“Why would I?” he asked.
“Point taken,” she said. “I was dealt a terrible hand in the parent department.” She blew out a breath. “Believe me when I say that my life would have been better off without knowing them. I come from the worst kind of evil, Duke.”
Was she about to open up to him? Give him the reason she’d had to hide out?
Audrey visibly trembled. “I can’t go there. Not even now.” She shook like she could shake off whatever feeling had gripped her. “How did you guys turn out to be normal? People who don’t walk around with a chip on their shoulders?”
“Living with our grandparents helped,” Duke said, not sure that was completely true. The chip he’d carried had to do with losing her and not knowing why. Now, he realized she’d been surviving the best she could. Why was it still so hard to shake off the rejection? Bruised ego? It was clearer to him now that she’d had no choice back then. “We knew what it was like to be loved.”
“I had no idea how horrible that must have been for you and your sisters,” Audrey explained. “Losing your mother and then your father taking off must have been awful to live through.”
“Honestly, I was so young that I don’t have any memories of either one,” he admitted. “Just my grandparents and the six of us plus a bad taste in my mouth for the father who donated his DNA to me.” He set his fork down. “All in all, I can’t complain. I wouldn’t change my childhood for the world.”
Did he have a few emotional scars from losing his mother? Probably. But he’d tucked those away in a little box, too, and had no plans to revisit something that could only cause more pain. That would be like stepping into the boxing ring with a strong opponent and without training or gloves. Could he get in a few punches? Sure. Would he take more hits than he wanted to? Absolutely.
Why torture himself when he could keep that box closed and forget it ever existed?
“Your grandparents are amazing people, Duke. You definitely hit the jackpot there,” Audrey said. “Do you ever wonder what your mother was like? Did you guys ever talk about her?”
“No, but I know exactly what kind of person my father is,” he stated. “He’s the kind of person who can walk away from an infant and two other children who just lost their mother. Not someone I particularly care to keep in touch with, if you know what I mean.”
“It’s understandable,” she conceded, but there was a note in her voice that struck a chord in him, a chord he didn’t want to acknowledge. It was curiosity.
“Look, I spent too many years thinking that man might show up at the ranch on my or one of my sisters’ birthdays or Christmas,” he explained, for reasons he had no plans to examine. “I literally sat in the front yard one day on my little suitcase because I built up a story in my head that he was coming for me when I got mad at my sisters. It took my grandmother to convince me to come back inside and be her taste tester for an apple pie she was baking. I didn’t want to give up. Call me stubborn, but my eight-year-old self had decided this was the day my dad would return to the ranch. To this day, I still don’t know why that day, of all days, I dug my heels in and decided he would show if I believed it enough.”
“You didn’t deserve to be abandoned,” she said with compassion.
“He called,” Duke continued. “I told him about the accident and the guy pretended to care for a minute but then decided he was too busy unless him visiting the hospital was absolutely necessary. Jerk.”
A tidal wave of emotion crashed into him, catching him off guard. He turned his face toward the window and coughed. Tucking the memories back in its place, he resumed eating dinner. “Food’s getting cold. We should probably just eat instead of talk.”
“Okay,” Audrey conceded when he expected her to fight. The look of compassion on her face spoke volumes, though. She picked up her fork and took another bite. “This is so good. I should probably come here more often just to remind myself why I live in Mesa Point on bad days.”
“Not a half bad idea,” he said.
“We can move on,” she hedged. “But I just want you to know that your dad leaving had everything to do with him and nothing to do with you or your sisters. It wasn’t your fault.”
“Yeah?” he asked, but it was more statement than question. “It sure never felt that way.”
A surprising amount of emotion flooded him at the thought of his dad. Anger. Hurt. Betrayal. Those were fierce and the ones he held tightly to his chest. Others joined them. Curiosity. There were times when he did want to talk to his father, to get answers to some of his questions at the very least. Like how he could have pulled a stunt like that when his children needed him most. Not to mention leaving Duke’s grandparents with six children to raise, even though they never seemed to mind.
“I won’t pretend to know how that feels, Duke. All I do know is that you, Crystal and Abi deserved better from your dad.”
“We had our grandparents,” he said. “We weren’t missing out.” As much as he wanted to believe those words, they felt like a lie. His grandparents had been the best surrogates he could have hoped for. But despite that love and kindness, every child still wanted love from their parents.
They’d talked enough about him for one evening.
“What about you, Audrey? In all our late-night talks in your bedroom, you never opened up about your family situation. What you said a minute ago is the most you’ve ever shared about them. Why is that? Didn’t you trust me?”
She tensed like he’d thrown a punch, which made him feel like the worst kind of jerk.
“IF YOU’RE DONE EATING, you can take me home,” Audrey said. She didn’t talk about the past with anyone. Not even him.
She’d wanted to at sixteen but just couldn’t put the horror into words. There’d been the all-too-real fear he would want to intervene or come to her defense. She’d had a lot of wild ideas back then. Talking about it now wouldn’t change the past. It wouldn’t change what had happened. It wouldn’t bring back her sister or stop her mother from putting out cigarettes on Audrey’s back or her stepfather from attempting unspeakable acts of horror.
“Today has been hell on wheels,” Duke explained, softening his tone. “I wasn’t ready to talk about my mom. Bringing her up at all does nothing but cause pain even after all these years. I’m a grown man, and I don’t need a mother. Our conversation struck a nerve, and I’m sorry that I turned the tables without warning. Since I can’t take it back, all I can say is that I hope you’ll forgive me for being a jerk.”
“I’m the one who should apologize,” she argued. “You obviously don’t want to talk, and I pushed when I should have stayed out of it.” She wanted to say that all she wished for him was that he could forgive himself when he’d done nothing wrong in the first place. “It’s not my place to needle in your personal life, Duke. I’m truly sorry.”
“Hey,” he started. “Let’s just forget the whole conversation happened and move on. Deal?”
“Okay,” she agreed, even though her heart wasn’t in it. She wanted to know more, dig deeper, find out what made him tick. But that wasn’t an option on the table right now. She’d seen the hurt in his eyes when he looked at her. His grandparents had been right about one thing: she shouldn’t try to cross paths with him while he was in town.
But she couldn’t exit on that note. “Do you want to swing by the hospital on the way to dropping me off at the cabin? We could check on your grandparents.”
“I thought you wanted dessert,” he said.
“Maybe next time,” she said, even though there wouldn’t be another next time. She couldn’t afford it with the way her heart betrayed her, wanting to be as close to Duke as possible. It was too hard, and besides, what would being close accomplish at the end of the day? Duke would go back to his job, and she would go back to hers. He wasn’t the kind of person she could downshift and just be friends with no matter how much she wanted that option to be true.
“Since you asked me, turnabout is fair play,” Duke said, breaking into her thoughts.
“What do you mean?”
“Why aren’t you seeing anyone special?” he asked.
“There have been people in my life,” she said, a little more defensively than intended. She wanted to add no one had been as special as him, but that wasn’t the right thing to say under the circumstances. They were different people now. She was still in love with that sixteen-year-old, but time changed everything and everyone.
Duke’s eyebrow shot up and a look of disdain crossed his features. Was it wrong she got a rush of satisfaction from his response? Probably. Still. She enjoyed it for a half second and the change in topic offered a break in the tension causing her shoulders to pull taut.
