“I… uhh.” I coughed again, clearing my throat. “I think it’s kinda hot.”
He definitely froze then. “What?”
I shrugged, giving him a quick glance and a cheery smile. “When men… when they get all hot… and sweaty… and… and bloody.”
His brows popped into his hair, his mouth falling open. He straightened and stared at me. “What?”
“Well… all that… grunting and testosterone, and the sweat flying and the heat, and the pure – raw – power.”
I shrugged and laughed, trying to disguise my eager reaction. “Shane… he… he used to cage fight when I met him.”
“What?” his tone had gone up an octave.
“Mmm.” I nodded. “That’s how I met him.” I blew out a breath and shivered. “Fuck. I’d never been so turned on in my life when I watched him power fist after fist into another guy. And apparently it was because I’d screamed something and the other guy had made a lewd remark about me. So Shane fucked him up.” I giggled uneasily. “But don’t tell Jen that. Fuck, she’ll go ape.”
He nodded stiffly, his eyes wide and staring at me.
“Well, I just wanted you to know that… well… I wondered if…”
“No!”
“Aww baby,” I whined, my lips pouting and my eyes widening as I tried to convince him.
“No Zoe, there is no way you are watching that. It’s a cruel, different world.”
“But…”
“NO!”
I huffed and went to back to my searching, my lips puffed outwards in a sulk. “But…”
“NO!”
“Okay. But just so you know, I get hot when you play too.”
He quirked an eyebrow at me. “Won’t work, baby.”
I curled a lip at him and grumbled when he winked and blew me a kiss. “Mean.”
I froze when I shifted another paper out of the way and a print off of an email stared at me. Picking it up, I scanned over it.
I flicked over the page that was stapled to the email. A photocopy of an old newspaper report stared at me and then behind that a duplicate of a police statement.
My lungs slammed hold of my breath and I palmed the desk for support. The room swam, my vision blurring and I closed my eyes to steady myself.
“I think we need to see if we can look into some financial records of Francis’, maybe which could… Ink?”
My mouth had dried so much I couldn’t swallow back the bile and I started to choke on it. Daniel rushed over, patting my back. His gaze landed on the email and he reached for it. Snatching it back, I shook my head at him.
“Baby?”
My mouth opened but nothing came out. He took my arm and directed me into Nick’s leather chair. “Zoe, let me look.”
I shook my head firmer, holding it to my chest, keeping it from him. “No. I… No.” I grabbed his hand unable to stop the heartache for him. “Oh god, Daniel. Baby…”
He licked his lips, narrowing his eyes on me. “Tell me.”
“Well…” I choked out. “I now understand what your parent’s have against you.”
He stared at me, his brows furrowing harder. “What? What do they have to do with this?”
“Did you know that your mum used to work for the government?”
“What?” He stared at me like I had gone crazy.
“Mmm.” I nodded, unable to function any other part of me. “Around thirty one years ago…”
He dropped onto the table, his body hitting the wood with a thump. “What?” I watched as the skin on his arms and neck prickled with goosebumps.
“She was the secretary for the local labour delegate.”
“What?” Daniel whispered.
I nodded and looked up at him slowly. “She was sacked when she accused her boss of rape.”
“Her boss?”
I closed my eyes. “Alan Francis. Her boss.”
“IT’S GOT TO be wrong. She never worked for any political party. She was a cleaner.”
Zoe stared at me in a way I didn’t want to see. I could read what she was thinking. Fuck. I was thinking it too. I closed my eyes. But the thoughts still slammed hold of me, all of them furiously fighting with the previous to be heard. Raped. Thirty one years ago. A year before I was born.
“Daniel.” The soft tone she spoke my name in made me hurt even more.
“No.” I shook my head at her, my eyes fixing her with a daring glare. “Don’t say it Zoe, it’s not true. It’s not true. NO!”
Her teeth clenched when her phone rang. She looked down at the screen then back up at me. “Bulk.”
I shifted uncomfortably. Bulk and Jax were at Penny’s, searching through her things. I just knew what he’d found… because he’d rang Zoe and not me.
“No,” I whispered, pleading with her not to answer. I couldn’t manage to talk and it came out a choked gasp.
She kept her eyes trained on me as she answered and listened, her eyes closing halfway through the conversation.
“We know,” she said after a while. “We’ve just found the same.” She nodded. “Yeah. I know. I will.”
She placed her phone back in her jacket pocket, her gaze secured on mine the whole time. “Daniel.”
“Will you stop saying my name like it’s a damn curse!”
She flinched but didn’t move away from my fury. I shook my head, angry at myself and grabbed her hand. “I’m sorry.”
“I know,” she whispered as she came to stand in front of me and held my face. “Life is shit, baby. Both of us know that. But I want you to listen to me.”
I stared at her, waiting, unable to do much else.
“We can’t choose our family. They are what we are given when we’re born. But sometimes,” she smiled and stroked her thumb across my cheek, wiping away the tears. “We are thrust into a group of people who, even if they’re not our blood, they’re very much our hearts and soul. The guy’s, they love you as their own brother, baby. Me, I love you so much that I would die for you. And Jakob, he will one day call you Daddy and he will be as proud of you as Harry and me are. We’re your family. All of us, because we love and accept who you are, what you are. Because to us, you’re you and you’re damn perfect.”
She pulled me to her chest when a stuttered sob erupted from deep inside me. She was right. My parent’s had never been my family. I found my family the day I walked into the music room at university and sat next to a long haired idiot that threw a scrunched up paper at a girl in front of him and pointed his thumb at me when she turned around. My family found me when I picked up the guitar that frosty morning in a rundown old shed by the river behind Boss’s grandparents’ house and played beside three other guy’s that took me into their hearts for who I was.
And they were the people that held me up when I wanted to drop, made me laugh when I couldn’t see for the tears. They were the strength that beat back my weakness and they were the love that fed my soul.
And the woman stood in front of me. She was what the future held for me. She was what my family would be. And she was what my heart would hold on to and cherish for the rest of my life.
I didn’t need someone who called themselves my mother and father and never once held me or told me they loved me. The guy’s did that. Zoe did that. But the difference was, they didn’t need to say it because they showed it with every breath they took beside me, with every smile they gave me and with every joke we shared.
I looked up at Zoe, my heart swelling with how she looked back at me, her love and adoration for me so openly displayed on her beautiful face. “I want to go home, baby. I want to stop. I want to stop and enjoy you, and Jakob and hopefully Harry. I want to clean the gutter and mow the lawn. I want to chase our children. I want to cook supper with you, and breakfast. I want to fall into bed with you every night, and wake up in your arms. But I want a life. I don’t want to exist for the sole fact that people want to hear me play. I want to have a family, and a life with that family. No more tours, no more interviews. N
o more hiding from flashing photographers or hiding at the back of the pub in case I’m noticed. And I do not want that for you or Jakob. I’m tired. I’m tired of living for everyone else. I want to live for us. For our family.”
She nodded softly and smiled. “And I just want you to be happy. Oh and maybe a few kids, and a puppy would be good.”
“Always so easy to please.” I whispered as I pulled her face to mine and brushed her lips with my own.
I pulled in a breath. “But first I need to go see my parents.”
She flinched but sighed and gave me a nod of agreement. “Together, Daniel. We go together.”
I nodded, giving in but knowing I’d need her every minute I was there. “Okay.”
“Come on,” she said softly. “Let’s get this done and then we can finally finish this shit.”
“I’ll… I’ll meet you in the car.”
Her expression saddened but she nodded, reaching up and placing a soft kiss on my cheek. “Okay, I’ll be right outside.”
I watched her through the window as she looked back at the house, closed her eyes and whispered her goodbye before slipping into the car.
I stood, my eyes roaming the room, taking in his own personal things. I didn’t have anything to say to him but I sensed he knew. The pain that tore through me finally found an exit, the grief at long last escaping with my tears.
I touched my fingers to a photo of him with his parents that was sat on a pale wood mantle, his happy smiling face grinning at the camera as his mum and dad smiled up at him. The picture made me smile. He’d had love, from a family that adored him. And from a man that would have given him his soul. “I love you.” It was all I could give him now but it said everything.
I gave him a final nod and walked away. Away from a man that had given me a part of him I would never forget nor ignore but to a woman that I knew would give me her own heartbeat.
It was time to be selfish. To take what I needed to breathe. To do what was right for me and ultimately for Zoe and Jakob. To give her the piece of me that I had kept from her for fear of rejection and hurt.
And it had taken Nick to show me that it was okay to be who I was. That it was okay to love another man, and to be proud for doing that. Because I had loved him and it was about time the world knew that. It was about time the world let me rest, let me take what Nick had taught me and to embrace it.
It was time for Romeo to play his last riff and let Daniel Wolfe be a man, just a simple family man.
AS SOON AS I met them I didn’t like them. They were obnoxious and rude to me but even worse, they were aloof and offensive to Daniel.
We weren’t offered a drink but to be honest I wasn’t sure I wanted one. Daniel sat beside me on a plush sofa. It was easy to see they didn’t struggle for money. And that made me wonder just how they had supported themselves when Daniel’s father worked for the local housing authority as a plumber and his mother refused to work.
My gut told me why but for Daniel’s sake, and to hold on to that final bit of humanity, I just imagined them being careful with money.
His mother, Jillian, was a snooty woman with a bouffant Audrey Hepburn would have been proud of. Her clothes were spotless, and apparently made from pure silk by the way she kept brushing the tiniest particle of dust from them. Her face was made up to perfection, the thin lines around her lips not even daring to allow a smidgen of lipstick escape its orderly line.
His father, Brian, had a twitchy moustache, his tongue coming out occasionally to slide over the ball of fluff across his top lip. He reminded me of a military sergeant, the way he sat super straight and held his hands on his knees, his buttoned up shirt and tie pressed and completely crease free.
“And to what do we owe the pleasure now, Daniel?” His mother spoke tightly, her lips hardly moving as she grated the words through her clenched teeth. “I thought we made it clear that you are not welcome here.” I frowned at the way she flinched as she spoke the words, as if they hurt her as much as they were intended to hurt Daniel.
Daniel squeezed my hand, urging me to remain silent. I squeezed back, telling him I was there but I wouldn’t jump in, although I wanted nothing more than to pick up the exquisite Chinese urn sat beside the fire and smash the fucking thing over her perfect hair.
Daniel didn’t hold back and waste time, he just shot it out there. “Is Alan Francis my father?”
My throat constricted as the air suddenly disappeared from the room. His mother’s eyes grew wild and wide, her lips sucked sternly behind her teeth. I’m sure that wasn’t good for her lippy. She wrung her hands in her lap, her eyes snapping to her husband and then back to Daniel.
Brian shot upright, spluttering something incomprehensible, spit flying and his moustache gaining a life of its own as it danced across his lip.
“What the…?”
“Fuck?” Daniel finished for him. “Yeah, that’s what I said too.”
His mother fell back into the sofa, the air in the cushion hissing with the press of her body. I wondered if they had ever actually snuggled into it with cocoa and a movie. The thought saddened me when I knew damn well they had never once enjoyed the comfort of the expensive things they bought to erase the pain.
“Daniel.” I whispered to him. It suddenly felt wrong. I knew what had happened to his parents. Their once perfect life had been torn apart by one simple act of cruelty by a man that I knew thought he could buy his way out of anything.
His father was still spluttering. Daniel was still staring at his dad goading him into saying something.
“Mrs Wolfe.”
Her eyes found mine. The fear in them broke my heart and brought tears to my own.
“Get out!” Brian raged as Daniel stood and took a step towards him.
“IS HE?” he screamed. “Just tell me. No wonder you always hated me. You’re not even my father?”
I moved across the room and sat next to Jillian. Her eyes were still wide on me, but I could see her terror. She remained frozen as Daniel and his father continued to scream at each other. I took her hand in my own and smiled at her. “It’s okay. It’s okay.”
Her face screwed up and she shook her head furiously. “I…”
“It’s okay to be angry. You are very much entitled to be. That man took something from you that you never found again. I get that because I too, was raped, a long time ago.”
Her eyes widened further and the whole room stilled.
“Ink?”
I turned to Daniel. His face was pale. He was holding onto an expensive table with so much pressure I wondered if I had enough money in the bank to replace it if he broke it.
“I’m okay Daniel. It was a long, long time ago.” I turned back to Jillian. “I can’t begin to imagine what you went through. A man that you had no hope of fighting against even though you tried.”
If I hadn’t discovered the police statement with the email I would never have realised what had happened. But it was the fact that she had tried, and so obviously failed, that made me determined to fight her corner for her.
A single tear rolled from her eye. Its solitude was more heart-breaking than a torrent of tears. She lowered her eyes to her lap when Brian stumbled into a chair and shut up.
I glanced around the room and sighed. “I take it he paid you off?”
Her hand shot to her mouth as a sob escaped but she nodded then looked up at Daniel. “I didn’t want to hate you. I wanted to love you. I so wanted to love you Daniel.”
She flicked her eyes to Brian and then back to Daniel as he slowly lowered himself onto the other sofa. “We had been trying for a baby for so long. But it wasn’t to be. We had tests and found out Brian couldn’t have children.”
She stood up and walked across the room and filled an expensive crystal tumbler with equally expensive whisky. Her back was to us as she carried on but we could hear her clearly.
“He… Alan had asked me to work late one night. He had a function to go to and there was a proposal that ne
eded to be finished up for the next day. I stayed behind and he went off to the party.” She tipped back the drink, downed it and refilled it. “A few hours later he stumbled back into the office drunk. He said he had forgotten something.”
She turned round, her eyes blazing with both tears and terror. “He tied me up so he didn’t have to hold me down. No hand marks, no evidence.” She shook her head with a bitter laugh. “He knew, knew I would report it.”
She swiped at the tears that were now fluid. “After he finished, he zipped up and walked away and just said ‘see you tomorrow Jillian, bright and early, we have an election to win’.”
She turned around, her pale face making her appear ghostly. “Oh I reported it. But I didn’t stand a chance. There was no bruising, no evidence of a physical assault. And Alan was ‘in’ with the high up circle.” She scoffed and shook her head. “He laughed at me, and winked when I was escorted out of the building the day after.”
She stumbled across the room and fell back down next to me, the whisky in her glass sloshing over the side and splashing her silk blouse.
“And then finally, I had evidence.” Her eyes slowly moved towards Daniel. He sighed and shifted uneasily.
“Me?”
Nodding her head, she closed her eyes and drank the remainder of the alcohol. Taking the glass from her, I walked across the room and refilled it for her, placing it in her hand as I sat back down beside her.
“By this time we were behind with the mortgage and the loans we’d taken out to furnish our home as newlyweds. Brian had lost his job on the trains and I couldn’t find another. Anyway I went to Alan and told him I was pregnant and that it was proof, that Brian had had tests and wasn’t able to father children.”
She stopped and silence descended. “And he made you an offer you couldn’t refuse.” I finished for her.
She nodded and stood up again, her pacing becoming uncontrollable. She flung her arms out and laughed. “All this wealth. Look at it. All the fancy goods, the designer clothes, the holiday homes, all of them just to keep a secret. All of it given to make me ‘feel’ better about it all. Except it never did, it never has.” She turned to Daniel. “And you, after wanting children for so, so long, you felt like another payoff, another part of the ‘compensation’.”
Finally Heaven (Room 103 Book 4) Page 19
