Jaci Burton (30 page)

“Oh.” She lifted the lid and the music played. Her bottom lip trembled.

“Shit. I knew I shouldn’t have. I’ll take it.” He reached for it, but she closed the box and laid her hand over his, then lifted her gaze, her eyes filled with tears. “No. Don’t. It was so thoughtful of you to buy this for me. I can’t believe you did that.”

He shrugged. “Like I said, I knew it upset you. But I wasn’t sure if it was good memories or bad.”

She shuddered out an exhale. “A little of both, actually.”

He took the box from her hand and laid it on the coffee table, then pulled her to the sofa, reaching for her glass of wine to hand it to her. “Why don’t you tell me about it?”

“I don’t like to talk about my past.”

“Maybe you should.”

She stared at the box and took a sip of wine. “Maybe I shouldn’t.”

“It obviously bothers you. And you know me, I don’t leave anything
unsaid, including things I probably should. I’m the best person to unload on.”

The corners of her mouth lifted in the hint of a smile. “No, you definitely don’t leave things unsaid.”

“But the media isn’t here. No one’s here but you and me. And you can trust me. I’m the last person who’s ever going to spill your secrets.”

“Why?” she asked.

“Why what?”

“Why are you being so nice to me?”

He swept a curl that had escaped behind her ear. “Because something in that box opened up memories, and those memories are hurting you. And like the music in that box, it’s obviously something you’re shutting away instead of dealing with. You should talk about it—exorcise the ghost and make it go away.”

She cocked her head to the side and looked at him. “You’re a pretty smart guy.”

“And that surprises you?”

“Not at all.”

“Okay, then. Start talking.”

SEVENTEEN

SAVANNAH DIDN’T KNOW WHERE TO BEGIN, OR IF SHE
should even talk about everything she’d bottled up inside.

It had been brewing for a while now. Maybe since that day she’d gone for dinner at Cole’s family’s house. It had been nice to spend time with his family, but also unsettling, seeing what he had and dislodging memories of what she’d never had. Then the conversation with Elizabeth and now the music box.

She was shocked Cole had bought the music box for her. Such a sweet gesture. Even more gallant was his willingness to sit here and listen to her problems.

What man voluntarily did that? No man she’d ever dated. Not that she and Cole were dating. They certainly weren’t. Having sex, yes. Dating …no.

He was being kind. Something that wasn’t typically attributed to him.

She was learning so many things about him.

“So? Are you going to talk?”

She shifted her focus back to him. He stared at her intently, held her hand, his thumb brushing lightly over hers. “This isn’t part of my job.”

“Consider yourself off duty, Miss Brooks. Now unload on me. Tell me about the music.”

She took a deep breath, then let it out, realizing maybe it was time to talk about it. “I mentioned it was a song my mother liked.”

“You did. You miss your mom?”

She let out a quiet laugh. “No. Yes and no. I don’t know. Not really.” She paused. “Sometimes. It’s hard to miss what you never really had.”

“Okay, that was a mouthful. Talk to me about your mom. You told me a while back it was just the two of you. Were you close?”

“No.”

That one word said a lot. Cole heard the pain and bitterness in that word. And loneliness.

“Did she have to work a lot to support the two of you?”

“Support? No, she didn’t work to support us. Mostly she was on welfare, food stamps, whatever she could do to get by. She’d work occasionally, but only when she absolutely had to, when the system made her. When I was old enough to stay alone, she’d go out at night and work—sometimes.”

He didn’t like the direction this was going. “Work where? Like as a waitress?”

She took a hard swallow of wine. “No. Not as a waitress. She’d get jobs at nightclubs as a stripper. When she got too worn down and haggard-looking from the drugs to do that, she’d just whore herself out on the streets.”

His stomach dropped. “Jesus, Savannah.”

She wouldn’t meet his gaze, instead stared at her hands. “Yeah.”

“How did you survive?”

“I stayed out of her way. She was mostly stoned all the time, so
she didn’t bother with me. She’d get high and play classical music. She loved classical. And she’d play Beethoven, especially that music—the one in the music box—over and over again. She’d dance around the house—sometimes she was even fun. She’d grab me and we’d dance together. When I was little, I never knew she was high. I just thought she was fun. Until I got older and realized there was something terribly wrong about her.”

That’s why the song triggered the memories tonight. That’s why it was both a sweet and awful memory for her.

“The welfare and food stamps brought in enough food—when she remembered to go buy it. When I was old enough, I’d go get it, but I had to steal enough money from her purse to get groceries. She didn’t like to part with the cash because that was her drug money.”

“The state—”

“Did nothing. She made sure the state couldn’t take me away. I was a meal ticket for her.”

He frowned. “In what way?”

“Not the way you think. I mean I was a dependent, so the state paid her for me. She might have been a lot of things, but she never used me other than to get money from the state. She never brought guys to the apartment. She always did her…‘work’ on the streets. She kept men away from me. Always told me to never be like her. She told me to make sure to go to school every day and stay away from boys. She wanted better for me than she had.”

She paused, caught her breath. “I guess, in her own way, she tried her best.”

Cole couldn’t imagine what it must have been like for Savannah as a child, to grow up with a drug-addicted whore of a mother who was likely too addled to care for her daughter. He wasn’t big on emotion, but Christ, his heart hurt for her.

“So what happened to her?”

“She left when I was thirteen.”

“What do you mean…left?”

“I mean she left. Decided she didn’t want to be a mother anymore. Or maybe she was so high she simply forgot she was a mother. I have no idea. When she didn’t come home for a week I finally ran out of food and there was no money to buy more. I got hungry, so I had to tell the school. Social services took me in after that.”

Cole was stunned. A child of that age left all alone. He couldn’t fathom the loneliness and fear, what that must have been like for her, wondering when or if her mother would be back. “Did they look for her?”

“So they told me. I’m sure they didn’t look hard. Where were they going to look? They knew her history. I figure she hooked up with someone and left town. Or maybe she figured I was better off without her. That’s what I’d like to think, anyway. They never told me she was dead, so…”

He was sure she wanted to think her mother was still out there somewhere. Still alive. Better than the alternative of dying of a drug overdose in an alley somewhere.

“So you ended up in foster care.”

“Yes.”

She was so calm. He wanted her to rage or cry, or hit something, to let out the emotion he knew she held in. But this was her story and she had the right to tell it—and to feel it—however she wanted to.

“How were the families you lived with?”

She lifted her gaze to his and offered a smile, but it wasn’t her normal, happy one. “Pretty good, actually. I got shifted in and out of a few at first, then ended up with a solid family. I had siblings—two younger sisters, which was nice, and attentive parents, which was even better. I had always loved school, and without having to worry or care for my mother, I could finally focus more on my studies. I wasn’t a problem child, so my foster parents didn’t have
issues with me. We all got along great, I was an A student, and I ended up getting a scholarship to the University of Georgia.”

Yeah, just one big fucking happy family. Only she left out the love part. He bet she wouldn’t have done anything to make waves just so she wouldn’t be abandoned again.

“Did you miss your mom?”

“She dumped me,” she said with a shrug. “No point in missing her.”

“But you did miss her.”

She frowned. “Don’t push this, Cole.”

She tried to jerk her hand away, but he held firm, refusing to let her run this time. “Why hold it inside, Peaches? Isn’t it better to get all the hurt and anger out?”

She shifted to face him. “It was a long time ago.”

“Doesn’t make it hurt any less. Hell, I hurt after being abandoned by a goddamned football team. But I have a strong, tight-knit family who loves me. I don’t know what I’d do if I didn’t have them. And look at you—you’re smart, you’re successful, and look at the person you’ve become. You did this all on your own.”

She looked down, then back up at him. “I didn’t do it alone. I had a very nice foster family, I was lucky to land a really great scholarship, and I had mentors to help me along the way.”

“But not a family—not your mother. The person who should have been there for you, cheering for you and supporting you.”

“Not everyone has the traditional nuclear family, Cole. Some of us actually survive that.”

“I know.” He leaned in and brushed his knuckles across her cheek. “And you can try and pretend it’s okay. That you’re strong and tough and you don’t need anyone. That you didn’t need her. But that’s all bullshit. I know it, and you know it.”

Savannah stared at Cole.

“You’re so pushy. I told you my story. Why can’t you leave it alone?”

“Have you ever dealt with it?”

She’d spent so many years holding it all inside.

“I’m here right now, aren’t I? I obviously dealt with my past.”

“I’m not talking about surviving it. Yeah, you survived it. But you haven’t let go of it.” He rubbed her arm. “What she did to you mattered. It wasn’t fair.”

He was wrong. She was fine. It didn’t matter. She had always shown everyone how strong she was.

“Show me how you feel, Peaches.”

Damn him. In a matter of a few weeks, he’d seen right through her. One music box, and he’d known.

Her bottom lip trembled. She got up, walked to the window to look outside, staring at the darkness, not really seeing anything but the years falling away, stripping away the cool, confident woman she was now, revealing the scared little girl she once was. She’d vowed to never go back to that place, to never revisit those feelings again, yet here she stood.

Cole wrapped his arms around her. She stiffened.

“It’s okay to be vulnerable, Savannah, to let someone see you scared.”

“I’m not scared. Not anymore.”

He tightened his hold on her. “She hurt you, abandoned you. What kind of mother does that?”

“She was sick.”

“Stop making excuses for her.” He turned her around to face him. “Did you ever get mad at her? Did you ever lash out, even in a room by yourself, and voice how you feel?”

She looked past him, to all those nights she’d waited in the foster home. “Every time the phone or doorbell rang, I was sure it was her. That the reason she’d left was so she could get clean, and then she was going to come back for me.

“But every time the phone or doorbell rang, it wasn’t her. She
didn’t get clean. She didn’t come back. She wasn’t thinking about me, only about herself. Like always, it was about her and what she needed, never about what I needed.”

He swept his hand down her arm, his touch light. He wasn’t pulling her in, wasn’t trying to hug her, just giving her comfort. “What did
you
need?”

Anger and hurt finally won. She slumped against him. “I needed my mother. I needed her to take care of me.” Tears spilled from her eyes and she didn’t try to hold them back. The floodgates had burst and pain wrenched from every part of her. “Why did she do that to me? Why didn’t she take care of me?”

Her legs wobbled and she started to sink to the floor. Cole was there to catch her, to wrap his strong arms around her. He dropped down and pulled her onto his lap.