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“That baby is so damn cute,” Abel says, pulling out of the driveway.
I swallow. “She’s related to me. Of course she is.”
“Beautiful women in your family, that’s for sure.” He glances at me. My heart turns over when I see his eyes are wet.
“You all right? My brother didn’t?—”
“No, no. Tuck was actually pretty cool. He had some nice things to say about us.”
“Like what?”
Abel looks at me again. “That he believes in me. That I can be different from my dad. That I am different.”
The water in the marina reflects the fierce oranges and pinks of the fiery sky. Glancing at the horizon, I see the sun is about to set.
My favorite time of day.
But that’s not why my pulse takes off at a sprint. The look in Abel’s eyes... it’s soft and scared in a way I’ve never seen before.
It’s vulnerability, and it’s so beautiful it takes my breath away.
I squeeze his hand. “How so?”
Abel’s shoulders rise on a huge inhale. “Growing up, Iremember my dad being—well, not a nice guy, but not a mean one either. He was around. He and my mom were making it work. They put dinner on the table and got me to school. It was all right, you know? It wasn’t necessarily happy, but it was functional, and I know my parents loved each other, at least in the beginning. There were pictures on the wall of them smiling on their wedding day.”
“Right. Y’all were a family unit.”
“Exactly. Then Dad fell off a roof at a job site when I was fourteen. I remember it so clearly. Mom crying, Dad in the hospital with a broken back. The change happened slowly at first. Dad acting a little weird. Getting a little too drunk. Being mean to my mom. It’s like some outside force took over his personality. Only later did I figure out that outside force was the pain meds he’d been taking. Kept telling doctors he had chronic back pain, and they kept prescribing him stronger and stronger shit.”
My throat closes in. “Oh, Abel. What a nightmare.”
“It was awful.” He lifts his shoulder to wipe his nose. “I mean, I remember one time my dad was really slurring his words, cursing up a storm, and then he suddenly falls asleep sitting completely upright. Had a drink in his hand and everything. His mouth was hanging wide open. It was like he’d died, but he’d been frozen in place or something. The most bizarre thing I’ve ever witnessed.”
“Also the scariest.”
“It was scary, yeah. But if I’m being honest, it was embarrassing, and I know it really affected my mom.”
We’re driving through the maritime forest now, the air beneath the trees still and warm.
My heart feels tender inside my chest. “I imagine she was terrified. Angry too. She was keeping it together alone, because the man she loved wasn’t there anymore in any real sense.”
Abel’s Adam’s apple bobs. “They both needed help, butthey wouldn’t get it. They just swept everything underneath the rug until they couldn’t hide it anymore. Dad was verbally abusive toward Mom, and I’d stand between them to make sure he never got physical with her. So instead, he got physical with me. Mom left, begging me to go with her to her sister’s place in Florida. I should’ve gone, but I... I guess I couldn’t just leave my dad to die alone, because I knew that would happen if I left too.”
Tears flood my eyes at the image of teenage Abel trying to protect both his parents. “You were decent from a young age. Decent and good, even when the adults in your life were not.”
“How fucked up is this, though? It was a relief when Dad got sentenced and went to jail. Armed robbery. Part of me thought he’d finally be forced to get the help he needed. Like it was a good thing he spent the rest of his life in a cell.” Abel shakes his head. “I wouldn’t call that decent.”
I squeeze his hand. “I’d call that survival, Abel.”
He turns left onto his street, the golf cart whining as we go up a hill. “See what I’m getting at, though? My parents started out happy. Then they were blindsided by this random accident that completely derailed all our lives. Dad went downhill slowly, over the course of, God, a decade before he went to prison. But he took everyone he loved with him.” Another swallow. “It’s a pattern I’m terrified I’ll repeat.”
The pieces come together all at once. Why Abel’s never been in a real relationship. How he holds everyone at arm’s length. His claims that he’s this dark, twisted villain, when really, he’s a person who’s been deeply hurt by the people he loved and trusted most.
Why he’s never let me in. Until now.
My eyes, my heart—everything spills over. Iwantthis man. But if he genuinely believes he’ll hurt everyone the way he was hurt...
“Is that why you only have one bedroom in your house?”I ask. “Because you believe you can’t have a family of your own, so you automatically ruled it out?”
