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Raymond
My heart lifts when she laughs loudly, her head thrown back. Her soft, golden-brown hair falls loose around her shoulders in a fluffy cloud of wild curls that beg to be touched. Almost without thinking, I stretch my hand out and caress her curls, like I’m pushing them behind her ears.
Her glance meets mine and the look in them makes me crawl closer. Slowly.
But I stop when her eyes shift. I’m not sure what she wants and I’m not presumptuous enough to push myself on her. I would never touch a woman that doesn’t want me to.
“Tell me more about yourself, Allie.”Tell me everything about you.I want to know it all.
She shrugs but it feels like her whole body has tightened up. “There’s not much to tell. My parents died. I went into foster care.”
“How did your parents die?”
“They were driving home from a movie.” She smiles but there’s something about it that tells me that the memory isn’t necessarily good. “I can picture them getting ready to go out and smiling at me. Sometimes those simple memories were the only things that kept me going in foster care. No matter how tough things got and how much was taken away from me, I always had those memories.”
“My dad insisted on taking my mom out at least once a month. It was their date night and they always dressed up to go out. He told me once that if a man loved you, he never forgot to make you feel special, wanted. Even after you got married, he would strive to make you feel special.”
She hangs her head and smiles. “She loved to go out and even though he’d rather stay home, he made a date night every month. That month was a new movie that she really wanted to see.”
A shaky breath hisses out of me when I see the tears in her chocolate eyes. “A drunk driver hit them head-on. Everyone was killed.”
“Oh, baby. I’m so sorry.” I move to touch her but she flinches back.
“I don’t need you to feel sorry for me. I had great parents. I just didn’t get to keep them. Some kids don’t.”
I lean back, sitting on my hands to keep from reaching out for her. “What happened in foster care?” Shit, I hope it’s nothing like I’m picturing. There are so many things that can happen.
She shakes her head. “Not that much really. It’s just that nobody seemed to want me. And even if they did at first, they didn’t want me the way I was. They wanted some perfect little girl that would fit their image. I was supposed to be quiet except when I was allowed to talk. I needed to try and fit it. Several couples had other kids that were in sports and they tried to get me to fit in with their kids. I was shuttled to soccer games and basketball. Whatever their kids were doing. And even if I didn’t want to do it. Because they told me that if I fit in with their family, I might be able to stay.” The chuckle that erupts out of her pretty pink lips isn’t nearly as pretty as she is. “It never worked out. I’m not athletic. Or at least I wasn’t. I didn’t fit into their idea of what you should want to look like. I was too thick and too undisciplined. Too unhappy.
She glances up at me, her blue eyes so darn tortured that it makes me want to hug her close and never let her go.
“What happened?”
She shrugs and it’s so damn heavy. “I just didn’t fit. Everywhere I went, no matter who or what, I just didn’t fit in and they just didn’t want me.”
I can’t take it anymore. I lean over and pluck her off the couch, holding her on my lap, my arms banded around her even as she squeaks and tries to jump away.
I grasp her narrow, stubborn chin in my hands and the old memories in those dark eyes rip me apart. So much pain in a simple look.
“You listen to me. You were a child. You didn’t need to fit in. They needed to help you and take care of you. Not make you into some little clone of their own kids. That’s not being a good parent. Being a good parent to me means letting your child be who they are. Letting them grow up and live the life that they dream of, not the life that you want for them. Or the life that you dream that you might have had if things had been different.”
“Doesn’t matter. It’s all over with now.”
I shake my head at her downturned gaze. “It does matter. They should never have treated you like that. I don’t know what I would have done in a situation like that but I think that you know that you got a raw deal.”
Another shrug. “I wasn’t beaten. Was taken care of. I had food and little things like books and clothes and a room of my own most of the time. It wasn’t a bad life.”
“Did anyone ever grieve with you over your parents’ loss?”
“That would have been pointless. They were gone. I had to move on and make the best of it.”
Sighing, I tug her up against my chest, holding her soft yet stiff curves tight in my arms. “Is that what you’d want your children to do? Make the best of every little scrap of attention that someone ekes out for them and then just push the insults and the lack of humanity away.”
“They treated me well,” she says stubbornly.
I shake her chin. “They should have treated you like you were a person worthy of being treated as such. They should have loved you as you were. Helped you deal with your loss, cried with you and then lifted you up as an individual. Not tried to stuff you into some crummy little box with their kids. Everybody deserves to be an individual in this world.”
Her brown eyes lift, twinkling. “Crummy little box?”
