Want Me (Mess with Me 4)

“He idolizes you.”

Law grunts. “He definitely shouldn’t do that.”

“Why not? He told me you basically saved him by taking him in so he could finish high school.”

Before he even speaks, I can feel his agitation. “He still has a big mouth. Apparently his kids aren’t keeping him busy enough if he has time to talk about ancient history.”

He rolls over to face the other direction and it feels like the temperature in the room plunges twenty degrees. It’s funny how you can feel so alone even when another person is right beside you.

“All I ever wanted was to know you,” I whisper.

He doesn’t answer but his side of the bed is eerily still. Maybe this is just one more thing that’s going to wedge us apart but drunk Anya doesn’t care. Instead, I feel emboldened speaking into this dark room. Law is the one who chased off my date and drove me home like I’m some errant teenager who snuck out with a boy. The least he can do is hear what I have to say.

“You would never let me know you.” This time I say it louder, my fury rising the longer he ignores me. “I want to understand where you come from. What makes you who you are.”

With a little huff, he rolls over to face me. Now that my eyes have adjusted, I can make out his features since we’re so close.

“That isn’t who I am. That’s more about my father than about me.”

I want to argue but something tells me to wait. After a few minutes, his hand traces over the comforter between us until it’s close enough to touch.

“We used to hide from my father together. Tommy is five years younger which doesn’t make much difference now but was huge when I was ten and he was five.”

His finger stops right next to my arm. I hold my breath waiting to see what he’ll do next. When he edges closer, the warmth of his hand next to mine is so jarring that I almost jump.

“We had this chair that was just big enough for both of us to fit behind. I’m lucky I was such a skinny kid. It was always about something stupid. He would scream at my mother about where she’d been during the day and what she was wearing. And we would just hide and hope he didn’t notice us.”

My heart hurts and the sound of my throat as I swallow seems so loud that I worry he’ll hear it. I don’t want to do anything to distract him even though listening is agony.

“When I got older I started to intervene. He wouldn’t ever hit hard enough to leave bruises, he was too smart for that. He was a corporate lawyer but he knew enough about criminal law to keep from leaving any evidence behind.”

“What about your mom? Did she ever try to get help?”

He sighed. “She divorced him and left. He got full custody of us. All the years she’d been in therapy and on anti-depressants to deal with his bullshit worked against her in court. He made her look unstable and like it was in our best interest to stay with him. It was just one more way for him to hurt her. He didn’t even want us. She lives with her sister in New Mexico now. We see her at Christmas.”

“I’m sorry, Law.”

He cleared his throat. “It was a long time ago. I graduated and got the hell out of there as soon as I could. I got a scholarship to Columbia and moved to New York. Worked my ass off in college and then got a job at a big agency in the city. I never planned to come back.”

“What happened?”

“Joelle got pregnant.”

I had known there was a large age gap between the children but I hadn’t done the math before. Now I realized that they hadn’t just been young when they had their oldest son but they must have been teenagers.

“They were still in high school.”

He nods. “My father was furious when he found out. He already had one son who was a disappointment going into marketing instead of law. All his hopes were on Thomas to attend his alma mater and then eventually join the family firm. That’s actually how I know Ethan. His father is a partner in a law practice with my father and uncle back home.”

“Wow. I didn’t realize you two went that far back.”

“Yeah, he’s a good guy. He has been there for me since the beginning. He witnessed my father chewing me out once so he knew that he wasn’t the charming, affable good guy he pretended to be.”

“Well, I know Thomas didn’t go into the family business so I’m sure your father wasn’t happy about that.”

“No, he threw him out. He wanted Tommy to convince Jo to have an abortion. He didn’t care what they wanted. All that mattered was that it would look bad to have a son who was a teen parent with his high school girlfriend whose family was from the wrong part of town.”

“Bastard,” I whispered.