When It's Right(31)
“Cool!” Justin yelled.
Blake waited for Gillian to leave the room before he looked back to a smiling Dee. “She’s trying.”
“You have to try,” Justin confirmed, just like his sister taught him. He happily stuffed more pancake into his mouth and chewed. He’d settled into the family.
Blake hoped Gillian did the same. Soon. Maybe she needed it more than Justin. She’d suffered at her father’s hands far longer and in a more brutal way. She needed to be surrounded by family and love. She deserved it and a hell of a lot more. Blake vowed she’d live a happy life from now on. He’d make sure of it.
Chapter 11
Gillian hobbled down the stairs after getting dressed and stood in the kitchen doorway, watching Blake play with Justin. Even when he wasn’t trying, he got to her. She felt another brick in the wall around her heart fall and hit the others he’d already knocked loose with his quiet determination to get her to trust him. Well, she couldn’t exactly say she did or didn’t. So far, he hadn’t earned it, but he hadn’t done anything to make her not trust him either. The jury was still out.
The smile came easily when Blake held Justin’s small hands in his large ones. Justin walked up Blake’s legs and tumbled over backward, falling to his feet, then Blake let go of his hands when he landed safely. Each time, Justin laughed with such delight that her heart melted a little more. His laugh and smile got her through more days than she could count. Thrilled, Justin jumped up and yelled, “Again.” Ever patient, Blake let him go again and again.
Dee wasn’t in the kitchen. Judging by the dish towel slung over Blake’s shoulder, he’d done the breakfast dishes. She appreciated a man who kept things clean and pitched in to help when needed. Her father’s idea of helping out around the house had been to throw his garbage and beer bottles in the general direction of the trashcan. Too drunk and stoned, he missed by a yard, but still called out, “Swoosh,” and laughed his ass off for no reason. She often felt more like a mother and a maid than a daughter who should have had no more worries than her next high school chemistry pop quiz and whether a particular boy liked her. She should have spent her days out with friends and her nights sneaking off with a boyfriend. Instead, she’d raised a boy to the age of six and tried her hardest to keep the evil that lived in their home at bay.
She’d done everything she could under the threat that her father would take Justin away from her if she tried to run away with her brother. Disappear. Then Justin would have been at his mercy. She’d wanted to take Justin away, but with her meager resources and the beating she’d suffered the one time she’d tried, she’d hesitated every time she’d thought to do it again. She’d feared that if it didn’t go exactly to plan, she’d lose Justin, either to her father or the system. So she’d saved her pennies, every cent she could spare, and she’d planned, hoping one day she’d have the resources to take him and not end up living on the streets and in shelters, where social services was sure to take him from her.
But none of that mattered now. Look at him. Happy. Safe.
Blake smiled and laughed with Justin, and her heart tripped. This was what a man, a real man, looked like. This was what a father looked like. She’d told them last night to stop. She didn’t have any defenses for kindness. Blake seemed to be the one who got past all her barricades the easiest. She wondered how he’d managed to do it in a matter of hours by being nothing more than himself.
She’d made it through her high school years without becoming another statistic of teen promiscuity and pregnancy. She’d managed to survive those tumultuous years without becoming like her mother. As she looked at Blake now, the muscles in his strong arms cording as he pulled Justin up for another flip, a door in her heart crept open. Part of a long-forgotten dream caught the first rays of light she’d let shine in since she was a little girl dreaming of being a princess in a faraway land. She wanted to slam it shut again, afraid he’d see those silly, girlish dreams, pat her on the head, and send her on her way so he could find a woman more his age and a lot less trouble and damaged than her. Someone further away from college than high school. Older, wiser, more experienced.
She’d dreamed a lot as a young girl, but she’d put silly things like that away the night her mother handed her Justin, bundled in his blanket, and left with her father, never to return. Yes, she’d put away silly things like dreaming that one day she’d find a good man who knew how to be kind and gentle, a man who knew how to smile and laugh without turning it into something ugly.