Mad Gold (Providence Gold 2)

She cringed and then nodded, but thankfully started to explain rather than leaving it at that.

“My mom was…” she paused and nibbled at her lower lip drawing my attention to it.

Her lips were smooth and puffy – was that what it was called? Fucking kissable? Edible? I didn’t know, but I found my eyes flicking to look at them more than I was comfortable with.

“She is a mess, a total mess,” Dahlia sighed and wrapped her arms around her chest. “She wasn’t happy being a mother. She didn’t like the changes to her body and had a breakdown over every inch her waist grew while she was pregnant. When she got her first stretch mark, she screamed and threw plates around the kitchen. She caught my dad on the side of the head right here,” she said, pointing to her temple on the left side of her face. “When I was born, she hardly held me or looked at me and left everything to Dad to do.”

“What the hell?” I growled, shocked at what she was telling me. I’d been expecting her to say something like an illness or some shit.

“Yup,” she nodded and looked at the road ahead of us. “On my first birthday, she walked into the room, where there were around forty family and friends celebrating, and announced to Dad she was leaving him for Mrs. Keegan – the Pastor’s wife.”

At that moment, I breathed in as I swallowed and ended up choking on my spit.

Stooping over to cough it out of my lungs, I took a savage gulp of air as she smacked me on the back.

“She left you for the Pastor’s wife?” I croaked, still choking and trying to breathe. I wasn’t laughing, I just didn’t think anything could ever surprise me anymore, yet here she was turning my world upside down even with this.

“Yeah. Said she didn’t want the responsibility of being a wife and a mom, and that Mrs. Keegan understood her and loved her even though I’d wrecked her body,” she replied, sounding very matter of fact about it all.

Part of me wanted to hunt the woman down and throttle her for what she’d done, and part of me was beyond impressed that Dahlia had turned out how she had with that as her starting point in life. Her dad must be one hell of a man to have got her to the person she was today, but it also spoke volumes about the person she just was. Few people would come through that with their heads on as straight as Dahlia’s seemed to be, piercings and craziness aside.

Thinking over what she’d just told me, I thought about her mom and her obvious hostility toward her daughter. Who the fuck did shit like that? Well, my mom hadn’t been a shining example of maternal love I guess, but still!

When I looked up at her, she was standing staring at the ground with that lost expression on her face again that made me want to wrap her up and tell her that everything was okay. The only person I was like that with was my sister though, and I was worried I wouldn’t be able to do it with Dahlia. If I did it, would she laugh in my face? Would I make her feel worse?

She took the choice away from me with what she said next.

“I guess she was right to get out when she did,” she whispered, absently scratching her arm. “I’m kind of a jinx.”

“Bullshit,” I snapped, finally able to talk without coughing, and stood up straight. “Bull… shit,” I stressed the last word. “Bad things happen, it doesn’t make you a jinx. My mom was an addict who died with a needle in her arm. Does that make me bad luck? No, it makes me a lucky guy who wasn’t around to see her spiral into what she became and then get raised by an abusive son of a bitch who beat and tortured his daughter. As if that wasn’t bad enough, he sold his daughter to three depraved perverts who would have let any guy use her body to pay off his debts.”

When she just stood staring at me with her mouth wide open, I nodded and put my hands on my hips.

“Yeah, bad things happen. It’s the way of life. I used to be a cop. I saw so much messed up shit that I still to this day can’t get my head around. Bad things happen, babe. It’s the way of life. But then I got out of law enforcement, moved here and started over near my baby sister. I got a chance to be a bigger part of her life and remove myself from all the fucked up stuff that most people are lucky to never know about or be touched by. I finally got the chance to breathe fresh air around good people. Then I got invited to a New Year’s Eve party at The Bar, and I met this woman who had golden curls, beautiful hazel eyes and the most kissable mouth I’ve ever seen in my life.” She flinched at this like I was talking about someone else, so I gave her the details she needed to make one plus one equal two. “She was wearing a short, tight, pink dress and was dancing like she was loving every second of her life. Through some miracle, we ended up kissing and then I lost her in the crowd of people. The best fucking kiss of my life, and then she was gone.”