One and Only(38)

“Well, that’s a little melodramatic.”

He shrugged. It was strange to be talking to him from so far away. She was still on the stool at the breakfast bar, and he was leaning against the counter next to the stove, which was as far away from her in the kitchen as it was possible to be. “It suited me, for the most part. I was a loner by that point. I didn’t need people bothering me.”

“So you’re the devil with an angel tattoo?”

“There was this woman named Mrs. Compton who lived in the park. She was exactly what you picture when someone says the term ‘trailer trash.’ Looked much older than her years, bad dye job, constantly talking about conspiracies and supernatural shit, usually had a wine cooler in hand. But she liked me. She was the only one who did. She had this crackpot idea one summer that she was going to start reading palms and doing tarot cards. So she had all these library books out, and she’d practice on me. She’d give me Oreos. I’d eat with one hand and let her examine the other against the charts in her books. She was always telling me that I was a fallen angel.”

“Oh,” Jane breathed, understanding dawning. Of course. The tattoo was a fallen angel. The tattoo was him.

“She’d go on and on about it. I wasn’t the devil like everyone said, she’d insist. I’d just fallen out of heaven.” He rolled his eyes. “I didn’t see much difference. Wasn’t Lucifer himself a fallen angel?”

“No.” She wasn’t much of a theologian, but she knew comics and science fiction, which were littered with otherworldly beings. “I think there’s a subtle difference.”

He looked up at her, and she was startled anew by his brilliant turquoise eyes. “And what is that difference?”

“If you’re a fallen angel, I think it implies that you might get back in. To heaven, I mean.”

He nodded once, a sharp, decisive nod, like she’d given the correct answer on a test.

Then he picked up the plate of sandwiches, crossed the kitchen, and set it down on the breakfast bar. “Eat up,” he said, back to his usual gruff self. “You’re going to need your strength for what I’m going to do to you later.”

There was still something tapping at the edges of her consciousness, a pre-formed thought that wanted to be examined, but she couldn’t quite grab it. Didn’t really want to, truth be told. Instead, she let the innuendo wash over her, warm her, and then chased that warmth away with an involuntary shiver of anticipation. “I can’t eat that,” she said, though the perfectly golden toast with a line of cheese oozing out the sides made her want to cry. “T-minus four days now; it’s after midnight.”

“Eat,” he commanded, sliding the plate directly under her.

“Goddamn you,” she said, picking up half a sandwich.

“Now it’s your turn,” he said, coming around and sitting down next to her at the bar.

“My turn for what?” she asked even as she groaned through a heavenly bite of buttery, sharp cheddar.

“If we’re playing midnight confessions, you’re up.”

She laughed. “Okay, hit me.” She was an open book. He’d seen her vibrators. He’d had his face between her legs, for heaven’s sake. She couldn’t think of anything she wouldn’t feel okay about confessing. Cameron was cool that way—he could be kind of jerky when he chose to, but now that she knew him, she could safely say he was utterly trustworthy. She really could tell him anything.

“You hardly ever drink. What’s up with that?”

Except that.

She exhaled and leaned forward, resting her elbows on the counter and her head in her hands.

“It’s okay,” he said quickly. “You don’t have to answer.” It wasn’t lost on her that she’d used the exact same words on him earlier, when he’d reacted to her asking him about his tattoos. She was pretty sure that he had never told anyone the true meaning behind that angel tattoo. He had trusted her. Could she do the same?

Warmth flooded her chest. Of course she could. Hadn’t she just been thinking how trustworthy he was? She took a deep breath. “My dad was an alcoholic.”

He nodded. “That’s rough.”

She shook her head, not because she disagreed, but because that wasn’t the hard part.

“I used to kind of cover for him,” she started, trying to think how to put everything in context. “I was the youngest—my brother is four years older. And my mom was deep in denial. He hated disappointing her, but it was like he couldn’t…”

“Couldn’t not drink?” Cameron finished gently.

She nodded, hating that a lump had formed in her throat. “So I kind of took it upon myself to try to…minimize the evidence. Like, I’d put him to bed in the guest room. Or if he was out late, I’d try to stay up and meet him at the door with a snack to make sure he didn’t make too much noise banging around in the kitchen. Or…” God, it was so humiliating, though she wasn’t sure why. Her mature, rational mind knew that none of it was her fault. “When he got sick, I’d clean it up.” She swallowed hard. “Somehow, it was important to me that my mom not know how bad things really were. But of course, as an adult I can see that she had to have known.”

“Oh, sweetheart,” he said, laying a hand on her forearm. She could feel his gaze, but she didn’t turn her head. Since they were sitting side by side, she could get away with not looking at him, so she kept staring straight ahead. It was the only way she could do this.

“How old were you when this was going on?” he asked quietly.

She shrugged. She couldn’t remember a time when it hadn’t. “Five, maybe, when it started? Six?” she ventured. “I don’t really remember. It was just always a thing I did, until…”

He squeezed her forearm tighter, and she appreciated that he didn’t prod her to continue. In fact, paradoxically, it was his patience that made her want to keep going. Now that she’d started, she wanted to unburden herself fully.

“So anyway, I was a big reader. The library was my happy place, you know?”

He raised his eyebrows. “You don’t say?”

She chuckled, loving the gentle teasing. “When I was eleven, I found this shelf of books in the kids’ nonfiction section about being the child of an alcoholic. There was this stuff in one of them about how often kids of alcoholics are forced to parent their parents. It was like a lightbulb went off—that was exactly what I was doing. So then I went and got grown-up books on the subject. There was this one targeted at spouses of alcoholics. It had a chapter about protecting your children from your spouse. Not physically—my dad was never violent. But, like, stuff about how it wasn’t fair to expect the child to step into the parental role, and how it could actually create lasting psychological damage, blah, blah. Anyway, I got mad.” Her skin felt hot and prickly just thinking about it, a mixture of residual anger and shame over what that anger had spawned. “Cameron, I got so mad.”

She paused. Was she really going to continue? She kind of felt, stupidly, like telling this story to another person would make it more real. And making it more real might make it more painful. And she wasn’t sure she could deal with that. But then the hand that had been resting on her forearm slid down and grabbed her hand.

His hand was so big. So warm.

She took a shaky breath. “I didn’t dare bring those books into the house. I read them in the library, put them back on the shelf, and I went home. I was seething. I mean, I’m sure puberty had something to do with it, but mostly I was just done. Like, a switch had flipped inside me. When I got home, he was drunk, which wasn’t unusual. I was the only one there. My brother was a top student, and his schedule was loaded with extracurriculars.” Extracurriculars that he had to quit, later, so he could work to support them. Jane would never forget that. “My mom wasn’t home. He was out of booze. That used to happen a lot, and it would tick me off. Like, didn’t he know by now how much he needed? Why couldn’t he plan ahead? Normally, I’d talk him out of driving to get more. I’d make him a sandwich and tell him I needed help with my homework. I never did, but that always seemed to trigger something in him. Like, he was fine with being a drunk, but some part of him didn’t want to be a shitty parent. So sometimes food and math homework would be enough to sort of land the plane, and he’d go pass out. But sometimes it wouldn’t work, and he would be determined. Those times, I used to feel like the best thing I could do was call him a cab. I’d stall him and do it on the sly, so that when it arrived it was easier for him to accept without damaging his pride—like, oh, this cab is here, might as well take it.”

“You had to grow up too soon,” Cameron said.

She wanted to say that it was fine. That it was probably nothing compared to what lots of kids go through. That her brother was the one who’d had to grow up too soon. But more than that, she wanted to keep going with the story. Now that she’d started, now that she had this big, warm, safe hand to hold on to, she needed to get it all out, to voice the words that she’d never said to another human being. “But that day, I decided not to do anything. I came home, took stock of the situation, and…told him I was done. I didn’t yell or anything, just basically recited everything I’d learned from my reading. I told him he had ruined my childhood. He was shocked. I was shocked. He tried to apologize, but I’d freaked myself out so much with the confrontation that I shook off his entreaties and went to hide in my room.”