"Hennessy," I said carefully. "Did your father tell you that you were a waste of space?"
I said it so controlled, I hoped, that none of my anger toward her father bled through.
This was something I was going to have to step around carefully.
There were so many booby traps that her father had been responsible for that I didn't know where to step without permanently damaging something pivotal.
"My father told me a lot of things," she laughed humorlessly. "What else do you want to know about how awful he used to be to me?"
My belly clenched, and anger started to ignite in my blood.
That stupid fool she called a father was a sorry excuse for one. Mine had been bad, but hers? Well, he deserved a gold medal for shitty father of the year-hell, of the goddamn century.
As if I needed anything else to hate him for.
I took a step forward and lifted my hand to touch her face. When she didn't step away, I pulled her face closer to me and stared deep in her eyes.
"Tell me what you want to tell me," I whispered.
She took a deep breath and stepped away. "To tell you that, I'd need to get drunk."
I grinned. "Then get drunk."
And she did.
She was drunk as a skunk, as they would say in the South.
She was sitting in the chair at her kitchen table two hours later, her face twisted as she relayed yet another horrible scenario.
This one was when she was eighteen and she'd told her father that she was going with Krisney to college four hours away-out from under his thumb and his rules.
"He thought I was kidding at first," she whispered, staring at her nearly empty bottle of wine. "Kind of laughed, then went on about his business as he prepared for a sermon. But then, at church the next day, everyone was congratulating him on me getting into UT, and it really hit home." She paused. "That was the night that he hacked my hair off the last time before I left."
I gritted my teeth in order not to say anything.
Each time I said something, she went off on a different topic on how her father abused her. Each time she spoke about him, it was even worse than the time before.
I was hanging on by a thread, and that thread was the tears that were threatening to fall each time she explained the next experience.
"Then I had all those blissful years without him," she whispered. "Since I got the scholarship and school loans, I didn't have to talk to him but for the occasional obligatory phone call that he deigned to make on Christmas and Thanksgiving."
"Each year he got more and more angry because his congregation was asking about me and if I would be home that year, and when he said no, they'd get all sad for him."
Fuck him. He deserved to be treated like that.
In reality, he deserved to have my foot up his ass, but with me being a felon, that probably wouldn't go over really well with the local police department.
In this fucked up community that we had, everyone thought Pastor Hanes was a fucking sweetheart. He was an old widower.
"I think he cheated on my mother with someone," she whispered. "My mom was dying of cancer, and she was so sick that she couldn't get out of bed anymore." She circled her finger around the rim of the wine glass. "I got home one night after staying at Krisney's and found a woman leaving … "
She paused for so long that I knew what she was going to say next. "My mother?"
She bit her lip and looked at me. "Yes."
I closed my eyes and looked down at my lap.
"Goddammit," I rumbled. "I'm sorry, honey."
I wasn't surprised, though. My mother was my mother. There would be no apologies for how she acted. She did what she did and she didn't care who she offended when she did it, even the teenage daughter of a dying woman that belonged to the man she was sleeping with.
She shrugged. "That was the first time I realized that my father wasn't a very good man."
I winced.
"I'm not like him," she whispered so softly that I could barely hear her words.
"I know."
She was nothing like him.
Then she lost the fight she was having with her tears, and the first one fell.
"I can't be with you."
I resisted the urge to go to her, to pull her into my arms and tell her everything would be okay.
Her father wasn't going anywhere. Despite him being a bad person, and a shitty father to not one but two girls, he was free to spread his assholenness to everyone that he felt like it.
"I'm not Ariya's daughter's father," I told her, knowing that if I didn't tell her, that I could possibly lose the fight that I didn't know I was having.
Her eyes widened, and another tear fell.
"Well, then who is?" she cried out.
I grimaced. "Your father."
It took her a few seconds to realized-to really comprehend-what was going on, but when she did, she gasped in outrage.
"You're shitting me!"
That was another thing about drunk Hennessy. She had the mouth of a pirate. It was as if all those words she didn't allow herself to say when she was sober came out when she was drinking.
"No, I'm not joking," I promised her. "I'm being a hundred and ten percent serious right now. Ariya didn't want me to tell you, but considering I plan to make you mine, I didn't want to start this off with a lie."
Her mouth fell open. "You can't make me yours. I've already transferred your patient care to someone else."
I started to laugh. "I won't be seeing your recommended psychologist, either."
Her mouth twisted into an angry line. "You will be if I have to take you there myself!"
I started to chuckle. "I reached an agreement with the judge. My twenty hours has been fulfilled. I don't have to do any more."
Her mouth fell open. "How did you do that?"
"The judge wasn't going to give it to me in the first place, but since it was recommended by the prison psychologist, and I wanted to make sure it was done right, I agreed to do it until it wasn't needed anymore."
She started to laugh. "That's not something that a person gets to decide who's been in prison. Why are you so special?"
"Because the cops, prison guards, judges, and my probation officer like me. Because I watched over their own quite a few times. Because I get what I want."
"And what do you want?" she whispered, hope starting to fill her voice.
"You."
She looked down at her glass of wine, then picked it up and downed the contents in one swallow.
"I can't be with someone who thinks that I am worthless."
That's when I moved.
I pushed the dining room chair that she was in until only the back legs were holding it up. Her eyes were wide, and her face was frozen in surprise.
"I do not think you are worthless," I growled.
"You said that I couldn't do what you did in boot camp."
I stared into her eyes. "Maybe not right now, no. But give it six weeks and you'd be able to, under the right training."
She bit her lip.
"I also know for a fact that you're smarter than me."
She bit her lip.
"You're beautiful, and smart," I continued, my words hopefully penetrating whatever she was thinking. "I couldn't ever do what you do. Couldn't listen to what your patients have to tell you about every day."
Her lip trembled.
"There's nothing that you couldn't do if you put your mind to it."
"How do you know?" she challenged.
"Because you're you," I whispered. "Nobody that couldn't handle it all could manage to get through eighteen years with your father."
She closed her eyes. "I have a sister, and I didn't even know it?"
And we were back to the important words that she'd conveniently not gone into much detail about.
"Yeah," I said. "But at this point, I'm not sure that it would be best for her to meet you as her sister. I'm sure you could introduce yourself, say hi."
She shook her head. "I think that Ariya might need me to stay away. Maybe if she were healthy, I'd pursue it, but from what I've heard, the little girl isn't doing well."
I shook my head. "They don't expect her to make it much more than the next week."
The words hurt to say.
I didn't even know the girl and it hurt. Children were so fucking innocent. Their view on life wasn't jaded like an adult's view was.
"I'll talk to Ariya," I cleared my throat.
"She'll be mad at you for telling me," she countered.
I shrugged and let her chair thunk down onto all four legs.
Her face came to a stop next to my crotch.
Before I could step away, though, her arms threaded around my waist, and she buried her face into my belly.
"We'll figure it out, baby."
She breathed out. "I know."
Her words were said into my belly, and I had to bite my lip to keep from bursting out laughing.
We stayed like that for long moments, her with her face buried in my stomach, and me sifting my hands through her hair.
In fact, that'd been all I intended to do was hold her, but she had different ideas.