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“Are you kidding me?” She drained her glass and put it on the table with an ill-tempered sla
m. “I didn’t dare breathe your name. My parents were upset, to say the least.” She dropped into her chair and then poured herself another shot. Thinking about everything that had happened up until this point—talking about it—emotionally drained her, but the next part? Whiskey-induced numbness might help her make it through without bawling.
“My father…” She closed her eyes and time traveled ten years back and a continent away. “My easygoing, fair-minded father was livid. My mom was surprisingly pragmatic about the whole thing. Sort of like, Okay, this happened. We’re going to get you well, get you home, talk about the mistakes you made that led to the situation, and then we’re moving on.” Her mom’s drama-free reaction could still wring a laugh out of her. “I mean, don’t get me wrong, she grounded me for life, but very calmly. She went easy on me.”
“And your dad?”
Shane’s question came from across the table, but it might as well have been from anywhere. The memory pulled her so deeply into yesterday. She sighed, opened her eyes, and blinked her unknowing coconspirator into focus. “My father wanted the name of the guy responsible for knocking up his sixteen-year-old daughter and landing her in a hospital. He wasn’t in the mood to go easy on anyone. Not on me, for violating his trust. Not on the guy who violated his daughter, for damn sure. If I had given him the vaguest clue it was you, your world would have turned to shit so fast your head would have spun.”
She spun her empty glass on the table as an example. Restless hands.
Now he released a breath, looked up, and pinned her with a green gaze full of regret. “So, you didn’t tell him.”
It wasn’t a question. No answer required, but something in those eyes made her speak. She spun the glass again. “I was a fool, not an idiot. I understood the implications of spilling my guts. You would have stood trial for statutory rape and possibly gone to jail. You’d have been booted out of the Marines. Your life would have been ruined.”
He nodded and then got up and walked around the table. When he reached her, he crouched by her chair. A muscle ticked in his jaw, but other than the small sign of tension, she couldn’t pinpoint his reaction.
“You must have been very angry with me by then. I hadn’t called. I couldn’t write. As far as you knew, I was some faithless asshole who’d kept none of my promises, and I was getting off without a single consequence while you paid for all our…”
She got the impression he considered and rejected the word “mistakes.”
“…for everything.” His eyes locked on hers. “I wouldn’t have blamed you for speaking up, baby girl. I deserved everything your father had in mind. Why didn’t you?”
“I told you why,” she shot back, knowing she sounded defensive. “Ultimately everything that happened was my own fault. I brought it on myself by screwing up with the birth control. I compounded the screwup by falling for a guy who was leaving for boot camp as soon as he graduated. You weren’t sticking around. I went into it with my eyes wide open.”
He shook his head, rejecting her explanation. “I’d promised you I’d contact you, and I didn’t. Couldn’t, as it turned out, but you didn’t know that. And still, you didn’t speak up. Why?”
What the hell had her father done to her furnace? Why was it so hot in here? Needing air, and space, she started to push back from the table, but Shane caught the chair legs and held her in place. “Why didn’t you tell him, Sinclair?”
“Shane, so help me God, I’m going to slap you again if you don’t back off.”
“Do it. I’ll take any punishment you dish out, but I’m not backing off until you answer my question. Why. Didn’t. You. Tell. Him.”
Hot words scalded the back of her throat, burned there until she had to let them out. “Because I loved you, you bastard.”
He cupped a hand to the back of her head and drew her down until her forehead rested against his. His warm, whiskey-laced breath flowed over her lips like some rare vintage. “I loved you, too, Sinclair. I loved you like I’d never loved anyone or anything in my whole pathetic life, and I wanted you so badly I never gave much consideration to the risks. Hell no, you didn’t bring it on yourself. I was the adult—”
“Oh, please.” She straightened. “You’re a whopping year-and-a-half older than me, and the whole birthday seduction was my idea.”
“I was eighteen. I had no right accepting that present from you.”
“Did you honestly give our ages a thought at the time?”
“No, but that’s on me, too. I should have. Add it to the shit-ton of things I should have done differently. If I hadn’t been busy righteously fucking up my first attempt at adulthood, I would have been able to call you like I promised. I would have been there for you. It wouldn’t have been your problem, it would have been our problem.” He kissed her softly. “I’m sorry I let you down. I won’t do it again.”
The sincerity in his words shook her. She resorted to cynicism to combat the weakness. “Careful what you take on there, Shane. There’s no need to pull the future into this. We’ve settled the past. Take that victory. It’s a big one, because I’ve been angry with you for a decade. You weren’t around to stick up for yourself, which made you my perfect personal scapegoat. Everything I didn’t want to own, I shoved onto you. Ending up ashamed and afraid in an Amsterdam hospital? Shane’s fault. Having to gain back my parents’ respect? Shane’s fault. Unsure my father would ever look at me the same again? Shane’s fault.”
He reached out a long arm and pulled the chair at the head of the table over. Then he sat, facing her, so they were knee-to-knee. “He loves you.”
Leave it to him to laser in on the deepest wound. “Yes. He does. But I scared him. Disappointed him. Shook his view of me, and of himself. My mom had to spell it out for me, because I couldn’t see past his anger, but she told me…” Damn. A lump lodged behind her vocal cords. She swallowed, but it stuck there. Her voice quavered from the effort of getting around it. “She told me he felt like a failure as a father.”
“Sinclair—”
“No.” She shook her head. “She wasn’t being mean, she was explaining. My father considered protecting his girls one of his most important jobs. He did it in little ways, like putting training wheels on our bikes, or looking under our beds when he tucked us in at night to make sure there were no monsters, but also in big ways. He taught us to react if we felt threatened, and how to throw a punch without breaking our hands. He taught us to drive.”
“You need a refresher course.”
She laughed at his snide comment on her driving skills, despite the emotion clogging her throat. “He thought he’d done a pretty good job with all the protective dad stuff, until his sixteen-year-old daughter landed in a hospital, recovering from a miscarriage. He hadn’t protected me from that. I hadn’t let him.”
