“But you don’t believe that?”
“Life wasn’t easy for my sister.”
“Doesn’t sound like it was easy for you, either.”
“No, it wasn’t.” He has no idea how hard things were, and as much as I’d prefer to keep my ugly childhood locked up inside me where I don’t have to examine it, I can’t stop the words from coming. “My father didn’t make things easy for anyone near him. He wasn’t always bad, not in the early years, at least. No one realized he had psychological issues. It would’ve mattered if we did. He was too proud for therapy, not that we could’ve afforded it. He drank instead. Mom thought she could save him. She tried to be his rock, but he spiraled to a dark place. One day he could be charming, seemingly normal. The next, he was a monster.”
“I’m sorry,” Jared says, his voice as grim as his expression. “That’s no way for anyone to grow up.”
“Jen got the brunt of his rage because she was so similar to him. She had his lightning temper, the same habit of lashing out when she felt attacked. She was rebellious, too. That only escalated the conflicts between them, which meant all of us suffered for it.”
“How did you manage to turn out so normal? Hell, better than normal.”
I shrug, brushing off his assessment with a downward glance and a shake of my head. “I don’t know about that. All I ever wanted was to hold the pieces of my family together, whatever it took. If that meant tutoring my middle school classmates for a few dollars each week in order to help put food on our table when Mom’s small paychecks didn’t stretch far enough, that’s what I did. If I had to put myself at the striking end of my father’s fists so he didn’t end up killing Jen during their fights, I weathered the blows before my mother had the chance to step in and get hurt, too.”
“Jesus Christ.” Jared reaches out to me, gently stroking my cheek as if he can see the bruises that used to ride there after my father’s manic rages. His thumb traces my jawline, his dark eyes smoldering with a combination of outrage and tender concern. “I’ve never met anyone as courageous and strong as you are. No one, Melanie.”
I haven’t told him the worst of it. No one knows that ugly truth except my mom, the only person alive who endured it along with me.
His compassion right now is almost too much for me to bear. I turn my face away from the comfort of his caress. I don’t want to crumble against him, no matter how tempting it might be to take the couple of steps that would move me into his arms.
“Where is your father now?” he asks, a dangerous edge to his low voice. “How did you finally get away from him?”
“He was killed in a car accident when I was thirteen.”
“Driving drunk, I assume.”
“No. Ironically, I don’t think he’d had anything to drink that night. He was having one of his manic episodes. He started driving erratically, shouting and swearing over nothing. Speeding like a man possessed as we approached the bridge on the freeway.”
Jared’s brows furrow. “You were in the vehicle with him?”
“We all were. Mom, Jen, and me.”
“What happened?”
“We had been at one of my school events, driving home from a regional science fair on Long Island. It was dark and raining that night. Dad was in a mood after hearing he’d been laid off again. He started railing about everything—the gas it took to take me to the event, the storm outside, the injustice of life in general. Mom asked him to slow down, to stop shouting because he was scaring all of us, but he couldn’t be reasoned with. There was a wildness in his eyes I’d never seen before, a cold resignation. I saw it when he glanced at me in the rearview mirror in those last few seconds before the crash.”
I see it now, too. I close my eyes, but I can’t erase the sight of his bleak stare in that narrow piece of glass. I shudder with the chill of it, even now.
Jared’s fingers brush lightly under my chin, coaxing me to look at him. “Tell me what he did.”
“He didn’t slow down. His eyes were still glued on mine in the mirror when he jerked the steering wheel to the right and hit the gas even harder on the bridge. Another car in the lane beside us clipped our rear bumper and sent us into a spin. It slowed our car down enough so that we only smashed into the guardrail instead of going over it as I’m sure my father intended.”
Jared grinds out a curse, his handsome face tight with fury. “That son of a bitch. He couldn’t handle his own problems, so he was going to kill you all?”
I nod, because as stark and horrific as the statement is, it’s the truth.
“He wasn’t wearing a seatbelt,” I explain, my voice quiet. “The impact threw him from the car. He died on the scene. Mom and Jen and I all spent time in the hospital with varying injuries, but we survived.”
Jared nods soberly. “That scar under your arm. This is the accident you told me was no big deal.”
I can’t pretend the crash—and my father’s cold actions—were anything less than life-altering. Not with this man. His gaze has had the power to look inside me from the very beginning. Even if I tried to hide this pain from him now, I couldn’t.
And I don’t want to.
I realize it with a clarity that shocks me.
“There are times, even now, when I wake up in the dark bathed in a cold sweat and dreaming that I’m still in that car. I’m twenty-five years old, yet I go to bed sometimes afraid to shut my eyes because I know I’m going to
