It was something he hadn’t thought about in years. Purposefully. And it was a story he had told only to his father. So once again, he thought, he was sharing things with Melinda that he never shared with anyone.
“You know how I said I lived in Vegas until I was sixteen?”
She nodded.
“That’s because at sixteen,” he said, in a voice detached from feeling, “I was finally big enough, strong enough, to beat the crap out of my mother’s boyfriend.”
“Sean—” She snaked an arm around his middle and held him.
He was grateful and tightened his hold on her in response. The years fell away easily and he was back in that miserable apartment in Vegas.
“The air-conditioning was broken, as usual,” he said, his voice soft and reluctant, as he mentally went back to a time he wished to hell he could forget. “It was so damn hot, it felt as if every breath I took was setting fire to my lungs.”
He paused and said, “Eric, Mom’s boyfriend, was a big guy with what you could say was anger-management issues.” He smiled tightly at the understatement. “He’d been beating on my mother for a couple of years. She always threw him out, and she always took him back. And I couldn’t do anything about it.”
God, he remembered the frustration, the fury that used to claw at his throat. He’d ached to be big enough that he could finally defend his mother. Take care of her.
And at last, that day came.
“He hit her again on my sixteenth birthday, and I hit him back.”
Melinda said nothing, and he didn’t look down at her, not wanting to see what was in her face. Pity? Revulsion? Didn’t think he could take either one. So he kept his gaze fixed on the wall opposite and let his memories dredge up the images.
“He went down, and I think I was as surprised as he was,” Sean admitted. And through the prism of time, he remembered seeing the bastard stare up at him out of eyes glittering with fury and fear.
“But like most bullies, he didn’t like being hit as much as he enjoyed being the one doing the hitting. So he just laid there on the floor, staring up at me like I had grown two heads.
“Mom was there too, and her latest black eye was just starting to bloom on her face.” He laughed shortly. “I was so damn proud of myself that I looked to her expecting to see a little hero worship.”
“What happened?” Melinda whispered.
Sean took a breath and said flatly, “She dropped to her knees beside Eric and shouted at me to get out.”
“What?”
He smiled a little at the outrage in her voice, but he still didn’t turn his gaze on her. Didn’t quite trust himself to finish this sordid little tale if he was looking at Melinda.
“Eric pushed away from her and headed out the front door, cursing and stumbling a little, which I admit, made me feel good in spite of everything. Mom chased after him,” Sean added. “But before she left she told me to leave and that she never wanted to see me again.”
“She was wrong,” Melinda said, pulling out of his grip to turn and look at him.
He couldn’t avoid staring into her eyes, and he noticed the fierce, righteous indignation shining in those blue depths. She was infuriated on his behalf, and Sean appreciated it. But the story was old and long since over.
“Doesn’t matter anymore,” he assured her, though the dark spot in a corner of his heart still burned with the memory.
Even now, so many years later, he could remember the look on his mother’s face. And just like every time the memory sneaked up on him, he tried to put a name to the expression she wore as she looked at him. Disgust? Fury? Hatred? The last bruise on her cheek was a mass of green and yellow streaks, visible even beneath her carefully applied makeup. And still, she had defended the bastard.
In his mind, Sean could hear her voice.
“He loved me. He took care of me. You had no right. You’re just like your father, out for yourself and screw everybody else.”
“Where did you go?” Melinda’s voice again, tearing him from the past and grounding him in the present.
He leaned his head back against the bed. “I called my dad. He sent a King jet for me, and I went to live with him.”
“Well thank God for your father, anyway.”
Sean chuckled. “Not too many people have ever said that about Ben King.”
“Well I am. Your mom was wrong, Sean.”
“Maybe. But because of what I did, I never saw her again,” he said, his gaze locked on hers. “She died a few years later.”
“Did Eric—”
“No,” he answered quickly. “Car accident on the strip. Some tourist ran her down one night.”
“I’m sorry, Sean. So sorry.” Her features were a mask of sympathy and fury for what he’d gone through. But Melinda wasn’t finished. “You shouldn’t feel guilty about what you did. It was right.”
He looked at her then and saw the fierceness in her eyes. All directed at easing his pain, and something inside him tightened another notch. She was the first person, other than his brothers, to care about what he was feeling. To try to make it better. Warmth stole through him, and Sean realized that talking about the past had actually distanced him from it as he had never been able to do before. He felt…freer than he had in a very long time.
He was walking a thinner and thinner line every damn day with Melinda. He knew it. He felt it. But damned if he could pull away.
“And you shouldn’t feel guilty about today,” he said quietly. “It’s okay to be alive, you know.”
She stroked her fingertips along his cheek with a featherlight touch. He caught her hand and turned his face to plant a kiss in the center of her palm. “Let go of the guilt, Melinda. Trust me when I say holding onto it will tear you apart.”
As he watched, she glanced down at the photo she still held in one hand. Sean looked at the framed picture too and knew without a doubt that he hated Steven Hardesty. And no way would he let her turn her back on a life for the sake of a dead man.
Deliberately, he took the picture from her and set it facedown on the bedside table. “Steven’s gone, Melinda.”
She took a long, shuddering breath and let it out again. “I know.”
“Would he want you to be miserable forever?”
“No.”
“Then let him go. Be with me.” He tipped her chin up so her eyes, red-rimmed from crying and pain, were focused on him. “I’m safe, Melinda. I’m the rebound guy. I’m temporary.” His fingers smoothed away the last of her tears, and he leaned in to kiss her forehead. “Use me to heal your heart, Melinda. I won’t be here long. We both know that. There’s no complications here. I don’t want anything from you.”