Jim tilted his head and glanced over at Adrian. The bastard looked no better than Jim felt. "Truce?" the guy said through bloody lips.
Jim inhaled as deeply as he could - until pain stopped his ribs from expanding any more. Well, hell. He might not be able to trust either one of them, but he needed help - and he had a tragic expertise in working with people who were shits.
"Yeah," he replied roughly. "Truce."
Chapter 36
"Okay, I love you. And I'll be home later tonight. Be good for Quinesha. What?" As Vin drove them over to the residential part of town, Marie-Terese listened to her son speak and got choked up. His voice was so near and so far. "Yes. Yes, you may. I love you. Bye."
She hit the end button on her phone and stared down at the screen, waiting for Vin to ask how the conversation had gone. It was something her ex had always done. Anytime she got on a phone, whether it was a telemarketer or the housekeeper or someone for him, Mark had had to know everything.
Except Vin didn't ask and didn't seem to be expecting her to fill him in. And the space was...nice. She liked how it gave her the power to choose, and it spoke volumes about respect and trust and all those things she hadn't gotten the first time around.
Thank you, she wanted to say. Instead, she murmured, "He wanted ice cream. Guess I'm a horrible mother, huh. Probably going to spoil his dinner. He eats early. At five."
Vin's hand covered hers. "You are not a horrible mother. I can assure you."
As they went by a bus stop, she looked out of her window. The people standing in the Plexiglas box all stared at the M6 while Vin drove by, and when another group of pedestrians glanced over at the car a little later, she had a sense that everywhere Vin went, he drew eyes of envy and awe...and greed.
"Mark liked nice cars, too," she said for no particular reason. "He was a Bentley man."
God, she could remember riding in those cars of his. He'd gotten a new one every year as soon as the fresh models came out, and in the beginning, she had sat in the passenger seat beside him with her chin up and her hands stroking the leather. Back then, when people had stared, her chest had swelled with pride that the man who owned the car was hers, that she was a part of some exclusive club of luxury that barred everyone else, that she was a queen with her king.
Not anymore. Now she saw the ogling faces as nothing more than people caught up in a fantasy. Just because you could drive or sit in a fancy BMW didn't mean you had the winning lottery ticket in the life sweepstakes. Turned out she had been far, far happier when she'd been on the hard sidewalk rather than the soft bucket seat.
Far better off, too, considering where she'd ended up.
"But I am a bad mother," she murmured. "I lied to him. I had to."
"You did what you needed to in order to survive."
"I'm going to have to keep lying to him. I don't want him ever to know."
"And there's no reason for him to." Vin shook his head. "I think a parent's job is to protect their kids. Maybe it's old-school, but that's the way I feel. There's no reason he has to go through what you've been suffering with. That you've had to deal with it is plenty."
The thought that had been percolating in her brain on and off since she'd been with Vin the night before resurfaced. And she couldn't think of a reason not to say it out loud.
"I did something to survive, but sometimes I think..." She cleared her throat. "I'm a college graduate. I have a degree in marketing. I could have gotten a job."
At least, theoretically she could have. One thing that had stopped her had been the fact that she hadn't been one hundred percent confident in her fake ID. If she'd actually put in for real work, she wasn't sure whether her social security number would have come up as someone else's.
But another driver of her choice had been something darker.
Vin shook his head. "You can't look back and cross-examine everything. You did the best you could with where you were - "
"I think I wanted to punish myself," she blurted. As he looked over, she met his eyes. "I blame myself for what my son was put through. I picked the wrong man to marry and that was my fault - and I feel like my son suffered. Being with those...men. I hated it. I cried every night it was over and sometimes I was physically sick. I stayed with it for the money, true...but I was hurting myself deliberately."
Vin took her hand, brought it to his lips and kissed it fiercely. "Listen to me. Your ex was the ass**le in this - not you."
"I should have left him earlier."
"And you're free now. You're free of him and you're not doing that...other shit anymore. You're free."
She stared out the front window. Except if that was true, then why did she feel so trapped still?
"You've got to forgive yourself," Vin said roughly. "That's the only way you're going to get past this."
God, she was so self-involved, she thought. Assuming everything those men had said back at the duplex was true - and given what she'd seen in Devina's eyes she'd be an idiot to think otherwise - Vin had just found out tonight that he all but murdered his own parents.
"You, too." She squeezed his hand. "You need to do the same."
The grunt that he made was a stop sign and a half, and just as he'd respected her privacy, she respected his: As much as she wanted to get him to talk about that what he'd been told, she wasn't going to push.
Leaning her head back against the rest, she stared at him as he drove them along. He was quick and comfortable behind the wheel, his brows low and his lips tighter than usual as he concentrated.
She was so glad that she'd met him. And grateful that he'd had faith in her when it had mattered so much.
"Thank you," she said.
He glanced over and smiled a little. "What for."
"You believed me. Instead of her."
"Of course I did."
His answer was just as steady as his hand on the wheel, and for some reason that made her tear up. "Why are you crying?" He pushed a hand into his jacket and took out a pristine white handkerchief. "Here. Oh, love, don't cry."
"I'll be fine. And better to get the leaks now instead of later."
After wiping her cheeks with her fingertips, she took the super-soft, super-thin linen square and spread it flat on her lap. She had some mascara on still from how she'd made herself up for church, and she wasn't about to mar the delicate cloth by actually using it - and yet she liked having the thing. Liked running her finger back and forth over the raised stitching of his monogram, VSdP.
"Why are you crying?" he repeated gently.
"Because you're amazing." She touched the V that was done in block font. "And because when you say things like you love me I believe you, and it terrifies me." She touched the S. "And because I've hated myself for so much, but when you look at me, I don't feel like I'm so dirty." Finally, she touched the dP for his last name. "Mostly, though, it's because you make me look forward to the future, and I haven't done that in forever."
"You can trust me." His hand found hers again. "And as for your past, it's not what you've done - it's who you are. To me, that's all that matters."
She wiped more tears away as she stared across the seats at him, and though his handsome face went blurry, she was getting to know his features by heart, so it didn't matter.
"You really should use my handkerchief."
"I don't want to mess it up."
"I have plenty of others."
She looked down at his initials again. "What does the S stand for?"
"Sean. My middle name is Sean. Mother was Irish."
"Really?" Marie-Terese's eyes watered even more. "That's my son's real name."
"You two ass**les stay here."
Eddie slammed the driver's-side door so hard, the whole truck rocked, and as the guy stalked over to the Hannaford's entrance, people went out of their way to get out of his.
Jim's balls still hurt. Bad. Kinda felt like he'd rolled 'em in cut glass - all tingling and painful at the same time.
On the seat next to him, Adrian was rubbing his shoulder, his expression one of disgust. "Bastard telling us to stay here. What the hell - like he's grounding us? Fuck him."
Jim stared out his window and watched as a mother with a baby in her arms walked by the truck, got a look at his face, and shied away. "I don't think we're fit for visual consumption."