He put his arms around her and hauled her to his chest. “I’m sorry, baby. Did I wake you?”
“It’s okay. I wasn’t really asleep.”
Trace glanced around the room. “Well you were the only one.” His eyes lingered on Pauly and his sister. “Poor Pauly. Claire Ann’s probably drooling all over him.”
“Um, he probably doesn’t mind.” Kylie placed a firm kiss on his neck to distract him. She let her hand slide higher up on his thigh.
Trace leaned down and kissed her on the lips. She knew they both had god-awful breath as neither of them had had access to a toothbrush recently. But the way he held her tightly, as if he needed nothing more than her in that moment, needed that kiss, that contact, solidified what she already believed.
This was love.
It was not caring if your mouth tasted like month-old coffee. Or worse. It was silence when needed and sleeping on uncomfortable hospital furniture for days without complaint. It was someone to pull you from your nightmares with a kiss.
It was walking away from your dream without a single regret.
It was this.
“You want to talk about it? Whatever it was that had you shouting in your sleep?” She snuggled her head into the nook between his shoulder and chin.
“Not really,” he answered, his tone gruff and warning.
“Might help,” she said softly.
“Might send you running for the hills.”
Her head popped up and she met his tormented stare. His hazel eyes clouded over, causing her heart to hurt for him.
“Trace, if you don’t know by now that you are stuck with me no matter what, then you must’ve missed something.”
He chuckled, but it was a low, dark laugh. As if she’d made a cruel joke.
“Hey.” She paused to kiss him once more. “I’m serious.”
He inhaled sharply and his eyes lost focus, as if he’d gone somewhere else. “My dad was a drunk,” he began softly. “Which I think Rae has told you before.”
Kylie nodded, afraid to speak for fear she’d say the wrong thing.
“There’s more to it. More to me.”
She snuggled closer to him. “There isn’t anything you can tell me that will change the way I feel about you, Trace.”
He cleared his throat. “Yeah, well. It changes the way I feel about me so I try not to think about it. But ever since I stopped drinking, it’s been coming back to me. Hence the nightmares.”
“I’m sorry, baby.”
“Don’t be. Not your fault, Kylie Lou. The only person who’s to blame is six feet under, may his black soul not rest in peace.”
Kylie cringed. They’d had very different brands of dads, that was for certain.
“You think I’m a mean drunk.” Trace snorted. “My dad was a monster when he drank. When I was drinking, I lashed out verbally, which, believe me, I know can be just as bad as physical abuse. Which is why I always wonder how you can stand me, much less love me.”
A shudder passed through him, and she scooted into his lap. “It’s not you when you’re like that. I knew that from the beginning. That version of you…It’s not the man you really are. Just a part you have to battle with sometimes.”
“The man I really am,” he said quietly, more to himself than her. He huffed out a small breath. “My dad used to get drunk and hit. He’d use his fists, his belt, whatever he could get his hands on. He beat the hell out of them. Always my mom and usually Claire Ann too.”
He clutched her tightly as he continued his story.
“I was ten when Rae was born. Old enough to try to protect her, to know that I was supposed to, but not big enough to really do it.”
“Trace—”
“For the first few years, he mostly ignored her. It was a relief, you know?”
She nodded and felt him swallow hard.
“He only hit me when I got in his way of getting to them. Said I needed to learn to be a man.”
Kylie wrapped herself around him the best she could in the awkward position they were in on the couch. She felt like they were both in danger of falling off the Earth down into a deep, dark hole neither of them would know how to get out of. But she knew she would go down with him before she’d let him fall alone.
“This one night, when I was fifteen and had just started a crappy garage band with my friends, I’d stayed out late.” He paused and Kylie looked up at his face. His jaw and throat were working overtime to keep the moisture in his eyes from being more. “I knew…I knew I should’ve gotten my ass home. It was a weekend, he always drank on the weekends.”
Her heart ached for him as he laid himself bare. “You can’t blame—”