The Schemer (Harbor City 3)

His first instinct was to lie, to shut down this conversation he’d never had with anyone, but the truth came out anyway. “Partly.”

“Tell me.” She broke away from him, going back and picking up her beer off the shelf.

How in the world she knew that he needed space for his confession, he had no idea, but she did. That fact should have given him pause, but he was in too deep for that. That was a problem. A big one. Everly was the one woman who had the ability to tie him right back to the one thing he’d spent most of his life running away from, and if he wasn’t careful he’d go with her, smiling like a happy idiot. Forget it being a problem. It was a fucking disaster.

“I want to prove them wrong. All of them.” If he closed his eyes, he could picture each one, from his parents to Irena to the society assholes who still called him “Scholarship Boy” when they thought he was out of earshot. “I want to show them that where I came from doesn’t define who I am.” God, he sounded pathetic. Weak. This wasn’t the image he projected. He was success personified, not some kid whining about his rough childhood. “Nothing like screwing with a guy with parental issues to really make you rethink your dating decisions, huh?”

A wry laugh escaped her lips, and she shook her head. “You don’t have the market cornered there.”

Heat rushed up from the pit of his belly. “Tell me.” So he could track down the people who wronged her and make them pay.

The pacing started again, but this time it was slower, more deliberate, almost like a hiker lost in the woods afraid that if she stopped moving she’d lose the last bit of hope she had left.

“My dad was an asshole, too, just a different kind.” She took a swig from her beer, turning at the end of the bookshelf and heading back toward Tyler. “He was a bigwig in the financial district. He and my mom met when she worked for him as his secretary. She fell in love. He thought she was the kind of girl you fucked but certainly never married.” She took another drink and set the half-filled bottle on the bookshelf, this time in front of Great Expectations. “When she got pregnant with me, she thought everything would change between them, and it did, bu

t not the way she thought. He fired her. Promised to pay child support without fighting her if—and only if—she promised to go quietly. So she did—and it broke her.”

“What do you mean ‘broke her’?”

Her bottom lip trembled, and in that moment there was no one in the world Tyler hated more than Everly’s dick of a dad. No wonder she’d been so hard on him in the beginning. He couldn’t discount there were some similarities between them—especially when he’d started things off by suggesting she lose her blue-collar accent. He wanted to kick his own ass again for that ridiculous comment.

She bit her lip like she was struggling not to share too much. He just waited patiently, hoping she felt comfortable enough to open up to him more.

She took a deep breath. “Nunni used to tell me that my mom wasn’t always sad all the time and that she’d come back from it, but she didn’t. When she died, I went to live with Nunni.”

Probably the right choice, but it wasn’t the one a lot of courts would sanction if there’d been a custody fight. “Not your dad?”

“I’d have to really concentrate to even pick that man out of a lineup.” She shrugged, but it was only a shadow of her normal attitude. “I only saw him a few times before my mom died.”

There were some people who deserved a little Waterbury justice. That asshole was definitely one of them. “Who is he?”

She shook her head, her long black strands giving her a temporary curtain. “It doesn’t matter.”

Needing to do something—anything—and since tracking down her dad and exacting revenge was a fight for another day, Tyler strode over to her and enveloped her, pulling her against him and holding her tight. “Our parents were real gems.”

As their bodies melded together, a dam seemed to break in Everly. Her shoulders shook as he stroked her back, trying to offer comfort.

“My mom was all right,” Everly said, her voice a little shaky as she still clung to him. “She just couldn’t handle the hand she’d been dealt. I realized how true that was when I walked into our apartment after school one day and found her hanging in the bathroom linen closet.”

The image stopped him cold.

He forgot how to breathe, his mind grappling with the thought of a little girl with long black hair and big, watery eyes staring up at her dead mother. She must have felt so alone. And abandoned by both parents now. His chest grew uncomfortably tight and he squeezed her closer.

“Jesus.” No wonder Everly held so tight to that badass shell of hers. He didn’t know what to say, so he said the only thing he could. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay,” she said, sounding like it was anything but. They stood there for, hell, he didn’t know how long, while Everly worked to regain her composure. Eventually, a stillness invaded her body, of acceptance or relief he couldn’t tell, and she let out a soft sigh. “The whole situation with my parents taught me a lot about life and the importance of fighting for those you love, caring for them, making sure that no matter what I’d be there for them.”

“That’s why you do so much for your grandmother.” He’d seen her financials, the visits, the cost of care; it all had her right on the border between making it and bouncing her rent check.

“As much as I can. If it hadn’t been for her, I would have ended up in the system, because my dad sure as hell wasn’t going to take in a little girl he couldn’t acknowledge to his country club cronies.”

That bastard deserved to have his clock cleaned with a tire wrench. “He didn’t deserve you.”

“But I still wanted him to want me,” she said with a sniffle. “What can I say, the relationship between girls and their daddies, it matters.”

What could he say to that? He had nothing to offer. He’d run from his family as soon as he could. So he just held her and they stayed like that, hanging onto each other for dear life before Everly took a step back, brushing away the few tears that had dared to fall. With a deep breath, she reset her shoulders and her nothing-bothers-me mask fell back into place. He could call her on it, but he understood the necessity of that barrier some days.

“No more sad stories that explain why we don’t believe in happy endings.” She cocked her head to the side and leaned for him, this time her fingers going to the buttons of his shirt, which she flicked open with determined speed. “This is supposed to be just for fun, remember?”