Marcus grins. “Right. Then why not a veterinarian? Or a zookeeper?”
“Oh, that would be amazing.” I sigh with exaggerated longing and dip my scallop into the delicious gravy on top of the tastefully arranged mound of sweet potato mash. Geoffrey’s cooking is high-end-restaurant good—not that I’ve been to many high-end restaurants. For the next minute, my mouth is too full to talk, but finally, I manage to ask, “What about you? Have you ever imagined anything along those lines?”
As soon as the words leave my mouth, I want to kick myself. Marcus’s face tightens, his smile disappearing without a trace. “No,” he says evenly. “I’ve always known where I come from, so there was no point in fantasizing.”
Dammit. I’m so stupid. He told me about his father, how he’d been killed in prison where he was serving time for armed robbery and assault. I remembered that, of course, but it somehow didn’t register fully. In my mind, Marcus’s upbringing had been pretty much a carbon copy of mine, with a shitty mother and a nonexistent father. But his father had been worse than nonexistent; he’d been a criminal.
Or at least, a guy who was convicted of armed robbery and assault.
“Do you think your father could’ve been innocent?” I ask cautiously. “Because that happens all the time, right? Wrongful convictions?”
Marcus’s mouth twists. “Oh, he was definitely guilty. If not of that specific crime, then of a dozen others. He’d done time before, more than once. Grand theft auto, breaking and entering, arson—he’d been convicted of everything short of kidnapping, rape, and murder. And I wouldn’t be surprised if he’d done that too, just without getting caught.”
I stare at him, my chest aching. “I’m sorry. That must be so tough for you. Have you always known about the kind of man he was, or did you find out later, as an adult?”
“I’ve always known. My mother loved to tell me about his exploits in detail, so I grew up on tales of his robberies like other kids do on bedtime stories.” Bitter amusement glimmers in Marcus’s gaze. “Her favorite thing was telling me how much like my father I was, how I was bound to grow up to be just like him.”
“Well, she was clearly wrong,” I say fiercely. I can sense the pain underneath his lightly spoken words, and it makes my heart feel like it’s being sliced into pieces. “You’re nothing like him, and if she could see you now, she’d know it.”
“Am I not, though?” A shadow passes over Marcus’s face. “Because sometimes, I wonder.”
“You’re not,” I say firmly. “Not even for a second. Blood doesn’t tell, remember? It’s the choices we make that determine who we are.” The man sitting in front of me might be driven in the extreme, and downright ruthless at times, but he’d never hurt innocent people. I know that about him, I can feel it. The intense ambition that burns inside him could’ve led him down a darker path, but it didn’t—because early on, he chose not to be like the man who sired him, just like I chose not to be like the woman who gave birth to me.
Marcus’s gaze softens, a smile tugging at one corner of his mouth. “Choices, huh? That sounds like one of those anti-drug slogans for teens.”
I grin. “It does, doesn’t it? I should probably come up with something more creative.”
“I’m sure you will if you put your mind to it. You’re a great writer,” Marcus says, and I blink at the earnestness in his tone.
When would he have seen my writing?
“A great editor, I mean,” he amends, and I exhale in relief. For a second there, I was afraid he’d somehow caught a glimpse of the story I started working on this weekend.
At this stage, I’m not ready to acknowledge to myself that I’m attempting this, much less talk about it with anyone. As an English major, I’ve known far too many people who started a novel and never finished it, and as a freelance editor, I’ve seen how hard it is to craft a compelling story. I may know proper grammar and be able to string sentences together, but the odds of me getting past the first few chapters, much less finishing an entire book, are slim. As a book-obsessed teenager, I tried it and failed miserably, getting stuck less than two thousand words in. Later, in college, I was able to write a few short stories for my Creative Writing class, but a full-length novel is a different beast. It requires dedication and persistence, and that certain something I’m not sure I possess—which is why I decided to leverage my love of books into a career in the publishing industry rather than trying to become an author myself.
Editing stories can be just as fun as writing them, especially if it’s a genre I enjoy.