don’t know.” He shrugs. “It’s just that he’s been in a really bad mood lately and now you’re back here looking like this.”

  “Lately?” I ask.

  “Yeah, like since he met you.”

  Oh? “I wasn’t aware you two were close. I thought you said he was a pain in the ass.”

  “He is a pain in the ass. But he’s my cousin and I still hang out with him. What’s up with you two anyway?”

  “Apparently, nothing,” I say.

  “Maybe that’s why he’s in a shitty mood.”

  I shake my head. “All the nothingness—it’s his choice.”

  He nods his head like he understands. Then he gives me a sympathetic look. Before he walks away, he says, “Cut him a break, okay? He’s been through some shit.”

  Some shit? I wonder if it has anything to do with the cryptic Chinese tattoo on his chest, or the CAT one on his neck. Or maybe it has something to do with Gretchen. But I’m too proud to ask. Or too scared. “Haven’t we all?” I say. Then I raise my glass to him and throw back the brown liquid that burns my throat. “Thanks, Jarod.”

  I close my eyes and let the warm feeling of the alcohol wash over me. And before I know it, I’m fishing the business card out of my pocket. For a second I fear he’s only given it to me in hopes I have contacts that could help him with his career as a screenwriter. But when I examine the card, I see he’s not a screenwriter at all. I blink my eyes and re-read the card.

  George Tate

  Author of children’s books

  He writes children’s books?

  The card lists contact information with a website and email. I turn the card over to see he has hand-written his cell phone number on the back.

  My curiosity gets the better of me and I lean over to use Skylar’s laptop.

  I’ve never once in ten years looked up anything about my father. I never wanted to know the first thing about him. I especially never wanted to know if he’d hit it big in show business.

  My fingers shake as I open Google and type in his name. I’m directed to an Amazon page that lists all of his books. I count. There are nine of them. Upon further inspection, I see they are all short books illustrated by many pictures. The details in his bio say he writes the stories for young school-aged children to raise awareness of sensitive topics such as bullying, peer pressure and even abuse. The last line of his bio makes me pause.

  George Tate writes these books in an effort to help the children of others, as he was never able to do with his own child.

  It makes it sound like I’m dead.

  I close the laptop, unwilling to read anything more about him. I don’t want to know if, after he left me to the fucking wolves, he acquired redeeming qualities. He could be the king of fucking England for all I care. Nothing he has done or will ever do can ma
ke up for the fact that he left me. Abandoned me. Ruined me.

  But all this time I thought he left because of me. Of course, now I realize my mother wanted me to think that. Hell, she started brainwashing me even before he left. Every time I misbehaved she would tell me he wouldn’t love me. Every time she did something she didn’t want him to know about, she threatened me that he might leave if he found out. So I never told him. I never told him about the drugs and the drinking and the men she would entertain when he wasn’t home. I think maybe all along, deep down she knew he would leave so she set me up to take the fall for it.

  She was jealous of our Football Saturdays. My dad was a big fan of college football and he raised me to love the game, too. The two of us even went on a road trip every year when his favorite team, the Miami Hurricanes, was playing within driving distance. Those were the only good memories of my childhood. Those trips were a thousand times better than meeting movie stars, going to premiers, or having lunch with big-named producers—all my mother’s idea of showing me a good time.

  Two months before he left, she ruined football for me, too. One Saturday when my dad and I were loading up the car to head four hours away to Pennsylvania to watch the Miami Hurricanes play Penn State, she stopped us at the last minute, telling my dad she was able to set up a meeting with a prestigious production company who wanted to look at one of his screenplays. But they would only see him that afternoon. We cancelled the trip, of course, and my dad waited three hours at a restaurant. He came home steaming mad. This was one of the fights I heard. He said he knew she was lying because he called the company and they had no record of anyone ever setting up a meeting. My mother made up excuses, telling him that his screenplays were shit and they must have decided at the last minute not to take the meeting. Producers do that all the time, she said. It’s just the nature of the business. When he accused her of setting up the whole charade to keep us from our road trip, she laughed it off, telling him he was silly to even want to take a twelve-year-old girl to a football game. That others would think he’s a dirty old man. I remember hearing a crash and running to my room.