AllFreeNovel
Share Us
She giggled. “Glad I could help with your flagging ego.”
“Give me a few more minutes and nothing about me will be flagging.”
A shiver of anticipation coursed through her. Touching this man, and being touched by him, brought her pleasure she hadn’t known was possible. Add that to how kind he had been, and she was perilously close to falling for him.
She brushed her fingers over the tattoo again. “I learned from the grim reaper on your arm you don’t get tattoos without them meaning something. Will you tell me about this one?”
His fingers stopped circling, and his hand wrapped around her shoulder. Tension crackled through his body, and her own muscles tightened in response. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to pry—”
He sucked in a loud breath. “Grace was my mother.”
His voice was hard, the sound rife with anger and regret. And he’d used past tense. Oh god. She’d brought up something painful.
“You don’t have to tell me. I understand some memories are too private to share.”
His grip on her flesh tightened, not quite painful but close. “Got the tattoo years ago when it was fresh. I don’t talk about it anymore. Doesn’t affect my life now.”
Somehow, she didn’t think that was true, but she wasn’t going there. “It’s okay. We can talk about something else. Or nothing at all, if you want. You must be tired after spending all night in a chair.”
He opened his eyes and trapped her gaze, his own tight and tortured, like he was fighting with hell’s demons. She wanted to soothe him but had no idea how.
His jaw clenched, and he looked away. “It all started on my sixth birthday. At least, that’s the first time I saw it.”
Charley stayed silent. She wanted him to take all the time he needed.
“I sat at the kitchen table. Just blown out the candles on my cake. No party, just my mother and him.”
She remembered how Dog had said he didn’t love his father.
“Your father?”
He grunted. “He’s the one who supplied the seed, but he was never anyone’s father.”
Charley nodded and swallowed hard. So different from her life.
Dog continued staring off in the distance. “Ma cut me a piece of cake, and I dove in. Then she brought out three presents, different sizes and wrappings, and set them on the table.” He ran a hand over his goatee. “I was so excited. I’d told her I wanted three things, and it looked like I was going to get all of them. That hadn’t happened before.” He paused on an in breath. “And then he….”
The hand that stroked his goatee balled into a fist, and the fingers on her shoulder tensed in a painful squeeze. “Motherfucker backhanded her, making her head snap on her neck. He screamed, ‘I told you only one present! He doesn’t get spoiled on my watch.’
“I just sat there, cake on my face and hands, and stared at them. Ma stumbled to the table and grabbed two of the gifts. She said, ‘Okay, honey. I’ll take them back.’ She caught my eyes, already wet with tears, and shook her head. I knew then to be quiet. She took the packages to their room, him yelling the whole way.” He paused a moment. “I never finished my cake.”
The lines on Dog’s face deepened, etching a map of his anguish. “It escalated from there. Nothing she did was good enough for him. She stopped taking me to play with friends. I think she didn’t want to explain the bruises. She would call him before we left the house and again when we got back. I don’t know what she did while I was in school, but she always picked me up and we went straight home. He called the house at 2:45 if she didn’t call him first.
“Then one night when I was eight, they were arguing in the bedroom. It was dark. I was in bed. Their door was open, so I could hear what they said. She begged him to let her go, to let us go. I heard a smack, and then he said, ‘The day you try to leave, I’ll burn this house down around us. Now, get your clothes off and spread your legs.’”
Dog returned his gaze to Charley’s, and his expression burned with a fire so hot she had to fight the tears building in her eyes.
“He was just crazy enough to do it. She knew it, and somehow so did I. Later I begged her to go somewhere else. She said everything was fine, that how he acted was just how men were, but we’d be okay.
“But we weren’t okay. Not long after that, he came slamming into the house at suppertime just as she was taking a ham out of the oven. The pan slipped from her hands, and the ham fell on the floor. He went after her with both fists, screaming about wasted food. I grabbed one of his arms and held on until he punched me in the gut. I fell back crying and she told me to run. But I couldn’t. I kept trying to stop him, but it only made him madder. He took turns hitting her and me until I was no longer able to keep up.”
Charley lost her battle, and the tears slipped down her face.
“We were just outside the laundry room at that point, and he pulled her inside and shut the door. I heard the lock click and started banging on the door. There was a horrible thudding sound combined with her screaming that went on for a while. But then it got real quiet. I hoped she had gotten out the door and into the garage.
“But there was a loud boom, and the house shook. A moment later, I smelled smoke. It started coming from under the laundry room door, and the crackle of flames told me the fire was close.
“She told me if there was ever a fire to meet her at the mailbox, so I ran there. She came out, but she was burned. She died almost immediately, right at my feet.”
