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I checked my patience, but fuck it was hard with the way she drew this conversation out. “Told me what?”
“I want to come live with you for a while,” Charlie blurted out.
“Here? You want to live here, with me?” I wanted to believe what I thought was being said, but I was sure I’d fucked it up somewhere. Charlie hardly knew me.
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sp; Tenille dropped her arms. “Yes, with you,” she snapped. “She wants to come and live here with you and your girlfriend.” I didn’t miss the nasty tone she took when she mentioned Monroe.
“Mum,” Charlie said, “I never said I wanted to live with Monroe. Why are you being like this?”
Tenille turned on her daughter. “Well, what am I supposed to think? You seem to really like her.”
Charlie’s chest puffed out like it did when she was about to go to war with her mother, so I stepped in. “Okay, you two, enough.” I needed to tread carefully if I didn’t want to alienate Tenille. “Look, I’m all for Charlie coming to live here—”
Someone knocked on the front door, interrupting us. Charlie slid off her stool and said, “I’ll get it.”
I watched her leave before pulling Tenille close. “We need to discuss this without Charlie in the room. Can you hold off until later?”
She nodded. “Yes.”
“We also need to discuss our divorce,” I said quietly. Her jealousy over Monroe led me to believe this would be a touchy subject, but it was one I had to bring up. I felt like a complete bastard doing it to her, though.
She blinked rapidly a few times before pulling out of my hold. “I was wondering how long it would take you to mention that.”
I raked my fingers through my hair. “Fuck, Tee, this whole situation is screwed up. Have you heard from Craig?”
“He keeps calling me, but he’s back driving in Western Australia, so he can’t get here.”
“Gibson keeps sending him over there?”
A strange look crossed her face at the sound of Gibson’s name. I would almost have labelled it as fear. I wondered if I’d caused her to feel that way towards him. Not a bad thing if I had. I wanted her to understand how dangerous he was.
“Yeah, I guess so.”
“Have you decided to leave him?”
I fucking hoped she’d say yes, but Charlie came back into the kitchen before she could answer me. And with her was Shane Gibson.
My body tensed, and a murderous urge came over me. I fought hard to contain it. If Charlie hadn’t been in the house, I doubt I would have been able to control it.
I reached for Charlie and pulled her behind me. No fucking way was I allowing her near him again. “What the fuck are you doing in my house?”
He kept coming towards me. “Hello, Aiden.”
“Stop fucking walking,” I barked. “Turn the fuck around and go out the way you came in.” I balled my fists by my side.
“That’s no way to greet me after all these years, son.”
I clenched my jaw. All I wanted to do was take the last few steps to where he stood and take to him with my fists. I wanted to kill the motherfucker, but not while my daughter was in the house. “I’m not your fucking son, Gibson.”
He finally came to a stop, not far from where I stood. “You never did understand how I felt about you, did you?”
I’d thought I had. I’d thought he was the best man I could find to be a substitute father when mine had never been there for me. When his son, Brad, had asked me to go away with them on a camping trip when we were twelve, I’d thought all my fucking Christmases had come at once. Not once in my life had I experienced anything like that weekend. And that had just been the beginning. By the time I began working for Gibson, we’d spent five years bonding, and yeah, I’d thought of him like a father. But a few years later, he’d fucking annihilated me worse than my own father ever had. Because giving love and then killing it the way Gibson had was far worse than never giving it in the first place.
“I understand you perfectly, Gibson. You’re a twisted motherfucker who uses every person he comes across. You take what’s not yours to take and—”
His nostrils flared in anger. He never did like being told truths about himself. “You were a son to me, Aiden. And after Brad died, you were the only son I had.”
